A Blog Experiment To Bring In More Traffic...and Customers.

A blog experiment to bring in more traffic...and customers for my funny animal photos (this traffic photo is from rush hour traffic in Beijing).

A Blog For Funny Animal Pictures
In my never-ending quest to garner traffic, and clients, for my funny animal photos (and all the various imprinted merchandise, prints and so forth that go along with that work), I am undertaking an experiment. I have started a new blog oriented for people looking for the humorous animal and pet pictures I do for my "Animal Antics" collection. Unlike this photography blog, the entries are brief, only a couple of sentences to go with the pix , and the text is not about the photography business. The blog is simply an attempt to help people find what they are looking for.if they are searching for funny animal pictures.

Google, Indexing and Pet Lovers
I have noticed that Google indexes my blog very quickly, usually within minutes. With my web site it can take months for a page to be indexed. This new blog is an attempt to both speed up the process and more precisely target the audience of pet lovers and bored business people looking for humor and killing time on their computers.

Web Sites, Blogs, and Showcasing Photos
I don't believe it is a good idea to spread your efforts over a number of sites and/or blogs, but in this case I want to keep the new effort separated from my existing web site and photo blog so that I can clearly see if the new blog, that simply showcases funny photos, will produce the desired results. Creating a blog is so ridiculously easy these days, what the heck!

Time, Top Traffic Sites and Web Success
Time is such an important ingredient in web (SEO) success that I am reasonably sure I won't have much to report back soon (all of the top traffic sites that I have investigated have been around for quite a lengthy period of time). But when I do I will share that information here. Stay tuned.

Funny Animal Pictures and Lessons Learned

This funny picture of a cat with a canary feather in its mouth started a huge additional source of revenue for me.

Funny Animal Pictures: A Cat and a Canary Feather
My Animal Antics series of funny animal pictures began with my image of a cat with one yellow canary feather protruding from his smiling face (click here to see a sampling of the Animal Antics series of images). I originally created the image as a stock photo, but before I submitted it I was invited to exhibit at the Sausalito Art Festival (way back when it was unusual to be using Photoshop). Someone had advised me to bring some un-matted 8x10 prints in addition to the larger matted and framed fine art prints. The first day of the festival I sold all 8 of the Cat & Canary prints. I went home that night and printed up a dozen more…and the next day I sold all of them.

Greeting Cards and Anthropomorphic Pets
I realized at that point that I had an image that really clicked with the public. As I thought about it, it occurred to me that perhaps the image should be a greeting card. I made an appointment with one of the art directors, Collette Kulak, at Portal Publications. I showed her a few of my anthropomorphic animal images, including, or course, the cat and the canary. I then suggested that perhaps, with Portal’s help, I could be the animal equivalent of Anne Geddes, who was enormously popular with her images of babies in flowers, pea pods and so forth. Kind of a bold statement in retrospect!


Exclusivity and Higher Royalty Rates
Collette, to my everlasting amazement, agreed with me! We started off with four images and added a few more each quarter. After about two years I was beginning to wonder if all the work I was putting into those images was worth it. Then suddenly one quarter I got a royalty check of about $6,000.00. After that things just took off. The cards became so popular that Portal offered me a higher royalty to be exclusive with them, and soon I was Portal’s best selling card artist. I held that position until Portal was purchased by a venture capital company and slowly carved up until nothing was left.

Funny Cats, Camaraderie, and Gratifying Work
I am now in the process of reviving the line with new distributors. The cards are doing well and I am excited to see a comeback taking shape. I thoroughly enjoy working with the pets and the process of creating funny cat photos and humorous dog images. I also enjoy the camaraderie of working with a team, something that rarely happens in my stock photography. One other aspect of this undertaking that is gratifying: I receive a ton of e-mail from people who just plain get a kick out of the cards.


Coffee Mugs, T-shirts and…Barbecue Aprons!
In addition, I am making these images available at CafePress for a variety of imprinted products including coffee mugs, mouse pads, T-shirts (for both people and pets), water bottles, and yes, barbecue aprons! If you check out the site you can see all the various items. This is all part of my process of diversification, of seeking out ways to reach as wide an audience as possible for existing images, images that I think of as income-producing assets.

Gift Books, Christmas Ornaments, and Lessons Learned
To date the Animal Antics pictures have been used (exclusive of CafePress) for figurines, picture frames, Christmas Ornaments, Gift books (printed in seven languages), checks, Purses and Tote Bags, Vet reminder cards, calendars, and, well, I can’t even remember all the products! The gift books had a good run (Andrews McMeel published three of them), the greeting cards still sell like gangbusters, and everything else kind of fizzled after varying degrees of modest success. In all of these efforts I have learned a few things.

Get An Advance
I have learned that you should always get an advance (so when, if for whatever reason you don’t get paid, at least you have something). An advance isn’t just money in your pocket, it is an indication of the faith, and effort, that a publisher/distributor has in the product. Not only that, but at least you have something if the client ends up running into their own financial problems…a lesson I learned all to well when I provided the images for a Calendar without requiring and advance. The calendars were printed and sold, the company changed hands, sold off its calendar division and disappeared. I pursued the matter briefly but realized it was going to probably require more legal fees and time than was worth the effort.


Take The Royalty
If you believe in your images and the product, and are offered a choice of royalties or a flat fee, take the royalties. If that original cat and canary image had been licensed through a stock agency as a greeting card I would have received several hundred dollars. With royalties I have earned over $6,000.00.


Be Stingy With Your Rights
I have learned that you should make sure that whoever is distributing the products has a good record for that kind of product. A company that is great at distributing greeting cards may be terrible at selling calendars. Do your research before giving up rights.


Explore Your Options
In the environment we photographers currently find ourselves in it is important to take the same kind of advice any good investment counselor would make: diversify. There are many ways to diversify and some of them might just end up being your main gig! Explore your options. Start looking around you at all the ways photography is used. In what ways are images like the ones you make being used? Diversify, make good business decisions, and your images can work for you for in a lot of ways and for a long, long time.

Tips For Creating Silly Pet Pictures For The Consumer Market

Silly Pet Pics, like these "Razor Cats", appeal to a large portion of the consumer market.

Cats, Dogs, Mice, Elephants And Other Animals
For those of you not familiar with my “Animal Antics” series of silly pet pictures, it is one of my sub-specialties. I create these pictures of cats, dogs, mice, elephants, cows and other animals by combining photography with digital compositing and manipulation. I use Photoshop to combine numerous photos and create anthropomorphic scenes and situations of our animal friends. Part of the idea is to bring a bit more humor and fun into the world by treating others to the unexpected delights of LOL pet pics (I get e-mails weekly from appreciative people…something that I have never had happen with my other work), and part of the series is to enlarge my photography market to effectively include the public…all those millions of people that search for funny pictures, funny pet pictures, funny cat pictures and so on, and that buy calendars, greeting cards, coffee mugs, mouse pads and…well, you get the idea!

Limit The Rights You Grant
The images are also available for licensing for advertising, editorial, corporate and promotional uses. For those of you moving into this arena, it is good to keep in mind that when a company wants to license an image, be sure and limit them to only the rights that they need, and in which they are competent. I have had enough experience now to understand that a company that does a great job at moving greeting cards might be terrible at distributing calendars or posters. Do your homework and makes sure you are not handicapping yourself by giving away rights to under-performing publishers/distributors.

Get Advances!
I also think it is very important to get advances. In thirty years of professional photography I have only been stiffed about three times…and the most recent was by a calendar company that talked me into supplying images without an advance. They sold the calendars, then, through a series of financial maneuverings, have made it pretty much impossible for me to get a penny. And this was a company I trusted! If a company doesn’t have enough faith in their venture to pay an advance, then you are better off passing on the deal.

Have A Collection And Create Mock Ups
If you are going to be successful in this arena you will need a collection. Have at least a dozen, preferably two-dozen completed images, to show to prospective publishers. If they are greeting cards, get them mocked-up complete with captions. If you have a book idea, get it mocked up too. I once showed a book idea to a publisher by showing them a couple of dozen of the greeting cards and explaining the story line. They commented that I didn’t have a book, just a pile of greeting cards. When I had a designer put those same images into book form, that editor gave me a contract and published three books.

Cats And Razor Scooters
In the above photograph of three cats zooming down a walkway on razor scooters, I first found a location that featured a meandering path alongside some rolling hills green with spring grass. Next I arranged to have an animal trainer bring several "professional" cats to my photography studio. I worked from a layout that is a drawing, of what the final image should look like. I might add here that the image was originally created for a greeting card company and their art director drew up the layout. Using the layout, I made sure I photographed each part of each cat in the position and lighting that I would need to put the final photograph together. When we do our shoots for these images, we make sure we also have on hand any props and/or wardrobe apparel that we might need. In this case that was only the scooter. After photographing the cats, the scooters, and the location, I use Photoshop to put all the images together into one final photograph.

Animal Trainers And Professional Talent
When photographing animals for specific pre-visualized images it is a good idea to have an animal trainer that is familiar with the animal talent. I am always impressed with how a good animal trainer can get the most out of animals without stressing them. A stressed pet is not a good model! As it is it takes a tremendous amount of patience to work with animals, particularly when you need to get all the very specific angles and parts that I need to get in order to complete one of these photos. A good trainer, a professional animal (one who is used to these environments and is chosen for their tolerance of such things) and lots of time can usually be counted on to produce the results we need. But not always...so we tend to arrange, whenever possible, to have back-up animals on hand. An important point about a good animal trainer (we use Bow Wow Productions) is that they usually have back-up animals. That is, they can bring two or three cats that have a very similar appearance, so if one cat just doesn't feel like working on a given day, they have one or more that can be substituted.

Ganging Up Your Animal Shoots
This all doesn't come cheaply. We make our dollars go further by ganging up our animal shoots. We try and shoot enough animals at once to provide for a dozen or more images. Usually this means about three consecutive days of photographing animals, two days for shooting props and wardrobe, and a day or so for shooting locations...and that doesn't even account for location scouting, finding props and wardrobe, and casting for the right animal talent. On top of that, it takes me at least a day of digital imaging for each of our photos.

Cows Are Harder Than Elephants
We now have over 200 hundred of these silly animal pictures in our collection...and we are still adding more. Recently we have added a number of elephant and cow photos. As you can imagine, cows and elephants are much more difficult to photograph than cats and dogs. Cows are harder than elephants. You can have an elephant sit, stand; lift its feet, etc. Cows, well, they just stand there and look at you like you are an idiot!

Mice Are Tough…And They Bite!
Mice are also difficult to photograph. They are so small that you have to move in tightly to get a good image to work with. If you need to have them holding something, then it is necessary to get a tight shot of their little hands…and as cute as those little hands are, they are very difficult to get in focus and in the correct position. The mice don’t exactly pay attention to our requests…and they have this habit of moving quickly and unexpectedly. Trainers don’t like to work with them either…they have nasty little bites!

Give It Time
But whether you are shooting mice or elephants, remember to shoot for a collection, to grant only the rights that a client needs and/or is good at distributing, create high-quality mock-ups, get an advance, and don’t assume that other people are going to do their jobs correctly. Oh yeah, and give it time. It was three years before my greeting card efforts finally began to pay off.

Funny Cow Picture And A Lot To Learn

Funny Cow Pictures And Wall Decor
Every so often I create an image that just makes me happy, and this is one of them.
I had a request from a wall décor company to produce a series of  “funny cow pictures” for them to distribute as matted and framed prints. My first reaction was not exactly enthusiastic. I had a hard time envisioning cow pictures that would be of any interest in a fine art sense. But what the heck, I thought I’d give it a try. For one thing, if I were to create a series of cow pictures for the wall décor company I would retain all other rights and possibly have some good material for stock photos. Funny Holstein dairy cow stock photos, but stock photos nonetheless!

Google Searches And Cool Stock Photos
This opportunity came about because of the effort I have been putting into my web site. The wall décor company found me through a Google search. While the matted and framed prints may or may not end up being successful, this (admittedly self-proclaimed) cool stock photo was a direct result of having my work found online. Twenty plus years of selling stock images have taught me two things: First, this image will sell. Secondly, I cannot predict what images will be successful. Oh well….

Mountain Peaks, Holsteins And Seals
But getting back to that cow image. After finishing the compositing work I zoomed in to 100% to check for dust spots or other possible problems. I almost didn’t see the seals! The mountain peak in the image that the Holstein is standing on is actually a rock formation just off of ocean beach in San Francisco. When I photographed it, and during the compositing work, I never noticed the seals laying in the shadows on the rock! Like they say, the devil is in the details….

Variations, Angles And A Lot To Learn
The sky was photographed during a road trip through Colorado. The cow was photographed as part of a greeting card image.  I thought I had done a pretty thorough job of covering the Holstein when I photographed it, but now I wish I had shot a lot more variations and angles.  I still need to come up with at least a dozen more “cowscapes” and I am a little thin on cow photos and ideas. Here I am, 58 years old, having shot professionally for over thirty years, and a Photoshop user for nineteen years, and I still have so much to learn! 

Efficiency, Productivity And Strategic Thinking
I can greatly increase my efficiency and productivity if I learn to think more strategically before a shoot. The Holstein dairy cow I photographed cost me $1,200.00 to rent (including the animal trainer). If I had thought about the shoot in terms of stock production rather than in getting what I needed for a given greeting card image, I’d be in a much better place for maximizing my return on that money. But, nonetheless, I do have what I think will be a successful stock image, the end result of efforts that I have put into my web site. And maybe even more importantly, I have an image that was both fun and satisfying to create.

The Blue Angels And A funny Animal Stock Photo

The Blue Angels And Stock Photography
From my Sausalito studio I can catch glimpses of the Blue Angels as they make their practice runs for Fleet Week.  Whenever they fly overhead I have this vague sense of guilt that I am not out there photographing them. Last year at this time I decided that I would figure out something I could do with them for stock images. I even went as far as to pull out my longest lens (Canon 100-400 zoom) and shoot a few frames. I downloaded the images and pulled them up on my screen, then sat there puzzling?  Speed was the obvious concept with this image, but how could I take this further? What could I do to create an image that went beyond the obvious and the doubtless hundreds, maybe thousands, of flickr images of the blue angels?

Focus, Fire and Duck!
I began to go through a folder I keep of interesting photos that I think have potential, but pictures that I haven't figured out what to do with yet.  I came across an image of a duck in flight.  I had been on that little tourist train at the San Diego Zoo, with that same zoom lens at the ready, when two ducks came flying alongside.  I frantically tried to focus and fire and managed to squeeze off three shots before they were gone. To my utter amazement two of the tree images were actually sharp! That never seems to happen for me in those kinds of moments.

A Duck, A Jet Fighter, And Photoshop
At any rate, here is this duck image, which just jumps out at me.  I can put the duck in the formation of jets. If nothing else it will be a pretty funny picture.  This poor duck working like hell to keep up! But the shots I had of the jets were just too far away and they just weren't working.  Then I remembered that in my studio I had, packed away, a realistic model of a jet fighter.  It was left over from some project that I know longer remember. Luckily the box was labeled and in sight.  I pulled the model out and had a friend hold it up while I photographed it.  I used a clipping path in Photoshop to silhouette the plane and strip it into a sky background.  I did the same with the duck. I duplicated the plane image several times, positioned the elements into a formation that seemed to work, and then applied some motion blur to disguise some less-than realistic detail.

Believable Isn’t One Of My Criteria
This whole process took about two hours to go through. Isn't digital great? I uploaded the image to the Getty portal. Three weeks later they informed me that the image wasn't believable and rejected it.  Wasn't believable? Duh! “Believable” however, isn’t one of my criteria.  One test I have for my stock photos is, can I put a headline to it.  In this case it might be “Having A Hard Time Keeping Up?” or “Feeling The Need For Speed?”.  OK, marginal.  But another test I have is do people smile when they see it? And the answer with this image has been yes.

Funny Animal Pictures And Photographer’s Choice
I could have followed-up my Getty effort with their Photographer’s Choice program, in which case as long as the technical criteria are met they will take the image (and I pay a small fee).  However, in this case, because the image is pretty much a “funny animal” picture, and I was feeling a little miffed at Getty, I submitted the image to Kimball Stock, an agency specializing in, of all things, animals and cars. Maybe I should have had the duck driving a race car! Oh well….

Funny Animal Stock Photo To The Rescue!

Cats And Dogs With Paintbrushes
A friend of mine owns a painting company and asked me to create an image to help him promote his business as he enters the slow winter months. In the past I have helped him with images of dogs holding paintbrushes and so forth. The animal-centered promotions have worked extremely well for him. After the first mailing he remarked to me that it was the first time ever that no one had contacted him wanting to be taken off the mailing list.

Funny Cats And Dogs Doing Human Activities
The first thing I did was to go through my Animal Antics images, a collection of funny cat and dog pictures, in which these pets are doing human activities, that I created for a greeting card line. If I could find the right image to start with it would save me the work and expense of shooting animals, locations, props and of all the stripping out of hair and fur that would be necessary. To charge adequately for putting together such a photo would take it far out of my friends price-range.

A Weimaraner, A Beagle And Two Cats
I found a likely candidate in a get well greeting card featuring a Weimaraner, a Beagle, and two cats, all waiting at a front door and holding soup, flowers and accessories for someone feeling “under the weather”. My friend, (we’ll call him Greg since his name is Greg), had asked me to create an image that included a stormy environment and the pets safe inside their home. I wasn’t coming up with a way to effectively show the pets inside and a storm outside. But when I saw the get-well card photo I realized I could drop a storm scene behind the pets and put various painting tools in their arms and come up with a great image to fit Greg’s needs. And I wouldn’t have to re-invent the wheel either. A great headline for the resulting image would be “We Are Here To Help!”

A Paint Brush, Masking Tape, And A Ninety-Seven-Layer Photoshop File
I gathered up some painting supplies and photographed each item separately. I pulled up my original layered Photoshop file for the greeting card. I used a clipping path to create a selection around each object: a paint can, a paint brush, a roller, some sand paper, a putty knife and a roll of blue masking tape. I copied and pasted each of the items into place in the layered file (after eliminating the layers containing the original get-well objects). Then it was just a matter of adding some shadows and dropping a stormy sky into the background. When I was finished I had a nice little, ninety-seven layer, Photoshop file!

Royalty Free, Micro Stock Or Rights Managed
What I now have is a humorous image that can be easily used by any painting contractor, distributor of painting supplies, or related business, to promote and advertise their enterprises. Now Greg certainly isn’t going to want someone else from his area using that image. If this stock photo is released as a royalty free or micro stock image, then there would be no control over that. You can see how the effectiveness of such a compelling image would be dramatically curtailed if more than one painting business were to use the image in any given client base. As a Rights Managed image, this picture can be used by many, many clients, with each one able to insure that they can get the exclusivity they want and need, and I, as the creator of the image, can get a premium for the imagination, creativity and plain old work that goes into such images.

A Key To Success
Choosing whether an image belongs in Royalty Free (includes Micro stock), or Rights Managed is one of my hardest tasks and one of the keys to optimizing your stock income. Ultimately I believe the success of a stock photo depends more on the photo and less on whether it is RM or RF. However, it can make a big difference and so I believe it is important to carefully weigh the criteria and try to make an informed choice. Oddly enough, in the case of this funny pet picture, I believe that by putting the image in an RM collection I am being of the most service to the client. It is hard to go wrong if you are putting the client first.

My flickr Experiment

I am amazed at how resistant I am to trying new things! Specifically I am talking about using social media and the Internet. I believe in the Internet, I rely tremendously on technology, was a very early adopter of Photoshop and digital capture, and yet I still resist a lot of the new and even not-so-new developments.
I am writing this because I have just dipped my toe in yet another pool of water…flickr. I am not thrilled about the prospect of spending time learning something else that may or may not work for me (when I would rather be spending the time making my images). But I guess as part of my ongoing growth, and my determination to keep my career in stock photography a healthy one, it is in my best interests to forge ahead and familiarize myself with another part of this stock-photo-Internet puzzle. After all, Getty is mining flickr, I have encountered a number of Art Directors who peruse flickr, and certainly gazillions of people log on to flickr just to look at photos!

So I just opened a Flicker account and uploaded five images. In the beginning I am just uploading my funny anthropomorphic animal pictures. Most of these images are not with any agency, and the ones that are with a stock agency are with Kimball Stock where they are available as non-exclusive rights managed images. If I choose to license the images myself I can still do so.

Now What? I decided to do a search to see how long it would take to find one of my images. I searched under “massage” and “cats” since one of the images I upload was one of my “Animal Antics” images of one cat giving another a massage. Well, it didn’t take long! My image was the second one that showed up! It was however uploaded by someone else. It was also the fourth one, and the seventh one, and…a lot more times as I looked deeper and deeper, but nowhere was my name ever mentioned, and I gave up searching before I found the one I uploaded. Not exactly the most encouraging start to my flickr experiment!

It seems pointless to try and police my copyright in these cases…it will just use up my time and there certainly isn’t any compensation to be gained. What I did do was to leave a comment on several of my pirated images that the image in question was mine and that they could see more of my work at my website (I included my URL). If nothing else, maybe I can use the misappropriation of my images to help direct traffic to my site. Time will tell! If any of you have any suggestions about how to use flickr to promote your photography business, or how to deal with infringement of this kind, I’d love to hear it!