Learning 5-9-2009

I haven't posted since December and I've learned a lot in the meantime. I am now a contributing photographer on 5 stock photo sites and I could easily go for more, but uploading images to all those sites is very time consuming and in my mind, not worth the effort. My biggest selling site is shutterstock.com. They sell far more photos than the other sites combined. I hear that this will change once I have 1,000 decent selling photos uploaded. iStockphoto.com sells more somehow once you have more photos. I don't understand why this should be the case, but I'm continuing to upload the 15 photos per week iStockphoto allows. That means it will take a long time to get 1,000 images there. iStockphoto would like their contributors to be exclusive, which means you are not selling photos at any other stock sites. If you go there exclusively they will allow you 50 uploads per week, but you have to have 250 images already accepted before they'll let you go exclusive. Seems to me they are limiting the number of photos they have available to their clientele, but it's their site, so I guess it must work for them. I will not be able to afford exclusivity unless my sales at iStockphoto can compete with my sales at shutterstock.com, and as of today they are not even close to competing. I was accepted as a contributor at shutterstock.com on February 27, 2009. I quickly uploaded 29 photos and they started to sell that day. I was amazed at that because it took months at iStockphoto before I got one sale. So I started shooting like crazy and today I have 475 images for sale at shutterstock.com. My goal these days is to have 32 uploads per day on weekdays. The pay is dismal, usually 25 cents per photo, but I can see that once I have better photos and more of them, I can make some decent money here and it's all on me to get those photos taken and uploaded. It's a lot of work and there is disappointment when I feel my best shots are not popular, but I enjoy it anyway and I'm shooting better photos. I also upload at Dreamstime, Fotolia, and Stockxpert. I like Fotolia. They allow all the uploads you want, as does shutterstock, and they notify you when you have a sale by email. Shutterstock is my kindergarten home. It's where I'm accepted and learning. It's where I can see progress most in earnings. Shutterstock gives me hope that I can reach all my goals.
I was borrowing lighting from photographer friend Tavo Olmos and doing a lot of tabletop photography. I learned the little I know about it from a friend, Steve Cukrov, who has been a major help to me in all things photographic. But the lights were an old set of Normans and when Tavo needed them for his own work I decided to buy my own lights, an inevitable expense I knew was coming. I ordered a 2 mono light kit from Profoto which will be coming in 10 days or so. I think I'll need at least one more light, but for now this expense dipped into my retirement fund, enough said! I was reading Lise Gagne's blog and she says that you will make sacrifices and have to buy expensive equipment, but if you hang in there you will succeed. So far it's all about the sacrifices for me, but I intend to hang in there and it was encouraging to read her words.