One of the biggest determinants of a good month on Shutterstock is the number of Enhanced Downloads (or EDs). What is an Enhanced Download? Strictly speaking it is an Enhanced License Download – a standard license on Shutterstock lets the buyer use the image for personal non-commercial uses with duplication up to 250,000 copies. If someone wants to print more than that, or use the image in a commercial way – as a print in a hotel, or as an...
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...
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...
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...
My recent trips around the world (Belgium, New York, England) have given me a lot of images to post, but I’ve also been a bit slow at posting examples of my latest stock photos on my blog. I had an objective of posting new images each week and I am probably a couple of weeks behind! This post tries to catch up with the latest images uploaded to the stock agencies. First off was my trip to Brussels. I had...
I mentioned a couple of weeks back that I had bought the RayFlash ring adapter for my Canon 580 EX, to help with getting uniform shadowless lighting in some of my macro shots – although it is also good for certain types of portrait as well. It isn’t cheap (at $199), but is it worth it? After a couple of weeks of use, I’m happy to report that I am pleased with my investment – it certainly hasn’t paid back...
