One of the topics I cover in my Stock Photography eBook is how to get the best placement of your images in the search engines of the stock agencies – with a chapter on advanced keywording and various tips that I picked up about specific sites. One that seemed to make a big difference to my sales was the ability to “Fave” your own images on 123RF. I covered this about 6 months ago, but I suddenly realized that is...
My new year resolution to post images each week has taken a beating this month. It has been a busy month for my non-stock photography activities, with a week’s conference in Chicago earlier in the month and then a few days vacation in St Michaels on the Chesapeake Bay to celebrate my wife’s birthday. Of course, the camera went along as well, but it has taken me some time to finally process and keyword all the images before finishing the...
Isolating an object against a pure white background is one of the challenges of stock photography, especially for light colored objects. If you place it on a white card and boost the lighting to get the card burnt out, the object suffers as well. I set about building a simple approach to the problem using things I have around the house. The project starts with a glass topped table, placed close to a white surface. Under the table you place...
Another in the weekly cycle of stock photos taken and uploaded this week. I decided to try some more isolated product type shots this week, and knocked up a small isolation table to get a good white background. In a nutshell, I took a small glass topped table and put it close to the white painted front door. On the top I laid my Lastolite TriGrip Reflector (which is a triangular piece of translucent material with a hand grip). Two...
A great month – April doesn’t normally outsell other months of the year, but this month I romped home with total sales of just over $1450 – a personal best. The month was helped by three sales on Alamy, for a total of $214, three video downloads on Pond5 for $75 and another great month on Shutterstock of $513. iStock recovered from a poor March to end with $271 compared to $235, and the other sites were OK if not...
This weeks examples of stock photos uploaded to the main microstock sites are a mix of old and new. The new ones first – just a couple of new images for this week – obviously my creative juices must have been low! The first shot is one of a series of teeth shots with metallic fillings, taken with my ring flash adaptor: I followed this with a shot (created from multiple images with the flash gun in different places to...
Keeping up with my weekly postings of images submitted to the main microstock agencies! I obviously had the Space Shuttle Discovery imagesposted earlier in the week, but while down in DC, I took this shot of the Iwo Jima memorial with the Washington Monument and Capitol in the background. I was looking to contrast the hard working marines with the people who work in the Capitol…. I also took some more images with my ring flash reviewed earlier. This one...
I’m occasionally asked what equipment I use for stock photography, so here is a summary of what I have, what I use, and why. My main camera is the Canon 5D Mk ii – the full frame 21M DSLR. Why? Because I like the low noise from the large sensor, I can crop well into the image and still get a usable stock photo, and when I am using most of the frame, I can downsize to around 4600 pixels...
In my endless quest to monetize digital photos, I created some new products on Zazzle this morning featuring the Space Shuttle Discovery final flight images. Too early to say how well they will sell, but if you need a coffee mug, hat, poster or simply an iPad case with a Space Shuttle photograph, please check out my Zazzle store.
I rushed down to Washington DC yesterday morning to join a cast of thousands waiting for the Space Shuttle Discovery, mounted on its Boeing 747, to fly over the city. I got to my chosen spot about 15 minutes before the time the plane was due to arrive, but, thanks to some poor planning on someone’s part, the shuttle arrived 10 minutes early and flew low over our viewing location. Luckily, I had my camera, 70-200mm and 1.4x extender all...
