Backyard Silver Latest Posts
In my various articles and even in my eBook, I rarely talk about Zoonar. This German site originally had a deal with another German agency called Polylooks, where each image uploaded to Zoonar and then accepted by Polylooks earned a small payment. In the end, with some sales with Polylook as well, I earned $136 from the site last year. Then Polylooks closed its door and since then – zero… Zoonar has continued to add partners, including some higher paying...
As a previous post explained, I’ve recently bought the Canon 100mm f2.8L macro lens using my earnings from a great July! I happened to buy it used from a seller on Amazon – I had been following sales on eBay, but then I saw a seller on Amazon offering the lens with an included Canon UV filter for $934 and it arrived very quickly in excellent condition. There is an Amazon guarantee to help you sort out issues with a...
I recently bought a new macro lens (paid for with an excellent month of sales in July!), and my research identified the real need for a macro focusing rail if I was going to do this properly. The Velbon Super Mag slider was the result. I bought the Canon 100mm f2.8 for two reasons – it seems to be the lens of choice for some great images on DP Challenge, and its review on The Digital Picture was very good...
I have been searching for some time for an easy to use flash diffusion system. I use a white umbrella when I am taking a head and shoulders shot, but for quick use in the studio (ok table top..), the umbrella is a bit big and gets in the way. I’ve been working a lot with a new macro lens and I wanted something that would spread the light but be very manoeuvrable. The Rogue FlashBenders have turned out to...
As a contributor, I rarely follow the approaches that the various stock sites use to market their services. I’m really glad they are doing it, but it doesn’t impact me very much. I was pleasantly surprised to see a new initiative from Fotolia to create a very clear and well put together site to explain why it makes sense to pay for an image rather than seek a free copy somewhere on the internet. I’ve been uploading to Fotolia since...
With the purchase of my first real macro lens, I have been investigating the world of the small! One of the things I learned in my research is that the depth of focus of macro images is very small, and there is a limit to how much you can increase the depth of focus with smaller apertures. As I tried to explain in a long post on Photography Talk, there is a sweet spot for clarity and depth of field...
I came across this tip on the Microstock Group site as a way to increase revenue from 123RF. The link is a post from one of the 123RF staff, and explains how you can highlight up to 5% of your images as favorites (or “Faves”) and that those images are displayed earlier in the search results. The site show you how many you can Fave – it was 81 in my case, and so I went through my images and...
What a month! After a couple of barren months, July roared back to give me both a best month ever and also I finally broke the magical $1000 earning level. As an earlier post detailed, I had a number of great sales – $118 on Alamy and $100 on Dreamstime, a couple of video sales for $25 each, and a few Shutterstock enhanced licenses for $28 each. A surprising entry in the list was iSignStock – a UK based stock...
After a couple of poor months, July has been unusual, to say the least. The month started well with the purchase of the full rights to an image on Dreamstime, followed by a couple of enhanced sales on the following two days on Shutterstock – one of our bengal cat with a mournful expression and one of the city of Abu Dhabi. In the meantime, Pond5 came in with two sales from Kauai – one of the pier at Hanalei...
I was very pleasantly surprised to be asked to give an interview with Matt Antonino, the photographer and blogger at NiltoMil.com. Matt is famous for a very aggressive target for his stock photography – to go from zero to a million dollars from the sale of his images. How is he getting on – not bad! I think he is regularly achieving $1000 months now. Anyway, Matt has a weekly “focus” section on his blog and he chose me to...
