As mentioned in a previous post, I’m still working through my 1400 images from a recent trip to Oahu and Kauai in the Hawaiian Islands. One of my experiments this time was a timelapse movie that I will upload to a few stock video sites. The steps are not that complex if you haven’t done this before: Set your camera up on a tripod and carefully frame and level the shot Set the quality to Jpeg and, if you can,...
Well, my new year resolution to post every week got forgotten last week! But I did have an excuse – I had to go to a conference in Hawaii and tacked a week’s working vacation (taking photographs) in Kauai onto the trip. Over 1400 images later, I am struggling to go through and edit the ones that I think have potential as stock images. I also had my first attempt at a time lapse movie during the week, taking a...
I’m keeping up with my resolution to take and post new images every week! This first one was a real joy to produce. I saw a video on PhotographyTalk forum which showed how to get a shot of wine flowing from a bottle. His example was one where the wine appeared to shoot straight up out of the bottle, but I thought I would try something a bit harder – make the wine go into a glass! The idea is...
Last week I started with a New Year resolution to post once a week with some example stock images taken that week. I did this partly to keep the pressure on myself to take more images and I also hope it will be helpful to give you some ideas. This is the second week, but first an update on some images uploaded last week. I took as set of images of an Apple Macbook (no logos), but was surprised that...
I’ve been doing some analysis of my portfolio to try to work out if the earnings have risen because of the number of images online, or if other factors are coming into play. The answers are fascinating! Although there is a lot of doom and gloom in the stock industry, with the common view that earnings are falling faster than you can put images online, the key point from my analysis is that the earnings per image is actually increasing...
A question that I am often asked is how you can find out where your images are being used online. I use the Google Images search to do that – and here are the steps: 1. Although Google Image Search works with any size of image, it takes quite a time to upload the full size JPEG to their server for the search. It is much quicker if you make smaller copies (800 pixels wide and lower JPEG quality) of...
One of the interesting challenges in stock photography is to identify the next set of photos to take. When the weather is pleasant, exterior shots can be taken, but on cold rainy days, what better than to relax with a nice glass of wine? This came from a misguided attempt to produce one of those shots where the edges of the glass are light and the center is dark to highlight the wine. I was balancing a piece of velvet...
I noticed this week that the image submission form on Dreamstime now has two new checkboxes in the “Rights Management” area at the foot of the page. I have recommended not clicking on the “Sell Rights” checkbox as that requires you to remove all copies of the sold image from every other location – hard to do, and it may lose valuable future revenue. However, the two new options should be checked. These permit the sale of enhanced licenses for...
Readers of my eBook, Getting Started in Stock, have probably started by uploading images to the top 4-6 sites, and are slowly getting their work processes honed to perfection! The obvious question is – which site shall I upload to next? This is a difficult decision, because the effort involved in uploading may not be justified by less than stellar earnings. I still have images on Crestock that have earned a grand total of $26 – after 3 years! I...
Shutterstock has developed a capability for contributors to group their images into a set (very similar to collections in Lightroom) in a new area called “Catalog Manager”. It is available from the main contributors page. Once you are in catalog manager, you can filter your images by a keyword, and then drag the selected images to the “sets” area and name it with an english name. This allows you to then point potential buyers, friends, or just readers of your...
