Ana de Sousa is a Portuguese photographer who has been contributing to Shutterstock since 2005 and has almost 1,700 images in the collection. Her most downloaded images include textures, business concepts, scenes from nature (like the flower you see above) and images related to eyes and vision. (Always popular with optometrists!)

When De Sousa started contributing to Shutterstock, she knew creating stock images would be a stimulating challenge. “I remember walking on the streets, looking at walls and things and thinking, ‘OMG that wall could give me a great stock photo.’ And I even thought about keywords too!”

Today she works on more advanced concepts and tries to shoot images Shutterstock customers will need. “I try to understand the imagery trends, anticipating as much as possible. I also try to think as a buyer.”

One source of inspiration is her husband, who sometimes appears as a model in her photos. One time on vacation they went exploring using an old map, and decided later to use the map as a prop in a photo shoot. The photo (seen below) became one of her personal favorites and a best-selling image.

Another time they were flying together and De Sousa spotted one of her images in a catalog in the back of the seat pocket—it was a shot of her husband holding up a computer. “I just had to wake him up asking what he was doing there! Lots of laughter as you can imagine!” (You can see the image at the end of this post.)

De Sousa shoots with a Canon 5D, and also uses a flatbed scanner to produce some textures and patterns. See more of de Sousa’s work in her Shutterstock portfolio.