Judging by reports in the forums and my own stats things are starting to happen at Photoshelter. In the past few weeks the number of “I made a sale” post on the forum has increased dramatically. Other reports (and my own stats) show a good uptick in lightbox adds as well.
I can’t imagine how hard it must be to startup a stock agency, kudos to the PhotoShelter team for all there hard work, looks like it is starting to pay off.
So nothing to show for Q1 as far as earnings. I am still basically exclusive at PhotoShelter (I have like 5 images on Dreamstime) and my portfolio is up to 73 images but I have not really be shooting much with only stock in mind. I have some good ideas I want to shoot and hopefully can get some time to shoot them in the next couple of months.
Work flow I have pretty much nailed at this point. PhotoShelter’s Aperture plugin rocks! I can go from import to upload really quickly. What I really need is key wording help. I was browsing around iStock the other day and see images with like 30-40 keywords, most of mine end up in the 10-20 range. Not sure what resources I can find to help with that though. Any ideas on key wording would be greatly appreciated.
Amazingly good time! The models where great and the fellow photographers where awesome. Here are the pics I took that made the cut. I was fighting my ghetto wizards all day, really frustrating and it pretty much cemented my desire to get some Radio Poppers.
It is not a sale but I am pretty stoked one of my images made editors choice. It will be interesting to see if it brings more traffic or not. I *think* I am getting a better idea of the style they are going for in the collection so I will hopefully get even more images accepted. Check out my editors choice image:
I have decided that Aperture 2 is going to be the main part of my workflow moving forward. The time i used to spend in Photoshop is now spent in Aperture. I can do 99% of the stuff I need to do with my photos I can handle right inside Aperture.
I also got the awesome UberUpload plugin for Aperture. It adds a super handy Export function to upload to ftp servers. For stock agencies that support ftp this is a godsend. My basic workflow looks like this:
1. Import images
2. Do a quick yes/no pass
3. Perform any adjustments needed
4. Keyword
5. Upload with Uberupload
I can rip through a ton of images using this technique.
The Moment It Clicks is an amazingly inspirational book that is easy to read and understand. The book is written by Joe McNally (blog) Who the heck is Joe McNally? A brief snip from his bio:
is an internationally acclaimed photographer, whose career has spanned 30 years and included assignments in over 50 countries. Although the majority of his career has been spent shooting for magazines such as Time, Sports Illustrated, and National Geographic, in the mid-1990s Joe served as Life magazine’s staff photographer, the first one in 23 years.
Joe is an amazing photographer and it would be a great book if it just had his photographs in it. In addition to his stunning images though he has 1-2 page stories and “How to get this shot” sections that explain the story and technique behind the photograph. These are straight and to the point. This is the first book I have read that is both inspirational and instructional at the same time. This tips cover the gamut from photography to being a photographer to life in general.
Still 0$ in sales although I did have a lightbox add at PhotoShelter. As I mentioned before I am throwing practically all my eggs over there. I have one or two images at a few microstock stock sites but almost all of my images are submitted to PhotoShelter first. They seem to be lagging a bit on the reviews lately but I take that as a good sign that they are getting busy. More photographers over there is a good thing.
I did get to go to the Bay Area Strobist mini-meetup which was awesome. I also rented a Sigma 10-20 for Borrow Lenses and captured this photo that I love of my new son.
I am also trailing Aperture 2which looks like I am going to choose for my main workflow app. I can do 95% of my post work there. Hopefully there will be a PhotoShelter plugin soon.
I had a blast at this mini meetup! We had 6 people show up in total with lots of really great ideas. This picture of Al is the best portrait I have ever taken. I can’t really claim it as mine though, I just happened to be the guy holding the camera. As you can see by Daniel’s photo of the setup, it was truly a group effort.
I learned so much in 3 hours and had more fun with photography than I have had in a really long time.
Thanks again to Allan for setting it up and everyone that showed up.
I have been thinking about this for a while now. The microstock revolution started a few years ago but it still felt very old. It changed the game mostly for producers of content, opening the door for an entire new breed of photographers. Now you can fairly easily pay for your hobby with income from microstock and thousands are doing it.
One thing that hasn’t really changed is the licensing. There are two main choices, royalty free(RF) and rights managed(RM). RF images are paid for once and used forever. This is the main license for most microstock sites. RM images are paid for based on where and when they will be used. For example if I wanted to use a RM image for a magazine I would be charged based on how long I wanted the rights and how big my subscriber base is.
GumGum is out to change all that with a very web based pricing model designed specifically for images used on the web. GumGum wants to use a CPM model. CPM is a term that means “Cost Per Thousand, (no idea why it is not CPT). This is a pricing model used heavily in the online ad space. As a photographer I can upload an image and set my CPM pricing. Then a designer comes along and gets code to place my image on there site. GumGum keeps track of the impressions and charges the designer. This has a couple of interesting aspects from a photographers point of view:
I continue getting revenue for the life of my image on a site, assuming people are still looking at the page. This is similar to a RM license but last forever.
The image size you are uploading in theory can’t really be used for prints etc. The technology they use also helps stop a lot of typical image theft tricks.
From a designers point of view I think they get a fairly low cost image (the the video below $.20 per CPM) so they don’t have to pay a lot if the site/page is not successfully.
There are a lot of other things that are pretty cool. Check out the demo video below or go to the GumGum site.
As reported on Photo Business BlogPhotoShelter has just hired Genevieve Harley from Getty Images to be Director of Sales at PhotoShelter. They also hired former American Express Senior Product Manager Andrew Fingerman to be PhotoShelter’s new vice president of marketing.
I don’t know anything about these people but them sem like good solid experienced people to bring on board. If PhotoShelter can move over a lot of Getty customers that can mean nothing but good things.
