Stock Photo Stuff

My food weekend

After noticing the lack of roast beef sandwiches on Dreamstime and confirming with iStock the same, I decided to do a sandwich shoot.  I thought it would be my first “easy food” shoot.  I mean..how hard can it be to style a sandwich? 8 toothpicks and 2 frustrating hours later I can honestly say it’s WAY harder than it would appear.

The second part of my foodie weekend was a birthday party / dinner party.  We combined an adult-based dinner party for the family with our 14 year old’s birthday party to come up with a menu of: pizza bites (slice in between each and every pepperoni) and tomato skewer appetizers, one huge tossed salad and saute of chicken and broccoli over penne as the main course.  We followed that with birthday cake of course!  Since we technically had my birthday to celebrate as well and 15 guests, we made two cakes.

Here are some quick images I shot this weekend – not the best of the best but at least a few I have already edited.  I’ll post the recipe for the chicken and broccoli on my MattAntonino.com site later today.

Be a ________.

During the last few months one of my major goals has been to shoot more food photography.  I am really interested in the subject, I enjoy all aspects of it, and I think I can do it well (eventually).

So my past few months have been focused on learning – studying food photos, “becoming” a foodie, learning styling techniques – I never wanted to jump straight into food but rather be a food person who knew how to photograph.  I’ve been studying food, food photos, collecting recipes, deciding on what I want to focus on. In learning to “be” a food stylist/chef  you learn about presentation.

Thus my thought for the moment – become involved in the shots you want to shoot.  You shoot sports?  Go PLAY sports more – referee for the kid leagues, shoot hoops more at the park and watch more games.  See how the pros present sports.  You want to shoot business people?  Get deeper into business – meet with SCORE, talk about business planning and attend a seminar so you can see how someone has designed their speech.  Desire to shoot more animals & nature?  Interact – get out there, follow wildlife, hunt (with or without the gun), track animals – learn their behaviors.

— Related tangent —

When I first started learning to be a wedding photographer I listened to everything wedding photographers said. Advertising, marketing, sales, websites, SEO, photography & lighting, everything!  Eventually it dawned on me that photographers were good at making images.  I should learn advertising from an advertising specialist.  I no longer pay much attention to wedding photographers when they speak on subjects other than booking or shooting weddings.  The thought is very similar to what I’m talking about above.  Learn to be great at your subject – not just aware of it.

Sometimes when I want to shoot something I just pull it up, shoot it, wonder why it doesn’t sell.  I think the main reason is because someone else understands the subject while I just wanted a good photo of it.  Can I take good photos?  Yes.  Absolutely!  I shot models for years – and then I realized that because I don’t enjoy it all that much, the images weren’t high-class.  I can shoot well enough but the connection wasn’t there.  The question is – how involved are you in the shoot?

It doesn’t make sense for a city-dweller to go shoot cows and barns.  It doesn’t make sense for a sporty jock to shoot ballet.  Who are YOU and what can you shoot better than everyone else?

Stock photography

We have a gallery of over 3000 images with multiple stock sites.  We’ll be posting images, links, information about stock photography, etc. in this section.

In order to get the maximum possible return for each image, we’ve decided to skip exclusivity for now and focus our attention on a broad spectrum of stock agencies. We are always examining, adding, removing and investigating agencies. Our plans for 2009 include adding Alamy and removing a few non-earners from our regular upload cycle. Production is key so I’ll put the list of agencies we work with into our income order.

1) Shutterstock – by far our biggest producer.

2) Dreamstime – images “season in” and produce more later than they do earlier.

3) IStock – difficult but worth it.

4) Fotolia – hard on some types of images.

5) 123RF – a mid level producer for us.

6) Bigstock – just behind 123RF in rank.

Other agencies we submit to but not regularly include:

• Canstock
• MostPhotos
• FeaturePics
• Veer Marketplace
• CutCaster
• YayMicro

Speed Editing, Part 1

We have examined our workflow many times over the last year in an attempt to gain speed without sacrificing a bit of quality. The first step in that process is always difficult and time consuming but ultimately necessary and extremely beneficial.

Our first step is to create an awareness of our current situation and workflow.

What steps do you take in order to go from image in camera to image on site?

I would suggest that while there are other steps to many photographer’s workflows, the following covers all of the bases and is a starting point to use.

1. Download the cards to your computer.
2. Backup the original files.
3. Choose the images to edit.
4. Edit the keeper images.
5. Keyword the keeper images and add title/description IPTC data.
6. Upload the images.
7. Backup the edited images.
   
8. Push the images on each site to completion.

Downloading Cards

Normally the download of cards happens while you do something else, such as drink coffee, watch tv, reply to email. So most people are not concerned with download speed. If you are trying to absolutely maximize your potential you will care but normally it will not matter much. Start with a Sandisk ImageMate card reader or a firewire reader. These are the two fastest options and will pull images from your cards very quickly.

Backup Originals

We prefer to backup our files to two external 1 TB harddrives. As professional photographers both in microstock and wedding/portrait fields, we know that it is of ULTIMATE importance that we have these originals. DVD backups fail more often, period. However you backup, however, just make sure you do it. Some photographers never backup or only do it “every so often.” Bad habits breed problems. Backup the same day you download, every single time.

Choose the Keepers

I prefer Adobe Lightroom for this step. If you have it, use it here. If you do not, you have to look at your current time and make a decision about the speed you are getting. Four clear choices exist for culling images from the rest. Adobe Lightroom, ACDSee, Aperture and PhotoMechanic. Whichever you are using, sorting the wheat from the chaff is going to be one of the most time consuming steps so measure your time here carefully.

Edit the Keepers

Photoshop, Gimp, PSP – these are your main editing tools for this, of course. Use what is familiar. Do not try to use Lightroom for the bulk of stock editing. The detail required in noise removal, sharpening and simple spot editing requires Photoshop to be open. Even though I am a Lightroom LOVER, it’s going to slow you down in the editing stage. Stick to single image editing programs.

Add Keyword/IPTC data

I prefer to use CushyStock as my keywording/IPTC editor. It is simple, fast and helps me do bulk images very quickly. I’ll be exploring this more in detail soon. Whether you use Lightroom, ACDSee, CushyStock or ProStockMaster, you should have a bulk IPTC tool for simple series labeling. Photoshop is *not* the right tool for this job. It does the job, but it’s not the right tool. You can use a rock to pound nails in too, but a hammer is more efficient.

Upload the images

Again, because I use CushyStock, I’m sticking in it for this step as well. Once the images are keyworded, set them to upload and you’re done for now. This part of the process on 50 images does take some time but a bulk upload tool or FTP program will help you immensely not to have to monitor it for each agency.

Backup the edited images

Do this step here, now. Once the images are headed online, back them up. If you do it before adding keyword data you can obviously understand what a mess that would be if you lost the images and had to re-keyword them. Do it after upload because once an FTP has started they can safely be backed up. If you backup and then start uploading you can cause conflicts which cause either the backup or the upload to fail. Doing it in this order is computer-preferable. Again, we obviously recommend double harddrives.

Push the images on each site

I’m not sure what most people call this step. Completing? We call it “pushing” because you’re giving the images one final PUSH toward review. You need to do whatever it is each site requires to complete the process of uploading once the images have been FTP’d.

Some photographers would add things to their workflow such as tracking accepted images, etc. but realistically these are not part of the workflow that gets your images on a site. Stick to the basics for now. Download, backup, cull, edit, keyword, upload, push. That’s it, that’s all stock is at its basics.

That leads us to stage 2 of improving our workflow for speed.

How long does your current workflow take?

In measuring the time it takes to do your workflow we must have a basis for comparison. I would suggest that a batch of 50 images is a good standard. Why 50? Shutterstock’s full page is 50. Dreamstime upload limits for anyone under 80% is usually 50 and StockXpert used to be 50 and is now 25, or 2 days of transfer. It’s a nice round number for figuring out percents as well, as half of 100.

Do this: time every step for your next 50 images. Separate 50 images you want to do the process to and mark it. Here’s a guide from my last 50.

1. 3 minutes (2.5 gb, 481 originals) to download.
   
2. 1 minute (2.5 gb to 2 external HDs) to backup drives
   
3. 28 minutes to sort 112 keepers from 481 originals.
   
4. 63 minutes to edit 50 of the keeper images.
   
5. 37 minutes to keyword and IPTC 50 images.
   
6. 1 minute setup (50 images to 14 sites).
   
7. 1 minute setup (50 images) to backup drives.
   
8. 9 sites pushed in 35 minutes, 3 sites remain undone (FT, DT and BSP).

My total from the last 50 edited images, 169 minutes. Of this, the 28 minutes to sort really gave me 112 not 50 usable images so it counts for about 12 of the 28 minutes for just this batch. It will take me slightly longer than 1 hour to finish FT, DT and BSP pushes. So in roughly 4 hours of work I uploaded 50 new images start to finish.

So get an idea where you are – that’s all for now and I’ll come back later with tips on speeding up, where I save time, where I lose time, and what programs we can use for everything we do.