Backyard Silver Latest Posts
I wrote an article last summer about my experience taking fireworks photos in Pittsburgh on Independence Day, and when I saw the latest Dreamstime Blog contest was about photographing events, I thought I would create a more specific “how to plan, take and post process great fireworks photos” article. The article is now online over at the Dreamstime Blog, so if you are interested in my latest thoughts on this, please check it out! One thought for this audience though...
Update: I’ve updated this post with new information and some photo improvements. The new version of the 10 best photo opportunities on Kauai can be found here on BackyardImage.com I’m just back from a trip to Kauai (yes, again) and here are my top ten locations that you must visit and photograph if you are lucky enough to visit the island. Think of it as my top 10 instagrammable spots on an island full of them! Kauai is the oldest...
Making money as a photographer must be one of the harder professions out there. Everyone seems to think that they can do it, and some people are willing to give excellent work away for free. You only need to look at Unsplash to see great images being offered with full commercial and editorial licenses at full resolution and for what? A credit line if you are lucky. As my friend Alex has discovered with his excellent research work on fraudulent...
I always like to see my images chosen to decorate someone’s wall and so I put what I think are my best artistic shots on Fine Art America and Photo4Me (for UK images mainly). This past month gave me just one sale of an image that has proved to be very popular: If you recall, I increased my pricing on FineArtAmerica a month or two back and this is the first sale under the new pricing scheme. Still too early...
As you know, I am a solid believer in Stock Submitter to prepare, upload and submit my images and videos to all the 20 or so sites I support. The ease with which it is able to submit images without me ever visiting the agency saves me a lot of time and effort. I’ve written a series of blogs about it starting with this one. Recently the developer came up with an interesting enhancement to the local app – Microstock...
I create quite a few stock photos and videos in what I laughingly call my home studio, but what does that entail? Do you need a lot of gear to make excellent images and videos? I think the answer is no! Basically, I have a room (at the top of the house which keeps me in shape) that is my computer room, TV room and studio. I’ve moved recently to a stand up desk arrangement with my two monitors and...
The discussion about the graph I published yesterday about my return per image is interesting over on the Microstock Group. I thought it might be interesting to explain how I calculated this, what alternatives there are and to show one area of good news! So what is Return per online image? Simply put, it is the earnings you get from an agency divided by the number of files you have. The interesting question is how do you count those files?...
This is an old post but I left it here because the comments are still very interesting and hopefully useful! If you are looking for the eBook, it is here: eBook – Getting Started in Stock.
2018 is behind us and thank goodness December has gone! This was one of the worst months for sales for a couple of years and I ended up with $850 less than in December 2017. Total earnings for December 2018 turned out to be $2350. A bit disappointing after all the effort in getting new images and videos online. Still, it is what it is and I need to look forward now to a great January! As this is also...
Not everything I buy turns out to be useful (or, even better, pays for itself in earnings). I remember thinking how great a carbon fiber monopod would be and I think it has been used once since I bought it at a photography show! But one of my better buys has been the Edelkrone Surface One. It was not cheap – over $800 with the flex head, but I have earned at least $1400 in video sales since I bought...
