In a previous post, I talked about submitting some sub-par images to the microstock agencies and how I feared it would be a mistake. Out of the 12 images that I submitted to each of the agencies here are the totals.

I haven’t gotten very many views out of these images and I speculate that i wont get many sells from them either. But none of the agencies out right rejected all of the images like I had suspected they would. Time shall tell if any of these images turn up making me any money and I will make a post if they do, but in the mean time I need to get back to shooting some more photos to submit and I’ve been busy jotting down ideas in my little orange book I just need to take them off of the paper ideas and into photographs.

I submitted images from the previous post, to my stock photo agencies. These obviously are not my best work and i have heard that you should only submit your best. I also heard that you should not submit several images of the same subject, I submited 12 images of drill / screw / hammer / nail set.

I submitted the images out of angst of getting something submitted and getting back in the habit of doing that. But I think in doing so I may of hurt myself by submitting too many photos of the same subject and submitting images that aren’t my best work. So we shall see what the verdict is from the agencies soon enough but I speculate that my acceptance % just went down.

I was using one of my hours to shoot some stock photos of some simple construction photos. A drill screwing in a screw, a hammer driving in a nail, and honestly they weren’t living up to my expectations.

Now granted I was trying out some new modifiers, a boom for a light stand, so I was able to put an Alien Bee AB800 in a soft box directly overhead. I was also using my slightly modified 22″ Beauty Dish. After using a couple of different props and a few different angles, I switched off the over heard AB in an attempt to get something that jumped at me and said pow.

So now I was shooting with just the Beauty Dish at the same height as the subject. And I still wasn’t overly satisfied with it, that is until I moved 180 degrees onto the dark side of the moon, and then my images started Popping.

I really liked what I was seeing on the back of my LCD the images, too me, had life and made me smile, I had Changed a simple thing as a toy hammer hitting a roofing nail into a photograph. But is it right for stock images?

I think it was Nicolsey that said you should look at photos used for advertising products and strive for your images to look like that in order to get good selling images for microstock. So does commercial advertising photography make good stock photos? Do I have too much fine art in my stock images?

I’m going to start dedicating an hour every evening to stock photography. Now an hour a day really doesn’t seem like much time. But I don’t have a lot of time either. I get home around 6:00 or 6:30 at night where I’m immediately swamped with the love and affection of my 4 kids and my wife. After accessing how the school day has gone and getting to chirp in 3 complete sentences between my wife and I Dinner is quickly served and consumed homework is double checked and baring any sports or scout activities the 8:00pm bed times are upon us quicker than the sun sets in the winter. After the last minuet drink of water and bathroom breaks are over the kids are snug and sound asleep it’s typically between 8:30 and 9:00 now normally I would catch 30 min of TV and then it was off to bed in order to get up at 6:30 the next morning to do it all over again. So now I’m making that mental allowance to try and get an hour in during the evening to work on my photography after the little ones are asleep.

I don’t expect I’ll get to it every night but I hope by putting this plan out on the blog I will get to it more than not.

It is very difficult for me to come up with what to shoot for my stock portfolios. When someone presents to me a subject for a photo I typical have very little problems coming up with some creative and unique ways of shooting that subject. But I get brain locked when it comes to photo shoot ideas when it comes to stock photography. I really don’t know what sells. I think I am very uniformed when it comes to the industry of stock photos and I’m not exactly sure how to become informed about it. I think this is why I am looking for that assignment, I think its why I like the entertaining thought of working for a news paper or magazine and getting asked for pretty specific topics for photos. I am also unfamiliar with the production of a photo shoot, the whole business side of it is completely foreign to me and just like I don’t know how to become informed about the industry, I don’t know what to do to become familiar with everything that is involved in a photo shoot. Maybe at the root of it all is that I dont fully have a grasp for the value of photography. I severely under-value it. Maybe its part of my self loathing, it cant be worth that much money since I can do it, but its something that is repeating with my non-stock work as well, continually under charging for my work.

Stock photography and more specifically micro stock photography isn’t going to make me rich, it’s not the high end top of the mountain work of Joe McNally. It’s not the cool work of Chase Jarvis, and it’s not the kind of work that will fill the empty black hole in your soul of Zack Arias inspirations. The photos I have for sale on big stock photo don’t bring me clients locally. My family and friends aren’t impressed with images that come across.

So what does it do for me? Well I want to take photos, I love taking photos, I have to take photos it’s what I do. I don’t shoot for myself and neither do you, I’ve set it before. When showing my work to others I grew tired of the childish games of internet forums, I felt the amount of effort involved in learning how to get good feedback and added expense of popular photo sharing sites was just too much. So for me it’s that rush I get when someone purchases my image, the satisfaction in knowing that they looked all that they could and my image stood out the most too them for what they wanted that is the ultimate thumbs up or +1 or digg or vote or whatever you want to call it. Even though it is not a reflection of reality I look at the size of the photos as to how much they liked the images. Someone how in my brain I rationalize that they looked at my photo, they don’t need that XXL size they only really need the small size, but since they enjoy the photo so much they buy the bigger size. Thus the greater coinage that comes to me. I know completely wrong but somehow that is how is how I hoped it happened.

So for me, I shoot stock photography because of the rush I get and satisfaction that I feel when someone buys the image unsolicited and non-pressured from me.