What should I shoot?

This is the most frequently asked question we get from our photographers. To help answer this question, we’ve built something called ‘What should I shoot?’. Based on customer feedback, internal research and data analytics we’ve developed this to allow you to see what types of imagery our customers need. You can also use this tool to read up on the latest photography trends.

How it works

The tool has two main features, the picture needs and the photography trends. The picture needs will show you everything that our customers haven’t been able to find within our collection.

Covering a need isn’t guaranteed to return an instant sale, but it will increase your chances of making more sales and it will help make Alamy a platform where customers and contributors are better connected.

If you want to see picture needs relevant to your specialist area, you can search the needs by keyword or browse by category using the filter button. Default categories can be applied in your account settings to customize the tool to always show needs that are relevant to you.

The photography trends are handpicked to show you particular styles our customers love. The idea is that you can plan your shoot knowing exactly what subject to photograph and apply the relevant trends.

Sourcing the picture needs

We use various methods to source the picture needs. Some are reported by customers, some by our Picture Research team and some are based on data showing repeated customer searches that returned little or no results. In cases where a need is listed and we already have images in our collection, it means we still need more of that particular subject.

Covering a picture need

Once you’ve uploaded content that matches a need, please let us know by ticking the box “I’ve covered this pic need”. We’ll then be able to feed this back to our customers. Make sure you tag your images with the same keywords being used to describe the picture need.

We’ll remove needs from the list once enough content has been uploaded.

Photography trends

As well as getting insight to what’s missing in our collection, we let you know what you can do to stay on top of the current photography trends. You might think that most topics have already been covered in stock photography, but our customers are always after new takes on saturated photography subjects.

Based on industry research and feedback from our customers, these trends are designed to give you further insight into what type of photography we want to see more of in the Alamy collection. Apply the trends when covering needs and plan ahead to shoot topics that will be in high demand.