It's all around you—on TV, in movies, in print and on the Web—but you rarely notice it's there. That's the funny thing about stock footage: it's meant to draw your attention to a thing without drawing attention to itself. Still, stock footage is more than just a generic photo or video clip. Stock footage brokers like Shutterstock offer hundreds of thousands of assets covering every topic imaginable—people, places, things, ideas—for use in almost any kind of medium, either on their own or in combination as wholly new images.

But who makes these images in the first place? Jon Paul Careless is a UK-based videographer and the head of Spotmatik, one of Shutterstock's top motion footage contributors. Three years ago, a colleague suggested Careless get into stock photography. He started small: going out on weekends and photographing high rises, communications towers and satellite dishes around London with a Sony HVR-Z1U. “I've always loved the ideas behind energy and its environments,” Careless comments. Eventually he started using models to create business-oriented montages and ditched the Z1U in favor of the Sony PMW-EX3. (He plans to upgrade to RED within the next year.)

When Careless is out in the field, he's usually accompanied by still photographer Darren Baker and assistant Marketa Lherova. “It's too big a job for me to do on my own,” he says, before stressing the importance of proper planning. “A shoot has to be structured. Everything from the prop buying to the location scouting have to be done two to three weeks out.”

Speaking of locations, Careless has since expanded his scope beyond London. Recent excursions to capture HD motion content include the western United States and Iceland, where he captured video of crumbling icebergs for use in illustrating ideas about climate change and geothermal activity.

Whether on land, sea or in the air, Careless is always looking for ways to capture compelling images. One of his favorite shoots involved hanging out of a plane at 15,000 feet to get a shot of a Mustang commuter jet cutting through the clouds. “It was really cold, and this jet was flying along about [30 feet] away from me. It was really surreal,” he muses, adding, “but when you go that extra mile, you get the extra quality.”