Shooting Locations for June 2012

We didn't get the opportunity to do a lot of photography this month due to factors such as having to work to pay the bills, and setting up the technology / marketing side of our microstock hobby.  This included setting up this blog, our Facebook page, our Twitter account and our Zazzle store, finalising some microstock accounts, and making sure that they all talk nicely together.....

We did manage 1 full day shoot and 2 sessions of a couple of hours each....

We started out the month with a full day shooting session that covered several locations.  We began the day at Southport Spit on the Gold Coast hoping to capture some good shots of the sun rising over the ocean.  Unfortunately, we didn't get our camera settings right and none of the photos where of a commercial quality. 

After a wonderful breakfast at Elephant Rock Cafe we proceeded around the corner to Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary.  If you ever have the chance to visit South East Queensland, we highly recommend a visit to this wildlife park, they have a very large collection of Australian Wildlife and you can easily spend an entire day wandering around the paths visiting all the different animal enclosures and various shows. 

The day we visited the park they were holding a fund raiser for the sanctuary, and there where thousands of people visiting, but it turned out as a bonus for us as they where offering a substantial discount on the entry fee for local visitors.  We spent about 6 hours wandering around and taking as many photos as possible, and we even had our photo taken holding a Wedge Tail Eagle.

The best photos of the day where (from our Mostphoto album):

(Native Australian Bird)

(Kookaburra)

(Wombat)

Our second location was a re-visit to Roma St Parklands for a short 2 hour photo session we managed to squeeze in after work before loosing the light.  The best photos of the day where (from our Mostphoto album):

(Green and white Ribbon Plant)

(Kangaroo Paw - Plant)

For our last location, we decided to revisit Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary specifically to shoot photos of Kangaroos and Wallabies.  This decision was a commercial one as one of our photos of a kangaroo from our first visit had sold several times on one of the microstock sites early in the month.  We arrived just after opening time before all the tourists and tour groups arrived, and managed to get a lot of photos of the kangaroos, wallabies and emus before they where too disturbed by groups of people.   We also did our bit for Queensland tourism by showing a lot of the overseas visitors that were too scared to approach the kangaroos how to hand feed and pet them.

Best photos of the day where (from our Mostphoto album):

(Large male Kangaroo - this male is over 5ft tall)

(Small Wallaby - this little one was only knee high)

(Emu)

Several of the female kangaroos had joeys in the pouch that where just starting to venture out.

(Baby Joey)

And the one photo that makes us laugh every time we see it........this kangaroo just looks sooooo confused.

(Confused Kangaroo)

Next month we're off for a 5 day photography holiday to Tasmania.....so we should have a lot of photos to share in Shooting Location post for July.

Cheers

Fiona 





Earnings for May 2012

May was our first month of operation, and as such, we spent a lot of time signing up to the various Microstock agencies and essentially jumping through hoops to get accepted as contributors. If you've ever tried to join Microstock agencies, you know what I've talking about.

Each agency has it's own criteria for accepting contributors - from just confirming your email address, to passing their own little quiz about what it means to be a contributor, to uploading 20 photos for review manually (no FTP allowed).

We managed to meet the criteria for several agencies by the end of the month, a few are still pending now, and we got knocked back by a couple.

What has become obvious over the last month is that all the Microstock agencies have very different acceptance criteria for stock photos - we found that some photos where being accepted by some sites and knocked back by others for technical reasons. This just confirms in my mind the need to be submitting photos to many different agencies at a time. Sure you don't earn as much commission on each sale as you would being exclusion with a single agency, but I'd much prefer a lot of little sales in the month instead on hanging out for only a couple with a high return rate.

We managed to scrape together about 81 photos from our May photo shoots that we felt had the potential for stock photos. The table below details how we went with our submissions to the various agencies.

Microstock Agency	Current Portfolio	New Photos for Month	Number Photos Sold	Total $ Earned
123rf	55	55	0	$0.00
Alamy	0	0	0	$0.00
Albumo	45	45	0	$0.00
AllYouCanStock	80	80	0	$0.00
BigStock	18	18	0	$0.00
CanStockPhoto	54	54	0	$0.00
Colourbox	0	0	0	$0.00
Crestock	0	0	0	$0.00
CutCaster	10	10	0	$0.00
DepositPhotos	0	0	0	$0.00
Dreamstime	10	10	0	$0.00
FeaturePics	5	5	0	$0.00
Fotolia	3	3	0	$0.00
GraphicLeftovers	0	0	0	$0.00
iStockPhoto	0	0	0	$0.00
MostPhotos	81	81	0	$0.00
Photaki	0	0	0	$0.00
Photokore	0	0	0	$0.00
Pixmac	64	64	0	$0.00
PocketStock	20	20	0	$0.00
ScanStockPhoto	0	0	0	$0.00
Shutterstock	14	14	1	$0.25
Stockfuel	0	0	0	$0.00
StockPhotoMedia	70	70	0	$0.00
SuperHug	0	0	0	$0.00
Vectorial	0	0	0	$0.00
Veer	0	0	0	$0.00
YayMicro	47	47	0	$0.00
Zoonar	39	39	0	$0.00
Totals	612	612	1	$0.25

As you can see we managed to make our first sale in May. We sold the image below via Shutterstock, and that was within 24 hours of the photo being approved. This just proves that a couple of photography novices with absolutely no experience can make money from Microstock - although it does take us a little bit more work to achieve it. It's the best $0.25 that I've made in a while - or should I say $0.12, because I have to share it with my sister....

Cheers

Fiona