Often, a photographer will hire a model to do stock shots. This means photographing the model with no particular project in mind.

Instead, the photos are put into a stock photography catalogue and clients, at any time, can purchase the photographs for whatever project they are dreaming up at that time. Stock photos are often used in corporate reports, political brochures, or on web sites that want to target a certain demographic, but don’t have the budget to shoot their own campaign.

Models are generally paid poorly for such assignments, but may do well if they can negotiate a fee for each occasion the photos are used. It’s not unlikely a good set of stock photos will be picked up for a variety of projects in different areas.