Premium – what to do in November?

Apart from hide your head under the bed covers as the US election comes to its logical conclusion, that is…

So here is my usual summary of themes I have been working on and what I think might be interesting topics for the upcoming weeks and months. It is definitely getting late to upload election related themes, but possibly there might be opportunities for the chaos that will follow election day as the results are counted, different totals are reached, lawsuits are started, the Supreme Court gets involved, riots in the streets – oh, no. Time to head back under the covers.

Seriously though, what have I been working on and what has worked for me? The first point to note is that my Coronavirus images have passed their peak a long time ago:

The September numbers include iStock results, October, of course, does not, but even so, there is a real drop as we move into the fall. As you can see from the thumbnails, the election oriented virus shots are now the main sellers with images containing a mask with some sort of election message being the biggest sellers as we have moved into September and October. However, overall, I’ve been very pleased with the results with over $2000 in sales.

I’m also finding that the simpler the image, the better. I have done those quite elaborate shots against the green screen (which were fun to do), but, to be honest, they are not selling well at all. The best seller (for the year) in this category is probably this one:

This has earned $50 from 11 downloads, although helped a lot by a big sale in September. The much simpler message of the importance of looking after your health has been this (taken in a previous year):

A much simpler concept, applies to both flu shots as well as a coronavirus vaccine, and has earned $243 this year and hit $70 a month in August and September with some good sales via iStock/Getty, so I’m hoping it will continue through the winter months. The simpler the better – the five minute shot beats the 30 minute Photoshop composite!

I think there are also still opportunities in the eviction/foreclosure area – my few attempts at that are continuing to sell and in the US at least, the main issues have been put off until January and so it will be back in the news in the New Year. I have tied these into the virus again, although I should probably do a series without a direct link. Again, the simpler the better! This particular one has sold 166 times for $109.

This month I have been trying to come up with new ideas for the election mainly. The ones I have been uploading recently have been aimed at the after election period:

I also tried to do some of my glass globe shots with the theme of trying to forecast the results:

I’m very happy with the results and I think it would make a great image in a magazine (for which people would have paid a good few hundred dollars in the past), but I have a feeling that it will struggle to earn very much. With these shots, I have also uploaded a blank version so that buyers can add their own message. In the past you could have seen hundreds of variants of this with different flags and messages, but Shutterstock (and Adobe) are cracking down on too many similar images. I do wonder if they are missing out with buyers who don’t have the skills to manipulate a blank image to add a new logo or message, but that is a story for another day:

I also have taken some with some currencies in the background (and also a bitcoin):

This one has sold a few times, so perhaps there is a market there?

I enjoyed taking these shots, but time will tell if I will get back the cost of the glass ball!!

Moving on – I missed the opportunity to upload images of the TikTok and WhatsApp apps that are still under discussion in the USA. I did suggest that you could take them, but didn’t do so, myself. So when I read an article about the potential rise of end to end encrypted communications Apps, I thought I should actually do something about it:

It didn’t take long and may be ready for the next set of discussions on this. I had also suggested that a similar picture of all the streaming video Apps might be a good idea. Again, I didn’t follow my own advice, but I see lots of articles about Disney+ and Peacock and do wonder if there is still time to do something that shows how complex that market has become.

I also tried to update my Halloween images with a virus feel:

Easy to do, but I doubt I have a world beater on my hands!

The fall colors in my part of the world are quite impressive and so I have been out and about taking shots of specific locations in autumn colors. I think the opportunities for a generic fall landscape to take off are pretty small, but I do sell images of Morgantown reasonably frequently and a shot I took in nearby Fairmont has sold a couple of times, so I think there is a potential opportunity in capturing great shots of local towns and landmarks. They won’t ever be a big seller, but if you keyword them well, they will sell from time to time and as long as it is not going to use time that would be better put to other uses, there is little downside. This image of the Jumonville cross in Pennsylvania gave me a good bit of exercise climbing the hill and so it was not a burden on my “stock business!”

So what about the future? I was intrigued by an article about a new 3D avatar company called Genies that is allowing you to create very realistic 3D avatars for your chat and messaging sessions and it suggested that Giphy, the GIF maker, could create these. I thought it would be great to illustrate those in some example chat sessions in some stock images (editorial probably), but so far I haven’t worked out how to create them. I think those could become a big craze and so getting in early is important.

This screenshot is from a Gucci ad to show how they could be used. You heard it first here!

The anti-trust cases against technology companies in the US is likely to be a big story going forward as well. I did one attempt at a humorous approach:

Rejected by Shutterstock as something that they no longer consider, but accepted (and sold) by Adobe Stock as illustrative editorial. I’m sure there are better ways to illustrate this and I’ll continue to think about it.

I also think that some images to illustrate the themes of getting a virus vaccine to people would be good. Those might be real editorial shots if you have any way to get those, but that will be a big story into 2021. I suppose you could create mockups of the logos of the companies involved and try to use those to illustrate the race to get a vaccine into the arms of the population? There will also be a lot of stories about people refusing to be vaccinated and the issues around that. Perhaps my shoulder with a big X on it might be a useful concept shot. More to think about in the coming weeks!