Romantic Vision: Black and White Tips

Just one of the romantic images in the Polylooks database

Valentine’s Day is not far away, prompting a rise in demand for romantic images to accompany articles, blogs and marketing materials. As well as red hearts and cupids, nothing captures the romance of Valentine’s Day like a black and white photo.

Despite its origins, black and white photography is rarer nowadays than the more commonplace colour image, making it more unique and, in the absence of colour, heightens the emotional context. That’s why so many wedding photos are still taken in black and white, even though colour photography has been widely available for decades. It adds an air of mystery and nostalgia.

Top Tips

Firstly, when shooting black and white photos, don’t set your camera to black and white if your camera gives you the option – shoot in colour on the RAW format and convert to black and white using a photo editing suite to avoid any potential loss of quality.

If you’re looking to capture romance in black and white, think about your composition. What do you want to use to illustrate romance? Is it couples? Rings? Hearts? If it’s a portrait, really narrow the field to focus the viewer’s eye on the core elements.

Contrast is an essential part of taking black and white images. When colour is taken out of the equation the focus shifts towards light intensity, so contrast really helps your image stand out.

The use of light is critical when shooting black and white. Romantic shots need to be sensual, not necessarily bright but, when using shadows, don’t make them too gloomy. That’s the challenge with black and white photography – finding the right balance – you don’t want a white out in the same way as you need to avoid overshadowing.

With black and white photography you can do so much more with texture than with colour, because the eye is forced to focus more keenly in the absence of colour. Play around with soft settings if you’re looking for that slushy feel!

Shopping for Images

If you’re looking to buy black and white images for Valentine’s Day, or any other event for that matter, make sure you log onto Polylooks.co.uk and use the colour and emotion filters available on the site to select the right look and feel for you. Also, use key search words such as ‘love’, ‘romance’ and ‘Valentine’s Day’ to ensure you get a wide choice of relevant stock images.

Then you can start looking forward to using microstock images in your features, blogs, or – if you purchase the merchandise license – to use commercially, such as creating gift cards.

Polylooks has nearly half a million images on offer so there’s plenty of choice!

UK Marketers Confess to Microstock Image Misuse

Microstock sites like Polylooks offer thousands of images for sale

This week, Polylooks unveiled findings of its study into the UK’s creative industry’s collective understanding of how they can use photos from the Web – and it makes worrying reading! We found that more than a third of UK creative professionals – publishers, PR people, marketers, etc – use Internet images without consent – and four in five (81 per cent) of those don’t feel guilty about doing so.

Digital rights are a really hot topic right now, and when a photographer or artist submits their work to a microstock site for people to use online they do so to either earn money, to showcase their work, or both. This is being undermined largely by a widespread misunderstanding over how and where images can – or can’t – be used. For example, only 21 per cent correctly identified the definition of ‘royalty free’, with nearly half (44 per cent) believing it meant they could use the image without paying for it. In fact, users must purchase the image and then are able to use it with certain restrictions. Additionally, only 16.5 per cent knew what ‘rights managed’ meant. The survey unveiled that these creative professionals have control over image-buying budgets, despite their lack of knowledge of how to legally use them.

Norbert Weber, Product Manager at Polylooks, said of the findings: “There is still a great deal of confusion when it comes to using photos or illustrations that photographers and artists have made available for sale online. Many people who should be paying for the right to use images are not doing so due to a lack of understanding on industry rules and terminologies. Some 85 per cent of creative professionals are not familiar with the term ‘microstock’, which presents stock image providers like Polylooks with a challenge. Is it time we redefined what we offer?”

Other key findings from the survey include:

·        81.4 per cent of creative professionals that have used an image without paying for it did not feel guilty

·        44 per cent legally download between one and five pictures each month, while seven per cent buy more than 11 stock images each month

·        Nearly half (48 per cent) do not have a microstock image budget but five per cent spend in excess of £100 each month on images

Do you use microstock sites? Do these findings surprise you? Get involved in the debate, we’d love to hear your views.

*Survey of 200+ UK-based marketing, PR and publishing professionals conducted online throughout November 2009

Seeking Perfection: How to Find the Right Stock Photo for You

Creative types are often perfectionists. When searching through royalty free stock images a publisher, designer or other user of microstock photography will have in their own mind a vision of the image they’re searching for to accompany their article, blog or design. This is where it gets tricky! For example, Polylooks.co.uk alone hosts more than a quarter of a million images. Someone searching through stock photo websites could easily spend hours looking for that perfect stock photo.

An image selected by mood and colour scheme from Polylooks.co.uk

Most microstock sites will offer simple drop-down, multiple choice menus which filter down the search experience but still leave hundreds or thousands of results to sift through. We at Polylooks have tried to simplify that process as much as possible to reduce the amount of time microstock image purchasers spend looking for photos and artwork by being a little more intuitive.

For example, Polylooks.co.uk enables stock photo purchasers to search by ‘emotion’. Do you want your image to have a friendly feel? Do you want it to convey fear? When contributors upload their photos or artwork, they categorise them by emotion so you can further narrow down your search according to look and feel.

It’s also possible to narrow the search further using colour schemes, so buyers of royalty free stock photos can best match the stock images they want with the background colours they’re already working with. You can also search by photographer, continent or country, and even take your chances with the ‘Random Search’ option.

Stock photography shoppers can also benefit from the size option. Do you need a web image or are you searching for a large format size that you can use for merchandise, such as billboard advertising? Use the size filters to help refine your microstock search.

Our top tips for searching for the right stock photo image are:

· Think about keywords – how would you describe the stock image you’re searching for? They’re probably the same as the photographer tagged them with

· Use the ‘emotion’ option when searching on Polylooks.co.uk – it helps whittle down your search to get a more accurate look and feel

· Think about the colour scheme you want. Many composition shots have a plain, white studio background anyway and are perfect for Web publishing, for example

If you think we missed anything here or you’ve got some tips – or queries – of your own, do please leave a comment and we’ll make sure we respond.

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