My experience with micro stock agencies

For the most part, my experience has been rock solid dealing with micro stock agencies such as Shutterstock, Bigstockphoto, Fotolia, Alamy, Pond5 and Videoblocks.  There are agencies that I will not work with again such as Dreamstime, Canstockphoto and 123RF.  While having portfolios on those last three agencies, the work is just not worth the return.  In 2+ years of having portfolios on those agencies, I've gotten one payout between the three of them totalling $51.00USD.  Uploading, keywording and submitting your photos or videos is just not worth the time and effort.

By far, Shutterstock is where the action is.  That's where I have my biggest portfolio and that's where I make the majority of my sales.  I've just start shooting video in the past 9 months and have had a great success with it on Shutterstock, Fotolia, Pond5 and Videoblocks.  I suggest doing both video and photo work.  Doing video as well gives clients potential options as well.  

As you can see on my blog I have links to my various portfolios.  If you want to sign up, please use the necessary links provided and sign up that way.  I spend about an hour or two a week just uploading to the various websites including editing, keywording and uploading.  It's a great return on investment and time.

Way to go England!

This is nothing photography related but way to go Britain.   You voted with common sense for Independence.  The second shot heard around the world.  

All time best seller

So this is my all time best selling photo that I have up on several micro stock agencies.  I do really like this shot.  I used to go to Parc Omega quite a lot.   Especially on those cold winter days during the week when people would be working and if they weren't working, they'd be inside because it was apparently too cold.  Yet, I'd be out there with my cameras taking my pictures.  Dedication and perseverance pays off.  You or I will never get this shot again.  

Nature is just amazing during the fall and winter seasons.  The animals are more active.  Their furs are thicker.  They are more hardier. 

When my photography ship comes in

Maybe.  Just maybe, when my photography sugar momma comes in I will be able to purchase one of these one of these spectacular vehicles.  It's just millions and millions of photos that I have to sell. Actually at $0.33 a pop it's about a million photos or so.  Just for a basic model.  So who wants to help a photographer out?  

Favourite duck

I go to Mud Lake often to shoot nature and wildlife photography and wildlife videos.  Mud Lake is located in Ottawa.  It's a lake surrounded by a lush green forest and is near a water filtration plant.  It's a peaceful refuge if you just want to get away.  It's got several nature trails and is really convenient as it's located within city limits.

You get a lot of turtles and various water fowl.  A lot of herons and a lot of various types of ducks such as the above Male Wood duck.  It's my favourite kind of duck.  It's not as friendly as the regular mallard duck as they don't seem to like going near humans.  But that's ok for us photographers with our lenses and large sensors.  We can crop our photographs to still get a nice image.

Holy exhausted Batman!

No new photos or videos today as I was swamped at work.  Plus I didn't get a chance to edit photos that I took yesterday.  I took a lot of panorama photos and some wide field like the one above taken with the Canon EOS 6D and the Canon EF f2.8 16-35MM L series lens.  I think I will do some photography tomorrow.  I haven't been sleeping well in the past week or so.  I'm really exhausted.

Shooting panoramas

Did another walk around from where I work to the Museum of Canadian History.  This walk takes me about 90 to 120 minutes to complete as I stop along the way to take photos.  Today I decided to shoot some panoramas with my Canon EOS 6D and the Canon EF f2.8 70-200M L series lens.  I gripped the camera vertically and started shooting at 70MM.  I stitched about 8-10 vertical shots in Adobe Lightroom CC and colour corrected, removed sensor noise, corrected white balance and then posted on this blog.

I didn't get to edit many more shots as I had a few errands to run after work.  Tomorrow will be the day for editing.  Actually maybe next week as we're supposed to get sunshine till sometime next week.  I want to be outside and use my camera.  Editing is for those rainy, miserable days.

The sink hole

Finally made it to the sink hole in downtown Ottawa.  Pretty funny to see it in person.  A lot of people just watching the workers and equipment fill in the hole.  What a mess!

Noiseless Pro

Noiseless Pro is a noise reduction plugin for Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom which reduces the noise or grain in your night or indoor photography.  Currently it only runs on Apple Mac computers.

As someone who shoots outdoors in low light or in night time, there is a lot of noise and grain in my photography.  Even using the latest camera bodies and lenses, you will get noise and grain.  Noiseless Pro gets rid of the noise and grain artifact in the photos quite easily.  You can check my night photography on my website or my microstock portfolio here and here.

I have been using Noiseless Pro for about 9 months now and have been going thru my previous shots and running them thru Noiseless Pro.  Everything is being accepted for sale whereas before it was not accepted because of high noise values.  The software is on the pricey side but you do get what you pay for.  The noise reduction in Photoshop and Lightroom CC is good, but not as good as Noiseless Pro.  That is why I would ask you to try and buy it here.  Purchasing the product also helps me out as I am an affiliate of MacPhun.

Shot this in July 2015 with the Canon EOS 6D and the Canon EF f2.8 17-35MM L series lens.  I think I had the lens about a month and I was still testing the lens out.  It's a great Canon lens.  

I'm editing a few photos from the past couple of years as it's raining pretty much the whole weekend. Trying a new technique in editing and re uploading the files to Shutterstock, Bigstockphoto, Alamy and Fotolia.  Most have already been accepted on Bigstockphoto so I'm just waiting for the others to catch up.  Hopefully they'll be accepted soon.

Sinkhole

Time to go see and do some video of the sinkhole in Ottawa.  Way to go City of Ottawa.  Ottawa, a city a sinkhole never forgot!

Baby woodpeckers!

Just got home from taking some videos and am editing them now.  Got some cute, little Pileated Woodpeckers being fed by both parents.  Videos to follow.

Finally some photography this week.

After doing a week of video work, I "forgot" my camcorder at home and only took my Canon 6D bodies and the various lenses.  The above shot is a landscape panorama composite of three separate photographs.  I shot this on my lunch today as I needed to get out of the office and do something I actually enjoy doing.  I actually enjoy the current job I have as the my coworkers are good, clients not that bad and the bosses leave me alone.

Today was a hot and sunny day as you can tell from the above photo.  Ottawa is finally green after a prolonged winter and hardly any spring as we went directly from winter to summer.  Spring was very cool compared to past years.

Anyways, back to photography.  I always get my shots from either across the river from Ottawa or from Nepean Point which faces westward towards Ottawa.  Today I shot eastward and got this pretty sweet shot.  It was taken with a Canon EOS 6D and a Canon EF f2.8 70-200MM L series lens.  Composite of 3 photographs each at 70MM, f16, ISO 200.  Ottawa is a really green city.