Apart from hide your head under the bed covers as the US election comes to its logical conclusion, that is… So here is my usual summary of themes I have been working on and what I think might be interesting topics for the upcoming weeks and months. It is definitely getting late to upload election related themes, but possibly there might be opportunities for the chaos that will follow election day as the results are counted, different totals are reached,...
It has been a quiet month (when is it any different these days) and a few things were on my mind, and so this post is just a collection of things that you might be interested in! First up – I saw a post on the Microstock Group this morning about a search on Adobe which brings up images and videos that have never sold. Thanks to Jo Ann Snover for discovering this. The core of her post was this...
There is something very satisfying about selling a photo as a large art print and I have had some great high priced sales on Fine Art America in the past. My latest one, of course, netting $287. But I was looking at similar images of this same place on FAA, and noticed that other artists were reporting more sales than I was seeing (you can tell by looking at the comments as you almost always get a comment when you...
Another month and time for some more ideas on what concepts might drive stock photo sales in the coming months. Of course the US election is showing no signs of calming down and we are headed for a tumultuous November. I don’t think I have done anything like enough to get some images online to illustrate the confusion and perhaps violence that will pervade that period – and I think there is still time to get those sort of images...
A long, long time ago I wrote about the copyright and model release issues that determined whether an image should be editorial or commercial usage but recently I got a message via my contact form from a photographer in the UK with this set of questions: I have plenty of ideas for stock photos to take but one area I am struggling with is copyright/legal aspects. I could not find any posts on your website about this so wondered if...
Once again, a very reasonable month. I know that we are probably in the final stages of this industry in terms of whether a single contributor (as opposed to a group of artists continually uploading new content) can make a reasonable living from stock, but usually the death of an industry takes longer than you think! In this case I think the major impact on earnings is the pressure that is on the stock agencies to get buyers to pay...
I was looking at my recent sales (using Microstockr Pro) and was struck with how often the images that I have created in the past year have shown up in the thumbnails. I usually do this at least once a day as I find that just scanning the sold files gives me a good idea of which themes are selling and also those small size images also give me feedback on whether my images, which might be great on a...
As you know, I have suggested that many themes around the upcoming US election will be opportunities for stock photographers (and videographers) in the coming weeks as the various themes of mail-in voting, voter fraud, delayed results, false claims of winning, lawsuits over ballot counting, violence at the polls (and afterwards) all come together in early November. This is an opportunity for readers around the world as the basics – envelopes and various campaign stickers can be created anywhere. The...
One thing I tried many months ago was to open up the website to questions and I then tried to combine similar questions and answer them in a concise post. So this might be a time to try that again! You can ask a question in the comments below, or send me a message through the contact form. Your question can be anonymous if you like. I’ll wait a while and then start to create some answering posts. So, if...
The concepts I am working on seem to shift depending on my enthusiasm for stock imagery. I’m sure many of you are feeling the pressure of thinking of new subjects that we believe will capture the image buyers needs – it is certainly a pressure to keep coming up with something intriguing and new! We have just had Labor Day in the USA, which is the final holiday of the summer, and so I did get out to our local...
