Talk about a cool tear-sheet… Kohls (a United States based clothing department store chain) used an ArenaCreative.com stock photo in a commercial featuring Jennifer Lopez’s clothing line! What an honor, and a surprise.  At 00:03 during the above video, you can see the stock photo of the NYC Uptown / Bronx subway sign that I shot one day while in the city.

J-Lo is really popular again and in the limelight right now; coming off the whirlwind of being an American Idol judge, having the biggest hit single of her life (On the Floor, featuring Pitbull) and recently being in all of the tabloids regarding her recent split with husband and Latin singer/actor Marc Anthony.  He also has a new clothing line at Kohl’s now, as well.  I had seen this JLO commercial a few times before, but hadn’t paid much attention to it.  As I sat there staring at the TV, realizing that was on of “my babies” on national television, I flipped out.  In this business, we never really know where our images are going to end up.  When we stumble upon them, and see them being used in real life applications, it makes up extra glad we were a part of it.Good old “Jenny from the Block”.  At ArenaCreative.com we are proud to be a part of effective marketing and advertising materials, and want to thank the advertising department at Kohl’s for using one of our images.  To learn more about us and other large corporations that have used our royalty-free stock images, click here.

That’s a question a lot of stock photographers and illustrators ask themselves.  People ask me how my images get used, and I usually just say, “in advertising and marketing materials”, just to keep myself from babbling and boring them with a long story (like I’m known to do with my flapping jabber jaw).  It’s even tough to explain to a normal person what a graphic designer does, and somehow people still end up thinking its CAD or something totally unrelated like that.

Anyways, back when I was a traditional graphic designer, I would horde as many stock images as I could whenever I had a stock photo subscription somewhere such as Photos.com or Shutterstock. That way, anything I had a feeling I might be able to use in the future I would be able to save on my hard drive and then use at a later date. This is something that happens a lot; so basically if you sell stock images, a lot of them are probably laying dormant somewhere on an image buyer’s hard drive. When you have a design position you begin to get a feel for which image themes and what type of imagery you go through the most, and obviously you can’t keep on using the same pics over and over again (unless you want to be a boring designer). I worked at a company that went through tons of sports, fitness, and medical related images in the custom magazines we produced for our clients.  I honestly think at least half of my image sales aren’t ever even used – but who knows?

How can you find some of the images you sell in use? Go to amazon and search for your name or username/that you go by on the micros. Also try google book search in addition to plain old google. Lots of books online even have previews, and sure enough you will find your name credited in at least a couple if some of your images were used. Here are some recent finds my wife and I discovered.

Our beagle is pretty famous (he earns his Pedigree dog food, that’s for sure).  Try searching for your own images if you haven’t already, and start a collection of tear sheets. You will only find a small random percentage of images actually in use, because obviously not everyone will credit your name in searchable text in each instance of use.  If you don’t sell stock, but you do buy it – make a microstocker’s day by emailing them a link, or dropping them an email about how you were able to use their image!  It only takes a minute, and you will no doubt put a huge smile on their face

I love it when I can find some of my stuff in use – I sell hundreds of images every day, and yet I rarely see where they are being used.  It makes me sad

If you go on amazon.com and search for your username, in my case “thesupe87″, you will see a list of books that have credited you in the text somewhere in the book.

This book featured my 3d cells image as part of the cover:(

Pocket Guide to Colorectal Cancer: Drugs and Treatment, Second Edition (Spiral-bound) by Gail M. Wilkes  ISBN-10: 0763761737  ISBN-13: 978-0763761738

I guess I have an image on page 33 somewhere in this book – I can’t seem to find a preview of it online, though.

Essential ICT for WJEC AS Level: Student Book (Paperback) by Stephen Doyle ISBN-10: 1850084130 ISBN-13: 978-1850084136

I also have an image in this one, on page 7.  Not sure which one, but the section is about the kitchen I guess.

Knack Organizing Your Home: Decluttering Solutions and Storage Ideas (Knack: Make It easy) (Paperback) by Emily Wilska ISBN-10: 1599213877 ISBN-13: 978-1599213873

books.gooogle.com is also a great place to search in order to find some of your images in use. Here are a bunch of mine that I found, with actual previews:

http://books.google.com/books?q=thesupe87&btnG=Search+Books