Category: Video

Featured Videomakers on Edelkrone Blog

Fame at last…. I’m very honored to be recognized as a featured Videomaker on the Edelkrone blog this week. I’m not sure I would put myself in the same class as some of the other artists profiled in their series – many of whom seem to have serious movie making skills in their background, but it is nice to have a stock photographer highlighted among such luminaries! If you happen to decide to buy any of their equipment (which is...

Master Class in Stock Photography

Master Class in Stock Photography

I gave an hour’s presentation to the Winchester Camera Club last summer and recorded the audio of the presentation. The video I created overlays the audio soundtrack on the presentation slides to give you a solid overview of the stock photography business, my approach to finding subjects, some of my best sellers and my thoughts on how best to make money in this increasingly difficult business. This has been available on subscription for a while, but I decided to make...

Microstock Plus – Easier uploading

As you know, I am a solid believer in Stock Submitter to prepare, upload and submit my images and videos to all the 20 or so sites I support. The ease with which it is able to submit images without me ever visiting the agency saves me a lot of time and effort. I’ve written a series of blogs about it starting with this one. Recently the developer came up with an interesting enhancement to the local app – Microstock...

Edelkrone Dolly One

Another interesting sale – Edelkrone

Not everything I buy turns out to be useful (or, even better, pays for itself in earnings). I remember thinking how great a carbon fiber monopod would be and I think it has been used once since I bought it at a photography show! But one of my better buys has been the Edelkrone Surface One. It was not cheap – over $800 with the flex head, but I have earned at least $1400 in video sales since I bought...

Earnings from selling photos and videos online

The September results are in and the big question is whether I managed to maintain my record of beating the earnings in the same month in the previous year? The answer is yes – for the 16th consecutive month I have increased earnings over that same month. I’m not sure how long I can keep this up, but it is a worthwhile goal! To be honest, there is not much that you can do to impact sales in any particular...

This photographer decided to sell his photos – the results will amaze you!

OK – sorry for the clickbait title. I always avoid clicking on posts like this, but I guess some people must click on them otherwise we wouldn’t see them everywhere! However, the results this month will amaze you – at least I was pretty pleased with them! Historically, April has marked the start of the down months for my stock earnings – a slump that lasts until August. But this month has knocked that tradition out of the ballpark with...

Did my junk shop typewriter earn its keep?

Back in February, I wrote about the ideas you can sometimes get from objects in a junk shop – specifically a typewriter which cost me $15. I was asked to report on success – did it pay it’s way? After 2 months of sales, I can report that it did! Total earnings from the typewriter shots now that my iStock results are available are $47 – so a solid $32 profit! I must admit that the sale that pushed it...

Stock Video – Part 3. How I do it…

The earlier posts on this subject have covered the basics of what stock video is, and then more detail on the sort of clips I have been producing. Now I’ll focus on some details about how I go about getting the clips taken, edited and uploaded to the five agencies I support: Shutterstock, Adobe Stock, Pond5, Storyblocks and iStock. The first step obviously starts in the camera. I’ve been choosing to shoot in the PAL standard of 23.98. There are...

Stock Video Part 2 – What I take

Earlier in the week I wrote the first of several posts on stock video. Today I’ll move forward to look at the sort of stock videos I’ve been taking and how successful they have been. By the way, if you haven’t read it yet, it is worth looking at the comment added by Vlad Savin to that first post. He provides a very good background to the video industry use of B-Roll to fill in gaps in their productions. It...

Adventures in Stock Video

I’ve been promising to write about stock video for a while and so this is the first of what I plan will be a series of posts going through my approach to stock video. I don’t pretend to be an expert – in fact I still struggle a bit with the concepts of what a good stock video is – but I’ll give you my thoughts. This first post will be an explanation of what I think you should be...