Stock Photos of China - Stock Exposures

When I first started writing this, I wrote it in the 3rd person because I thought it would come across as being more professional, but then when I read it back, it sounded like I had died and someone else was writing about my life! I also read somewhere that writing in the 3rd person can come across as sounding arrogant, so I definitely wanted to avoid that! I started writing in the 1st person, but even that felt strange, it was like I was writing a letter to someone I'd never met before in a lonely hearts column and introducing myself! Instead, I decided to keep it in the 1st person, but in the style of an interview, in the hope that it doesn't come across as arrogant, but a professional approach in a light-hearted manner:

Who is behind Stock Exposures?
Stock Exposures was co-founded and is run by myself, Mark Amy, British, and my Chinese business partner Fan Gao, who is Chinese.

Where are you based?
Our office is based in a small town called Taiping, which is in Huangshan (Yellow Mountain). It's in east China, about a nine-hour bus ride from Shanghai.

When did you form Stock Exposures?
The whole idea and the website planning began in January 2008.

What is the concept behind Stock Exposures?
That's a bit of a long story! The main ideas stemmed from:

Having lived in China since 2004 and knowing and loving this country full of beauty, culture and history, and what it has to offer the western world, photographically
Having seen the amazing talent and the stunning quality of images that Chinese photographers are capable of producing
Being in the country with the largest population on earth where the work these countless photographers produce goes undiscovered and unseen outside of China
Constantly hearing about the booming economy in China, how world interest in China is rapidly growing and all the foreign business ventures and connections that are being established
Knowing that in the west, the stock photography business is huge, and in China, it's pretty non-existent
Knowing that Chinese photographers can't put their images on western sites because they can't receive money from abroad via the usual western payment methods
Knowing that Chinese photographers would be eager to receive exposure to their images in the west and be able to sell them to the west
Knowing that most westerners don't access Chinese stock photo sites because of the language barrier and Chinese payment methods
Thinking about how the western stock photo industry is saturated with inferior royalty free images and how there is the need for more unique photographers and new, exciting images

Breaking into stock photography is difficult. It's a competitive market and for people entering this market they are always given the same advice...Find your niche! Being British and living in China, creating a niche stock photo website devoted to China and everything Chinese was the obvious route to take. Just another Chinese stock photo website wouldn't have been enough though. There are countless stock sites spread worldwide, in both the west and in the east. The concept at Stock Exposures was to create one that would bridge the two. A big problem Chinese people have with western stock sites is the ability to receive funds from abroad after their photos sell, so they have no choice but to use Chinese stock sites. This deprives the west from having access to some of the most amazing images and the huge pool of photography talent that resides in China. At Stock Exposures we solved that problem and are excited to introduce the very best, royalty free, images from the vast untapped pool of amazingly talented Chinese photographers living in China.