In another section I advised looking through the images of the stock photo agents that you submit (or are planning to submit to) to see the images they had of the places you are going and to shoot what they have the most images of. As a matter of course, these will be the iconic images of the places you are going and the images of places that sell the best. This is only half of the story however.

When you get to your location you need to shoot not only the icons of that place, but concept imagery that you find along the way. This is extremely important.

The photographs that you take of location icons are what will satisfy your soul, bring you joy and allow you to express your creativity. Location icons will also, from time to time, make very large sales. It is the concept photograph, however, that is going to be the cash cow that will fund your continued travel.

The location icon is the thing or place that when you see its picture, you automatically thing of the place it was taken. It is Big Ben in London, the Taj Mahal in India and Mount Fuji in Japan. Pictures of the Eiffel Tower, the Great Wall and Times Square will automatically lead you to think of Paris, China and New York City respectively.

When you are shooting travel photography for stock you have to take pictures of these things. It is expected, pleasurable and the images do sell. The trick, as I have noted elsewhere  (see Commentary) is to bring enough of your style to the creation of your images of these icons that they will stand out from the crowd.

To find out what these icons are for the places you are going go to stock photo agency sites such as Getty, Istockphoto, Dreamstime or any others that you may be working with and search through all of their images from your intended location. Seriously. All of them. I look through thousands and thousands of photographs from a location before I step out my front door. I want to know not only the subjects and places offered, but how they have been captured as well. If I can, I want to determine the exact location in which the photographers who have gone before me have set up their tripods.

Please note that you should not consider this as a theft of someone else’s idea. A location is not an idea. When I go to a location that other photographers have already photographed I fully intent to impose my style and my vision on the subject. If I were to duplicate the ideas of others I would have no competitive advantage, buyers would have no reason to purchase my work over others.

While doing your research make lists of the places you see. If you can, download comps of locations you like or see most often so you can view them on day you are actually going to shoot them.

Not many places actually have more than a handful of location icons. This is why, when I’m traveling, I never stay more than a couple of days in one place. Keep in mind that you are not shooting journalistically. Stock photography does not aim to capture depth. Capture your icons and move on.

If you are shooting only for royalty free outlets remember that logos and other copy write restricted designs cannot appear in your images. Shooting skylines and many cityscapes become problematic because of this. Train your eye to see these problems and either avoid them or be savvy enough with a photo editing tool that you can remove them.

While finding new ways to be creative in photographing the travel icons satisfies my artistic soul, it is the concept photos that I create along the way that keep me in the cash needed for airfares and hotels.

A concept photograph is exactly what is says, it is an image that illustrates a concept. There are a host of concepts to illustrate. Teamwork, the way forward, wealth and diversity are all concepts. I have attached a list of concepts you can think about at the end of this article.

The real talent is to have an eye that can spot the concept to photograph. They are often very small and mundane. One of the reasons I do travel photography (apart from the obvious) is that I have become so used to the visuals in my own environment, that I can no longer see the concept image opportunities that are right in front of my face. A new location refreshes my vision and heightens my visual acuity. Simply put, I see better when I travel.

For the longest time my two best selling images (images that sold for multiple tens of thousands of dollars) were grab shots taken in Hong Kong and Japan that illustrated the concepts of Go (or start) and choice respectively.