A DIY stock photo for Christmas

I've still yet to have a stock photo sell that features me as a model, not that there are many! This is my latest effort and it gives me a little more hope than most. We'll give it 10 years....

As an alternative to me, for some festive spirit try some photos of the London Christmas lights.

Anyway, it gets onto my Christmas cards and gives me the chance to wish you a great Christmas holiday period!

Shooting stock photos in London for Alamy

So, here's a little more analysis of the income potential of stock photos placed at Alamy. This time it's my local bread and butter - getting on the train to Waterloo, wandering around and shooting stock.

As with the previous two entries - travel stock and model released stock photography - I look at the time invested on the day of the shoot and the net income arising since. That allows me to calculate the "Income per hour of shoot per annum" (which is perhaps better expressed as "Income per annum per hour of shoot").

I've chosen two very typical days out in London - you can see how the total of 8 hours invested can expect to earn me £57.50 next year, based on past performance.

Shoot 1
Costs - £7 in travel fairs
Date - March 2004 - 3 hours shooting
Sales - 6 (4 of one photo)
Income - Alamy gross $600 - Me (before commissions payable) £210
Income per hour of shoot per annum - £17.50

Shoot 2
Costs - £7 in travel fairs
Date - March 2007 - 5 hours shooting
Sales - 4
Income - Alamy gross $746 - Me (before commissions payable) £261
Income per hour of shoot per annum - £40

Now you may observe that the rate of pay is rather above the minimum wage and is repeated each year. But of course it does not take account of the time spent processing the images, keywording and getting them online which I'd say is double the time of the actual shooting itself. It also does not take account of equipment costs, time spent preparing or time on the train....

So income per annum per hour worked is actually about £15. It's not as good as the model released photos (by some margin) but a damn site better than travel.

Why is travel so bad, for me anyway? With over 393,000 images of London on Alamy, of which I have contributed 900, why should I imagine that going out and shooting even more of London bring in any at all?

I think it's local knowledge - 300,000 0f those images are probably contributed by photographers outside London or the UK. Somehow I imagine that collectively they must be as bad at getting saleable stock photos of London as I am at getting saleable photos from elsewhere. Local knowledge plus some knowledge about what sells. But I've no idea how to describe either. All I know is that the knowledge is lacking when I travel. Or I could blame the family!