Before attempting microstock photography I’d only ever worked with ambient light (aside from the occasional horrible on-camera flash), and for the first few months attempted to make stock images with only ambient light.
My consistent rejections for ‘poor lighting’ or more commonly ‘not stock material’ were frustrating, and the lengthening delays before being able to re-submit to the sites for approval (yes, they tell you to wait longer and longer before re-submitting) were becoming ridiculous. At some point, the penny dropped, and I realized I needed to learn about how to create my own light.
Many of the sites are noise Nazi’s, and will often reject images shot at over 200 ISO. You’ll need to learn all about using your camera with off camera strobes.
Fortunately, using off camera lights is extremely cheap – well, cheap relative to the rest of your equipment! For a few hundred dollars you can get setup with two decent manual strobes and a wireless trigger device. I use Cactus V2′s, which I bought from China, they’re cheap (around $40), and fairly reliable. Not as reliable as Pocket Wizards or some of the other brands out there, but good enough if you’re mostly doing product and portrait photography. I wouldn’t recommend them for weddings and event photography, but home studio stuff is fine.
Most of my stock images were shot with a Sunpack 611 and Vivitar 285HV, both of which I found on ebay, for around $30-$40 each. Recently I purchased a used studio lighting kit, again very cheaply on e-bay, which consists of a 400ws powerpack and four strobe heads.
My plan now, is to invest in Alien Bees or White Lightning 1600ws mono-heads. 2 of them. With those bad boys at my disposal I’ll be able to light almost anything I choose!