More Travel Photography for Stock

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 accepted. As you can see from my portfolio on Shutterstock, they are all generally bright and “happy” looking images which I think is a big reason the upload was so successful.

I noticed that one of them sold this morning – yes, just for 38c, but at least it was being seen and downloaded!

Panorama of Hanalei Bay Kauai

My thoughts this time on what I took, and why, are somewhat different than the trip to Spain, which was a first time visit.
I’ve been to Kauai perhaps 6 times before and so have seen all the sights, so this time I tried some different things. Of course the light is always different, especially sunrise and sunsets, and so you should always try to be in a good spot for those, but I also did a pretty strenuous hike down to the Na Pali coast on the Awa`awapuhi trail from Koke’e State Park. The hike starts at 4100 feet and ends at 2500 feet above the sea (just off those cliff edges) so getting there is fine. Getting back with my full kit of Canon lenses and tripod – less so. Another hiker was enjoying the view and so I added her for some scale in the photo (and have asked for a model release). Even without the release, these are fine for editorial work and so have been uploaded to Alamy, Corbis and Zoonar.

Awa`awapuhi trail from Koke’e State Park

The backpack with the lenses paid off as I was able to get an interesting shot (and a video) of one of the island’s helicopter tours over the jagged rocks of this coastline:

Helicopter tour over Kauai Na Pali Coast

I also took shots of people enjoying the reasonably calm Queens Bath on the north shore of the island. This is often very rough (here is a January 2015 shot and then one from this November)

January 2015

November 2015

Detail shots that can be used well outside the travel genre are also important. A new “mini-golf” course is decorated with plants showing the history of settlement on the islands and gave plenty of opportunity for close-ups of food and spice plants:

Hawaiian Kona coffee beans

Don’t forget to take snaps of the signs describing the plants – key to getting the right names in the keywords!

Another tip is to visit the various photography galleries in a touristy place. You will see shots of places that you had perhaps missed – like this one that I didn’t know existed:

Historic Stone Dam on Wai Kai Loop trail

There are often angles that you may not have thought about – you may not get the light that the professional photographer was able to wait for, but you will still get an interesting shot. For instance, a photographer in a gallery was working on a gorgeous sunset shot of the Taro fields in Hanalei – I had been there but hadn’t thought about a stitched panorama with this particular tree in the frame. My lighting is not a sunset, but an interesting shot, none the less:

Panorama of Taro fields Hanalei

In another very upmarket gallery, I saw a fantastic shot of waves shooting into the air at sunrise from a local beach. Of course on my visit, it was nothing like that, but a turtle on the beach with a bit of stitching in of the sunrise sky to give it more of a sense of location resulted in a worthwhile shot. And no – I didn’t get very close to the animal!

Beached green sea turtle Moloa’a Beach Kauai

Finally, use the time to experiment. I tried a series of wave shots with a very fast shutter speed (around 1/2000th of a second) to freeze the water. These were taken at 280mm on my full frame camera and cropped in a bit. Not sure if they will sell, but they are interesting! Perhaps a wall print sometime!

Frozen motion waves in Kauai

So, even though this was a visit to places I had been many times (and some new ones I discovered), there are always opportunities for photography!