Stock In Action

Chances are that if you are on a normal stock photography website and you search “Paris Hilton”, all you are going to find is a hotel in France. Most stock photo and video websites don’t sell images of celebrities, athletes, politicians, or anyone else famous.

Be Careful
When you buy an image from most stock websites, you can use the image pretty much however you want. This is not the case when buying a photo of a famous person! Let’s say you run a blog all about the latest and greatest sports news and you want to do an article on former UFC champ Chuck Liddell. You can’t just search Google, find your favorite picture of him and slap it on your site. If you do, it is highly likely the license owner of that image will come after you. If you think the consequences for using a famous person’s image on your website is bad, you should see what happens to people who use unauthorized images of celebs in fliers promoting their products. This is a dangerous road that you shouldn’t walk down. Each license is different so read them very carefully before you buy.

How to get these Images
You have three main options: You can camp outside Brittany Spears’ house with a camera, you can buy million dollar photos directly from the paparazzi, or you can buy them from a stock website like Getty Images. This isn’t like buying regular stock images like you may be used to. They typically won’t let you even see the price until you have signed up, logged in, and answered 20 questions about yourself and how you will be using the image. Some normal questions include:

How will it be used?
Where will it be used?
What resolution will the final product be?
Will it be on the homepage or a subpage?
How many prints will there be?
What country will it be seen in?
What is the industry of the product you are promoting?
How long will the image stay up?

Pricing
Pricing for celebrity images can vary greatly depending on popularity of figure, quality of the image, and the million questions they will ask you regarding the use. Don’t assume that because it is “stock” it is going to be cheap. Even if you are just using it for your blog, these images can cost hundreds of dollars. For example I looked up the price of an image of Angelina Jolie walking up a hill in Afghanistan. She is far away and barely recognizable. I selected that it would be used for an inside page of a magazine taking up an eighth of the page, circulated to half a million people, for just one week and the price was $273.