Earlier in the week I wrote the first of several posts on stock video. Today I’ll move forward to look at the sort of stock videos I’ve been taking and how successful they have been. By the way, if you haven’t read it yet, it is worth looking at the comment added by Vlad Savin to that first post. He provides a very good background to the video industry use of B-Roll to fill in gaps in their productions. It...
I’ve been promising to write about stock video for a while and so this is the first of what I plan will be a series of posts going through my approach to stock video. I don’t pretend to be an expert – in fact I still struggle a bit with the concepts of what a good stock video is – but I’ll give you my thoughts. This first post will be an explanation of what I think you should be...
Don’t the months go by so quickly these days and although I guess February is a short month it was still reasonable. January had shown quite a bump over the previous month (and the same month last year), but February – not so good! Total earnings were still pretty solid though at $2860 although for some reason nothing has yet been reported by Zoonar – perhaps there is nothing, but usually I get a few sales there each month. Here...
Did I really need to buy a new camera? Obviously no – the businessman inside me said firmly that the Sony A7r ii that I have (with 15000 shutter activations) is more than adequate for stock photography and the new model (the mark 3) has only a few enhancements. But the inner child knew that a new camera body was just what I needed and that I would be able to take higher speed videos and slow them down (only...
I wrote earlier in the month about seeing one of my images in a thumbnail and my mind wandering to a new or different edit. The main edit in that case was one of a drowning man holding a bitcoin, but I also realized that I hadn’t uploading the underlying scene of the dark stormy sky with the flooded ocean: The sky for this was an HDR version of the sky over the Shenandoah valley coupled with an ocean generated in...
I uploaded this image yesterday as an Easter background – cute? But where did the idea come from? As usual, just browsing through my sales as I do each morning using Microstockr Pro. I came across
I’m always looking for something different to photograph (and keeping my eyes open to what is being used on web sites) and I’ve seen a few images with older typewriters on them – gives a more interesting angle to writing, journalism or blogging than yet another laptop photo. So I go to antique stores (which are really junk shops here in the USA) and see what is around. My most recent purchase was an electric typewriter in pretty good condition:...
For travel photographers, the winter can be a downer – cold, wet, snowy weather (depending on where you are of course) and little enthusiasm to brave the cold! Now is the perfect time to improve your portfolio and your skills with some studio shots. But what to take? I find ideas from just generally browsing news and opinion stories, such as ones about people not saving enough for retirement. It was illustrated by a savings jar with a few loose...
I was looking at my daily sales this morning on Microstockr Pro (and there weren’t very many over the weekend!) and I saw a 38c sale of an old image of me in a swimming pool holding a “Help Me” sign. For some reason, my brain immediately jumped to the current collapse of bitcoin prices and the chance that everyone who bought in since December is likely to have lost their shirt (and hopefully not their life savings). A new...
Another year goes by. Hard to imagine that I am now in my 11th year as a stock photographer having starting uploading in early 2008. Earnings that first year – $1113! Now we are in 2018 and January is traditionally a slow month for me in the stock world. This month is no exception – after a run of over $3000 months, I ended in January with $2727: What is interesting about the chart though is that I was significantly...
