I was very fortunate to be able to present a session on Stock Photography to the Manassas Warrenton Camera Club in Virginia last night. If you are ever in the area, please come along to the Club meetings on the first and third Thursdays in the month to meet a great bunch of people and hear some fascinating speakers… I wanted to keep the talk light-hearted but still informative and so put together a PowerPoint presentation trying to cover the...
The August results are now complete, and this has been a pretty reasonable month. August is never a great month because of vacations in many parts of the world, but this has been a month marked by steady progress on most of the sites. There were no one-off specials like the rights sale for $100 on Dreamstime and the $120 Alamy sale last month, but overall each agency played its part in getting to a total of $892. Shutterstock broke...
One of the advantages of being in Northern VA (apart from the earthquakes) is the closeness of all the monuments in Washington DC. So, I got up early this morning to be first in line for a tour of the new Martin Luther King monument that has opened by the side of the Tidal Basin. I managed to get some shots of his grandson (Martin Luther King III) who was touring the site before it opened to the public and...
Back in April, I mentioned the 123di Digital Photography Course, and gave an overview, gleaned from their web site, of the course contents. It appeared to be a pretty comprehensive computer based training course, but I didn’t have the time, at that stage, to properly review the details. I’ve now spent many hours going through the course, and I’m now in a much better position to give my full review of the course and its content. But, where to start...
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...
