I was thinking about this question recently. I have many, many images that I sell via stock agencies and then I have a smaller subset that I try to sell as prints via Fine Art America and also Photo4Me in the UK. I sometimes even print my own images but there is a limit to the amount of wall space I can dedicate to my own prints! So there is a conflict between the commercial calculation of time spent versus...
I’ve been spending time adding more “fine art” images to Fine Art America recently, adding perhaps 40 or so in the past month. My latest images can be seen here. But how to “goose” those sales? I decided to try Facebook advertizing for an image that I created in black and white of San Francisco: The image itself needed a bit of work as it was taken using a 200mm lens (on a tripod) from the Marin Headlands near the...
Last weekend I went to Washington DC with my local camera club and, as some of the attendees were new to DC, we mainly covered the popular sites that I have visited many times before. So how to take something new that I could upload to my stock portfolio? The answer for me was to seek out the unusual view of those places that have been covered in thousands of images already. While not many of my readers will visit...
I seem to be on a roll this month with posts. I think it is because I have finished processing all my Hawaii shots and have got those online and I’m waiting for the next project! That is also giving me some time to look at some of the shots I have taken and trying to improve ones that are worthwhile. The first one could have been a great shot of a proud (and wild) cockerel overlooking his territory on...
I currently have 620 images on Fine Art America, although I would be the first to admit that some of the early images I uploaded were probably not very suitable for display purposes. It is too easy to think of what might sell for stock, and just upload that, but in reality, people are looking for something to put on their walls and so you really need to think about what you yourself would be willing to print and frame....
One of the many issues with uploading videos to stock agencies (apart from the sheer size of the files) is the lack of an ability to automatically keyword and describe the files before uploading them. That generally means you need to visit each agency and either upload a csv file with that required information or do a lot of copy and pasting to get each video file ready for submission. On my recent trip to Hawaii I took 31 videos...
I’m still processing images from my recent trip to Maui and Kauai, but as I was going through them I thought about how I find out where to go for the best photo opportunities when you go to a new place. How did I know where to find this lcoation for sunset? I start, before I go, with a guidebook – I know that is old fashioned when you have Google at your fingerprints, but at least I get...
Ever since I got my Sony A7Rii last June, I’ve toyed with the idea of moving more into stock video production. Why? Mainly because the people involved seem to be doing very well, there is less competition (because it is harder) and the introduction of modern SLRs capable of handling 4K video production is opening up a new market for this ultra high resolution images. If you think about it, almost all the images currently in stock agency libraries are...
Since my earlier review of StockSubmitter back in December, I’ve really grown to like the system and it really does save time! As I explained last time, my basic process is to keyword in Lightroom (which is alphabetic order) and then to export the files as Jpegs to a new folder structure ready for uploading. Once I open StockSubmitter I first check to see that the categories have been guessed correctly – they generally are, but it is worth a...
As many readers know I have been using StockUploader for 3 or 4 years and it has always served me well. However, it has not been publicly available for at least 12 months and will be totally unavailable at the end of the year. So what should new stock photographers do? The answer has also become more complex for me because of the need to identify and prioritize the first seven keywords to fit in with Adobe Stock’s process and...
