Browse John's Galleries of unique stock pictures, funny animal stock photos, and conceptual stock images!

Lightning Strike – Creating A Conceptual/Fine Art Stock Photo with Adobe Photoshop

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Using Photoshop the author describes making a fine art stock image for Getty Images with before and after images

Picture of the Devil - Creating a Stock Photo

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Using Photoshop John creates a very devilish stock image.

Dragon Pictures - Creating a Stock Photograph of a Fire Breathing Dragon in Photoshop

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Chinese type dragons inspired John to Create this dragon picture from photographs of an iguana. Lots of details.

Flying Elephants! Move over reality - here comes stock!

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John provides insight on how to come up with and produce highly profitable stock images.

Ganesh the Indian God.

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John discusses how to have a successful stock photography photo shoot in a foreign country

Royalty Free - Rights Managed - Micro Stock - Stock Photography Pricing

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Royalty Free Stock Photos along with Rights Managed and Micro Stock - A discussion of pricing considerations.

Hindu Gods - The Hindu God Ganesha - Picture and Story

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The Hindu Gods - Photograph of the Hindu God Ganesh showing explanations of the symbols.

Free Siggies, Tags and Tubes - Amazing Siggy Pictures

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Images for use with Siggy and tag type signatures.  Free as long as you follow the directions.

Stock…the Highest Form of Commercial Photography

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The author discusses stock photography and reveals some of his experiences with the stock photo industry over the last 30 years. 

Pictures of Dog Breeds - Shooting Stock Photos of Miniature Poodles

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Pictures of Dog Breeds - Taking pictures of poodles -a very intelligent breed of dog.

Dominatrix Pictures - Photo Shoot and Photoshop

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Creating a great stock photo was just a mater of locating props, finding a model, and a little Photoshop work.

Female Photography - Photographing the Human Body

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It took me some twenty-seven years, but I have finally started a series of photographic studies of the human body, not just women but men too, that I feel does offer something new. 

Stock Photo of a Wrecking Ball Produced with Adobe Photoshop Tools

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To create the image I started with the wrecking ball. I used the "spherize" filter in Photoshop on the manhole cover, worn smooth by years of traffic.

Stock Photos of Cows - Being Creative Taking Pictures of a Cow

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The closest I have ever come to being killed or injured on a photo shoot was while taking pictures of a cow.

Pictures of Lions - The King of Beasts

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There were three animal trainers and each carried a pick handle and a can of mace.  I can’t imagine that a pick handle would have done any good if they had been needed…and I think the mace would just make the lion madder!

Stock Photos Articles

I will be posting articles of how I made stock photos, and the stories behind them.  These stories or articles may include where the ideas came from, any problems or interesting anecdotes that occurred during the shooting and/or compositing of the pictures, and whether or not the images have been successful.

I know that as a photographer I love to hear stories from other pros about how they approach their work, what they go through to get the images, and whether the photographs succeed at their intended purposes.  What I hope to provide here is similar information for anyone, amateur or pro, who might be interested.  I picture this section as being a blend of entertainment and useful information.

Some of these stories will be from images made long ago, and some will be written pretty much as I produce the image.  The common denominator will be that in my opinion there are, as I mentioned above, both useful information and some entertainment value.  Since stock photography is my career I expect most, if not all, of the articles will feature stock images.

Some of these stories will come from the Photoshop book I had published several years ago:  Adobe Master Class: Photoshop Compositing with John Lund.  The book is out of print now, but much of what was presented is still true today.  The book was written using actual stock photos that I had created and featured step-by-step illustrations about the details of how the image was made from start to finish.  While not a runaway best seller, the book was published in English, Chinese, Japanese, and, of all things, Russian!

I also intended the book, as with these pages, to be inspirational in nature.  I am always, to this day, amazed at what can be accomplished with a minimum of tools.  One of my points then, and now, is that one dose not have to be a Photoshop Guru to create exceptional new photographic realities…a firm understanding of the basics will do very nicely.

Some of the earliest images were actually composited with Live Picture, a unique imaging program that unfortunately could not compete with Photoshop, though it had layers before Photoshop did, unlimited undo’s before Photoshop, and could, in most cases, move huge numbers of pixels far faster than Photoshop.  For those images, I rebuilt them step-by-step using Photoshop, for the above-mentioned book.

I currently shoot and composite images for Blend, Getty, Corbis, and Kimball Stock.  That keeps me extremely busy!  I specialize in conceptual images, especially ones that require extensive imaging for their execution.  I have dipped my toe in the waters of lifestyle shooting and actually do enjoy it from time-to-time.  Travel is also important to me and many of the articles will have information in them about my approach to shooting stock during the course of these travels.  Travel gets me out of my comfortable environment, and finds me with a camera in hand more often than not, exposing me to far more photographic possibilities than I would otherwise encounter.  Stock photography allows me to travel with the knowledge that I will almost certainly make a profit from any given trip.  I don’t believe I have been on a trip of any significance over the last ten years that hasn’t yielded, over time, a nice profit.  Not a bad gig if you can get it!