The end of December is a time for reflection and setting of new targets for the coming year and so I decided to pull out all the stops and do a detailed analysis of how my efforts in the Stock Photography business are going. This is going to be a long posting, so relax and take the information in stages! First, how did December pan out. Not great (although in perspective for the whole of 2012, it was a reasonable...
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...
November is usually a pretty good month, but this year, it turned out to be a great one. I was excited in October to finally break through the $2000 barrier and now in November I easily exceeded that to end the month with $2216 in earnings – more than 10% more. My growth chart is looking pretty good at the moment: The great earners this month were Shutterstock (of course) with a BME of $970 – around $150 more than...
For a while I started identifying the images that were downloaded under the $28 enhanced license on Shutterstock, but back in June, those downloads almost dried up, and I stopped publishing them! I’m sure the two things are not related, but it didn’t seem worthwhile publishing a couple of images a month. I’ve started getting a few more in recent months, but one great surprise this month was a $70 download under the Single Download category on Shutterstock. Perhaps this...
A common fear among stock photographers is that it is a “losing” battle – you need to keep uploading images just to keep your earnings where they are. I decided to update an analysis I did a year or so back to see if my uploads to Shutterstock (and to the other sites) were increasing my earnings. First, the methodology. Each month I make a note of the earnings from each site and for most of them, I also note...
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...
It has been a long time since I posted on the site – sorry about that! Just been very busy with travel and some personal issues, but I am back now, and back with a roar! October turned out to be a great month for sales. The combination of the end of the summer vacations, start of planning for Christmas and early new year publications for designers, and perhaps the cumulative effect of adding more images on all of the...
Back on the normal cycle of publishing my earnings at the start of each month! September and October tend to be two of the best months of the year, and my September isn’t quite there, but is quite an improvement from August, which had plummeted down to $1425. September has come in at a much more healthy $1632, which is not my best month ever, but is nicely positioned at number 2. It will be a while before I reach...
This is a very late post, and I can understand if you think I was trying to hide bad news – but no, I had a death in the family and so my attention was elsewhere. However, earnings in August were not good! After a series of great months, with earnings reaching $1761 in June, I fell back to only $1415 in August. Several reasons seem to be behind this – one might be the holidays when buyers are at...
