photoconnecting

What exactly was wrong with beige?

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Hortop) — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 23:04:00 +0000

In case you are surfing around the site right now, you may be taken aback by the design inconsistencies. But although it's getting worse in the short term, it's going to get better and as the beige elements disappear (was it beige anyway? more an off- beige perhaps?) so nice neat and consistent in design white pages will emerge.

As I'm updating I'm noticing that the photos first placed on the site really look rather dull compared to the recent ones. I'll be updating most of those in due course - but in the meantime remember that what you get is not what you see, what you get is an image file freshly prepared for you using a far superior monitor and software compared to that I evidently struggled with 7 years ago!

Buying a stock photo here at photoconnect should finish up being an all round better experience.

Seeing in the new year; seeing Bath

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Hortop) — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 22:12:00 +0000

No fireworks anywhere to be seen, but had a couple of nice clear but freezing days out of five spent in Bath over the New Years holiday. They've been a while getting to photoconnect but my stock photos of Bath have finally hit the site.

Photographing Fulham

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Hortop) — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 14:37:00 +0000

Nothing to do with football (although one or two photos of Craven Cottage were inevitable) but a good walking tour on a cold day to get stock photos of Fulham.
Originally I had envisaged going up to London at the crack of dawn but the previous night's forecast suggested a cloudy day, especially at the start. so imagine my displeasure when I woke up to a sunny dawn. I quickly decided to go out anyway but instead of going up to the city, to go to Fulham which is less of a hike.
Of course as soon as I stepped out it clouded over but I stuck with it to be rewarded with sunny intervals and a long sunny late afternoon, great weather for photography even if it was tricky to find locations where the low sun was not cut out by the tightly packed streets.
I finished up at Earls Court where I met a friend for a pint or two....

Updating the site!

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Hortop) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 17:14:00 +0000

I've been quiet on the photoconnect front in the last year or so. However I've been prompted to reconsider this relative inactivity by the realisation that the continued first place positions on Google and other search engines for terms such as "Stock photography London" and "stock photos Paris" can be capitalised on in driving traffic to my assignment site, Light Touch.

It's the London pages that are key to all this so I've just uploaded about 300 new images captured over the last year. And looking at the London stock photos index page I've realise how this really could be better organised (done) and simply look better (on the way). There are some quaint link descriptions to pages of obscure content that really need to be updated to something snappier and some even quainter images that need to go in the favour of the newer, better content. All this I'll be working on this week.

In fact I really want to build on the London pages to make them clearer to all and easier to navigate, bringing better images to the fore. Clear reference to districts should allow for people looking for a photographer to stumble upon Photoconnect content. And separately, appropriate linking from portrait stock photo pages should pick up on people looking for a portrait photographer rather than portrait stock photos.

But also, more importantly, the upshot of all this should be that more stock photo images should sell!

All the best for Christmas and the New Year!

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Hortop) — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 17:21:00 +0000

I've been quiet of late. What new turmoil will the new year hold in the world of stock photography?

A DIY stock photo for Christmas

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Hortop) — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 17:40:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Hortop) — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 16:25:00 +0000

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!

Photography from my roots

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Hortop) — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 12:10:00 +0000

I've spent too long in suburbia without returning to my old haunts in the pubs around Kentish Town and Camden.

I got the opportunity on Wendesday to see Kismetik with a bunch of friends who were there to give Gerard and his band support 'from the front'.

Earning money (?) from travel photography on Alamy

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Hortop) — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 21:56:00 +0000

I looked recently at what sort of financial return I typically get from shooting model released stock photos on Alamy.

Now for overseas travel in Europe. How does that pay?

Holiday 1 - ten days in Spain, touring.
Costs - on holiday with the family
Date - June 2004
Sales - 13
Income - Alamy gross $3,179 Me £871
Income per day per annum - £22

Holiday 2 - seven days in France, touring.
Costs - on holiday with the family
Date - June 2006
Sales - 2
Income - Alamy gross $84 Me £23
Income per day per annum - £1

Holiday 3 - two days in Paris.
Costs - weekend away with the wife
Date - Sept 2006
Sales - 1
Income - Alamy gross $114 Me £38
Income per day per annum - £9

'Holiday' 4 - one day in Rome.
Costs - a day trip; no overnight stay; rained all day; travel etc £50
Date - Jan 2006
Sales - 4
Income - Alamy gross $515 Me £170 - £50 = £120
Income per day per annum - £60

What is "Income per day per annum"? It's how much I have earned each year subsequently from a day spent shooting. Ignoring the processing time. I also ignore the first six months after the shoot when no cash comes in. It's conspicuous that even the best of these rates is less than the "Income per hour per annum" from many stock shoots featured in the separate model released shooting exercise.

'Holiday 4' was not really a holiday at all. It was a day trip to test the effectiveness of using low cost airlines to 'blitz' a destination. Perhaps the rain helped. Although it dramatically reduced the actual number of photos captured. It's worth mentioning that many of the images were captured as transparencies - the last time that I have done that. In the end, only 15 images went onto Alamy.

My usual approach - holidays 1 -3 - is that I don't go out of my way to get images. I'm on holiday. With the family. The photography does not really impinge on the holiday. But when I return, there is probably days of processing. And looking at the statistics, I should be far more critical of the time spent doing that processing, because it's not working out to be a remotely sensible way of spending my time.

Fundamentally there's a competition problem on Alamy when it comes to travel. Thousands of photographers putting photos online to sell from the same locations visited, most of which are too boring these days for the travel mags to chat about. At least in the way that most of us take those images. I've got to get myself into a different mindset to avoid taking the same photos as everyone else. But I clearly don't. I'm on holiday - I don't want to think too hard about photography.

In a way I'm sitting with the many hobby stock photographers whose travel stock photos form a huge proportion of what's on Alamy where money does not matter too much.

But for me, time spent processing on my return home for me means that I'm not earning money elsewhere. And I know all the more now after doing this exercise that putting my holiday photos up for sale (with the odd exception) is is a bad business decision.

I really don't think my statistics will be too different from other people's on Alamy. But that won't stop about 2000 more travel shots being uploaded tomorrow....

Do model released images on Alamy make money???

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Hortop) — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 17:14:00 +0000

I've been analysing the effectiveness of Alamy as a home for selling stock images with a particular interest in financial results against time invested. Alamy is not the obvious place for model released imagery, but as I wait patiently for images to emerge from the Getty quality control process, it's the only place I've got. By all accounts Getty will yield substantially better results, but that's still to be tested.

Shoot 1 - two models at smart location. Images posted mainly as RF.
Costs - a model commission on sales and/or exchange of other services
Date - two shortish days in September 2004 - say 10 hours shooting
Sales - 19
Income - Alamy gross $3,179 Me (before commissions payable) £1,112
Income per hour of shoot per annum - £30

Shoot 2 - spur of the moment shoot with model but very specific social/health issue subject matter. Images posted as L and RF.
Costs - a model commission on all sales
Date - January 2005 - 1 hour shooting
Sales - 5
Income - Alamy gross $629 - Me (before commissions payable) £220
Income per hour of shoot per annum - £88

Shoot 3 - model on location. Images posted mainly as RF.
Costs - a lunch plus model commission on all sales
Date - June 2006 - 3 hours shooting
Sales - 6
Income - Alamy gross $1492 - Me (before commissions payable) £519
Income per hour of shoot per annum - £86

Shoot 4 - 2 models on location
Costs - a lunch plus a hefty model commission on cumulative sales above £500
Date - November 2006 - 4 hours shooting
Sales - 8
Income - Alamy gross $699 - Me (before commissions payable) £245
Income per hour of shoot per annum - £40

The income figures do not look too bad here in terms of the time spent on the shoot itself. But the snag is that shoot time is rather less than the processing and submission time.

So what is "Income per hour of shoot per annum"? It's how much I have earned each year subsequently from an hour spent shooting. Before model commission. And ignoring all the set up and processing time. I ignore the first six months after the shoot when no cash comes in.

It's not huge bucks, but shows that money can be made from stock. Just on Alamy.

I've not included here some relatively aimless shooting I've done. Having good saleable subject matter is so important to generating income from stock photography. Which is why I've been suitably vague about the subject matter of these shoots.

Party photography

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Hortop) — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 21:41:00 +0000

There's nothing like going to a party to get over the demise of a business in which you've invested a hunk of time for no return.

Particularly when you are paid to attend.

Images by me and Meeyoung Son from a party in a humble Sports and Social Club in Wallington are here - party photographs - thanks to Jeanette and Lorraine for providing a great group of party animals to celebrate their 30th birthday.

Photoshelter Collection closes its doors

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Hortop) — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 21:20:00 +0000

Images approved, but like Photoshelter, not live.

It makes me realise that photoconnect is still here. Six years on and a fair few photographers have actually sold photographs. Some might even think it a successful investment of their time. Which pleases me.

Because for all the bluster and initiatives like Shoot the Blog and Shoot the Day, not one of the thousands of contributors could have made remotely enough money to repay the time spent shooting and for some loading thousands of photos. Of course the vast majority made nothing.

Photoshelter, as exemplified by Shoot the Blog, was an agency run by luvvies who knew how to use technology and create a buzz, but not what to sell. Or how. If only Alamy could move their technology at one tenth the speed of Photoshelter, they might be dangerous.

London by Thames Clipper

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Hortop) — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 09:19:00 +0000

Monday was my wedding anniversary so I spent the day with my wife zipping up and down the River Thames on the excellent Thames Clipper service, so fast once downstream of Tower Bridge and at just the right pace to get photos of London on the upstream side.

Easy access to all the pics (including Shirley, my wife) on Flickr but otherwise the images have been added to photoconnect - unfortunately another cloudy day with a short sunny period towards the end.

South Bank

River Thames

Canary Wharf

Greenwich

Transport in London

Events in London

Dublin's fair city.....

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Hortop) — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 09:49:00 +0000

.... is sometimes best appreciated indoors. Well a lot of the time if my experience is anything to go by!

I was booked by a client in July to get images of their School in the centre of Dublin. The trip was called off at Gatwick airport when a call to Dublin confirmed the BBC's forecast of solid rain all day. So at the start of August I made a second attempt, this time deciding to stay on an extra day to catch up with some friends and spend that extra day seeing more of town and getting some stock photos of Dublin.

The day of the client shoot was dull and rainy but there were at least some dry spells. The next day was solid rain from the go so it was off to that faithful standby the Guinness Brewery until some blue sky was spotted on the horizon. After eating I had about an hour of sunshine to whizz around Trinity College and get a bus to the airport from O'Connell Street. So probably not the best 'photo day' (I bet there are thousands of images of Dublin in the rain) but it was a damn good pint of Guinness.....

I have put a few shots from the shoot in my portfolio on flickr.

Notting Hill Carnival - London 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Hortop) — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 20:01:00 +0000

I spent a few hours today at the Notting Hill Carnival - now officially the London Carnival - by the time I was getting into the groove I had to go. I've loaded several images up to Alamy (where they are guaranteed to miss the press deadlines even though Alamy are now on a 24 hour QC period. I'll load a few to Photoshelter later as 'breaking news' so they may be available in the USA before the UK. Except of course they are available on Photoconnect now!

Notting Hill Carnival 2008

Why do magazines have shrink wrappers?

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Hortop) — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 11:01:00 +0000

And I don't mean those on the top shelf!

Answer: Because if you skim the content on the newsagent's shelf, you'll find it's not what you were led to believe from the cover.

For the first time this month I bought Black and White Photography magazine. Quite prominently on the cover it stated "45 B&W digital papers for you to choose" - I thought how useful, a commentary that I'll be able to use as a reference.

There was a free supplement . "Printing for Digital Photographers" - "Features both Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom".

So what was the problem? Well, the Digital Paper article turned out to be a product listing, one product per line, with less information on the qualitative aspects of the papers list than you'll find on a retail website. And the supplement was frankly useless. It was a puff for a book, contained NO content for Lightroom users but one tutorial on Apple Aperture!

I find this more and more with magazines. Misleading information on the cover - and then the more secret the content, the more it is likely to disappoint.

The landscape route to Wales

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Hortop) — Wed, 28 May 2008 10:53:00 +0000

It was not that the M4 motorway was blocked but I thought I'd take a more leisurly route to give me an opportunity to get in some shooting. So I've added some photos from along the A4 including Hungerford, Marlborough, the Kennet and Avon Canal, and Wiltshire landscapes including one of those chalk White Horses and the famous neolithic Silbury Hill.

Italian diversion

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Hortop) — Sun, 11 May 2008 07:47:00 +0000

A long time since the last post but I've been to Italy for a holiday, did some stock photography and have posted the results:

Flew to Pisa:

Leaning Tower of Pisa, Duomo etc
The rest of the city

Train to Lucca

Duomo and other churches
Lucca - people and streets

Train to Florence

Cathedral, Duomo Santa Maria del Fiore. and other churches of Florence
Florence streets, people, views and Ponte Vecchio

Jilted on my date with Naomi

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Hortop) — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 10:56:00 +0000

I was writing earlier in the week about heading to Terminal 5 to get some photos yesterday - sure enough I was there yesterday afternoon; what I did not mention (because I keep these things to myself) is that I was meeting up with Naomi Campbell to take a few pics and discuss how I could help further her career if I could take a few pics of her doing lifestyle chores around my house. You know, hoovering, ironing, dusting.....

Anyway, while I was there, handbags happened.

So I had to make do with taking pics of the terminal. Which I can't load to this post because Blogger is being temperamental. So I put them on Photoconnect.

Heathrow Terminal 5 stock photos

Sorry, no photos of Naomi.

Assignment sales update

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Hortop) — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 21:33:00 +0000

While the internet advertising continues to pull in a few enquiries the major play I will be making is to make direct contact with second tier design agencies in London. Yesterday I took receipt of 500 postcards designed to attack the market for the photography of "Real people" in "Real locations". It's what I do best and generates photography for brochures, websites and annual reports.

I am convinced that companies and the better designers will soon realise that yet another brochure or website populated with sterile iStockPhoto images will be a disaster. High budget shoots with models are, well, high budget.

The best people to project a business in images are the company's own people.

Tomorrow I take delivery of 800 address labels for these second tier agencies.

Tomorrow, however, is also stock shooting day. Right now I'm looking at Heathrow Terminal 5 and some unglamorous West London industrial architecture. I am anticipating that Terminal 5 will be so chaotic that no one will notice me.....

Alamy stock photo income on slide...

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Hortop) — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 08:31:00 +0000

Earlier posts this year will have suggested that Alamy is not working as it once was, but this month has hit a low in that I will be getting no cheque for the first time in years - while there were only 3 sales totalling $292 gross (yes that's before the 35% commission) from 2786 images online.

Downloading sales information from the site and evaluating it in a spreadsheet shows some interesting statistics. I look at rolling six month periods to smooth things out statistically and get the following results - all are gross sales:

December 2004 - $2.44 per image per year
June 2005 - $2.99 per image per year
December 2005 - $4.87 per image per year
June 2006 - $5.81 per image per year
December 2006 - $5.40 per image per year
June 2007 - $5.20 per image per year
December 2007 - $3.75 per image per year

For the last quarter sales are in fact $1.67 per image per year....

So what's going on?

For Alamy, if the growth in images online is not matched by increased sales then the income per photo will fall. And Alamy's sales growth shows every sign of flattening out - you can see that in the graph on their site. With the number of images online more or less doubling since the peak in my sales it is not surprising that my return per image is falling.

For individual photographers, directing more images at Alamy is not the solution. As the per image return falls it becomes a nonsense to throw more images at them. Let's suppose all photographers did that then with the doubling in numbers online the return would halve yet again!

As for the economics, let's say a day's stock photo shooting gets 50 good images, there's about another day to process and keyword and submit all those. At $3 per image per year gross, that's £1 per image per year net or £50 per year in future income for two day's work. Over 5 years discounted, that's a value of about £100 per day. That's before I think of any costs associated with the shoot.

At £200 per day the economics are quite different!

But the interesting thing I have noticed is how RF income in particular has fallen off.

In the 6 months to March 2007 I pulled in 17 sales for $3233 gross. In the 6 months to January 2008 8 sales for $1413. Whereas RF outnumbered L in the halcyon days, L now makes up 75% of sales. This is in particular hitting the sales of some of the shoots that I have done with models with the more commercial market in mind. Here one has to think of microstock as being the major cause.

If one streamlines one's workflow and submits to multiple stock photo agencies then the economics become better. Perhaps then £200 per day is achievable again. But unless Photoshelter takes off, there is no obvious supplement out there in terms of non-exclusive agencies.

Thursday is my timetabled two weekly stock shooting day. This week the weather may be fine. I'm not out of the stock market yet because it can be such a pleasant way of spending the day that even if one earns nothing then it seems OK. In the worst case it's an enjoyable day off and that's the way one must approach it, but don't forget, the processing is hard work and has to be fitted in somewhere.....

Alamyrank and pseudonyms

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Hortop) — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 10:05:00 +0000

This is a piece of irony for the statistically obsessed elements on Alamy.

Alamy ranks photographers according to pseudonym. The general message is to delete weaker images, or as I did, at least put them into another pseudonym.

So that is what I did to some extent - until I got bored - about 6 months ago. I put my weaker images into a separate pseudonym, Scott Hortop Images.

Now I have found that the click through rate for these images is 1.31%. And for Scott Hortop (my "better" images) 0.99% (that's measured over the last year or so).

What is going on? Why should my rubbish images (that really do not sell) have a better click through rate than my good images (that do sell)?

I can only now think of one answer right now - image content clutter. In choosing what images to put into my second tier pseudonym, I chose the images that had the most unimpressive cluttered thumbnails. Where it is clear what the image content is - a nice clear image - buyers don't need to click on the new larger thumbnails. So click through rate goes down. Where the content is fuzzy, buyers have to click to see what is there. So click through rate goes up.

Just a thought. The main point is that it's unpredictable how buyers behave.

One thing is sure, had I not carried out this exercise the CTR on my main pseudonym would be greater than 1%. And I think that being less than 1% has sent my Alamyrank over the edge into a lower tier so that my good images are ranked lower than my bad.

So beware! Meddling with pseudonyms can be less than productive...

Control

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Hortop) — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 23:02:00 +0000

Just been to see "Control", the Ian Curtis biopic in Kingston. Yet again am bowled over by the photography, all stark black and white making terraced house interiors and exteriors.

I'm realising that I tend to be rather more influenced by great cinematic photography than stil photography - at least in the sense that great photography in a movie has a longer hold on my brain than great photography on a wall.

It's not static v. dynamic, it's more that during a movie that contains great photography I find myself clicking in my head, thinking about which moments I would capture and there were many dazzling moments in this film. Not to mention the great Joy Division music & recreation of some great gigs (all of which I missed).

Love Will Tear us Apart, but the descent of a great talent (being able to lead a creative lifestyle I might only dream of) to suicide at the age of 23, was far more complicated than that.

It was also curious how someone so talented, now so famous, earned so little money from his creativity. At least I have one of these things in common.

Getty submission done and dusted

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Hortop) — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 19:23:00 +0000

It took a lot of effort so the envelope of stock photos that I posted to Getty Images (in Ireland) today had better be worthwhile. Understandingly the requirements, figuring out how to package the images onto a CD (no online upload here), and the time taken to prepare the images was over a day. Much of that was cataloguing the model releases - I am only glad that most of the property releases were for my own home! Still, to avoid pedantry at the receiving end, I completed four releases, one for each shoot, each with a photo of my own house, just in case I forget what it looks like presumably.

This will be an interesting experience. But first to get accepted.....

Dancing with the devil (part 2)

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Hortop) — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 11:14:00 +0000

If part 1 was Getty (yesterday's post) then part 2 is Getty on the cheap, iStockPhoto.com.

I do some web development and some of my clients ask me to buy stock photos from iStockPhoto. When it comes to business you have to leave some morals behind so I go ahead and do it. Yesterday I received a notification that I had 4 credits remaining to use within 3 days so I have gone off and used them.

Pic 1 was on the latest pics added section of the home page. If you think the shirt and tie combination is lurid then it's also available in pale green. No doubt also available in photoshopped lilac and mauve but I did not bother to look. To find this image searchers can use such keywords as "fashion model" "sex symbol" "modern" and "male beauty". But probably not pink. Somehow, I can't see the model in a pink shirt.

Pic 2 is a 'Sexy Russian Girl" and had just appeared on the home page after I refreshed it. My lucky day.

Just to be a little more serious about things I went off to find a couple of t-shirt stock photos for my client Pier 32 who prints ethical tshirts to use in his website or on his blog which I write. Contrary to what many pro photographers would have you believe, there are good images to be found on iStockPhoto and I'm looking for something a little classy and ethically sound. The sexy Russian girl will never make it although I'm sure the printing presses are up to dealing with skimpies. Or bear hats.

Anyway the last two images were the best I found in a search on "tshirt woman nature". They will have to do.

I have just earned the photographers 20 cents per image. I feel better now. If not exactly ethical.