Premium – February ideas for new stock images

I’ve been busier on new concepts these past few weeks, although there was one that I thought about early on and did nothing about – the online game Wordle. I knew about it, knew that it was becoming something that people were talking about, but never got round to taking a few simple photos of the screen. As it turned out, much discussion in most newspapers and many, many sites around the web. So, an opportunity missed! Increasingly, I think there is a market for quickly and cost-effective images that can be used to illustrate stories. If you can make a few for little time and effort, and they earn $40 or so, it is probably worth doing.

But back to ideas that did work and others that I think will become popular this year. I noticed some discussions starting about issues with the rollout of 5G on a new frequency band in the US and how it could impact planes landing in bad weather. I was not as quick as I should have been, but I quickly created some composites using my various images of cellphone towers (including ones from the ground) and some pictures of planes I have in my portfolio to illustrate the story:

This was a plane landing on a small airport in St Martin in the Caribbean and one of my drone images, and this next one is a cell tower from the ground and a much older image taken when waiting to pick someone up from Heathrow airport in London.

These have started selling quite nicely and I noticed an uptick in my cellphone tower images as well. These might be long term sellers as well for any story in the future when they allow making phone calls from aircraft in the future perhaps.

Staying with the technology line, there are plans in the US (and in many other countries to different timescales) to close down the older 2G and 3G networks. These were the mobile networks that first allowed data and browsing and have been superseded in most places with 4G and now 5G. The mobile networks want to reuse the radio frequencies. The big US networks will close these down later this year and many things (cars for instance) that used to get updates on traffic from the older networks will no longer work. Also the older phones won’t work as well. I can imagine many discussions about how people can’t afford new phones, which cars won’t update (including some that are only a year or two old) and so on. So if you have an old flip phone in a drawer, now is the time to take photos of it not working! I started creating images using my cellphone antenna again, trying also to show the “sunset” idea for the technology:

I’ve had a few sales already, but it isn’t really in the news yet. I plan to do more along these lines. Funnily enough, all these were soft-rejected by iStock with the message that I should remove the watermarks and resubmit!

I mentioned an idea for US based readers to order the new free Covid Tests that the government are issuing. Mine did arrive and by that afternoon they were already photographed and uploaded:

Too early to say if these will sell, but, again, it only took a little bit of effort to get them online.

Sticking with this theme, I also think there will be continued discussion about the need for another booster shot for the virus (the fourth), and so I did a couple of shots to illustrate that by sticking multiple pieces of sticking plaster (bandaids) on my arm:

I also thought a “good, better, best” color scheme might be a good seller:

I think this one might be a bit too subtle though – the first one has sold, the second one, not so much!

As I think I have mentioned in other posts, I am going backwards through my portfolio, reworking older images and uploading to Fine Art America. In doing so, I come across images that I ignored in the past because the sky was blown out or boring and now, I can easily just replace the sky with a few clicks in Photoshop. So, I am uploading those to the stock agencies as well. I also did a new version of one of my best-selling images. I have found that new versions often give the older one a new lease of life as well!

One thing I hadn’t seen coming and am still not too sure how to illustrate is a big increase in the number of companies about to launch (literally) electric vertical takeoff vehicles (eVTOLs). Yes, who knew! Many big airlines have placed order for them to get their big spending customers from a city center out to the airport and there are at least seven different companies making them. At a minimum, you could photograph their websites, but if you happen to live somewhere close to where these companies are based, it would be worth photographing their office and signs. The companies are: Archer Aviation, Beta Technologies, Eve Urban Air Mobility, Joby Aviation, Lillium, Vertical Aerospace and Velocopter.

There are also a lot more electric car manufacturers about to launch vehicles so, again, it would be worth looking out for those, or their manufacturing base if you can. The new ones include Canoo, Fisker, Lordstown, Rivan, Bollinger and Lotus. Not worth going far out of your way, but they might be closer than you think!

In the world of finance, there are also big battles brewing to capture our wallets with Apps, and so some illustration of that would pay off. The companies there are PayPal, Venmo, Cash App, ShopPay, SoFi, Chime, Coinbase, Robinhood, Affirm and Klarna.

Another trend that I think will grow this year and beyond is a new range of alcohol-free wines which are far better than the old ones. I read that they will increase by 30% in the next two years. So, watch out for bottles from Leitz in Germany, Giesen from New Zealand among others.

Well, I think that is all I have for you this time. Happy shooting!