Online image galleries – I don’t get it

On 10.30.08, In Commentary, By Chester

Lakewood High School Cheerleaders 2008-09
Like any photographer with an online presence, I wanted to be able to sell prints of my images online. I have a number of images that I think are worthy of hanging on the walls of homes and businesses (corporate art I guess), and I also have portraits that I have done of various people (mainly my daughter’s senior pictures and the Lakewood High School Cheerleaders). In either case, it is the ultimate convenience for my customers to be able to review their images online, tell me if they want any of them retouched, then be able to order the final versions in whatever dimensions or on whatever material (canvas wrap, coffee mug, etc) they want.

I took these things into consideration when I started looking for an online gallery source. I could have done it myself, using Gallery2 or similar software, but I honestly didn’t want to handle the back-end pieces of fulfillment. A one stop shop was a good idea. So I researched the different sites out there. Smugmug is widely regarded as the market leader. The there is Zenfolio and a bunch of others.

I have friends on Smugmug, and I never really liked how the sites looked. I know customization is possible, but I was hoping to avoid that. Zenfolio, however, had a nice, clean interface. The ordering process was straightforward. They let me do coupons and all that sort of stuff. The only thing they were lacking was digital downloads. This is a pretty big deal in this day and age. A number of other sites offer this. As recently as July, they indicated this was a priority and they were working on it. As recently as 10/28 though, they made it crystal clear that we won’t see it in the immediate future.

Instead, Zenfolio is putting their development focus on allowing comments on photos. I have a couple issues with this.
1. Zenfolio is not Flickr. It is a commerce site. Comments are secondary in nature to the sales process.
2. Digital downloads offer immediate $$ returns. As a photographer looking to make money from my images, this is a priority to me.

I have already lost at least one sale that I know of because I didn’t have an immediate download option available. And that was someone who took the time to let me know. How many opportunities have their been that I was not aware of?

It’s my own fault really. I have this need to be different, and give “new guys” a chance even when it might not make the most sense. I have learned my lesson though. I am signing up for my Smugmug free trial today and will start using their tools to migrate my stuff away from Zenfolio. The good news is that the “Print of the Week” entries will now be available as digital downloads, so you can use them as a desktop, print them for yourself at home, or however you want to use it. Commercial licensing will also be available if you want to use one of my images for an ad campaign or something similar. I’ll let you know as soon as this is available.

By the way – if you have found this post and are a dissatisfied Zenfolio / Flickr / Picassa / Phanfare / Yahoo / Photosite customer, go to smugglr.smugmug.com and see how you can migrate your stuff to Smugmug, and save significantly on your first year with them.

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Composite Images

On 10.29.08, In Commentary, By Chester

Happy Halloween (by bridgepix)
Photo by bridgepix
I have been reading a lot lately – books, magazines, online articles and blog entries (always been a voracious reader really). I have been noticing a trend in all the materials I have been reading – composite images are ok.

When I say composite, I mean images that are created using pieces of other images. For example, there is an article(PDF) in this months AfterCapture about a well respected (and well paid) photographer who is creating wonderful compositions (the theme in the article is Halloween related).

A book I have been reading recently, Shooting & Selling Your Photographs, also has a couple of examples where the author has sold composite images for respectable sums of money.

I am sure this has purists screaming, and artists gleaming. It’s the perfect hybrid for this medium though, in my eyes. You can still deliver an image that people want. As I mentioned in a previous post, this is really what it is all about – deliver what the customer wants. And that is why the purists scream. But I am not making images just for myself, to remember something exactly as it was. And if I do, then I don’t really modify it that much.

I see a lot of potential here. I think real estate photographers have already been doing this for some time, and clearly advertising does it. So if it will help me to make more marketable images, who am I to argue. I have a Photoshop class coming up soon. I hope it will give me the skills needed to make these images look natural. Can’t wait to try it.

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I have had sales on iStockphoto

On 09.30.08, In Commentary, By Chester

Handicap Accessible Restroom A few months ago I took some photos of a very corporate restroom, thinking (for some crazy reason) that they might make good stock photos. I put them up on iStockphoto and pretty much forgot about them. In fact , over the last several weeks, I pretty much forgot about stock photography altogether. I have been travelling for work, trying to figure out how I want to do the real estate photography thing, taking senior pictures of my daughter, taking pictures of the Lakewood High School cheerleaders, and still trying to have a family life. Yep, pretty busy, just like you.

Then I came across a blog post about fotoLibra. I checked it out. I liked what I saw. I made some uploads and then wrote about it briefly yesterday. And in that writing, I made a mistake.

I said I hadn’t made any money off of my stock photo endeavors so far. After I wrote that, I checked in at iStockphoto (haven’t done that for a very long time). Sure enough, I have had some sales. 3 to be exact, garnering me total commissions of $3.92. For the bathroom photos. That’s right – the bathroom photos. Not the pretty picture of golf carts all lined up in the morning, not the pretty cactus or the corporate biz jet. The bathrooms.

It’s kind of funny really. Some friends of mine thought I was crazy taking a photo of a bathroom, much less a few of them. But you never really know what people want (which is why I like fotoLibra), but apparently I must have at least a little bit of an eye for it. To the tune of almost $4 right now. Woohoo. I might go buy a Chai at Starbucks. That’s only enough to pay for a small though.

Hopefully this is the start of something wonderful. Hopefully fotoLibra is more successful. I really want them to succeed. But as long as my photos are selling somewhere, I guess I am happy.

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Culling the herd

On 09.29.08, In Commentary, By Chester

Cactus I came across a different sort of stock photography site the other day. fotoLibra takes a different approach to stock photos – they don’t presume to know what people are going to want to buy. Instead, they accept most everything, as long as the photos match their technical standards (which are easily interpreted by the upload routines). No human intervention really. Once you upload your pictures, they are available immediately for people to see, assuming they search for keywords that you have tagged your photos with.

Since their model is a little different, you do need to pay to have your photos hosted on their service. But here is the cool thing – you only pay if you are hosting more than 12 photos. That’s right, the first 12 are free, so you can try out the service and see if it is going to work for you.

That brings us to the subject of this post. I have approximately 6,000 images in my Lightroom Library. Probably half of them could have potential as stock photos. So how do I choose which 12 to narrow it down to? I started with the fotoLibra Submission Guidelines. This helped me to sort out which ones were clearly not good candidates. I narrowed my choices down to about 27 that I thought had REAL potential, based on the guidelines and what I would be looking for if I were buying stock photos (a few friends of mine have said I have a good eye for this). From there I narrowed it down to 9 that have a vertical orientation (marketers like verticals more, since pages in magazines and flyers are vertical) and 3 that are compelling enough they could work as horizontal. I went for a few different subjects – skiing, beaches, sports, scientific, religious – just to see what is going to work (this is a test after all). You can see the resulting choices in my first fotoLibra collection. Some of these images have been placed on other stock sites, but none have sold. We’ll see what happens here.

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Don’t pigeon-hole me

On 08.15.08, In Commentary, By Chester

Cactus I have been reading more than a few books on the subject of photography lately. Also been hanging around some interesting conversations that have made me think (never a bad thing). Some of what I am seeing and hearing is this: specialize so that you will be known in that area. Presumably this would be true also because it would allow you to hone your skills in that area.

But I like to be different. And the last thing I like is to be pigeon-holed.

My photographic interests have evolved over the years. My current “collection” of interests is as eclectic as my taste in music. For me it is more a matter of inspiration than anything else. If I feel inspired, I’ll take a picture of whatever it is that made me feel that way. Could be a padlock, a surfer walking on a beach, a solitary cactus, or my family. There is no rhyme or reason to it. It just happens, and I hope I was smart enough to bring my camera.

Sure, it could be that I don’t make the absolute best image for that “category”, but if it is pleasing to me, isn’t that enough? Some people I know are too kind and tell me that I have “the eye” for certain types of photography, and ask why I don’t do it full time. The answers are fairly simple.

  1. I have a day job that I really enjoy
  2. I make a good living at said day job
  3. I have turned a hobby into a profession before, and I started to burn out

Family photo So instead I choose to keep this low-key, taking pictures at events I am part of, doing our family portrait or pics of the kids, and basically keep this fun. Does this mean that I can’t try to sell my photos? Of course not.

I can make this fun, and maybe make some side money from it too. More importantly, I have the freedom to expand my horizons. I love landscapes and flower macros and think I do well with them. I don’t do well with people (I am a computer geek after all), so that is what I want to work on next. But I can also take a time out and have fun making a stock photo when conditions warrant. I can be whoever I want, because I don’t have responsibilities around it, nor the trappings that come with that responsibility. If some images sell along the way, that’s great. But if I enjoy the pictures I take, then that is all I need. Just don’t tell me who I should be. My portfolio will tell you who I am.

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To microstock or not to microstock, is that the question?

On 08.14.08, In Commentary, By Chester

P8082018-flickr888 Yesterday I talked about part of a conversation I observed recently. This is how the second part of it went.

The altruistic one starting to talk about stock photography and what it takes to get accepted, etc. as she is having problems getting accepted. The veteran then started on about how microstock is killing the industry, and that, by taking part in it, submitters to microstock sites are thereby killing the industry.

Being someone who has photos available on microstock sites, I cannot say that I agree with him.

I saw part of an interview with Moby the other day. He said several things I agreed with (bear with me, I am getting to the point). One was a response to a question about commercializing music (putting it out there in the equivalent of stock photography for anyone to use as they see fit). The response was one that I have thought in regards to my own attempts at microstock – it is far easier for new artists (and photographers are artists) to get noticed on sites like this than for the traditional methods.

I don’t know any art directors, I barely even know anyone at an ad agency. I also know that a lot of businesses out there don’t use an ad agency, and microstock sites are an effective means for them to get images for advertising, websites, brochures, etc. Heck, we use art from microstock sites where I work for my day job. My microstock budget for the whole year would be destroyed if I paid for one or two pictures the traditional way. That just isn’t going to work.

I am happy to go the microstock route for images that fit into the “stock” category. That said, I have other images that I consider to not be stock. These would be more in the vein of “fine art” types of images. These are the ones I will put into my “Prints for Sale” category and hope that someone buys one. Or perhaps I’ll print a collection of them and see about having them put on display in a local coffee shop. They are my images, and I can market them as I see fit. I have never been one to follow the norm anyway.

One last thought from that Moby interview. Someone asked how he feels about non-Vegans. His answer might sound PC, but I think it was genuine. He essentially said that being Vegan works for him, but he recognizes it doesn’t work for everyone. I think this debate about microstock really is the same. Can’t we all get along?

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Restroom in blue

On 08.07.08, In Photos, By Chester



Restroom

Originally uploaded by Chester Bullock

I had to work Saturday. For some odd reason it occurred to me that it would be a good time to take some stock photos of a restroom. When I brought them into Lightroom, I started playing with the sliders a bit, and this was the result. Feels to me like it is from a Miami nightclub or something. Not that I have ever been to a Miami nightclub, but I did watch Miami Vice a lot when I was younger (and recently thanks to Netflix). Color can make even a “stock photo” so much more interesting…

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It’s Grilling Time

On 07.30.08, In Photos, By Chester



It’s Grilling Time

Originally uploaded by Chester Bullock

Stock photos can be anywhere, and are often literally right in your face. I had actually forgotten that I had taken this last year when we got our new grill. I stumbled across it when I was looking for a different picture from last year. I submitted it to the stock houses I am a contributor too, but I am not too optimistic. While I personally think it would do quite well, it was shot with my old Canon G5, and not many pics from that camera get accepted for some reason. But if you like it and have a use for it, let me know and we’ll work something out.

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My Journey Into Stock Photography

On 07.25.08, In Photos, By Chester

Let's PlayI have had my eye on doing stock photography for some time. I first attempted it over a year ago (almost 2 I think). Rejections were immediate, and I wasn’t sure that I really had the eye or the gear for it. Over the course of the last 2 years, I guess I have become more adept technically at taking pictures.

My “eye” for stock photography must have improved as well (at least my friends tell me it has). 2 weeks ago I was accepted as a contributor to istockphoto and Photo Shelter. I even have photos available for sale on each of those sites.

Why did I decide to go this route? Simply put, my subjects have always been static objects – landscapes, product photos, things that lend themselves to stock photography. I’d love to see some of my photos be sold as fine art prints someday, but it seems that I am going to have to get really serious about marketing in order to do that. Since I have a day job that keeps my hands more than full, I have to stick to shooting photos as being a hobby for now. I might do the occasional portrait here and there (most notably for my family), but otherwise I just take pictures when I can, in the environs that my job or other hobbies take me.

The photo above is from one such trip. I had the opportunity to go to Rochester, New York for a conference. The conference hotel had a 9 hole golf course. On the last day, conferences ended in the morning, and I had an hour or so to kill before the airport shuttle came. I grabbed my camera and started wandering around the property. Since it was the middle of the week, the golf course wasn’t being used very much. They had these golf carts lined up waiting for people to play, and the backdrop was great with such a blue sky, broken up by a few clouds scattered here and there. I think I took about 200 photos on this trip, and this is easily the best one, captured on the last day, in the last hour. You just never know when the moment will strike, you just have to be ready. I take my camera everywhere and some people think I am nuts. But who knows – this “stock photo” could make it’s way to a national magazine ad or story. How cool would that be?

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