Unexpected Revelations of Beauty and Grace

I have spent the last week learning Final Cut Pro and getting started editing some 500+ clips shot with the Phantom HD high-speed video camera. The camera can shoot 1000 frames a second at HD resolutions. The results can be truly mesmerizing. Thankfully, editing the clips for stock is relatively simple. Nonetheless, learning to use “four point garbage mattes”, 3-way color correction filters, and Time Lines has been a bit challenging. But all of it is worthwhile when I get to view a few seconds of unexpected beauty and grace. For one such moment check out the video at the bottom of this post.

The opportunity to shoot with the Phantom came about because over the years I have had a close working relationship with GVS systems, a Leading developer and manufacturer of ruggedized digital video recorders and media management for the aerospace, broadcast, defense, digital cinema, post production, and sports worlds. They needed a beta tester for an elegant solution they have come up with for the challenges of shooting with the Phantom. Their software/hardware solution (GVS9000 2XU 444 VTR) is capable of dealing with the huge quantities of data captured by the camera (32 gigabytes every 4 seconds) in a simple and efficient way.

This was demonstrated to me dramatically when I went on line and checked for alternate Phantom workflows. In one forum I read this:

Download the cine files to harddrive and use Gluetools (Mac) / Phantom Control Software (PC) to mov file in lower resolution workable format for offline. Once edit is locked use Iridas FrameCycler Pro / SpeedGrade HD to conform the edl with Cine files. Iridas products can access cine files directly. The other option is using Gluetools you can relink the offline files with Cine files and then directly export as DPX log frames (settings needs to be done in system preference based on various options and choice) and then take back to Color Grading and output your work to TV / Film.

Phew! I am reminded of what a novice I truly am…and how simple the world of stock clips is. With the GVS workflow we captured the scene, then were able to view the results within seconds at whatever frame rate we wanted. If we liked those results, we “clicked” on “capture” and the raw footage was converted to Pro Res QuickTime movies and saved to the hard drive on the fly, again in only a few seconds. Now I am editing those QuickTime movies in Final Cut pro.

The simple workflow allowed us to focus on coming up with and capturing what David Fischer, the photographer I was collaborating with, called the “unexpected revelation”. Over the coming weeks, I will combine learning Final Cut Pro with narrowing those 500 clips down to the fifty or sixty best. Those clips will then be submitted to stock agencies and go up on my site.

I am not sure yet how large a role video will play in my stock future. But this brief foray is proving alluring. I have enjoyed collaborating with other photographers in the shooting stage. Learning Final Cut, while a bit challenging, does feel good. I guess if I could shoot with that Phantom all the time it would be a no brainer. It feels more akin to the concept images I make in stills…and when we find one of those “revelations”, well, it just doesn’t get much better than that!

A Knock Your Socks Off Stock Photo

A Knock Your Socks Off Stock Photo

It is always exciting for me when I come up with an image idea that doesn’t seem to have been done before, and that is relevant to the market. I no longer remember when I first had the idea to create a “Knock your socks off” image, but the idea was rekindled when my girlfriend, Stephanie, was showing me how she could flex her toes. I checked on Getty and Corbis and didn’t see any similar imagery. This is potentially a really great stock image. It is a concept stock photo that can be applied to any product or service, or even to something as generic as a sale. The image has humor going for it. Funny pictures can be powerful attention grabbers. The photo is simple, a quick read, and has an “iconic” place in our culture. Another side benefit of an image like this one is the relative inexpensive nature of creating it.

The big decision for me was whether to have a “dust” cloud showing to emphasize that the socks are being “blown” off of the feet. There was also some question as to whether the toes should be articulated so much. Ultimately I decided that the dust clouds would help make the message more obvious, and that the articulated toes added to the humor.

The shoot was simple; I had Stephanie sit on the edge of a table and flex her toes. I lit her feet with a beauty dish above the camera and a soft box behind and on either side. I used Profoto 7B flash units. I filled a pair of socks with bubble wrap and positioned them on a light stand. I used the same lighting set-up as with Stephanie’s feet, and fired off a few frames. To create the dust cloud I used some face powder that had been left in my studio at some point. I created a pile of it on a piece of white foam core, then sprayed the pile with canned air with one hand while shooting with a Canon 1ds MKIII in the other. Not really a recommended technique, but it worked. Of course, my studio smelled like face powder for a week!

I used the pen tool to create clipping paths around both the feet and socks, then converted the paths into selections. I created a new “canvas”, then pasted the feet into place. Next I brought in the socks and sized and positioned them. I brought in two of the dust shots and created layer masks to fade them away into the background. I then duplicated the feet layers and dragged those new layers to the top. The next step was to create layer masks to hide the new feet layers, then I used white “paint’ with the airbrush to create the illusion that the feet were showing through the dust clouds.

All in all, it only took a few hours to put the photograph together. The final question is whether the image should be a Rights Managed image, or a Royalty Free one. I finally decided that I would stick with RM on this one. An image like this one will probably do equally well in either model, but my ego tends towards Rights Managed, and that’s how this “blow your socks” off image ended up.

Service As A Guide To Stock Photo Success

If I had to use one word to describe my strategy for success in the stock photo world it would be service. Service isn’t necessarily a word that you might associate with success in stock photography, but hopefully I can present a convincing case for it. Business Gurus often say that service paves the road to riches. I think it is true. Let me explain.

Service as a stock photographer reveals itself in several ways. As an example let’s look at an experience I had yesterday. A doctor on the east coast emailed me asking if she could use one of my photos in a power point presentation. The image was of a patient and doctor consulting in a recovery room…with an elephant standing in the background. The doctor is presenting to a group of her peers. It is very important to her to give a powerful, interesting and effective presentation.

The first way that I was in service to this doctor was by creating an image that goes beyond your normal everyday image. The photograph is not just out of the ordinary, but it is also relevant with a quick, clear message. When you create images that stand out from the crowd, have a strong message and are needed in the marketplace, you are in service to your clients.

But how can you take that service even further? By making it as easy and efficient as possible for potential clients to find your images. When the doctor was looking for an image, she typed into Google “elephant in the recovery room”. I just did the same thing to check and see how quickly that image would show up. My image came up first on the Google search. Now that is service! As they say, time is money. If you can save a client time and effort your images can command a higher price point, and if it takes too long to find that image it dosen’t matter what price you charge, you aren’t going to make that sale (yes, I know, we license the images rather than sell them).

I believe in agencies; they do have the “eyeballs”, the traffic if you will. But I also believe in supplementing those agencies by putting your images online and making them easy for people to find. In the above example the doctor contacted me because the image in question has not yet been accepted by an agency. Once it is with an agency collection, my site will direct people interested in licensing it to that agency. BTW, the “elephant in the recovery room” image was submitted to Getty two weeks ago but has not yet been edited (accepted or rejected). Another "aside", I am the patient in that image:).

Being in service to your stock photo clients means getting your images up online with a search capability, great key wording and a large enough image for a client to easily see details and quality. It also means serious SEO (search engine optimization). Without the SEO component, all that work you put into creating great images might go to waste.

Service is rewarded. Keeping in mind how you can be of service to your clients will keep you on the right path. Service to your fellow photographers will also find its reward. You can’t always tell how or in what form that reward will come, but I have seen it happen too often to not understand the truth of it.

Creating A Social Media Stock Photo

Social media and social networking are huge topics right now and there is a need for images representing them. They are also, in my opinion, difficult to create images for. That is a good thing. If I am correct it means there will be inherently less competition for the images that I come up with. In this environment of image over supply that is a critical criteria for me.

I don’t remember exactly what sparked this latest idea, but it was centered on the intention of coming up with those “social media” themes. Oh, I do remember! It was those “flickr photo clouds” that Getty is promoting. I thought, geez, I should do my own photo clouds. Somehow, when I see Getty, with whom I have such a large image investment, promoting their flickr collection so prominently, I tend to feel a tad anxious and resentful. The trick is to channel that hit of energy into creativity and productivity. Then it occurred to me that I could have a “photo” cloud around a person’s head indicating their “connections” on social media sites. The image could also work for networking, business connections, even communications in general.

I got pretty excited. Over the last few years I have shot plenty of images of people that I can pull the “cloud images” from. I browsed through some of my recent shoots to see if I could find a “base” image, one with a model in a situation and pose that would work. I needed an image with a fairly plain background. With all those smaller images floating around, the picture could get too busy very quickly. It is important that an image remain simple enough to be a quick read at thumbnail size, since virtually all images are first seen by prospective licensors as thumbnails. The photo should be a positive image with the primary model looking happy and confident. If the model was in a business environment it might help broaden the potential market for the image, expanding it into the realm of business networking.

It didn’t take long to find what seemed like the right image to work with. From an office shoot I did a little over a year ago, I came across an unused out take that in no way was a similar to any accepted shots. Once I had that image I just started looking through the numerous shoots that were readily available on my archive drives. Every time I found a likely shot for the cloud I just opened it, copied the portion I wanted, then pasted it into the base image.

It only took me a couple of hours and my image was done. Sort of. I sent the composite to my editor at Blend Images. He loved it. Hmmm, now the realization sets in. With so many pictures around the model's head, and some of them groups, I am going to have to come up with over a hundred model releases stretching back over five years! I wouldn’t be surprised if it took me two days to accomplish it! Well, guess I better quit blogging and get down to tracking down those releases!

Combining Stock Photography And Motion Footage

Several months ago some friends of mine, veteran and successful stock shooters, planned and carried out a fairly ambitious stock shoot, in Tahiti. They decided that they would like to include some stock footage in addition to their stills. They looked into renting a video camera, but in the end chose instead to hire a Director of Photography and fly him and a moderate amount of equipment (he did own his own camera) to Tahiti. I don’t know exactly what they paid, but it wasn’t cheap. However, stepping back and looking at the whole picture, the bulk of the expense for the shoot was already in place for the stills. Adding video to the mix, even if it wasn’t cheap, spreads out the financial risk of the whole shoot, adds the potential marketing point of having both stills and motion of the same material, and provides a relatively smooth avenue of learning the ropes of video.

My friends came back with great material, both stills and motion, and were very positive about the experience. Their still images are excellent, but that is expected. I have seen some of the footage and it is very good too. They are using the footage not just for stock, but also to promote their photography business as well. Having an experienced DP handle the technical side of shooting the video freed them up to explore their creativity and, in addition, enabled them to enjoy the experience more. The DP was also able to add to their vision with suggestions drawn from his own years of experience. The question now is whether their investment will pay off. Time will tell, and I suspect that the answer will be a resounding yes.

In seeking advice from photographers who have successfully incorporated motion into their businesses I have found that most recommend hiring a DP as my friends did. I also have encountered several who have taken it upon themselves to jump right in and shoot film or video themselves. I have taken the latter approach. About two years ago I bought a Panasonic HVX-200, an HD capable video cam. By the time I had bought the various accoutrements I needed (tripod, fluid head, P2 Card, case, basic lights etc.) I had about $12,000.00 invested. Here it is two years later and I personally have never shot with it!

I have, however, made the camera available to several of my “associates” in exchange for a percentage of the royalties. We now have about 50 clips online with Getty from these efforts. Those clips are bringing in about $1,000.00 per month average for the first six months they have been available. Interestingly enough, of all my stock photo sales for the first quarter of this year, four of my twenty best selling images are motion clips! My investment is a long ways from being recouped, but the results up this point are very intriguing.

The best selling clips I have so far were shot as an adjunct to a still shoot in which I rented a theater in Buenos Aires, and put on a mock rock concert. My friend and colleague Drew Kelly shot the video. Since the motion was piggybacked onto a still shoot you might say it didn’t cost anything. But the point is that the clips that are selling the best did have quite a bit of production behind them. Investing in stock shoots does have risk. You can lower that risk by combining motion and stills.

In another case of combining stills with motion I joined forces with fellow photographer David Fischer, and shot extensively with a Phantom HD High Speed camera. We shot stills as we could, but our primary efforts went into the motion. One of the still images, a dove being released by a magician, is posted above. Again, I believe the stills will pay for the effort regardless of whether our video is successful or not.

Combining stills with video adds to the difficulty of doing each well and thoroughly, but it spreads the risk. I also believe that it will become increasingly important to advertisers to be able to access both stills and motion from the same shoot. Right now agencies are not geared up to promote this advantage, but eventually I believe they will. It only makes sense. Even more importantly, I am comfortable with the still end of things. I know those stills will make me money even if I totally blow it with the motion and because of my comfort with stills I am much more likely to actually plan and carry out video shoots. And I am learning. Perhaps, in these times, that is the most important thing of all….

Stock Photo Success By Thinking Inside The Box

Sometimes thinking inside the box can work extremely well for stock photographers. After all, most of us think inside the box most of the time, and if we, as stock photographers, can create images that take advantage of that thinking, then we have a good chance for a great selling image. A good example of this is seen in the case of clichés.

A cliché is something that is very familiar to all of us, so familiar that it must have some basis in truth, or perceived truth, and, like going into Starbucks, can have that comforting feeling of the familiar. If you can find the right cliché and illustrate it in a new and interesting way, then thinking inside the box can really pay off.

In the example I have here, we have all seen cartoons of patients in a body cast and traction. We all have a mental picture in our minds from those cartoons, a stereotypical image that probably doesn’t actually exist in real life. I did a search on the major stock sites and found only a smattering of body cast images, none of which matched that ubiquitous cartoon version that resides in our heads.

I arranged for permission to shoot in a surgery center. My associate, Stephanie Roeser, created a body in a plaster cast using pipe insulation and, plaster impregnated gauze purchased from a medical supply company. I photographed the body cast prop in position on a hospital bed in the recovery room. Next I lay down on the bed and had Stephanie photograph me. Then it was a simple matter to use Photoshop to add my fingers, toes, eyes and nose to the cast double.

The finished image works for a wide variety of concepts in business to business (B2B), consumer advertising, and even editorial use. This “traction” image even goes beyond medical and pharmaceutical categories one would expect. It can be used to illustrate themes such as dependency, catastrophe, and risk. Creative art directors will no doubt be able to find yet other uses for the image (one of the fun things about shooting stock is seeing the cool ways other creatives use your work).

Thinking outside the box is a great goal, but sometimes thinking inside the box can produce some pretty good results. Learn to leverage those visuals that are familiar to your potential audience and your stock photos will be in demand for a very long time.

Intention: A Powerful Tool For Success In Stock Photography

INTENTION is one of the most powerful tools you have at hand for achieving success in the stock photography business. I have written several times about generating stock photo ideas, and that I believe “Intention” is the primary tool for doing so. That is, having the INTENT to come up with a stock photo idea makes practically any other endeavor in that direction work.

I think the same thing is true when trying to learn from looking at the photography of others. Have the INTENT to learn something. It is a great exercise to decide consciously that you are going to learn something from looking at other photographer’s work. That “something” might be lighting or propping and styling or Photoshop effects. Whatever it is, if you set the intention first then look at pictures, the learning is almost guaranteed.

This morning I came into work and had the INTENT to create a stock photo from existing files that I had on hand. I keep a large number of images in a folder I call“Resource Images”. I continually add to the folder and occasional purge images. This repository, or library of images provides me with such “parts” as skies, backgrounds, textures and occasionally, people, to utilize as necessary in the creation of my stock photos.

This library of pictures also acts as a kind of idea playground for me. Often I will decide to create an image on the spur of the moment and turn to these images for ideas as well as for parts. I will find an image that catches my eye and start to play with it, putting it in different backgrounds, maybe combining the image with another, or altering it in some way, to create a viable stock shot.

Sometimes I find all the parts I need to create an image, sometimes I get an idea but need to shoot some more to bring the idea to fruition, and sometimes it is just an exercise in frustration. This morning things came together and I was able to create a stock photo and send it off to an agency for consideration (in this case I sent the photo to my editor at Corbis). I’ll let you know how it turns out!

The image (above) is a fabricated skyline, a cityscape of some future metropolis that doesn’t actually exist, except on my computer. The idea germinated as I looked at a skyline shot taken in Buenos Aires. The buildings looked very cool and futuristic. It occurred to me that a whole skyline of ultra modern buildings could be a very useful concept image for stock. I picked through my digital files finding some skyline shots of San Francisco that I could mine for buildings. I used Photoshop to combine and alter some of the buildings and to simply stretch-out and adjust the color of others.

I made sure that the finished image could be cropped either as a vertical or horizontal. This image isn’t going to set the world on fire, but I will be willing to bet that it sells reasonably well…and it only cost me a couple of hours work…nothing more.

Because I don’t see this image selling like gang busters I have submitted it for RM where there is actually more flexibility in pricing than in RF, where I get a larger percentage of each sale, and where there is always the possibility of a truly large sale. Large sales do still happen. Last month Getty sold one of my images for $18,000.00+. My share was over $8,000.00. Stock isn’t dead yet!

Getting back to my original point, intention is a potent tool for so much of what we do in stock photography; for coming up with ideas, for learning, and for creating images. Get in the habit of setting conscious intention; cool things happen when you do!