As regular readers know, I have not been a big fan of Fotolia on several grounds. I didn’t like the pricing approach and the way Dollar Photo Club was launched, my rejections have been sky high – perhaps getting a 40% acceptance rate (if that), and their upload process was tiresome and annoying. Then, of course, the sales weren’t great either… Talk about a triple whammy. Fotolia was bought by Adobe and changes are definitely occurring – there is the...
I was mulling over the strange click teasers (if that is an acceptable phrase..) that you see on the internet to try to entice you to click through to the article, and came up with one of my own. The answer, of course, is that I started selling them as stock photos, and creating a lot more as well, and I just noticed that I missed a major event – I passed the $100,000 earnings mark just a couple of...
I’ve been a bit behind in posting new information – mainly because I’m in the process of moving to a different state and getting a house ready for sale is a very big task – you accumulate so much stuff over the years. Anyway, photography took a back seat for the past month, although I did finally manage to process and keyword images that I took during a vacation in Cornwall in England and a short trip to Ocean City...
I took some images of a new golf course in Kauai around sunset and liked the calm and serene feeling of the “18th hole”, and so submitted about four different shots of the green and a sand bunker. I noticed that one of them: sold reasonably well on Shutterstock and the image in the thumbnail immediately reminded me of a heart shape in front of the flag – it starts off well at the top, but loses it! As a...
I always find it interesting to see what sells – especially on the more expensive sites like Alamy. I check that site from time to time to see if I have any sales. Most times, no, but today I saw that I had a $245 sale (of which I get 50%) for an RF images of this: Well, that is a “sort of interesting” shot… I remember taking it on a hike in the Smoky Mountains, and I thought at...
One downside of posting regularly is that older posts that are still relevant get lost. So I’ve created a page (under the About heading in the menu) where I will list posts that are useful for new readers. I’ll add more as I think of them!
As I’ve probably mentioned before, my main camera kit is a Canon 5D Mk3, with the 24-105mm F4, 16-35mm F4 and 70-200mm F4 lenses. I also normally carry a 1.4x converter and 50mm F1.4 lens as well. All in all, quite a load on my back, but I like the flexibility that I can get with the lenses and the high quality of the results, even at higher ISOs and if I need to crop. The trip to Equatorial Guinea...
I’ve written about food photography before – recommending the series of books that Taylor Mathis has produced, but here is a free, very comprehensive guide from the Serious Eats website. Full of detail and examples of the techniques they are recommending, you can find it here.
OK – this is really about my sort of stock photography, which focuses more on travel, outdoors and some still life studio shots rather than people, but hope you find it useful. Counting down from number 10: 10: Spend time on keywording Too often we enjoy the photography but not the mundane keywording. Don’t over-stuff keywords, keep to the facts of who, where, what type of questions but outlining some conceptual words is OK if that is what the image...
We often get worried abut the $0.33 sales on Shutterstock, but the “on demand”, enhanced license and now the “Single and other downloads” can make a tremendous difference to the month’s income. I noticed today that my total had shot up, and found a single download for $126.77. This image – a stitched panorama of the landscape in north wales – was the one chosen. Its great to see these higher value downloads!
