Don’t forget your Fine Art
In these troubled times, it is important to perhaps take a break from feeding the stock machine and see if you can process some of your better images for sale as prints or on other products. I upload my best shots to Fine Art America (always), Photo4Me (sometimes) and Society6 (from time to time). I was reminded of this with another sale earlier this month on Fine Art America – this time a large metal print (36 inches x 24 inches) of the Heinz Field sports stadium, the home of Pittsburgh Steelers and the Pitt Panthers. The buyer was a military person from Colorado – obviously a keen sports fan!
I took this on the evening before the July 4th fireworks in Pittsburgh when I was strolling around the city close to the hotel. It is always worth taking images of sports arenas in particular, especially if they are dramatic, because I think there will always be a sports fan potentially interested in a print for their wall. This particular image didn’t actually look as good as this when I took it. The original had the normal rough waters of the river in front of it, but a little bit of work with the Flood plugin made all the difference. The original looked like this:
For fine art stuff, I always try to make the shot as dramatic as I can – there might be people who prefer the original, but I think the one I uploaded has much more about it. For those interested, this sale netted me a profit of $227 using my normal pricing for images.
This follows a nice sale last month of a print of Formby Beach in England. The 20 x 12 inch print was actually sold to someone from that location for a profit of $130.
I also check my sales at Society6 from time to time. This is a much harder site to upload to (although they have made some improvements recently so that you can set default pricing for the print products and also fixing the position of the print on some items automatically creates the same placement on similar items. Still, it is very much an image by image upload. I was pleasantly surprised to see 3 sales in May for a total of $24 including a digital painting that I did earlier last month using Jixipix Pastello of the New York skyline from the Staten Island Ferry:
With this one, I created the pastel version and then brought back some of the detail in the buildings by compositing the original photo with the drawing and painting back that detail using a mask. Unfortunately it only sold for $2.77!
In June I did sell a wood art photo of Avalon harbor on the island of Catalina for $18, so that was a bit better.
Whenever I see a sale over there it does remind me to upload something new – this time I chose a dramatic tree with the skyline of Waikiki behind it. I don’t know exactly why I picked this one – I thought it might be something unusual that someone would like to remind them of a vacation in Hawaii – who knows if it will sell!
So take a break from keywording and try to make some of your images as beautiful and dramatic as you can. These occasional sales make all the difference to the earnings in a month.
I thought you have to pay now for uploading to fine art, but it is worth maybe. Without payment portfolio is limited to 25 or so, or did that change? Long time ago I had photos there
It is free up to 25, so I do pay for my 500 or so. It has been worthwhile for me, as you can see.
Steve
Steve, what’s up with Photo4Me? Is it worth uploading?
I have a (still) small port in Society6 with only patterns. I got tired of trying to adjust the various compositions to the different dimensions of products, and patterns are easy because they don’t need to be adjusted. I have just done this and I don’t no if it will sell.
https://society6.com/alessandrarc_art
I have a larger portfolio in FAA but keep selling one image I don’t particularly like of a water tower in Davis. My best guess is, former students feeling nostalgic.
Photo4Me has been Dead4Me for quite some time. The one that used to sell is that Formby beach shot, but even that is dead. I don’t know what is going on there. Nice patterns on Society6, but the trouble with patterns is that they are so hard to describe in a way that people can find them I think. I have the same issue with abstract sort of shots. People need to see them and I’m not sure how they do that.
Steve
Steve that’s a good point. In stock I have sold some patterns but the more abstract they are the harder it is to find them. Those in S6 are all natural patterns, those looking for botanical/floral/plant/natural patterns should be able to find them… amidst the hundreds others I guess… to those keywords I am adding the color spectrum and for plants, species’ names. Not
sure it will work out though.
Worth trying – who knows what people use in the search terms!
I am continuously upload to FAA but with no success yet. Just 3-4 sales for the last years. Maybe we need to advertise more.
I did try to organize that in a previous post (or at least allow us to move up in the search). By all means add your chosen image to the comments. I don’t advertise my images as such, but I try to upload shots that someone might want to buy for their wall
I’m curious how do they print the large sizes if the photo isn’t that big? Do they just lower the resolution? Does it still look good that way?
Good question. The original is 6500 pixels wide, which would be 180 pixels per inch on the print – which is certainly more than enough for this size of print. I think that bigger prints are normally looked at from a greater distance and so don’t need as many pixels – remember computer screens used to be 72 pixels per inch. On the FAA site, this image can be bought up to 72 inches wide, which would be 90 pixels per inch. Maybe they upscale a bit before printing?
I guess as long you don’t have to do it yourself and people don’t complain it’s all good!
One other thing, I gather from this post that it is legal to sell editorial images as fine art? I’m assuming you didn’t need a release from the owners of the stadium?
Yes, it is FAA that would take the complaint and I’m sure they don’t over size them. On the editorial question, the restrictions on usage and obtaining permission etc. come into force when you publish an image. Publish means that you are putting it in front of a large number of people – think newspapers, magazines, popular online sites etc. Putting an image on your own website or in your portfolio, or printing copies for people is not publishing and so you don’t need releases for people or things in images for print.
Thanks, good to know
I’m a longtime reader, first time commenting 🙂 I too have been switching focus these past two weeks from stock to print on demand, after the gut punch from Shutterstock. I figure there’s no harm in branching out and learning something new. Honestly, it’s been hard to feel motivated to create more stock photos this month. My portfolio is small, but it has been a nice little side hustle for me. My earnings at Shutterstock are now 1/3 of what they were before, and I stopped uploading new images.
Do you have any experience with Redbubble? I’ve been uploading there lately and trying to figure out what looks good on their products https://www.redbubble.com/people/Amy-K-Mitchell/explore?asc=u&page=1&sortOrder=recent
It seems to me that it’s better set up for artists than for photographers, though there are quite a few photographers selling on there and I know some claim to have had success there. I’m curious if some of the other print on demand options like Fine Art America and Society6 are more photographer friendly.
I’ve never investigated Redbubble – I should do that, as there is no reason why people will search between different PoD sites and so supporting multiple sites would make sense. I find FAA pretty easy to upload to as they read the information in the file. Society6 is definitely a one file at a time approach and probably takes 5 minutes per image to complete the process. So I’ll try Redbubble next. Do you have a referral link?
Steve
I don’t have a referral link, but thanks for asking 🙂
I am also thinking that it would be good to join multiple POD sites to hopefully reach different audiences, just like joining multiple microstock agencies 🙂
It sounds like the upload process for Society6 might be similar to Redbubble. I find it takes time to make sure an image looks good on each product. Redbubble doesn’t read the information in your file so you have to title and keyword each one, then write a description. I think stock photographers probably have the advantage here, with our experience writing descriptive titles and keywords that do well in search.
Good luck with Redbubble, I hope it’s successful for you!
Yes, Society6 is exactly as you say – nothing is read from the file, although they only want 20 keywords. But it is time consuming and hard to know what is going to sell. I find abstract ones the hardest to keyword – they might look great on a wall, but thinking of what people might search for is tricky! I was just doing some searches on Google for wall art, and Fine Art America always appears at the top of the image searches, so they are doing well there!
Steve
On Redbubble you can search for similar products, and also sort your search by bestselling, trending, newest, most relevant. Then you can see what keywords the successful sellers are using. The most popular items always seem to be near the top of the page. Also, if you start to type in a keyword in the search bar, Redbubble will show you which keywords are trending on the site. I’ve found both of those methods really helpful. For instance, summer forest is currently a trending search and I had a photo that fit so I made sure to use those terms in my title, keywords, and description.
Good to know that Fine Art America shows up so well in search. Once I’m finished setting up Redbubble, I’ll have to check that out.