I’m keen on realistic HDR images, and one of the restrictions in Canon firmware (at least in the 5D Mark 2) is that you can only take three exposures automatically, which normally means that I take one normal one, one at -2 stops and one at +2 stops. While this captures most of the information, it is recommended to take 7 images separated at 1 stop intervals for best quality output. I also often miss being able to set up...
Blur, or camera shake, occurs when there is some movement of the camera (or the subject) when the image is being captured. In this post, we will ignore the subject movement and concentrate on avoiding blur in the camera. I have only tested this on my Canon camera/lenses, so I am not 100% sure if it is an issue with other makes. Back in December, I was taking images of our newly decorated Christmas tree with all its lights and...
Well, the results are in, and… Not too shabby, but not as good as the last 2 months that had set a roaring pace with quite a number of high priced downloads. Most of the sites performed to the normal levels, with a little growth. I added around 70 images in the month to each of the sites – a little less than normal as I was focused on writing my eBook! Here is the graph showing month by month...
After almost four years in the business, I have spent the past few months creating a “how to do it” book for aspiring stock photographers. This is now available for purchase using Paypal or credit cards. I’ve also posted User Reviews as I notice them. Here is the introduction and table of contents from the book to give you an idea of the coverage: Introduction Thanks for buying this eBook! You will find all the learning I have gained...
I use Adobe Lightroom every day in handling stock images and adding keywords etc., and I noticed that the program is on sale at Amazon for $149 instead of $299. I’m not sure how long this will last, so snap it up before it goes!!
I came across this simple tip in a magazine, and thought I would pass along. It also will help me remember it as well. This tip works in Photoshop to quickly and easily add some POP to your photographs. Use with caution with iStockPhoto as they don’t tend to like over filtered images, but it certainly adds some mid tone contrast and clarity to the right images. The first photo is the original image after the normal adjustments in Lightroom...
I saw an article in Professional Photographer last month about a new site that is aimed at creating a community of artists displaying and selling their works of art. The team behind it is quite new – it launched in January – but it appears to be very professionally created and organized. The initial membership is free and you can upload and share 2GB of files. Each one is restricted to 15MB. The images are “Right-click” protected, and the terms...
I’ll start this post early, as I have already had two enhanced downloads from Shutterstock. Last month was a record with over $800 in sales and so this month has a hard target to beat. Luckily, these two downloads from Shutterstock at $28 each, have already pushed the earnings from that one site to $110 after 6 days in the month. The first was yesterday, and is a photo of a Buddha statue on a wooden platform in a small...
I have a professional site on Smugmug, which I use to host my best photos at a high resolution, and, although I keyword the images and make them available for search, I had pretty much given up any hope of selling images via the site. I had set the pricing at about 50% more than the cost of the prints, and was extremely pleased to see an order placed this last weekend for $90 worth of prints. Some were simple...
Another record month in April in selling my images on Microstock! The total in the month grew to $836, compared to earnings of $788 in March and $371 in April 2010. It definitely shows that a focus on taking more images and getting them online really pays off. This month I had a great run on Enhanced Downloads on Shutterstock with six of these $28 downloads in April – I’ve updated my post about the best selling images in April...
