Beautiful Nova Scotia

Had a wonderful week in Nova Scotia last week.  The east coast is so beautiful.  It's just so calm over there.  Everyone was hospitable and friendly.
 
I still can't believe that I finally got to see the Appalachians and they're absolutely beautiful.  Though the mountains on the east coast are not majestic like the Rockies in the west, these mountains overlook the Atlantic Ocean and driving through the Cape Breton Highlands on the Cabot Trail was definitely the highlight of the trip for me.

In terms of photography, I was trying to play with getting shots suitable for HDR as well I was hoping to capture depth in my shots (to give a more 3-D effect).  Hope you like them.

For more of my work, you can visit http://www.flickr.com/photos/joekyng/ or http://joe-k-ng.artistwebsites.com/

JN

Happy Canada Day!

Happy belated Canada Day everyone. 

My partner and I spent the day in a little town called Naigara-on-the-Lake.  A last minute decision and it was tremendous fun.  Finally got to try our hands on taking photographs of fireworks.  The results are okay considering we forgot to bring our tripod with us.  Dumb mistake, I know. 

Fort George, one of the main attractions in town, was free all day on Canada Day and it was a fun visit.  I love taking images of oldish lifestyle stuff.  That's where the fireworks display took place too.



This is one of the images I took at Fort George.  I converted it to sepia and I thought it works quite well.  Simple but it conveys an oldish kind of a western feel.




The bustling town of Niagara-on-the-Lake was packed with people.  We saw colourful garden spinners for sale at one of the vendors and we started taking pictures of the spinners as some of them were spinning.  The owner probably thought we were weirdos, but oh well.  I thought the effect was pretty awesome.

JN

A night at a resort

Spent a weekend at a resort last week and the room had an electric fireplace.  The picture on the left was taken with 15 seconds exposure - thought the effect came out pretty good.  Gives that warm and cozy feeling.  What does everyone think?  (For the full version, please click here.)


Alas, spring is here...here hoping I'll take a few good shots this year.

JN

A different type of photography

Today I went to a rally in downtown Toronto - one of many such rallies across Canada.  We came out to demonstrate and protest against our Prime Minister's decision to prorogue (suspend) the Parliament.  I thought it'd be a good occasion for me to pick up the camera again - have been on a photography break given the cold weather.  It was a bit chilly but it was for a worthwhile cause.

This is the first time that I did photography for journalistic purpose and it was quite fun.  It was quite meaningful to capture the spirit of the event.  I don't usually get this kind of feeling when I take nature shots.  I think I'll be doing more of this type of photography in the future.

Here are some of the images I captured at the rally.  What do you think?

A month in review

Thought it would be fun to analyze my upload and download numbers at the end of the month.  Below are my numbers for October.  Not the best in terms of sales, especially for DT but what I am most excited about is the fact that SS has almost overtaken DT as my best earning agency.  SS has also more than made up for the loss in revenue that I sacrificed when I ended being an exclusive photographer for DT.  The remarkable thing about SS is two-fold: 1) SS didn't come into the picture until mid-October; and 2) SS is only 1/6 of my DT portfolio.  I can't imagine what SS can bring me after a full month and with a bigger portfolio. 

Stock Agency	Online	New Uploads	Downloads	$	$ per download	%
Dreamstime	331	9	15	$14.84	$0.99	48.91%
Shutterstock	52	52	58	$14.50	$0.25	47.79%
BSP	114	2	2	$1.00	$0.50	3.30%
IS	9	9	0	$0.00	0	0.00%
Fotolia	70	3	0	$0.00	0	0.00%
TOTAL:			75	$30.34	N/A	100.00%

Micro Stock Agencies Review

EDITED: October 24, 2009 (Thanks to Luis' comment, it turns out my rant on keywording is somewhat moot now because of a free software that I could have used.  Here's Luis' blog article on this software.)


I thought I'd do a brief preliminary review of the micro stock agencies that I currently contribute to.
(DT = Dreamstime
BSP = BigStockPhoto
SS = Shutterstock
ISP = Istockphoto)

Dreamstime.com

As I have written before (Click here to see previous blog), I have nothing but good things to say about DT.  My choice to end my exclusivity agreement with DT back in August was a personal one.  I would definitely recommend anyone who's new to stock photography to join DT.  I have been with DT for two years and counting, and I absolutely enjoy my time there. 

The uploading process (I might be bias) is quite easy.  Keywording is simple because you just hit the "space" bar after each keyword.  Also, it has a feature that allows you to refer keywords from a prevous file that you had uploaded and you just make changes from that set of keywords.  This saves a lot of time if you're uploading a series of photos of the same theme (eg. Thanksgiving, Halloween)

Fotolia.com 

I joined this site back in August 2009.  As of today's date, I have 70 images online and only two sales.  I find the uploading process easy, but the filling out the details part very tedious, especially when choosing various categories.  Also, when keywording, it requires you to hit "enter" after each keyword, so with my existing DT files, I can't simply copy and paste my keywords. I have to manually hit "enter" for each word.  I still have over 200 images from my existing DT portfolio to finish uploading and keywording.  I will definitely need to catch a second wind before I can complete the remaining images. 

Since I'm not selling as well as some other agencies (see below), I'm not in a hurry. 


Bigstockphoto.com

I joined BSP back in August 2009.  As of today's date, I have 112 images online and only four sales.  The uploading and keywording process is extremely easy.  Better yet, I simply copy and paste from the keywords from my DT's files.

Their review time is pretty fast but it's ashame that the sales don't seem to be there.

Shutterstock.com
*Requires potential contributors to take a quiz and submit 10 images for approval before uploading more images

SS has got to be the most pleasant surprise for me so far.  I knew from the get go SS and ISP (see below) are leaders in this industry.  So I sort of wanted to at least contribute to one of the two - if anything, just wanted to see what all the fuss is about.  Many claim that SS is their top earner and I didn't think it's possible when they only make 25 cents per download.

Well before getting any downloads, I first must get my first 10 images approved by SS.  I ran into a couple of hiccups with SS as my intial batch of images was rejected.  Their policies require that we wait 30 days before re-submitting new images for approval.  This was back in mid-August.  And then, my images were rejected again in September.  I had completely written SS off until last week when I got an email from SS inviting me to re-submit a new batch of images.  Quite courteous of them I thought.  Without much expectation and really nothing to lose, I submitted 10 new images and within the next day, I received an email informing me that 9 of the 10 images had been approved.  So now, I am able to submit images with SS. (I think you need 7 of 10 approved).

SS' review time is phenomenal.  Their upload and keywording process is easy.  In 3 days, I have  22 26 approved images online already.  And better yet, I have 6  10 downloads! 

True, SS is a subscription-based agency, so my sales are only $0.25 each but I can totally see SS outgrossing both Fotolia and BSP, combined, by next Friday.

Istockphoto.com

*Requires potential contributors to take a quiz and submit 3 samples for approval before uploading any images.  Note the three samples approved do not get added into the contributor's portfolio. 

Being a leader in this industry, I am quite disappointed with ISP.  I can't comment too much on this agency as I didn't have enough patience to upload too many images to ISP to really appreciate its system.  My three sample images were approved in August and so I was able to upload to ISP.

Among the many disappointments, I was only able to upload one file at a time (couldn't find their FTP feature if they have it) and after each upload, I must insert the description and keywords before I could upload any more files.  (October 23, 2009 - I learnt today that there's a batch upload application that I can use.  I'll test it out and see how things go now that I could upload multiple images.  So I've deleted most of my comments re ISP - JN)  Their review process isn't the longest, but it's definitely not the quickest.  I just didn't have enough patience to do this consistently, so I only have 6 uploads, so not surprisingly, I have no sales.  For now, I have no plans to continue with ISP.

If you have any comments or suggestions, please feel free to leave me a comment.  Thanks.

I think I'll be doing a review periodically on these agencies. 

Cheers,

JN

Yellow Flower Macro

It was an even nicer day today than yesterday. So went out for a long walk and enjoyed more fall colours before they disappear into the snow.  Came across a bright yellow flower so  I put on my micro 60 mm lens and shot the image on the right.

For a full version, please click here.

PS: If any one knows the name of this flower, please let me know.  I don't think it's  a sun flower, but I could be wrong.  Thanks.

JN