I’ve been thinking about what makes a stock image that takes off, especially one that illustrates a story or article. Of course, the subject needs to be in the news, but more than that, it needs to be the subject of more opinion oriented articles. If something is in the news because it is newsworthy in real time – some violence, that collapse of the building in Florida – the website will almost always use some real-life imagery from the...
As you have probably surmised from my other posts, I have been putting a lot more effort into social media recently to try to boost some print sales and stock has been just “ticking over”. I have added a few images as I have taken them, but, to be honest, not very many! I will continue to write these posts, but if you feel that the value is no longer there, feel free to cancel your membership. If you don’t...
I was looking back at some of the ideas I promoted earlier this year to see how they had performed. The new tax date in the US (which I wrote about the day after the announcement) was an easy one to create and has made me $80 so far with hopefully more to come via Getty/iStock. Not a phenomenal sum, but perhaps that is how stock photography is these days – easy to produce ideas that get picked up and...
April comes round and here it is arriving with a very pleasant warm spell, so there have been a few opportunities to get out and about with my camera. As I have written in previous posts I have been very busy on two projects – completing the video of my son’s opera (which had to be done virtually due to the virus) and trying to get some traction on my print sales to build an alternative to stock images. The...
As the month has progressed, I’ve been thinking of what new images I can create and the recent passage of the American Plan Rescue Act of 2021 (the new stimulus package) gave me a few ideas. Yes, I know this is a US thing, but it is something that can be illustrated wherever you live with a little bit of creative Photoshop work. I created a US Treasury check for the first stimulus package last year and the images of...
Looking at my sales in late January and now February, I am just not seeing any trends or directions – images are selling, but they are very random and coming from my entire portfolio, rather than any particular subject or concept. On one level that is good – it shows that I have built a portfolio that has enough different subjects to continue to meet demands, but on the other, it is becoming hard to spot those new opportunities. As...
I’ve been very slow this year on creating my own images (due to a focus on the Opera video and updating my stock presentation), but I have managed to add a few new images to try to capture the latest trends. As I mentioned last month, there is a big growing demand and interest in e-sports and I did talk about a very popular drink among gamers called GFuel and my order finally arrived a week or so back. So...
Another year, but perhaps not a very different year… Firstly, I was amazed at how badly the year has started at most of the agencies, Shutterstock in particular thanks to that terrible decision to reset everyone’s level on January 1st. I can’t believe the open way they are just boosting their income yet trying to say it is “good for creativity”. However, let’s see if we can come up with some new creative ideas for 2021 and start to make...
Today, I have a few ideas to give you that I haven’t actually done myself, and so there are no example images. I plan to work on them in the coming week or so, but I am also focusing on getting my fine art work up to date on Fine Art America after a couple of sales this month. I mentioned the number of times that I have seen a relatively simple image of a vial for a vaccine with...
Another month goes by in our new world without travel! It seems so strange not to be packing a suitcase for another stock driven adventure and now six inches of snow have shown me that it really is winter now and time to settle down! As I noted in my normal review of earnings, I have been a bit sluggish at uploading new images with about 40 added during the month. One positive thing about the various sorts of lockdown...
