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Q&A With Our 10 Millionth Image Submitter

Last Saturday here at Shutterstock, we added the 10 millionth image to our library. The photo was submitted by Matthew Jacques of Bedford, Nova Scotia, Canada, a Shutterstock submitter since 2006. We caught up with Jacques to learn a little more about his experience shooting stock. Our Q&A with Matt is below.

Shutterstock: What is the story behind the photo?

Jacques: This photo of two Dall Sheep locking horns was taken during a field trip to Shubenacadie Wildlife Park. I’ve been deliberately building a diverse portfolio of images at Shutterstock, but this was my first attempt at capturing wildlife images.

The park is in a fairly remote area of Nova Scotia, and we had just received about 10 centimeters of fresh snow. If there had been much more snow, the park would have been inaccessible, but it turned out to be a perfect day with a clean blanket of snow covering the ground and all the surrounding trees.

Mating season for these sheep was supposedly over, but a few of the males were still putting on impressive displays of power for the nearby females. These beautiful creatures were so majestic to see in person, and I was glad to have walked away with even just a few images that show their true character.

Shutterstock: Are you a professional photographer or an amateur/hobbyist?

Jacques: I’ve been interested in photography my whole life, but my pursuit really took off in 2001, when I bought my first digital camera. With every year that goes by, I’m feeling more and more comfortable getting rid of the “hobbyist” label, but I know the big jump to professional photography is still a long way off on the horizon.

Right now, I’m happily in the “semi-professional” category. I know there are many of us in that middle ground, and agencies like Shutterstock help make that progression a real possibility.

Shutterstock: What kind of camera did you use?

Jacques: This image was taken with a Nikon D700 (set to ISO400) with a Nikon 80-200mm f/2.8 AF-D telephoto lens (set to 170mm at f/2.8).

Shutterstock: How has your experience with Shutterstock been?

Jacques: My experience with Shutterstock has been amazing. When I first joined, I had just purchased my first DSLR (Nikon D70), and was eager to explore the possibilities of earning money from photography.

Shutterstock has not only provided me with a solid base from which to develop my skills and finance future equipment purchases, but it has also taught me so much about looking at my photographs from an image buyer’s perspective.

I think all photographers go through early stages of being happy with their own photos, and then hearing praise and support from family and friends, but the bottom line is if you are hoping to earn money or make a living with photography, you need to look at your images with the critical and objective eye of a client. Making the grade in stock photography and learning about what makes a commercial or editorial image salable are important steps along the way, and Shutterstock provides that through a stringent review (quality control) process, as well as great community and peer feedback in the discussion forums.

As an example of peer feedback within the Shutterstock forum area, I learned from other wildlife shooters early on that adding the scientific Latin names to my wildlife images would help my overall downloads, so in this particular image I remembered to add “Ovis Dalli” to describe the Dall Sheep in the title area as well as in the keyword area. Accurate keywords, of course, are very important to any photographer’s portfolio.

View Jacques’ gallery here.

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