Contributor Tips, Inspiration

What to Create: PSD Mockups, Olympics-Themed Media

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Thinking about what to create? The Olympics is a hot topic at the moment, but there are also some evergreen ideas and approaches that we’re looking for in our database: natural landscapes, conceptual images, and cool PSD templates. Curious which media were the most successful last month? Check out this collection.

PSD Submissions Wanted!

Photoshop templates allow you to be truly flexible with what you want to create: from mock-ups to green-screen sets, there’s so much your PSD files can help your buyers with. We are currently open to all types of functional PSDs, so take advantage of this opportunity to be among the pioneers of this part of the Pond5 collection.

Rectangular Gift Box Mockup
Rectangular Gift Box Mockup by ktyellow

Video: Plains and Agriculture

If you want to portray agriculture, think about orchards of fruit-producing trees rather than more fields of grass, wheat, or other monocultures. For example, we don’t have as many clips of orchards of apples, oranges, pears, or other fruits. If open spaces filled with grass are your thing, try to capture footage of naturally occurring grassy landscapes, rather than man-made ones. These could be the prairies of North America, steppes in Asia, the African Serengeti, or other environments of sweeping, diverse landscapes and wide open spaces.

Cape Buffalo Migrate Across the Dusty Plains Of Africa by RickRay

Wheat, corn, rapeseed, poppies — fields of these plants can sell decently, and are not difficult to shoot. However, we have more than enough in our collection at the moment. Unless these fields are shot from a unique angle that is different from the other clips in our collection, or the footage was shot at a resolution of 4K or higher, we have decided to limit how many fields of various plants we accept from now on.

Harvesting Wheat Field “Think Different” by LeomenHD

Music: Going to Brazil

We’ve been excited about the 2016 Olympics for months, and they’re finally (almost) here! Now’s the time to really get that Brazilian music in. There are so many varieties — samba and bossa nova are among the most well known, but try creating some sertanejo, pagode, tropicalia, choro, maracatu, frevo, forró, axé, brega, and lambada. We expect agencies to be on the lookout for authentic Brazilian-sounding music a lot with the event heating up — after all, it only happens every 4 years!

Countryside – Brazilian Sertanejo Music – Sertanejo Universitario by NihonFilms

We also love ambient music, a lot. We just listened to Tim Hecker and Brian Eno on the office speakers, in fact. But unfortunately, we’ve got a ton of it right now and don’t need any more at this time. (Specifically, ambient synth-based music.)

Ambient Synth Logo Ident (Relaxing Intro/Outro) by FredlMusic

After Effects: Sports-Minded

Sports and Olympic-themed templates that are geared towards broadcast design are definitely in demand. On top of that, we also have very few Olympic-themed templates so now is the right time to create one.

Action Sports Presentation by CappiFX

We prefer templates that are universal and not limited to just one sport. We also appreciate when they’re flexible, so that the customer can tweak various elements. Templates that have a limited spectrum of uses will probably only attract a limited number of customers.

Football Promo by mgd

Photos: Don’t Keep It Simple

As we encourage our artists to set their own prices, there is a lot of space for creating images that are more complicated and complex. You can spend more time on creating a perfect concept that will be a real piece of art, and then ask a good price for it. Follow trends, create work that will be connected with current events, and your images will elevate the work of anyone who uses them. Go outside and use all the seasonal benefits — landscapes, flowers, light — to make great photos or get great material for your conceptual collages.

woman in a dress levitates over the field.
Woman Levitates Over Field by kladyk

Meanwhile, please do not upload too many images of blurred interiors and other backgrounds. Such images might be useful if they follow a clear concept, but a blur that seems random hardly ever sells successfully.

Blur image of escalators at the modern shopping mall
Blurred Image of Escalators by boonsom

Illustrations: Movement for All

In the run-up to this summer’s biggest sports event, it’s easy to get excited about Olympics-themed content, but to truly cater to your buyers in the long run (no pun intended!), think about sports imagery that’s truly inclusive of all ages, seasons, nationalities, and genders!

Pregnant Woman Character Vector Sport
Pregnant Woman Character Vector Sport by vsstock

If you’re going for more traditional athletic imagery, try and play around with your visual style to stand out from the crowd.

Marathon Runners Gym Working Out Isometric 3D Vector Image
Marathon Runner Working Out, Isometric 3D Vector Image by aurielaki

Header image: Levitating in the Orchard by konradbak