Category: “How-to” articles
I blogged about this a couple of weeks back, but Leo (the designer behind the Symbiostock network) has been making remarkable progress and we now have a very substantial and flexible stock agency developing using WordPress. Two things of note – the first is that the site design is now much more professional – I hope you agree that my own stock photo agency BackyardStockPhotos.com would not deter anyone from moving forward to buying an image from me! The second...
An eye-catching title…but what can we do to increase our earnings potential from images already in our portfolio and online. I was thinking about this recently when looking at some of my better selling images on Shutterstock. One that caught my eye was this one: This is a nice clean bright and colorful image – stands out well in a thumbnail and has space in the sky for text or other copy. How can I maximize my earnings from this...
I came across an interesting earnings calculator on Yuri Arcur’s site. It takes account of annual variations of stock sales (ie Late December/early January is not good for earnings) and also that weekends are lower than weekdays to calculate the likely monthly earnings from any point in the month. You can find the Stock Earnings Calculator here. You can add in your own sites as necessary, and so, as an experiment, I have put in the earnings for today from...
One of the issues of normal “stock” photography – especially studio and people/lifestyle images – is that they tend to remove the opportunity to add an artistic flair to the image. Pure white isolation, room for editorial copy, deep depth of field – all these are part and parcel of a stock image. Photographers are driven by other aims though – the ability to create an image that wows the audience, or takes their breath away, but is it possible...
Lightroom 4 introduced a new (and not well publicized) feature – the ability to edit 32 bit images using the sliders and tools we know so well! So what, you may say! However, a 32 bit image, created by combining the exposure values from a number of shots taken at different exposure levels, contains an enormous amount of information about the dynamic range of the scene, and we can bring out hidden details in the shadows and reduce over-exposed highlights...
Every so often, when I think I have enough good and different images, I create a calendar of a location or country on Zazzle. My early attempts of a calendar about Kauai sold very well, and I keep updating it with a few new images and change the cover page (and dates) each year. It doesn’t take much effort, it sells from time to time (and I can also buy copies myself for Christmas gifts!) I’ve just finished my latest...
Everyone is probably familiar with green screen technology – look at some of the fantastic movies and even the weatherman to see green screening (or chroma key) in operation. Stock photographers can use it to extract an object from a background by taking the image against a green cloth and then getting rid of the “green.” Why not just take the image against a white background that is bright enough to burn out to pure white? Well, it is hard...
One of the smaller line items (but still significant!) in my monthly sales tables is Pond5. This site is one of the leading agencies in stock footage – and since I uploaded my first movies in 2010, I have earned over $850 from the licensing of short video clips. The sales are a bit intermittent, but each one nets around $30 (they sell for $50 to $60), and so a sale makes quite a difference to my monthly earnings. I...
I cover both of these sites in detail in my eBook, but a couple of updates that will be useful if you are uploading to these sites. Fotolia: When I upload to Fotolia, I now click on the “State” heading in “Manage Files” before starting to edit the uploaded images prior to submission. This keeps all the unsubmitted files on the first page of images, and stops you having to keep jumping to later pages if you have uploaded a...
On hot days (and cold ones in winter) taking macro studio shots can be a great way of building up your portfolio. The main problem with macro images is the extremely narrow depth of field, so you can take a photo of a coin straight on, and get it all in focus, but if you wanted to take a stack of coins laying flat on the table, no manipulation of the aperture would increase the depth of field sufficiently to...
