In my previous I failed to mention this list of stock sites. It is the source I plan to use for doing more research into other options that work for me. There are other non-stock links there that might prove to be valuable as well.
Down the road, Stockmodels.com could come in useful for locating models. (NOTE: Be warned that some images on that site might be NSFW.)
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Stock situation
Well by now everyone knows the Photo Shelter Collection news. It leaves lots of people like me wondering where to turn for selling stock images. I've been doing a bit of searching the net and found a few resources that can be helpful.
There's also some good advice on this post. While I agree with most of those sentiments, I'd like to avoid microstock altogether.
Personally I think the closing of PSC leaves a bit of a void for options. I'd love to join something like Digital Railroad but the cost of using their service wouldn't allow me to ever get out of the red. The Independent Photography Network not only has high costs, but qualifications I don't meet.
Almay seems to be the only real option for non-microstock with no subscription fees (although I'm looking for others and I suspect they are out there). Too bad, as they are not US based, which I feel can sometimes influence what will sell. It's nice to have as a compliment to a US based company, but don't think it should be my only avenue.
With a smaller collection like mine, one thing I really liked about PSC was their stock requests feed. Rather than try to put pictures into the cloud that is searched by stock buyers, it was nice to see exactly what stock buyers have for immediate needs. A service like that is specifically what I'm interested in finding now. I've found a few that were subscription based, but nothing else yet that is free.
More to come.... If you have information to share I'd love to hear it.
- Stock imaging forum
- The Photo Shelter Collection Flickr group
- numerous other stock groups on Flickr (some of which have NOTHING to do with stock photography
There's also some good advice on this post. While I agree with most of those sentiments, I'd like to avoid microstock altogether.
Personally I think the closing of PSC leaves a bit of a void for options. I'd love to join something like Digital Railroad but the cost of using their service wouldn't allow me to ever get out of the red. The Independent Photography Network not only has high costs, but qualifications I don't meet.
Almay seems to be the only real option for non-microstock with no subscription fees (although I'm looking for others and I suspect they are out there). Too bad, as they are not US based, which I feel can sometimes influence what will sell. It's nice to have as a compliment to a US based company, but don't think it should be my only avenue.
With a smaller collection like mine, one thing I really liked about PSC was their stock requests feed. Rather than try to put pictures into the cloud that is searched by stock buyers, it was nice to see exactly what stock buyers have for immediate needs. A service like that is specifically what I'm interested in finding now. I've found a few that were subscription based, but nothing else yet that is free.
More to come.... If you have information to share I'd love to hear it.
Monday, September 1, 2008
HDRI links
In the past I've taken a few sets of bracketed exposure images in the hopes of combining them into a High Dynamic Range Image. I finally started doing a little more research into what software would be best to use. It certainly sounds like Photomatix has been the de facto standard for a while. There are a few other alternatives, however, and I wanted to find out which was the best one for my needs.
In the process of searching for some comparisons, I ran across this DP Review post identifying some options, and this tutorial with some amazing images.
I downloaded and tried "Dynamic Photo HDR" and Photomatix to see what I could do with them using my images. The first thing I found out was that clouds can move faster than you think. :-) I took several shots of sunsets that clearly showed the clouds in different locations from one exposure to the next. Ignoring that fact (or we can say I was trying the programs to see how they would handle that situation), what I did find was that I liked the price and UI of Dynamic Photo HDR better than Photomatix. Unfortunately when I went to produce a JPG (tone map) of the previewed image in Dynamic Photo HDR, it came out looking nothing like I expected. It was much darker and lost all of the cool HDR details I was looking for. Photomatix did a much better job in that respect. Note, I let them both take in my Canon RAW files and didn't even have to produce JPGs to get started. I did like that, and it looks like Photomatix has some capabilities to produce a pseudo HDR image from a RAW file that I didn't see in Dynamic Photo HDR.
I haven't spent enough time to make a decision yet, as I think I must be doing something wrong to get such poor results with Dynamic Photo HDR. If I could get that to work it would be my choice.
In the process of searching for some comparisons, I ran across this DP Review post identifying some options, and this tutorial with some amazing images.
I downloaded and tried "Dynamic Photo HDR" and Photomatix to see what I could do with them using my images. The first thing I found out was that clouds can move faster than you think. :-) I took several shots of sunsets that clearly showed the clouds in different locations from one exposure to the next. Ignoring that fact (or we can say I was trying the programs to see how they would handle that situation), what I did find was that I liked the price and UI of Dynamic Photo HDR better than Photomatix. Unfortunately when I went to produce a JPG (tone map) of the previewed image in Dynamic Photo HDR, it came out looking nothing like I expected. It was much darker and lost all of the cool HDR details I was looking for. Photomatix did a much better job in that respect. Note, I let them both take in my Canon RAW files and didn't even have to produce JPGs to get started. I did like that, and it looks like Photomatix has some capabilities to produce a pseudo HDR image from a RAW file that I didn't see in Dynamic Photo HDR.
I haven't spent enough time to make a decision yet, as I think I must be doing something wrong to get such poor results with Dynamic Photo HDR. If I could get that to work it would be my choice.
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