Category: Stock Photography
I reviewed this earlier in the year – I really enjoyed reading each of the issues of Taylor Mathis’ Photographing Food series. I haven’t seen his videos (to be honest I don’t like watching instructional videos much), but I thought the separate eBooks were interesting and thought provoking, but expensive. I noticed that Taylor has a special Black Friday sale on his site with 55% off – Friday through Monday. If you are interested in having a relaxing read and...
I wrote about this topic earlier this year after an ocean cruise around Australia and New Zealand. The basic question was whether the organized trips and activities gave a photographer any time to create useful stock images. In the fall, I went on a river cruise from Nuremberg in Germany to Budapest in Hungary, and every day was structured – arrive at a new city, go on a walking or coach tour, see the sights… Nice for a vacation (in...
As I was gathering my earnings for the month of October from the various sites, I got to thinking about which agencies I still upload images to, and why? I have tried various sites in the past, and have never actually deleted images from an agency, but for some, I just stopped uploading new images. I thought is would be interesting to put that in a table so that you can see how many images I have with each site,...
I’ve not been posting in the past couple of weeks as a result of a trip to Equatorial Guinea in Africa. In most people’s mind, a visit, at this time of Ebola scares, to West Africa is probably very low on the priority list, but I found it to be a fascinating location with a chance to photograph things that are not present in very many stock agencies. I’ve not decided what to do with my images from this trip...
I mentioned Image Brief before as a great source for ideas for future stock shoots, but it is also a potential revenue stream if you are lucky enough to win one of their briefs. You can sign up here if you are interested in joining them. They will check your portfolio so make sure you have a representative set of images available that shows both the quality and range of images you can take. I’ve just been awarded my second...
If you are anywhere near Washington DC, don’t forget that Nature Visions Photo Expo is on again this year between November 14 – 16th. We have some great speakers – Rick Sammon, Julianne Kost, Ian Plant, Jay Patel, Deborah Sandidge and a great photo exhibit as well. I organized the speakers this year so please come along and see what we have in store for you!
I’ve had two sales on Fine Art America in the past month or so. The first one was a framed print of fireworks over Washington DC. This sold with a profit to me of $51.70 in late September. This was followed up in October with a very large print (just a rolled paper print) of a stitched panorama I took of Santa Monica Beach in California. This print measured a cool five feet long – 60″ x 13″. My profit...
As usual, I’ve been a bit slow in posting – this time because of a 3 week trip to Europe including a cruise down the Danube (photos still in development…). As a result, I have only just updated my records of sales for last month. As it turned out, the month of September was OK – again, not great, but I ended the month with $2300. I’m sure a lot of you will think that “if, only…”, but I’ve noticed...
I mentioned, a few posts back, that I look at the Image Brief site regularly, both to see if I can submit an image for a request, or just to get some idea for another shoot. Earlier this week was a request for outdoors adventure type images, but they were looking for landscape format. I immediately thought of this shot: BUT – the shot is clearly vertical and can’t be cropped into a horizontal format, and I don’t have a...
One thing that beginners don’t appreciate is how much work goes into stock photography. If you track your earnings per hour, it can sometimes look pretty depressing unless you are taking the photos because it is also something you enjoy doing. As a practical example of what I mean, I recently went on a short trip to Colorado to see some friends and, or course, take some photos, including the climbing ones I blogged about last week. Total time in...
