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Challenge | Visual Storytelling

Need a Special Image? Roll Your Own!

Holly Jahangiri
4 min readJul 19, 2020

Stock Photography

How often have you found yourself searching for just the right photo on one of the free stock photo sites, only to come up empty — or to find only the same photo that has been used a thousand times, before, on Medium?

Stock photos are meant to illustrate — they are the workhorses of the photography world. And how lucky are we, that we have access to so many high-quality, free, stock photos?

I’ve relied heavily on my own photos, in the past. I’ve even contributed some to ShutterStock and, just this week, to Unsplash. I don’t know if Unsplash will accept my contributions, but I submitted a few under the “pay it forward” principle — in gratitude for the glorious free stock images others have made available, for free, to me.

Did I Choose the Wrong Career?

The generosity of our fellow creatives is not something we should take for granted. Stock photographers can earn quite a bit for just the right photo, taken to fit a client’s requirements, and licensed for their exclusive use. They can earn some nice royalties — even that mythical “passive income” — from some of…

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Holly Jahangiri
Holly Jahangiri

Written by Holly Jahangiri

Writer and Kid-at-Heart, often found at https://jahangiri.us. Subscribe to my (free!) Newsletter: https://hollyjahangiri.substack.com

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