Stock Shot Project

1st Quarter Update

Three months have gone by since I began this blog and I thought it might be time to pause and look at the results so far.  Despite the fact that I did some traveling in that time period, I did not miss a single day of posting to the blog.  I set out to take one shot a day for a year.  Taking photos is a lot like eating candy, one always leads to another.  On average I am finding that I take three or four images per day directly attributable to this blog.  So it looks like the blog project will increase my annual production by 1000-1400 images this year.  That is a substantial number, and more that I had thought I would do when I began this project.

Let's look at the results so far: Most of the blog images are still life or walk-around pick up shots.  This is very different from my normally scheduled shoots, which in the main include models.   I wanted to maintain this project as a low budget, opportunistic shooting event, and that is exactly what it is.  The first images from the project are just now entering the marketplace to be sold.  I would expect to see the first sales results around June, but the results will not be very meaningful because they only represent the return from a small number of images. 

The blog has had an ancillary benefit of keeping my mind constantly on stock production.  I find that my constant awareness of image concepts has increased and has resulted in a higher production rate in my normal workflow.  Typically in the past I produced around 50 images a day from a shoot.  Over the past few months my production has increased to a daily return of 60-80 images per day.  This is directly attributable to the mind set I am in as a result of having to come up with one blog shot each and every day.  The stock photography equivalent of writer's block is a serious impediment to a steady stream of image production.  A project such as this is a nice home-remedy for that.

Happy Valentine's Day!