Better Concerts and Music

Occasionally too much choice can be a bad thing and stock photography is an excellent example. For years many of the household-name stock image libraries would promote themselves as being the largest and having the largest collections. If you have been paying attention more recently though, you could have spotted that isn’t such a major selling proposition any more and many of the bigger libraries are now desperately attempting to find other ways to differentiate themselves in a very crowded market-place.

The reality is, many photography purchasers find massive stock photo collections time-intensive and tedious to search, in spite of the enhancements in image search engine technology. The difficulty is, the size of these collections has increased at a greater rate than the search technology has improved … So in many cases, photo research has essentially gotten slower and harder. It is unsurprising then that more photography-researchers are choosing smaller ‘niche’ stock photography, when they need to buy stock pictures online.

These boutique stock libraries do not even try to compete on volume and most of the time they can’t compete on price either … But more photo buyers are swarming to these photo stock sites just the same, with a totally new set of reasons-to-buy.

Private service, contact with the photographers, fresh original photography unique styles and content. OK, perhaps these aren’t totally new reasons after all , but they’re reasons-to-buy that’ve been pushed aside for far to long.

A lot of it goes back to the way the photography researcher values their time, and what type of price they put on finding the right photograph fast. The good news for photographers is, more and more are prepared to pay a little bit more to avoid the tedium of a mass-distribution library and hone in on quality new images faster.

So next time you need to buy stock pictures, take a pass on the massive stock photo supermarkets, and check out a few of the boutique collections instead … You could be amazed at the difference.

Matt Brading is a photographer and writer with the Global Eye co-operative stock photo agency, where buyers can deal direct and buy stock photos directly from the photographer

Once you’ve gone to the trouble of hiring an after dinner speaker you might believe that all the hard work is over. Sadly this is not necessarily the case. After you’ve made the arrangements for who’ll be speaking you have to start your preparation work by ensuring that your after dinner speaker is fully briefed so he or she can be ready.

Many people make the mistake of assuming that hiring a professional after dinner speaker will guarantee them a professional speech with no problems. To save yourself the tedium of listening to a speech which has been recycled and used on every audience the speaker has ever addressed, you need to make sure the speaker knows some basic details before he or she tailors a presentation to the audience.

One of the simplest things that you must remember is the most often forgotten: to give the speaker enough information about the audience. He or she needs to know the age and gender of the audience and the reason they are in a room together in the first place. Are they workmates? Do they belong to a club or organisation? All of this is important and affects the speech. You should also let the after dinner speaker know exactly what the audience will be expecting from the speech. Whether they are expected motivation, humour, advice or something else entirely will affect the speech.

It is to be hoped you watched the speaker in action before hiring him or her. You should therefore feel confident that they won’t be littering their speech with clichés which will bore your audience Don’t feel guilty mentioning this to the speaker though. If you believe that your audience will appreciate or detest certain jokes then inform the speaker well ahead of time.
When reviewing the after dinner speaker before booking him or her you hopefully saw how they captured the audience’s attention. This is important in any speech, but if you believe your audience will be restless then you should also forewarn your speaker so that they can prepare to include the more interesting content early to grab the audience’s attention.