Having worked in Stock Photography for over 25 years, I have seen the rise and more recently, the fall of the professional photographer as stock contributor.

At Pocketstock, we take these matters seriously and as such, we have decided enough is enough.

As part of our drive to be different, we realized that it wouldn’t be possible to say this with as much pride as we do, if we treated every image in the same way.

Our aim is to democratize not commoditize the industry and to that end, we value every image on it’s own merits. We understand that if you have years of experience as a photographer, it will show in your images and we believe that these images should demand a higher price in the market place.

We plan to sell content from all sorts of contributors, amateur first timers right up to the top professionals. With our Academy tutorials, we want to inspire and educate the amateurs and with Compass, we want to work with you, our more experienced professionals, by giving you a way to control how your images are presented and offered to our clients.

Put simply, Compass will be a collection of premium royalty free imagery that will be sold at a higher price point to reflect the skill and experience that has gone into producing each and every image.

To guarantee the quality of the images, a Compass account will be offered to photographers on an invite only basis.

Once accepted, the Compass account will include a number of benefits to the photographer that are unparalleled in the industry today:

• As well as the offer of a highly competitive royalty rate, you will be able to set a minimum price for your images.

• You will have a Compass profile, showcasing your images and if you want it, a link to your own website from your profile.

• You will also be able to participate in our PocketBriefs program. This will enable you to be on our Client PocketBrief List where any client can post a brief that is sent directly to photographers in that field – a food brief will go to food photographers for example. We charge a premium for this service so you earn more if the client uses your image.
  
  (We will be posting more about this in the coming weeks, so please check back)

We invite you to join here.

We will review your application and respond within 14 days.

Before applying, remember:

The offer to submit to Compass is by invitation only.

We are looking for a very high standard of work from the best and most experienced professional photographers.