We found our way to a very remote spot in West Virginia today – Jenkinsburg Bridge, also known as Bull Run Bridge over the Cheat River. This 1912 metal truss bridge is only about 12 miles as the crow flies from Morgantown, but the only road to it takes almost 50 minutes and the last 4 miles is on a 4 wheel drive very rough and steep track down the hillside. The road across the bridge is pretty much impassable...
I don’t often recommend books, but one I have really enjoyed reading and also found very informative is Alain Briot’s Marketing Fine Art Photography. He gives lots of good advice about what sort of photographs sell, where to sell them and how to go about marketing prints of your work. Making money from selling prints yourself isn’t easy, but it is very rewarding to get the personal satisfaction from someone deciding that your image would look good on their wall....
I’ve not done much outdoor shooting yet, but I wanted to try the new Sony in a more difficult setting – a backlit indoor shot using natural light. I have the Sony set to ISO 100 unless the shutter speed is going to be less than 1/60th second, in which case, it moves to Auto ISO (nice feature!). This tricky lighting condition with a sunlit window in the background and exposure compensation set to +1, meant that the final exposure...
Right – now we have the camera and the Really Right Stuff L bracket installed, it is time to set the camera to my liking! You would think I would be out taking some pictures as it is a balmy 83 degrees and sunny here in West Virginia, but we are looking after our grand-daughter this week (and the two dogs) and so free time is not really available! So what do I like in a stock photography camera?
I’ve finally decided to give my back a rest and move to a slightly smaller camera kit, hopefully without sacrificing quality along the way! As a result, all my Canon stuff will be going and making room for a new Sony A7R ii body plus 16-35mm F4, 24-70mm F4 and 70-200mm F4 Sony lenses. I decided to go this way rather than buy a lens adapter and use my Canon lenses partly for convenience and weight and partly because those...
Although these don’t come round very often, I did get a sale in May on Fine Art America. The one that sold was a 14 x 12 inch canvas of a traditional Washington DC view – the moon rising over the city. This one earned $27 profit with my current pricing scheme on FAA. Each time I get a sale I think that I must add some more images there, but rarely do. I just accept the sales that...
Another month goes by so quickly. It has been a strange month here in the wilds of West Virginia – very cold early on, and then pretty hot for the last week. With moving into a new house we are still snowed under in boxes and lots to be done around the house and so almost no photography to speak of for at least 2 months now. I’ve not uploaded very much either as a result, so it is interesting...
Is this an April Fools Joke or what – earnings in April were down to a new low and Shutterstock, normally one of my more reliable agencies, failed to even reach $750 this month – ending at just $736. The last time I had earnings so low at Shutterstock was in February 2013 – over 3 years ago, when I had just 3664 images online at that agency compared to 5800 now. I don’t know if the buyers are voting...
At my old camera club, we had competitions each month and I entered this shots as a 16×20 matted print: I’ll never forget the judge’s comments – “I’ve never seen a sky like that – really overdone…” and she gave it a poor score.
I’ve been very quiet of late, and haven’t been paying much attention to my stock photo work – mainly because our planned move to Morgantown in West Virginia finally happened after we sold our home in Virginia. So we have had 4 weeks of packing things into boxes and now four weeks of unpacking things and wondering where on earth they will go in a smaller house. I’ve taken a few shots when I can find the time – there...
