Not everything I buy turns out to be useful (or, even better, pays for itself in earnings). I remember thinking how great a carbon fiber monopod would be and I think it has been used once since I bought it at a photography show! But one of my better buys has been the Edelkrone Surface One. It was not cheap – over $800 with the flex head, but I have earned at least $1400 in video sales since I bought...
Actually, not technically free as the authors are asking for a “pay what you can” donation, but that payment is totally separate from the actual download, so you can read the book and decide if you liked it and then make a choice about donating. The book in question is “How to create Stunning Digital Photography” by Tony Northrup and the free site is available here. I’ve downloaded it and am currently reading it – so far I would say...
Earlier this week I talked about Steadify – a new approach to a tripod for relatively slow exposure times. The project to actually build and sell this is now live on Kickstarter, so if you want to take advantage of the early bird offers, now is the time to do so. I’m planning to buy one and review it in due course – I’m always looking for something to reduce weight and this might help for some types of shoot....
I’ll start with a confession. Eight years ago, I spent $216 on a carbon fiber monopod and I’ve used it maybe twice in all those years! It just goes to show how we are always seeking something to provide stability in those difficult lighting conditions that travel photographers both seek and struggle with. A tripod is great, and I almost always take one on vacation with me, but that doesn’t mean to say that I always have one with me!...
I do talk about Stock Submitter quite a lot, but that is because it is now such a key part of my workflow, so much so that I don’t think I could ever go back to visiting each site in turn to fiddle with their categories and model release approaches to do that final piece of submission. I noticed a post from the developer that he is having his annual New Year sale on subscriptions for the software. It only...
This should really have been titled the best drone I never had… About a month back I finally gave in to my impulse to buy a drone for stock photography and videos. I did a lot of research, and my key requirements were obviously a good camera for stills and video but also something that I could travel with on my jaunts around the world. I’m going on a cruise later in the year and thought lovingly of a great...
This may seem strange – I have my own book on stock photography and here I am talking about a competing one! However, the new release by Alex Rotenberg called The Brutally Honest Guide to Microstock Photography is actually a very nice complement to my own book! Alex takes a broader view of the subject of stock photography, first looking at the market and what buyers are seeking, then going through some very useful tutorials (or reminders) of the various...
Update: I’ve updated this post with new information and reworked photos. You can find the new version of a Sunset cruise along the Na Pali coast in Kauai here. For something different, I thought I would post a review of a sunset cruise I recently took in Kauai with Na Pali Coast Hanalei Tours and illustrate it with some of the images that will be finding their way onto stock agency sites in the near future! I’ve been to Kauai...
After moving from being a long-time Canon shooter to the Sony mirrorless full frame system last June, I started questioning one of my lens choices. I started with the 16-35mm F4, 24-70mm F4 and the 70-200mm F4 Sony lenses and carried those around in my backpack. Right from the start, I was a bit uncertain about the sharpness of that 24-70mm lens and even had some rejections from stock agencies about lack of sharpness. Even though I did some tests...
In previous posts I have reviewed the use of Microstockr Pro for monitoring your sales and how I used it to find images that were selling well but missing from one of the main agencies. There is an alternative application on the market that promises far more detail about your portfolio and so I decided to investigate Microstock Analytics in more detail. This is a far more complex system aimed at really understanding which shots are selling and why, whereas...
