[ELuSiVe1151]

This is for all experienced paintball photographers who want to help paintball grow.

From personal experience, i know that advertisers look to stock photo websites like iStock and ShutterStock for pictures when they need a generic photo on the quick.

sports, entertainment, fitness, men's health pharmaceutical and many other industries will often look to these websites when they need a nameless male or female figure doing something cool for a package design, website or advertisement.

So i design for one of these companies, and today i check out iStock because i need a photo of an athlete. Being a paintball player for more than a decade, the first thing i noticed when i typed "athlete" was paintball; there wasn't any.

before you can be noticed, you need to be mentioned. before you can be mentioned, you need to be seen. If ad agencies and company marketing departments are perusing stock photo websites for athletes to use in their ads, we need to flash paintball photos at them. if there is a paintball player at least once on every page, rest assured paintball will be seen by the right people on a daily basis, and paintball will find it's way into popular culture THE RIGHT WAY, not on negative news reports.

I propose a major blitz of the following websites with paintball photos tagged as "athlete":

www.iStock.com
www.ShutterStock.com
www.fotolia.com
www.crestock.com

not that I have anything against woodsball because I don't, but i don't know that i'm cool with typing "paintball" and having the whole page turn green and brown.

oh and by the way, this means getting your work seen amidst exactly 263,749 (ShutterStock) other pictures tagged under "athlete", so the sooner we start this, the better.

thoughts?

[Enderle]

This actually sounds like a good idea. But don't fully expect them to keep your watermark in there if you put it in the corner of your picture.
But either way, still good for paintball exposure

[ELuSiVe1151]

I agree, but if you look at their stuff, nothing is watermarked, and that is because by submitting your photo I BELIEVE you are submitting your rights to it so that designers like me can use it in ads. Not to mention you make some money every time someone downloads your photo.

As an artist, I know that art is expendable. By that I mean we are creative people and can continuously create more of it. Which is why as an artist, be it photographer or otherwise, you should secure your most prized creations for personal use and copyright them as necessary, and THEN set aside a few expendable pieces to put out into the world for endeavors like this.

if I were a photographer that's what I would do.

and this isn't even something we have to make a major thing out of. all that's needed is that if you are a photog, every time you take pictures of an event (NOT PRO), save a couple for your favorite stock photo website. if the photos found in magazines like Facefull and that new digital european one that i forgot the name of are any indication, there are some sick high res photos out there of paintball that the general public would drool over.

Now this is all stuff that i'm sure most paintball photographers are pro enough to know already, but i'll get into it anyway:

Check out the popular ones that come up and see the types of dramatic photos/poses/presentations people are looking for the most, and we can blend right in.

that also means no team logos or player names. Photoshop that stuff out if you can.

[ELuSiVe1151]

no other thoughts on this? it's the absolute easiest way to promote the sport, with no approval needed from the media and no financially better-equipped entities to compete with for the same exposure.