Ever so often I look at some of my photos and think – that would be great on a wall in a large scale print! That triggers me to look at some of my shots and export them at full resolution for upload to Fine Art America to see if I can entice someone to buy a print of mine! I’m still pricing at the levels that I explained in a post on FineArtAmerica pricing a couple of years back....
I was looking at the images that had sold recently on Canva and came across the very small thumbnail for this image: I sat thinking – why on earth would someone use that in a design? But then I saw the main shapes of the two trees – the large one very dominant, the smaller one cowering off to the right and thought that an image without the house and fence could illustrate themes such as domineering, oppressive, overbearing etc....
Just two days ago, I was complaining about not being able to get my earnings above the $2-$3K per month level, but later that day I finished the keywording of my images from a week’s trip to Kauai in early November – looking at those pictures of the warm sunny days made me realize that this is not a bad way to make money! Even better, I got the results of the upload to Shutterstock – 103 images uploaded, 100...
Parts 1 and 2 of this extended post have discussed what to take on a travel vacation and then how to select and process images on your return. I’ll now turn to keywording and uploading the images. I finished processing most of the images in mid October and eventually ended up with 389 images that I thought were worth keywording. I generally follow a simple rule about what is going to be “editorial” and hence only uploaded to my own...
OK – here is reason for my comment about the identical tattoos. Perhaps not visible on the smaller images I posted:
Wow – who would have thought that processing 2000 images would take so long! It is an interesting question in psychology that although I earn a reasonable amount from photography, in my mind I am not “working” when I process images and so it sometimes takes me some time to process them all. However, I think that is an important approach as well – if you just plow on through your images, you will become jaded and start to pass...
Shutterstock has been a big disappointment for a few months, with my earnings dipping well below $1000 month after month. I haven’t done a lot of analysis, but the relative lack of “on demands” and particularly Enhanced Downloads, seems to be a major reason for the fall. So it is nice to sometimes open up the earnings page and see a pleasant surprise: This simple macro shot of a pile of pins sold this morning for $88.50. I’ll start the...
It is a long time since I reported a success on Fine Art America, but out of the blue I got an email telling me that someone had bought a relatively small print of a night time shot of the Riverwalk and Centennial Fountain in Chicago. It was only a 12 x 8 inch print and so my profit was $32, but better than nothing. I could do to revisit some of my more recent “artistic” shots and upload some...
Now that I am back from my vacation in Spain and London, and have started to go through my 2100+ images, I will write first about what I look for when I am travelling and how I approach the processing and selection of images. I’m doing this in parts, as the whole thing could get too unwieldy. I’m writing this now that I am back home, so the first question of what to shoot is me thinking back about why...
Success at last… Well, in a small way I guess. Just 3 weeks after I launched my new improved stock site based on the new Symbiostock plugin and theme, I had my first sale: Admittedly it was for the smallest size image and I only earned $2.00, but you can’t help but get excited at a 100% royalty sale! Hope there are more in my future!!
