Driftless Ramblings

  I just came across an excellent tutorial on taking portraits on a white seamless background.  It’s by Zack Arias and is a five step tutorial with pictures and great explanations of everything.

  A lot of this is probably old hat to many pro photographers but for a novice the information is great.  He explains how to build the set as well as how to light and shoot it.

I’ve been wondering how some of these techniques are achieved, especially the reflection of the legs.  Now I know, thanks to Zack.

Allen

 [EDIT]

Don’t know what I was thinking, I didn’t even put a link directly to the article on my post.  Well here it is, White seamless tuturial.

It looks like this should be the month I switch over to reporting only monthly earnings.  I almost doubled my entire previous earnings with 48 downloads raking in $27.85, giving me a total from microstock of $61.37.  Guess I wont be getting any new camera equipment for a while.  I would like to cover some of cost of the Nikon 18-200 VR lens I bought recently.  The way the earnings are being made across several sites makes it look like I’m still several months from a payout.

The horse picture I refered to in my post Microstock RPI (return per image) actually accounts for a large portion of this months earnings.  It was 2 of the 3 downloads from Stockxpert for $6.50 and several downloads on ShutterStock.  The other big picture for the month was another animal shot, namely our wonderful alpaca cria that was born recently.  The head shot was the EL from Fotolia and the only download for the month from IStockPhoto.  And I didn’t think alpaca shots would sell very well!

Overall I’m really pleased with my results for the month.  I’m still working out a workflow that will hopefully allow me to get some more consistent uploads, especially to SS, but to also build my portfolios on the other sites.  Verizon finally made DSL available in my area so it’s a big help actually having broadband at home and not having the take the files to work an upload them.  Actually one of my goals now is to get my microstock earnings to cover the cost of it on a monthly basis.

It’s still July somewhere but I think I’m pretty safe to post this a couple hours before midnight at the international dateline.  Maybe some one from Hawaii will buy one in the next couple hours and I’ll have to edit the post.

Sites	Portfolio Size	Downloads	Balance	Comments
Fotolia	144	2	$8.25	I doubled my balance here with only two sales.  Got my first EL which accounts for $6.60 of the total.
IStockPhoto	55	1	$2.10
Crestock	21	0	$0.00	The only thing that changes as this site is my portfolio size.
ShutterStock	54	42	$10.50	Didn’t nearly as many new ones on here as I had hoped.
Stockxpert	99	3	$7.00	Still trying to figure this site out.  Have gotten several images online, but not working with it effeciently
Dreamstime	14	0	$0.00
123RF	110	0	$0.00
Totals	Avg.71	48	$27.85

Here’s a couple other blogs I follow that report their earnings:

Microstock Diaries
Nil to Mil
Pixels Away
Captured Little Moments  <–  Just found and added

Allen

  I went to check to make sure my list of digital print sites was up to date and check to see if I could find some new ones.  I made some additions and subtractions from the list and wasn’t seeing any significant changes until I found Artscow and their offer of 400 free prints, 200 of them are 4×6 and 200 of them are 5×7.  This and the addition of Giant Eagle doubles my original list.

• Artscow - 200 free 4×6 digital prints + 200 free 5×7 digital prints (better act quick though because it looks like they’ve already given away over half of the 20,000,000 free prints they plan to do)
• DotPhoto - 50 free digital prints
• Giant Eagle - 50 free digital prints
• WinkFlash - 50 free prints
• CVS - 20 free prints and if you have a ExtraCare card get an additional 30
• York Photo - 20 free digital prints
• Clark Color - 40 free prints
• Shutterfly - 50 free prints & collage poster! 
• Photoworks.com - 25 free prints
• AdoramaPix - 25 free prints
• Register at Kodak - 20 Free Prints
• Snapfish - 20 free prints
• Kellards - 20 free digital prints
• Photomax - 20 free prints
• PhotoThru - 20 free digital prints
• Fotomat - 15 free prints
• Photomama - 50 free prints

Don’t just let all those digital pictures sit on the computer or in the camera, get some actual prints to put in a photo album to show off to people.  This 950 free digital prints is just amazing.  I didn’t think I would get anywhere this number.  I’ll have to be sure to update the list when the artscow deal ends.

Allen

  We recently returned from a really great vacation to Glacier National Park in Montana (pictures to follow).  Of course two weeks before we plan to leave my Nikon 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6G ED-IF AF-S DX which came with my Nikon D80 decides to quit working.  I checked into getting it repaired but I would not have gotten it back before we left for vacation.  I had been looking at the Nikon 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 G ED-IF AF-S VR DX Zoom-Nikkor Lens to upgrade the kit lens and I finally broke down and bought it.

It is a great all purpose lens.  The wide angle of 18mm was nice for landscape photography and the zoom to 200mm was great for zooming right in on the wild life, like the mountain goats at the goat lick.  I’d love to have a longer telephoto lens for the next trip but it’s not really necessary with this lens.  It also works great for taking pictures of some of the kids sporting events. 

  I do plan to get the 18-135mm kit lens repaired and then I’ll have to decide which one I need to sell.  Hopefully at that point I’ll be able to justify keeping the 18-200mm lens.

Allen

  I’ve been following Comparing RPI and STR of stock photographers with some interest.  I think tracking an approximation of the RPI is interesting information, just not sure how useful it is.  I say approximation of the RPI because I don’t think many, if any, microstock photographers calculate it right (me included).  Unless there’s some software program out there to do it for you it’s just too time comsuming to do (as a programmer I should take this opportunity to write a program).

This isn’t too big of a stretch but lets assume I have a portfolio of the 2 images below.  As you can see the image of the horse is on three sites, IStockphoto, ShutterStock and Fotolia.  It’s the exact same image from my portfolio, just for sale via three different avenues.  The stop sign is available only on Shutterstock.

These two images account for $4.50 of my microstock earnings.  That is an RPI of $2.25 (note: I did pick my two best sellers).  Now if I add up all my portofolio sizes, Shutterstock: 2, IStockphoto: 1, and Fotolio: 1 it appears that my portfolio size is 4 giving an RPI of $1.125, significant lower than what I would say it actually is. 

I currently contribute to 7 different microstock sites and not every image is accepted at every site so keeping track of this the way I would like quickly becomes unwieldy.  Hence the reason it gets calculated the way it does.  Most RPI calculations also don’t take into account the rejected images.  The photographer thinks the image is good enough but it gets rejected from every site!  Is that image in the photographers portfolio?

I think portfolio age and upload/acceptance rate also play into the RPI.  If you let the images out there and quit contributing hopefully your RPI will increase as the images continue to sell.  Uploading images would have the opposite effect.  My Shutterstock portfolio is currently 39 images, if I achieve what I hope to achieve I’ll double that in the next month or so.  All those new images will start out with an RPI of $0.00, pulling down my overall average.

I do still think the RPI is an interesting number to calculate.  It along with the STR (sell through rate) is some measure of how your portofolio is doing.

Allen

I did okay getting some more images added to my portfolios in the beginning of June, but with preparations for and a vacation at the end of June I didn’t get much done then.  Hopefully in July I’ll be getting some of the stock worthy shots from vacation uploaded.

I have been reading that the summer months are usually a little slower in microstock.  Hopefully I’ll be able to make up for that with additional uploads and have more there for when things pick back up in the fall.

I really want to hit getting images onto ShutterStock.  With only 39 images, which is less than my average portfolio size, it accounts for almost half my overall earnings.  I still want to give some of the other sites a chance but I just can’t seem to get many images accepted Crestock and Dreamstime.

Sites	Portfolio Size	Downloads	Balance	Comments
Fotolia	138	14	$8.25
IStockPhoto	52	6	$7.06
Crestock	11	0	$0.00
ShutterStock	39	71	$17.85	My first week accepted here back in May was better than the entire month of June.  I didn’t get nearly as many pictures on as I would have liked in June though.
Stockxpert	67	0	$0.00	Still trying to figure this site out.  Have gotten several images online, but not working with it effeciently
Dreamstime	14	0	$0.00
123RF	90	1	$0.36
Totals	Avg.58.7	92	$33.52

Here’s a couple other blogs I follow that report their earnings:

Microstock Diaries
Nil to Mil
Pixels Away

Allen

I haven’t really done a lot in getting my numbers of pictures increased this month. My big news this month is that I finally got accepted on ShutterStock and StockXpert. ShutterStock has been doing very well for me as you’ll see in the table below, I’ll take ShutterStock over Lucky Oliver any day. I’ve been accepted on StockXpert but haven’t gotten any pictures in my portfolio yet, not sure if I didn’t submit them correctly or if they just are really slow at getting them reviewed. Would have been nice if the initial five I submitted for approval would have gone right to portfolio, but that doesn’t appear to be the way that site works.

In the last couple days I did finally get some more shots together that I will upload, just need to do the post processing and keywording.

I should point out that these numbers are my career TOTALS not just the totals for May. When I get some more consistent downloads and earnings I’ll switch to monthly numbers.

Here’s a couple other blogs I follow, hopefully someday my earnings will rival some of theirs:

Microstock Diaries: Microstock Results for May 2008
Nil to Mil: May 2008 Microstock Earnings
Pixels Away: Microstock Photography Earnings Report for May 2008

Allen

A couple days ago (5/24/08) the boys and I started a new experiment. A while back I got a couple large 55 gallon plastic barrels from a neighbor and I’ve been trying to finalize what I want to use them for. I have quite a list, rain barrel, recycle bins, chicken feed tub, and probably a couple others that I’ve already forgotten. The idea I came up with was to mix the fresh grass clippings and fresh alpaca manure in one of them, similar to a compost tumbler but much cheaper.

The first thing I did was have the boys drill a bunch of holes, don’t know the exact sizes, but somewhere in the range of 1/4 to 3/8, on the sides and bottom. There probably should be more holes but my help got tired or lost interest. We then gathered up the fresh grass and scooped the paca poop. We then layered it into the barrel. I had been hoping to get the barrel half full, but in reality it was full to overflowing. It would probably work better if it was only half full so could get mixed around when the barrel was rolled, but I left it full. The extra grass I sealed into the second barrel that had no holes drilled in it. I did also dump several gallons of water in with the grass clippings and manure. All the water must have gotten absorbed by the grass and manure though since none or very little of it has drained out.

Today (5/26/08), we checked the barrels and the one with the holes in was cooking pretty good. It was composting quite nicely. We actually busted up a couple dozen guinea eggs that I didn’t have room for in the incubator and added them to the mixture. It was actually probably reduced down by about 10% or so already. The mixture will work better if it does get mixed more thoroughly. The boys do enjoy rolling the barrels around. The sealed barrel with only grass has done virtually nothing in the way of composting.

Now that I have some garden planted it sure would be nice to find a way to process the alpaca manure into a more useful compost. I had been just dumping the alpaca manure into the garden and just got it tilled in (no I won’t be doing any root crops this year), but since I’ve started planting in the garden I need to do something else with the poop. What I would really like to get worked out would be to process the manure through a quick composting then process it through a worm bin. I think the output from this process would be a wonderful soil addition, a mixture of vermicompost and regular compost.

I think the next barrel will get used as a big worm bin. Attempting to get it setup as a layering bin, at foot or so of material for the worms and more added on top once that portion has been processed by the worms. I’m just not quite sure how many barrels I’ll need to get going to process the poop from seven alpacas.

Allen

  Immediately after I published my previous post on April’s earnings.  I went to check my email and found that I had a sale on Fotolia.  It could be a good month!  It was a XS but a sale none the less.

Allen

April was a really busy month but I still got to do some shooting and uploading. Even got a couple more added to most of the sites. I got a good jump in my average portfolio size, but I’d really like to do something like Lee Torrens’ Shoot Daily and Contribute Nightly or Matt Antonino’s April 450 - monthly microstock goal . Both of which are very ambitious but not really an attainable goal for me right now.

Had an interesting experience with my best sale from last month. It was just a simple shot of some gravel I took while watching one of my boys baseball practice. That is what I’m working at getting better at, having the camera with me and seeing the opportunity to take a shot that is a good microstock shot.  The shot is the picture to the right.  Makes me think if you can get it past the review process, it may well sell on Microstock, within reason.

My average portfolio size is currently 52 up from 43 images. It looks like that will take a hit along with my total balance when Lucky Oliver goes away in May. I did sign up for 123RF last month but need to submit my first batch of images there too, probably use the same batch I use for ShutterStock.

I should point out that these numbers are my career TOTALS not just the totals for April. When I get some more consistent downloads and earnings I switch to monthly numbers.

Here’s a couple other blogs I follow, hopefully someday my earnings will rival some of theirs:

Microstock Diaries: Microstock Results for April 2008
Nil to Mil: April Earnings and Portfolios
Pixels Away: Microstock Photography Earnings Report for April 2008

Allen