Sometimes you have to relax
I spend a lot of time thinking about stock photo opportunities, but sometimes you just have to relax and take some photos that you enjoy! They may sell (chances are probably close to zero), but it is just as important to hone your skills on ordinary attractive images!
This week has been lovely in West Virginia – unusually warm and the leaves are starting to turn, and so a bike ride was in order:
The leaf covered Deckers Creek Trail
The Deckers Creek Trail runs from Morgantown to Masontown and beyond and that section is 13 miles long with a gentle gradient all the way up. It is built on an old railway line and so there was a limit to the steepness of those lines, which makes cycling easy in both directions. About two miles south of Masontown (Mile Marker 12) I came across this nice waterfall in the river, with a swimming hole, and spent a pleasant hour in the warm afternoon taking 2 -4 second images of the different cascades:
A bit further down the track I stopped to take the cycling image that headed this post as the light was coming gently through the leaves and I took the opportunity to take some 4K videos as well with me riding away and round the next bend, and then coming back. Pretty easy to do and those are uploading to the video sites as I type. Unfortunately this sort of details 4K video is around 2.8G in size, so uploading can take some hours!
Around a lower bend, I came across a working limestone quarry and stone crushing plant:
Greers Limestone Quarry near Morgantown
Crushed rock and conveyor belt
This gave me an opportunity to take some editorial and commercial shots whilst I was on my relaxing ride, and so even when you set out to just take some nature shots, a stock opportunity may not be far away!
Update: I don’t believe this, but I uploaded the waterfall images to Shutterstock and they were accepted at 11:30 this morning. Just now I saw that one of them had sold! Shutterstock has been very poor on newly uploaded images recently (at least for me) and now one of my “relaxing” photos has sold. I must do this more often!
This one sold 6 hours after being uploaded!
Nice way to profit from your relaxation Steve!
I’ll take any sales I can these days!
Thanks Craig!
Steve
Beautiful. Wait, there will be a fall color show pretty soon there, it will drive you crazy. I miss the east coast colors!
The general understanding among the people out there is that “no sales of new images”, which has hit pretty much every one, means that those images will fall into some kind of black hole not to be ever found again.
Yet today I sold for the first time on SS one of my test images which had never sold before. Ten months after uploading, it is a summer image of a lake in the Sierra Nevada. Selling of old, forgotten images is happening more frequently to me now, but fresh new images being sold is sort of rare.
May be I got the timing wrong, since summer and spring images is what I have sold more recently.
I’m in the relaxing mode myself, will take some time to think about “what all that means”. Probably it all means nothing, but thinking does not cost anything.
Yes, it is strange how new images (even good ones) never seem to sell on SS. I don’t have that issue as much on other sites.
But the bottom line is – enjoy yourself!
Steve
Dear Steve,
Just wanted to thank you for sharing about your experiences so openly in your blog. It is very interesting and useful to read. I am still considering if to get into the microstock or not… appears rather time consuming. However while I am thinking, love reading you anyway. Best of luck with your microstock adventure (and with the house move).
Great waterfall shots!
Cheers,
Anna
Thanks Anna! Glad you find these musings interesting!
Steve
Dear Steve
I wanted to ask you as I googled but I can not seem to find this information anywhere.. is there some list on microstock websites re what is currently in demand, most “common” searches etc.? Where could I potentially find something like this?
Thank you in advance.
Kind regards,
Anna
Anna
It would be a good post to do – as far as I know, each agency has its own view of popular keywords/images and they are all hidden away in different parts of their sites. If I have a spare hour, I’ll put together a list.
Steve