YAS = Yet Another Sunset/Sunrise

I just can't let go of these. The color creeps into my peripheral vision at the end of day through my southwest window as my computer work is coming to an end. I look, and then grab the camera on my way out the studio door. And, so with this one, I finally gave in and uploaded it to Alamy. And, there it will sit, no doubt with the other gazillion sunset/sunrise images. It is, and will remain, the only brazenly obvious sunset image in my stock image collection.

Also, I've started another, very specific blog. It is a chronicle of my thoughts, experiences, excitement, and angst as I create, prepare, and finalize my proposal for the Art of Action project for Lyman Orton and the Vermont Arts Council. I figured it deserved its own blog, rather than having bits scattered among the general visual stuff here.

Useless Image -- Except for my Eyes

After looking at countless stock images as I was moving into the business, I spent a long time thinking about all the images with saturated colors that I saw. I also looked for comments on the prevalence of such images, but found almost nothing. It is apparently the norm.

I may be shooting myself in the foot, but I can't bring myself to do that. I try to send my stock images out into the world with their real colors. Of course sometimes this means that in the group of thumbnails on a stock agency's search page, my images will not jump off the page. I have to live with that. But if someone buys one of my images, they will get reality.

Which brings me to this image: this was taken outside my front door a couple of days ago, just before sunrise. I was transfixed by that sky. It was, as it appears, unbelievable. It looks like the most saturated of stock images. But it is not. It is wholly untouched. In my book, it's not good for anything except to take my breath away.

PSC Shutting Down - Archive Regaining Focus

It's the end of a very short era in the stock photography annals.

The PhotoShelter Collection announced yesterday, that the doors are closing. It was an effort that failed. But, at least they tried. I, along with many others, think perhaps a year was just too short a time, and perhaps the plan should have had at least a 2-year window. These are tough times, and so everything takes longer.


BUT, they are saying that they will go back to their roots, which is the PhotoShelter Archive. I applaud this. I've been a paying member of the Archive since January or February and find it valuable and slick. I'll like it even better when they improve the stats and search engine. My photography website links to my Archive galleries.

Here's their comment on the Archive in their Collection closing announcement:

As an ongoing indication of our commitment to you and the Personal Archive, we are currently developing a new feature release to address some of your most frequently requested items. We'll also be hard at work developing new innovations to help advance both the art and business of photography. We will be in touch soon regarding these exciting announcements.

And here's the link to the main Archive page.

Small Announcement

Since this blog may loosely be construed as a chronicle of my progress in the digital visual world, I probably should announce that I've sold my first stock image. Any stock togs reading this will already know that it takes a lot of work to even get to this point, never mind progressing to where your income from stock is significant.

And it has taken much work, much study, much shooting, much thinking.

The sale occurred on the 4th of September and was an Alamy sale for a book, full page, print run of 25K, educational use. So, I'm not suddenly rich: image sold for $205. My take is $133 and some change. At the time of the sale, my portfolio on Alamy only consisted of about 106 images. Very, very small.

I only do Rights Managed (RM). And IMHO if you are starting out in the stock business you should aim to have a large portion of your portfolio RM as well. A good article to start with on this exceedingly important issue is from the ASMP Library Rights Managed Stock vs Royalty Free Stock.