Stock Photography & Keeping up with Modern Technology

After laboring through my latest stock submission of 1,100 images, I have been coming to a conclusion over the past week that I need a more efficient workflow. I submit to a number of stock photo portals but hadn't been taking full advantage of all the options available to me. One of which is Lightboxes! Up til now I've just been creating galleries on my website and emailing them to prospective buyers, emailing low-res jpegs, or the old school way of mailing discs with print outs. I mean there's benefits to that too, namely lots of search engine traffic for my site, but that is not really the most efficient use of time.

So I've spent the past two days looking through the stock sites that I contribute to and learned how to set up lightboxes by emailing them to myself. They look good and gives the buyer flexibility in adding or removing images, something that is not an option on my main website currently. In the future I do plan on adding the MySQL-database, Lightbox Photo gallery software on my site to make it a fully searchable stock website with thousands of images. I'm working on figuring out the logistics of such an ambitious project as that would force me to learn more about website production than I ever planned to.

In the meantime, there are a lot of new companies out there to aid photographers with automated production, archiving and distribution tasks such as Digital Railroad, Photoshelter, etc... The drawback is that they are not cheap. Unless you plan on utilizing all of their features by integrating them onto your own site, or use them as your main website business, those sites would probably be a waste of your money. I do plan on following the status of Digital Railroad's new Marketplace feature though as that is essentially a massive stock photo website. That alone could make DRR a profitable venture for a photographer if you even get a sale or two per year through that service. However, my first priority is with continuing to grow my own website, then Alamy, then the other stock sites. So incorporating lightboxes into my submissions is going to be of high priority for me.

One service that I am with is Rohn Engh's Photo Source International. I've had portfolio listings with them for the past two months but now I'm really liking their lightbox feature that comes with it. I think the lightbox feature alone makes it a great deal for a do-it-yourself type of photography business. I'm glad to have discovered it tonight!

I just put together a Photo Source lightbox from Saturday's Central Coast images and I think it looks great. I plan to use it more than Alamy's lightbox since I want to deal directly with buyers, but there's more contact info on those lightboxes than I want to post on my blog here. I would be more inclined to use Alamy's though if they would let us photographers know who our images are being sold to. It makes it harder to market your photos and know what buyers are looking for when you haven't a clue who is buying your photos. That's Marketing 101. I have a bachelors degree in marketing management and a masters degree in advertising so I don't think that I am wrong about this. If anything, it would be beneficial to Alamy to provide us with that information. More sales for their photographers = more sales for Alamy. Obviously the more prosperous we are, the more photos we can provide to them. I don't think a homeless guy is capable of providing thousands of images to stock agencies.

Despite what I just wrote in the above paragraph, here is an Alamy lightbox I put together with some of my Eastern Sierra pictures. A few days ago, one of the scenic landscapes here sold as a double-page spread to run for three years in a U.S. textbook.

http://www.alamy.com/lbx.asp?318607

P.S.: don't get me wrong. I love Alamy. They give me a link to search my own image collection that I have on my main website, are non-exclusive, require no commitments, and are reliable when it comes to paying on time. They fit into what I want to accomplish so that is why I have been with them for two years now.

Bye Bye Miss American Pie

Picture: Valley Drive-in Theatre, Lompoc, California

On Saturday I made a real long day trip up the coast. After shooting for most of the day at Solvang, Mission Santa Ines and Mission La Purisima, I was heading through Lompoc on PCH towards Jalama Beach County Park when I spotted the Valley Drive-in Theatre so I made a quick U-Turn and went to snap a few photos. The theatre is now closed and there aren't very many drive-ins left nowadays so I had to photograph it. You can't see in this small blog post, but there is a near-full moon rising over the wall on the right side of this photo. I thought it was a quite fitting moment with the golden sunset lighting and moonrise over the theatre. Drive-in theatres have had their moment in the sun.

Seeing this theatre reminded me that I live near the old Route 66 Azusa Foothill Drive-in Theatre. It went out of business in 2001 and they tore the screen down a year or two ago to make a parking lot for Azusa Pacific University. The sign is still up though so I hope to photograph it tomorrow morning after I mail two stock photo submissions out. It's kind of sad to think of drive-ins going away as my parents took us to the Azusa Drive-in when my brother and I were kids. It wasn't the most comfortable way to watch movies for sure (I'm sure most people don't go to drive-ins for the movies anyway... :-) but it was definetely memorable. I wouldn't be writing about it here twenty years later if it wasn't!

Gam Saan, Land of the Golden Mountain

If you’ve seen the regular portion of my website, you might have noticed the Wild West Gold Rush theme going on and wondered why I designed it that way. If you’ve read my bio and know a little about early Northern California history then perhaps you might know why. But I suspect that most people probably wouldn’t know so I will tell you a little about my history.

When gold was discovered in the western Sierra Nevada foothills in 1848, word quickly got out to traveling Chinese merchants in the San Francisco area. They returned home to Southern China (Guangdong / Canton) and told their relatives about the “Land of Golden Mountains.” That region of rural China had always been very poor and still poor to this day due to agriculturally-poor soil. So a number of men left China for the United States to become miners in the Sierra. Their goal was to make enough money in a few years and come back home to provide a more prosperous lifestyle for their families. It never quite worked out for most of them due to several reasons. One of which was intense racial discrimination in the mining camps, with another reason being the language and cultural barrier. The Chinese were seen as hard-working, quiet people with strange customs.

Over time, the Chinese adapted by becoming a service-oriented group for their Caucasian counterparts. They provided Asian medicinal herbs and set up shop as merchants both to each other and to the other ethnic groups. The Chinese taught the Caucasians innovative farming techniques to improve efficiency of their crops. A combination of their extreme hard-work while mining and their aggressiveness in establishing businesses, the Chinese earned a reputation as efficient workers. By the time the U.S. started building the Central Pacific Railroad, California had solicited the help of foreign labor; mainly Chinese to build the most dangerous portions of track in the Sierra from Sacramento thru the Donner Pass in winter to Utah. Many died during this period but the railroad eventually was connected with the other portion of the Transcontinental Railroad which originated from Omaha, Nebraska. California during this period from the 1860’s to the 1880’s was still very much a land of outlaws. In some respects, one can travel through certain portions of California today and still experience some of that historical legacy.

Photo: Chinese railroad workers in the Sierra Nevada mountains at the California State Railroad Museum, Old Town Sacramento, California

My great-great grandfather immigrated to San Francisco during the railroad-building era and since then my family has had roots in America in some form or another. As of today, I believe that all of my immediate family members reside in the United States. But if it weren’t for the Chinese men who came here to build the railroad system, I wouldn’t be here. I’ve always had an immense respect for the history of our country and the Gold Rush era has been of a particular fascination of mine for obvious reasons. That is why my website looks the way it is. Now excuse me while I try to find a way back to San Francisco… or dream about it for tonight. It's late.

The Beginning of Life

Picture: American Coot (Fulica americana) Feeding Baby Chicks, Orange County, California

I had never seen anything like this before yesterday. Judging from the bald heads, I would say that these baby American Coot chicks were probably born yesterday or the day before. Man. I am getting really sleepy right now after lunch, but I have stuff to do so I can't take a nap.

Added 5/21/07: On Friday, I forgot to mention that at least two of the baby wood duck chicks seem to be doing well. In fact, they have finally developed little feathers on the wings. They still can't fly yet as far as I know. Come to think of it, I have never seen an adult wood duck fly either so I'll have to research that one. A part of me wishes they would stay small and cute, (they still look cute but look less cute now than two weeks ago) and on the other hand I'm glad to see they are progressing. The mother duck wasn't anywhere to be seen so I guess the two babies have been left to fend for themselves now that it is 3+ weeks later. I photographed another mother wood duck w/ five little chicks or the same one gave birth to more chicks? So I guess the other two chicks from the four remaining original group died in the past week and a half. Can you imagine what it would be like to give birth to nine babies and have seven of them die within the first month? Hopefully I can get back down there one morning this week to verify my observations.

Blog Archive Links Finally Functional!!

On the right column of this blog you may have noticed that there is an archive of blog posts dated by month since I began this blog 2 and a half years ago. Well I could never figure out how to get those links to work. My friend Brandon came up with the idea for this blog and created it for me and did a great job but I had no idea how the file structure of this worked so I could never figure out how to fix those broken links. I just figured it out right now by trying to move the archive files to the blog's subdirectory and it worked. So now all of my archive links work. Before I could never figure out how to easily access my old posts but now that is no longer a problem. Now there are over 100 posts easily accessible for you to enjoy. Thanks for your patience!

Snapshot Adventure

The other day on his blog, Gary Crabbe posted a link to a Superman Returns online photography game where you try to make it onto the front pages of various newspapers. It was fun. My high score was a 112. My brother, Eric on the other hand annilhilated me though with a 147, 146 and two 145's!

Yesterday, I saw this game called Snapshot Adventure: Secret of Bird Island, that is kind of similar to the Superman game but is actually a bird photography game complete with a field guide journal and simulated camera birding equipment. I downloaded the free 1 hour trial and played about 15 minutes of it. It can be addicting so I forewarn you. I learned something new about birding actually in those 15 minutes. I had never heard of a "Life List" which apparently is a species count that birders add to a categorized list each time they photograph or see a new bird. I'd seen such lists on some bird photography websites but didn't realize that it was common practice to do so. I guess I need to redesign my Bird Photo gallery and start my own right now!

Here is a cardinal postcard that I took in Snapshot Adventure and emailed to myself thru the game:

A Sad Day for Nature Photography

Photo: Contrails in Sunset Sky While Ducks Swim up to Urban Runoff Storm Drain that Empties into Upper Newport Bay, Newport Beach, California

The Upper Newport Bay Ecological Reserve is one of the largest remaining coastal wetlands in the Southern California. Critical bird habitat such as the Back Bay has been eroding at a rapid pace over the past century and becoming increasingly polluted, particularly so in the past thirty years due to rampant urban development. The bay is a mixture of fresh and saltwater but the "fresh" water mainly consists of urban runoff from the local community. The foreground water flowing into the bay with the ducks is a reminder that we must be careful not to pour toxic chemicals down our drains and pesticides. There is life out there that depends on our used water.

Birds outlived their dinosaur predecessors and have been around for millions of years. They developed the ability to fly in order to avoid ground-based predators. Their ability to adapt to their surroundings has allowed them to thrive in almost every habitat on the planet. However, the interference of man can have a much quicker and dramatic impact on wildlife than their ability to adapt. The airplane-induced contrails in the sky is a double-reminder of the increasing competition that birds must endure in order to survive in today's world. Even in the air, birds are not alone anymore.

I took this image on Saturday evening. To me it symbolizes the importance of strong environmental protection laws and how urgent it is to have cooperation in our society when it comes to respect for the environment. This is perhaps the saddest picture that I have ever taken. Only one can wonder how beautiful this planet was before the Industrial Revolution.

This photo will soon be added to the Environmental Issues gallery on my website.

How far would you go for a picture, Toto?

Scenic landscape photographers and photojournalists often look for dramatic action to capture in their photographs. But at what lengths would you go to get your photos? Where would you draw the line? For me personally, I do not like heights. I'm that kid you'd find hanging for dear life onto the Capilano Suspension Bridge in Vancouver. And I have the pictures to prove it, but to save face, I won't show them here. :-) Not to say that I am a total wuss. I have rafted whitewater, have got hit by sleeper waves at the beach, slipped down forest ravines on slick rock, risked hypothermia and frostbite. What I haven't done that interests me, is storm chasing.

The closest I have been to a tornado is when my apartment was hit by a F2 tornado a few years ago. I wasn't home that day. I have seen tornados in the horizon while driving in Oklahoma. I have felt post-tornado winds in Nebraska. And I witnessed some brief but freakish storms in Louisville. Never seen the full-blown thing though.

I first heard of storm chasing in the National Geographic article several years ago and have been intrigued by it ever since. Apparently there is a fringe tourist-industry in the midwest geared toward stormchasing. Most however, are amateur hobbyists who chase during their spare time. I wouldn't go chasing by myself, but I would hire a professional meteorologist to be my guide. I want the photos and the thrill obviously but I am not stupid. Whenever you do an extreme sport, you should always use your best judgement. If you lack confidence in your teammates, then don't be afraid to walk away and say no even if it's at the last minute. There will always be another day.

Here is a good example of a storm photo that I found today. Storm chasing photo

Alpenglow is pretty awesome to see, but storms are a notch above that on the excitement scale in my opinion. Now excuse me while I look at storm chasing websites.

P.S. The most annoying thing about living in Tornado Alley are those tornado warnings at the bottom of the screen during tv broadcasts. Nothing ever happens where they say it will!