You can find photos of SELECTED IMAGES either here through our webshop, or through the image-search system my-picturemaxx, if you are signed-up to this system.

No, all photos offered by SELECTED IMAGES are Rights Managed (RM), and require clarification of usage rights and associated royalties before they can be used.

Yes. We are happy to help you with the photographer search. As of today, SELECTED IMAGES works with more than 16 photographers directly worldwide. In addition, we maintain a network with of more than 1000 photographers who are not supplying us directly, but with whom we are in contact, and who can also be inquired, and located worldwide. An overview of the photographers represented by SELECTED IMAGES is available on this website under the menu item >> OUR PHOTOGRAPHERS. Of course we are at your disposal for advice and photographers.

The image search itself is free. You can either do it yourself or ask us to pick pictures from our archive for you. If you make use of our service dedication, in which we look for pictures in other agencies for you, then we charge for this a performance premium of 10% on the same of us for you negotiated usage fee. More about this can be found under >> OUR SERVICE.

Image search is easy: Enter a keyword or keywords and start search. It applies

Spaces = AND (Example: Football Bundesliga)

Minus sign - = NOT (example: politician - Chancellor)

Semicolon; = SHARP SEARCH (example: sailing;)

Asterisk * = CONTAINS (examples: "sail*" or "*money")

There are three steps to do this:

1. In the menu on the top right, under "Registration", you will be taken to a form window in which you must enter personal and contact details. Then please send the form online to us.

2. Upon receipt of your registration, we will send you an image usage contract in which the terms of use of our photos are more closely regulated. We ask you to sign this and return it to us by email as a PDF scan, mail or fax.

3. Once we have received the signed image usage contract, we will activate you for downloads. From now on, you can download photos from SELECTED IMAGES whenever you want.

Yes. Please tell us which image (filename!) You need. The shipping options are FTP, WeTransfer, Dropbox or E-Mail. Any costs incurred will be charged at cost. We are happy to help.

The licensing fees depend on the type of use. Factors such as the type of medium, distribution, duration of use and so on play a role here. When calculating the fee amount, we are guided by the "Overview of customary royalties for image usage rights" published annually by the Mitelstandsgemeinschaft Foto-Marketing (MFM) and respected throughout the industry. Information about the overview in general can be obtained from the Federal Association of Press Picture Agencies and Picture Archives or www.foto-marketing.org.

Our usage fees are personal, individual and strictly confidential! If you have specific questions about use and image fee of one of our photos, please contact us directly. We are happy to help.

Please do not forget to send us 2 voucher copies after printing, or share links with us for online usages.

Yes! Good photographers are always welcome at SELECTED IMAGES. We are looking for photographers who have a modern imagery and are able to implement current topics in a contemporary way. However, we are very selective in our approach and only include photographers who fit in with us, and can deliver SELECTED IMAGES something new that we do not yet have in our archive already, both artistically and in terms of content.

Very easily. Send us an e-mail with a link to your website or a PDF (no bigger than 3 MB). We are interested in seeing both your freelance work and your commercial photos. After reviewing your image material, we share our assessment of the chances of cooperation. If we consider a cooperation to be meaningful, it is important to clarify both the possibilities of marketing and the mutual expectations. We assume that you have informed yourself about our agency and offer us photos that fit our profile.

SELECTED IMAGES offers its customers photos in very different ways. Direct image orders by phone or e-mail are processed and transmitted via FTP, WeTransfer, Dropbox or email. In addition, image buyers can search in our databases or with the my-picturemaxx tool. Furthermore to these sales channels for single images, we also offer complete reportages and image series on our website. Up-to-date information about the work of our photographers and about new imagery is sent in newsletters to our customers by email.

We utilize all online and offline means available, in order to make sure each contributor, image and each story will get promoted and showcased to our clients. This via regular emails, industry blogs and newsletters, social media, printed flyers to picture desks and art directors, personal meetings, phone marketing, image galleries on the SELECTED IMAGES homepage as well as in the my-picturemaxx network, and FTP push to clients that subscribe to such a service.

Yes, of course there is a contract. If we want to work with you, we will send it to you as a PDF for your review.

A central point of marketing usage licenses is the exclusivity of photos. Photos that are distributed via SELECTED IMAGES should ideally come with all rights of use worldwide and exclusively with our agency. If customers have usage rights, e.g. for advertising or book covers, they must be sure that this photo will not be used by a competitor for a similar object or product. For this reason, photos are blocked for certain types of use or distribution areas for a certain period of time. The customer pays for such a blockage a corresponding fee and expects a corresponding security. More than 90% of all images in our archive are exclusive and only available here.

We know that a photographer may be active in a number of very different areas and produce material of such breadth that it is only of partial interest to an agency because of its focus on content, and representation by multiple agencies may be appropriate. Therefore, unlike many other agencies, the contract only refers to the material submitted and not to a complete work.

No! Even though our core market is Germany, we represent our photographers and their images in Europe and worldwide. We have customers in all markets and on every continent, and sell globally.

Front covers or double-page spreads like “Pictures of the Week“ or “Outstanding Images” selections in premium magazines and publications, multi-page feature stories, corporate or commercial usages like billboards or ads in magazines, below and above the line, classic or new media.

Ad agencies, minor and major publishers, market-leading publications, content producers and music companies. We want to provide the highest quality photographic content to an international client base of publishers, media, charities, corporations, brands and cultural institutions. We have a database of more than 1000 clients from Germany and Europe, coming from exactly those targeted peers. Furthermore, we maintain a contact database with over 19,000 contacts. And they are checked and up-to-date!

Hamburg, the home of SELECTED IMAGES, is the capital for publishers and ad agencies here in Germany, and many of the biggest names in Europe are located here. Meeting clients and showing them the work of our contributors in person is easy.

We are only looking for the technically and qualitatively best photos. Second choice has no chance. Be critical. If you offer pictures, you should look at the competition and then consider whether your own material can stand its ground. An image selection is a business card. Our needs are the same as those of your clients. The number of photos we archive varies from case to case. Basically, however, the smaller and more precise a picture selection, the faster it can be archived and offered.

Same or confusingly similar images may not be distributed by you or other agencies. Side shots are other photos, if they are not to be confused with the actual photo. We expect photographers who want to work with us to be able to decide the likelihood of confusion between a photograph and the side shot.

SELETED IMAGES works exclusively with digital files. We archive image data in JPG format, stored at compressions 10. Digital photos should have a minimum size of 3500 pixels on the longer side, at 300 dpi. The bigger, the better, of course. The images should not get interpolated, however, so not get artificially enlarged by editing software. Filenames should not consist of any spaces. The color space used should be Adobe RGB 1998.

In everyday life there is no time for inquiries with the photographer. Only photos with complete information in the IPTC header have a chance to be commercialized. The journalistic W's (Who, Where, When, What, Why) are a matter of course, for us. A photo without sufficient information will not be purchased. Important are the following information:

WHEN was the photo taken, i. an exact date consisting of day, month, year. This statement is mandatory, however unimportant it may seem, such as at landscape shots. When images without dates end up in databases, they fall out of any chronological order.

WHERE the photo was taken, i. Street or place, city or place, province, region or state, state. Please also with more exotic places exact location information. Photo editors are looking for certain wells in Rome or the main shopping streets of New York. Typical region inquiries for travel reports are also: "We are looking for images from Lombardy", the photo editor then enters only "Lombardy" in the PC, just not print photos in which the region is not mentioned.

WHO and WHAT do you actually see in the photo? Although this often seems so obvious, it is difficult to know exactly what is being screwed together in the photo, especially in technical image content. Is this the final assembly of a lawnmower or a tank? It is equally important to know which company it is. We have found that image editors are reluctant to print images that do not clearly describe the image content. We can not explain what research is being done in a gene research laboratory if the caption does not clearly describe it.

Exact information also has the advantage that the pictures can be better tagged by us. The closer the search terms, the higher the chance that the images will be found.

Upon signing your contract, you will receive a metadata-template as a JPG together with a metadata guideline document as a PDF, in which the metadata fields that must be filled in for SELECTED IMAGES are marked and provided with sample data. We can also provide a .snap file for Photo Mechanic by Camera Bits upon request.