My top 6 agencies this month ranked by decreasing monthly earning:
1.IS 2.SS 3.FT 4.CSP 5.DT 6.SXP
A small decrease in earnings was observed compared to May (which was my BME) mainly due to the fact that I did not have any EL. For the second consecutive month IS is ahead of SS and I expect this difference to increase in the coming months. Shutterstock is at an all time low with a RPI of only 0.1 despite six on demand sales this month. Fotolia did better than normal, with just enough earnings to rank number three. With a new BME, Canstockphoto is not far behind followed by Dreamstime.
Stockxpert is on the decline and I do expect this to continue when the subscription scheme Jupiter/Photos cancellation will be kick in. 123RF,SCP and BSP have still low sales and no sales to report on new agencies YAY and Cutcaster:( I got few sales at Panthermedia though which pushed my earnings very close to $400 this month.
I changed quite a bit my workflow this month using Isyndica platform which I found very useful especially when using a limited broadband access. Although SS and IS are not reported yet, a screenshot below shows respective earnings for the months of June 2008 and June 2009. I found also Deepmeta very useful to submit to IS and I hope to get to 500 pictures online in the near future. The $ 500 milestone is within reach but I don't see it happening before September.
Like last year, May sets up a new high for microstock earnings.The most strinking development is that after 24 months, SS lost its number spot to Istock. Two BME to report at IS and SCP this month and a record of $ 0.77 per dl. I joined Isyndica this month to make my uploading task easier and spread pictures to more agencies . It will be interesting to see if it will help reach my long expected $ 500 target. I will blog on this subject later on.
Microstock one by one
IS. Put all other agencies in the dust this month and sets the record for the most money made by one agency. Even without the 2 EL, IS would have end up ahead of SS. RPI=0.51
SS. 9 OD's sales and just above $ 100 this month . Earnings down 20% compared to last year with 500 more pictures online ! Growing earnings at SS appear quite limited for the future.... SS represented this month only 25 % of my total earnings compared to 37% last year.
FT. Back to number 3 spot but still on the same flat line despite continuous uploading....
SXP. Down from last month but overall satisfying earnings. It looks like that since Getty got on board some files were desactivated because of IP problems. I noticed that some reviews were not very consistent this month.
DT. Big drop this month , looks like level 2 and level 3 images are not selling anymore.....
BSP and 123RF: quite far from DT in term of earnings with RPI of 0.01......
Less than 1 % of earnings:CSP, CT (got my 1st payout :)
This month sets a new high for my microstock earnings just above the $ 400 mark (previous was in May 2008). Several sales contributed to that: 3 extended sales at SS,FT and DT (my first one), a first fotosearch credit sale at CSP. All this translated to 3 best months ever at DT,SXP and CSP and a new record of $ 0.76/dl in average. If 2009 follows the trend of last year sales, I expect May 2009 to be as good or better but we shall see...
Microstock agency ranking by $
Shutterstock: 1 EL and 4 OD's sales this month, 1 zero sale day. It looks very difficult to increase earnings at SS despite a rather large number of new pictures added this month.
Istock: Very similar to last month, but it always slow to growth my portfolio: upload limit combined with slow review and high rejection rate. Should take over SS one of this day if I manage to get more best sellers (my best seller made alone exactly $ 214.97 in one year with 164 dls).
Stockxpert: For the first time in a while, credits sales were largely superior to subscription sales and a single image leads to a BME due to a favorable ranking in the search engine towards the middle of the month. It will interesting to follow up on this one !
Dreamstime: My first EL there and quite a lot of regular downloads made a BME. Working towards a 1000+ pictures portfolio there.
Fotolia: Despite constant uploading my earnings in FT did not really change in over a year: low search engine ranking ??? If it was not for a EL, FT would have been at the bottom...
Canstockphoto: A nice fotosearch sale the last day of the month :) Hope to have 1000 + pictures on line soon.
123rf: An average month at 123rf, it is the first agency where I have 1000+ pictures on line.
Low earners this month with 1% or less of total sales are BSP, SCP and CT (I am 50 cents shy from my first payout there....). No sales to report at YAY and Cutcaster.
I've been experimenting lately with infrared photography as I did previously with HDRand see if eventually such pictures are accepted and sold on the main microstock agencies.
How does it works ?
Light is an electomagnetic radiation with visible light made of wavelenghts in the 400-700 nm and infrared light in 700-1200 nm range (near infrared). Longer wavelenghts will fall in the range of mid-infrared and far infrared (used in thermal imagery) just before the microwaves.
The IR filter placed on top of the lens blocks most of the visible light and let near infrared hit the CCD. Unfortunalely, IR sensitivity is decreased quite a lot by the hot mirror placed on top of the CCD sensor which job is to protect it :(
Why infrared photography ?
Mainly because it gives a dramatic, surreal effect to the pictures. Foliage and grass have the property to reflect infrared radiations and appear much brighter in IR giving an ethereal white glow (in some pictures grass can be mistaken with snow). Different foliages have different IR reflectance as well as foliage affected by disease or insect infestation. Blue sky and water will appeardark. Shadows can be interesting in IR with more subtle nuances. Depending on the light, textures can be revealed in more details as well. Skin also can give interesting tones.
Challenges in IR photography
Focusing and depth of field
In IR, focusing is different than in visible so producing sharp images can be tricky. If you are lucky your lens have a IR focus mark on it. If not the technique is to take several shots at different focus distance preferably with a small aperture. An universal technique is to use the hyperfocale distance but once again you will have to experiment before to found the settings for your camera.
Exposure
Because the IRfilter is very dark, indications given by the camera cannot be trusted and most of time several seconds exposure are needed. I used typically 2 to 15 seconds exposure time so a tripod is necessary. On the positive side, long exposure can give interesting results on water and clouds for example.
Equipment
You will get variable results with IR photography as it depend to what extent your CCD sensor is IR sensitive: most manufacturers add a IRblocking filter (also called hot mirror)in front of the CCD ! It looks like that few year back the protection was not so high…..
Also it depends on the lens : some lenses are known to cause flares or hotspots in the pictures making them not usuable at all….
My gear
I am pleased with the Canon Powershot G9 so far using a Hoya R72 filter onthe 58 mm Lensmate lens adapter. To obtain longer exposures, I select the ND function on (3stops) and/or put a ND4 filter (2 stops) on top of the R72.
As its name suggests, the Hoya filter blocks wavelenghts below 720 nm. The cut-off actually follows a curve a 50% is blocked at 720 nm so the filter let pass through a tiny amountof visible wavelenghts.
Although quite expensive, a lot of digital cameras can be modified to remove the IR filter in front of the CCD and make it possible to take handheld IR pictures.
10 steps workfow
Here is my workflow using Photoshop CS3 and Lightroom started with the raw file. It tend not go for the usual B&W processing to keep some blue sky.
Open Raw with LR2
Set color temperature 2000, tint -50
Remove noise Luminance 60
Chromatic aberration : all edges
Export as jpeg or tiff
In CS3 swap red and blue channels: red 0 blue 100, blue 0, red 100
Image--> adjustements levels blue and green
Image ---> curves define gray point
Import in LR2 adjust hue/saturation on the different channels to get the desired results.
Export as jpeg
Microstock and IR photography
Although not popular, IR pictures can be found in most agencies. As the time of writing, a search with ''infrared landscape'' and ''infrared buiding'' as keywords returned 526 and 106 pictures on Shutterstock respectively. I found very similar results doing a search on Dreamstime with 540 and 124 images. A lot less IR pictures are found on Istockphoto: 140 hits returned for ''infrared landscape'' and only 45 for ''infrared building’’.
So far my experience with IR photography and microstock is still limited and the most challenging is to have pictures accepted as they tend to be noisier and less sharp. Despite a high rejection rate, I managed however to have some accepted at Shutterstock and Dreamstime and sold a few, Istock looks very though which is confirmed by the small number of IR pictures on their gallery.
IR can be combined with HDR or panoramic stitching to produced spectacular pictures but of course noise has to be kept low somehow.
A good solid month with a bit more than $ 300 earnings with microstock alone, not far from my BME in May 2008. Midstock added another $43 to the total. So no BME this month but all big agencies performed well especially IS. Earnings are well up compared to last month and March 2008 with a new record of $ 0.7/dl in average. If it was not for 1 EL and 9 OD's sales, Shutterstock would have lost its number spot to IS this month. I had also one day with no sales..... DT ranked 3 in earnings this month followed closely by FT and SXP. SXP looks like more and more like SS since most sales are from subscription and other credits. So far it looks like that my increase in earnings is coming from IS,DT and SXP. On the other hand, FT, BSP, 123RF earning curves are flat despite regular uploads..... I had my first download at Snapvillage for $ 15 , I've completely forgot about this one......
Compared to March 2008 in ():
Total earnings: $ 325.76 ($ 209.51) Pictures sold: 445 (402) Average $/dl: 0.73 (0.52) Global RPI : 0.82 (0.78)
For the time since I started microstock, my earnings were lower by few dollars compared to the same month last year. On a positive side, I had my first sale and Cutcaster and two new sales at YAY. A good surprise came this month from midstock agencies taking a bit more than 25 % of total earnings including Panthermedia with 32 euros sales in total. Total earnings with midstock brought this month earnings above the $ 300 mark. I found Panthermedia to be a consistent seller in term of sales and type of pictures sold so I encourage to submit there and see what pictures of your portfolio they accept like I did.
Compared to February 2008 in ():
Total earnings: $ 238.33 ($ 239.18) Pictures sold: 435 (379) Average $/dl: 0.55 (0.63) Global RPI : 0.46 (1.06)
Microstock one by one
Shutterstock . Less than 30% of microstock earnings this month way down compared to February last year. It is the first time since I joined Shutterstock that I did not reach a payout.... Only 2 OD sales this month
Istockphoto. Earnings slighty better than last month with a RPI of 0.16 the highest of all the microstock agencies
Fotolia.Number 3 only because I sold a bunch of old and ugly pictures for 0.5 credit each
Dreamstime. One of the most consistent agency this past months in term of earnings and very close to a BME. Above average rejection rate this month though.....
Stockxpert. Earnings are in the normal range this range although a lot of sales came from subscriptions.
A lot of action in low earners this month: 4 BME to report at Crestock, Yaymicro,Cutcaster and Scanstockphoto.
123RF and BSP joined the rank of the low earners this month but all of them made a non negligeable 15 % of earnings. . I had my first sale in 7 months in CSP as I uploaded my entire portfolio there after the Fotosearch acquisition.
A good month in term of earnings considering the slow start of the month and the fact that I did not have any EL and sales in midtock. Among the 10 agencies, I had only one BME at Dreamstime. RPI went up so does volume of sales from last month. However compared to the same period lastyear, RPI is only half its value and volume of sales about the same despite the fact that I have a larger number of pictures on line.
Compared to January 2008 in ():
Total earnings: $ 265.08 ($ 179.26) Pictures sold: 462 (446) Average $/dl: 0.58 (0.42) Global RPI : 0.48 (0.89)
Shutterstock. A good month above the $ 100 mark again due a large number of OD sales which represent 15 % of the earnings, up from 5-8 % normally RPI=0.17. I had however my first 0 sale day ever this month.
Istockphoto. Sales are getting better again. IS new price structure certainly boosted my earnings.RPI=0.16
Fotolia. Very close to the second position this month and earnings. RPI=0.05
Dreamstime. A BME by few dollars hope it continues this way. RPI = 0.04
Stockxpert. A lot of sub sales this month since I had a only 6 credit sales on 45 sales. RPI=0.03
Bigstockphoto . Dissapointing month with earnings lower than in december
123RF. Dissapointing month as well, a bit better than last month but still far from past performances....
Less than 1%: SCP (no sales this month),CSP,CT
On the midstock front no sales this like I mentioned earlier. I have 500 pictures on line now on YAY and decided to hold uploads now on. I give a bit more time to Cutcaster but still wait for my first sale there. I hope Zymmetrical and Panthermedia will pick up next month....
Stats
Lookstat screenshot January 2009
The trends of this month are clearly visible on this screenshot from Lookstat. FT should be added shortly to the list of agencies and it worth mentioning that Lookstat implemented a new feature this month to track earnings per picture. I will do a post about this later on but it is definitely a very good tool to analysis strengh and weakness of a portfolio.
