We found our way to a very remote spot in West Virginia today – Jenkinsburg Bridge, also known as Bull Run Bridge over the Cheat River. This 1912 metal truss bridge is only about 12 miles as the crow flies from Morgantown, but the only road to it takes almost 50 minutes and the last 4 miles is on a 4 wheel drive very rough and steep track down the hillside. The road across the bridge is pretty much impassable...
I’ve not done much outdoor shooting yet, but I wanted to try the new Sony in a more difficult setting – a backlit indoor shot using natural light. I have the Sony set to ISO 100 unless the shutter speed is going to be less than 1/60th second, in which case, it moves to Auto ISO (nice feature!). This tricky lighting condition with a sunlit window in the background and exposure compensation set to +1, meant that the final exposure...
Although these don’t come round very often, I did get a sale in May on Fine Art America. The one that sold was a 14 x 12 inch canvas of a traditional Washington DC view – the moon rising over the city. This one earned $27 profit with my current pricing scheme on FAA. Each time I get a sale I think that I must add some more images there, but rarely do. I just accept the sales that...
Another month goes by so quickly. It has been a strange month here in the wilds of West Virginia – very cold early on, and then pretty hot for the last week. With moving into a new house we are still snowed under in boxes and lots to be done around the house and so almost no photography to speak of for at least 2 months now. I’ve not uploaded very much either as a result, so it is interesting...
Is this an April Fools Joke or what – earnings in April were down to a new low and Shutterstock, normally one of my more reliable agencies, failed to even reach $750 this month – ending at just $736. The last time I had earnings so low at Shutterstock was in February 2013 – over 3 years ago, when I had just 3664 images online at that agency compared to 5800 now. I don’t know if the buyers are voting...
At my old camera club, we had competitions each month and I entered this shots as a 16×20 matted print: I’ll never forget the judge’s comments – “I’ve never seen a sky like that – really overdone…” and she gave it a poor score.
I’ve been very quiet of late, and haven’t been paying much attention to my stock photo work – mainly because our planned move to Morgantown in West Virginia finally happened after we sold our home in Virginia. So we have had 4 weeks of packing things into boxes and now four weeks of unpacking things and wondering where on earth they will go in a smaller house. I’ve taken a few shots when I can find the time – there...
First a word about February – although this is a short month, it didn’t turn out too badly for me, my Stock Photographer’s Lament notwithstanding! Total earnings ended at $2511 and some of the Zoonar and iStock earnings have still to appear. Bright points of the month were with iStock, where I had five Extended licenses bought on the same day – all variants of this shoot: Fotolia/Adobe is continuing to grow – I reached $192 from that site in February,...
I don’t know if this is a result of changing my pricing on FineArtAmerica, but I have had my second sale of the month today. The image that sold as a 30 x 18 print was this one: It sold as a gallery wrapped canvas print and profit on this was $77. Nice to see, and I hope this is just the second of many. I reported my first sale this year via FAA here.
Hooray – a sale on FineArtAmerica! Back in December I decided to reduce my pricing on FAA and explained the logic at that time (it was based on the average pricing of people who had had sales recently). Nothing happened immediately, but I did get a sale this week: This sold as a framed and matted 24 x 20 inch print, and my profit was $63 under the new pricing. Still worthwhile, but I’m hoping the sales will come a...
