I admit it - I've been seeing another photo sharing site.
Mainly to amuse myself on a wander round the local lake with the Samster which takes about 50 mins, and also because all I could be bothered to carry was the 50mm. I'f I'd thought about it, I'd have probably limited myself to 50 exposures as well.
No cropping, no photoshopping.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=327544&id=850030623&l=796189db48
We going to get an official challenge soon Mr L?
Tuesday, 6 October 2009
Monday, 21 September 2009
Alamy musings
Give or take a few days, this time last year was the momentous day when I took my first steps towards stock photography wealth and had my first batch accepted by Alamy. ;)
Year on, have had a look at how things have gone and may, or may not be useful to share:
Yet to have a major problem with passing Quality Control. Learned very early on to be extremely harsh with my own QC and if I had even the slightest doubt about sharpness etc, I didn't even bother to try putting it through QC - because of Alamy policy of rejecting all photos currently awaiting QC if just one fails, it's not worth it.
Be careful if batch processing and upsizing. My only QC problem came from a handful of pics within a larger group which I'd forgotten had been slightly cropped before I batch uprezzed...which meant they didn't quite reach the min uncompressed size required. Thankfully, and another important lesson, this is a rare case where Alamy will only reject individual photos rather than the whole batch, if this is the only QC problem.
Have now got 233 photos on Alamy. Have currently sold just under $250 worth (annoyingly tiny amount under $250 (about £150) in fact, which is the threshold for Alamy sending out a cheque!). That means average earnings per photo uploaded is 66p. If images continue to sell at this ratio, I'd need about 2,000 images up there to pay for a D300 each year.
Keyword indications seem to show most popular images (for viewing and zooming at least, if not buying) are location based photos (Orkney, Newcastle etc), rather than objects or specific identifiable places. My three sales have all been "landscape" locations.
"Zooms" on Alamy have really dropped off recently (mainly because the image you see when you hover over a pic with the mouse is now more detailed than the zoom), which makes it difficult to assess how attention grabbing images are. On the plus side, the only reason for zooming an image now is to see the price/licence restrictions or add it to a lightbox - so it's been suggested a zoom on an image is a much better indication someone, somewhere, is thinking about buying it.
This isn't going to make me rich - but the time invested is relatively small, especially if I'm just reusing photos I would have taken anyway, and once they're uploaded, they can potentially make money with no further work.
Cheers - Tom
Year on, have had a look at how things have gone and may, or may not be useful to share:
Yet to have a major problem with passing Quality Control. Learned very early on to be extremely harsh with my own QC and if I had even the slightest doubt about sharpness etc, I didn't even bother to try putting it through QC - because of Alamy policy of rejecting all photos currently awaiting QC if just one fails, it's not worth it.
Be careful if batch processing and upsizing. My only QC problem came from a handful of pics within a larger group which I'd forgotten had been slightly cropped before I batch uprezzed...which meant they didn't quite reach the min uncompressed size required. Thankfully, and another important lesson, this is a rare case where Alamy will only reject individual photos rather than the whole batch, if this is the only QC problem.
Have now got 233 photos on Alamy. Have currently sold just under $250 worth (annoyingly tiny amount under $250 (about £150) in fact, which is the threshold for Alamy sending out a cheque!). That means average earnings per photo uploaded is 66p. If images continue to sell at this ratio, I'd need about 2,000 images up there to pay for a D300 each year.
Keyword indications seem to show most popular images (for viewing and zooming at least, if not buying) are location based photos (Orkney, Newcastle etc), rather than objects or specific identifiable places. My three sales have all been "landscape" locations.
"Zooms" on Alamy have really dropped off recently (mainly because the image you see when you hover over a pic with the mouse is now more detailed than the zoom), which makes it difficult to assess how attention grabbing images are. On the plus side, the only reason for zooming an image now is to see the price/licence restrictions or add it to a lightbox - so it's been suggested a zoom on an image is a much better indication someone, somewhere, is thinking about buying it.
This isn't going to make me rich - but the time invested is relatively small, especially if I'm just reusing photos I would have taken anyway, and once they're uploaded, they can potentially make money with no further work.
Cheers - Tom
Thursday, 20 August 2009
Nice to see...
...the megapixel arms race might finally be over
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0908/09081908canong11.asp
Winding back from 14.5MP to 10Mp certainly seems to be a tacit admission that the last few rounds of development have been steps in the wrong direction - or perhaps consumers have started to show they're actually caring about pic quality and low-light performance.
G11 looks rather nice, now they've put the swivel screen back. If I had a spare £500....
Cheers - Tom
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0908/09081908canong11.asp
Winding back from 14.5MP to 10Mp certainly seems to be a tacit admission that the last few rounds of development have been steps in the wrong direction - or perhaps consumers have started to show they're actually caring about pic quality and low-light performance.
G11 looks rather nice, now they've put the swivel screen back. If I had a spare £500....
Cheers - Tom
Wednesday, 19 August 2009
Pointless photographic experiments #2
First, there was Tom's sweet wrapper. Now, if you've ever wondered what happens if you use a cheap pair of sunglasses as a "grad" filter (I noticed the sunglasses in question were darker at the top than the bottom so stuck it in front of the camera) this is what you get.
It's Barmouth viewed from Fairbourne beach, by the way.
Friday, 14 August 2009
Tripod matters
For Toby: not sure if I described how I carry tripod...pic tells a thousand words and all that.
Monday, 10 August 2009
Mini Challenge - late entry!
Like Toby, not a huge number which fitted the brief to choose from. Particularly liked this one:
50mm saves the day!
Firstly, I have a huge queue of photos needing sorting and processing, which include some shots from the party...which I will upload eventually!
16-85@16mm, 3s, f/22, ISO100
16-85@38mm, 1/50s, f/4,8, ISO800
50mm, 1/50s, f/2.5, ISO800
Thought I'd post about photography at the Great British Beer Festival last week - which always proves to be the most challenging location photographically for me every year.
As you'll see from the first pic (for information really, it's technically messy!), it's a nightmare of not-very-bright mixed lighting (white balance is always fun), bad backgrounds, hot spots, high ceilings and nothing to bounce flash off.
Initially, I tried using the flash, but with no bounce opportunities, found I was getting harsh foregrounds and too much drop off in the backgrounds (second pic). Forced to use ISO 800 and a wide aperture anyway to try and balance everything a bit more - with the associated noise - I figured I might as well try some flash-free shooting with the 50mm...and got some much better shots - like the third pic.
Interestingly enough, having snooped on the file info for the shots taken by the pro on the first day, he took a very similar approach - no flash and ISO 1250...his shots with a Canon 1D3 and rather more expensive zoom lens were outstanding considering the difficulties.
16-85@16mm, 3s, f/22, ISO100
16-85@38mm, 1/50s, f/4,8, ISO800
50mm, 1/50s, f/2.5, ISO800
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
