January Totals

January, the first month of my new resolutions. For the most part I stuck to my regime. I've process 72 photos and uploaded to all the sites I'm submitting to. A mixture were accepted/rejected so I think across the sites all 72 appear somewhere. I'm quite happy about this effort and will get down to business again in Feb.

Earnings down this month to $22.84, although the last two months were skewed by extended license sales. I think this is a good progress. I'm hoping to build on this in Feb with my new images online.

 

New Years Resolutions!

Following slack uploading and picture taking in the last couple of months of last year, I have made some New Years targets. Armed with a diary and plan of 20 shots per week uploaded, I am going to try to get a 1000 images by the end of the year.

I've learnt the need to be more systematic and to plan the shoots before had. I'm going to list 52 subjects to shoot twice a week, uploading, hopefully, 10 from each session. I'll plan these a few weeks in advance to give time to get props and learn the techniques needed, and try to keep the pace throughout the year.

So far this year, having a couple of weeks off of the day job, I have been able to complete three shoots uploading around 30 images, all of a decent standard.

I also have the goal of joining Shutterstock, so far I have been refused 3 times. With the new shooting schedule I'm hoping to have enough new and quality pictures to be accepted by them.

Lets see what happens.......

December Summary

December saw only modest uploads. A mixture of work and the holiday season meant I didn't get around to taking many pictures. I did however have a surprisingly good month (for me). Down on last month but another Alamy download of $21 gave me a Dec total of $36.97.

November Totals

I'm fealling very pleased with myself this month. I've gone from $6 odd last month to over $50 this month. This was due to an extended license sale on istock and a repeat purchase of a file sold last Dec on Alamy. I'm happy but know there will be a drop next month. I've uploaded a few more files with an extra 100 across all sites. I really need to pick this up for next month. Almost time to make some new year resolutions.

October Summary

This month my total earnings were $6.55 with 1069 pictures online across 11 sites. Up on last month. Still very modest but in the right direction I suppose.

I set myself a loose goal to upload 10 images a week. I kept to this for 2 weeks, but I'm struggling to keep this rate up. A busy couple of weeks at work and a lack of inspiration have been my biggest problems. I purchased a new flash this month to help with some studio shots but a delay in delivery and me not being able to work out how to get both my flashes working together has slowed me down. 

Looking to November, I'm going to try to upload a total of 20 good images this month, but more importantly work out a shoot list and do the research needed to take the pictures. I'm finding I'm really limited by my technical capabilities at the moment. I need to try to divide my time between coming up with concepts, researching shooting techniques, shooting, key wording and uploading. 

These are my graphs:

September Summary

My first month of microstock. It's been a busy month of applying to agencies, uploading, keywording and settling on a workflow. Below are a couple of graphs with my image totals, downloads and earnings for September. Not very impressive but a start I guess.

In Summary: 3 downloads totaling $1.52.

I've been spending a couple of hours a night processing the images I already had and getting them organised. I've now got to work on a routine of coming up with shoot ideas, getting the pictures, processing and uploading. I'm setting a goal of 10 images a week uploaded & accepted.

Kings Troop, Polzeath.

The Kings Troop horses were down on Polzeath beach, Cornwall today. I went down to see if I could get some pictures for editorial use. They can't be regular royalty free as they have people with no model releases. I'm familiar with how this works with Alamy, just set them as rights managed, but it will be a learning curve with the microstock sites. They all have editorial libraries now. It will be interesting to see if my pictures are good enough to be accepted and sold.

The conditions were quite tough, the horses are dark and the background (the sea) bright. I couldn't use any flash as I didn't want to be the idiot that spooks the horses. I learnt a lot, think I  could do better if I had another try. It's quite interesting to see what you can come up with, everything happens very quickly and there are a lot of people getting in the way. Below are a few of the better pictures, I got very wet to get these viewpoints.