If you’re following our microstock TRIPS at http://www.wewillexplore.com you may already know this but we secured our first sponsor for the trip today.  Pro Photo Rental has agreed to sponsor us with some gear for our trip in exchange for some images from their lenses and telling you & them what we think of the gear.  This is great news!  We’re going to have much more access to cool lenses & such as well as the ability to branch out of our “normal” gear and shoot with some fun stuff we don’t normally get to use.

So that’s the first major announcement on our trip.  More will be released soon - we may have a new sponsor to announce in the next week as well as a working outline of the trip.

Ok, so August was exactly what I expected - our busiest month and the least likely to result in any new stock. Other than a couple of trial images to show people how stock works, I didn’t upload one image this month for the first time since March. I feel terrible about how August went and Sept may not be a ton better.

We’re preparing for our trip in Sept. as well as launching a new Picture Infinity website on the 12th. We have a bridal show on the 14th and our trip starts October 8th. Once we get back from the trip, we have one more wedding and then it’s on. If you’re wondering when I’m going to kick it into another gear and start down the road of finding Mil, that’s the time. In the meantime..

Total earnings for August 2008 - $415.82

yeah, so August is really busy here at the studio.  Sorry for the lack of updates. :(  We’re doing: 2008 weddings (7 in one month), 2009 pricing, september bridal show prep, october trip planning, and trying to do anything regarding stock.

well i just checked stats (thanks for still reading!) and I found that someone clicked us through a google search for “microstock rejects” - we’re #8!  GO US!  We are rejects! hahahaha!

I don’t have anything motivational to say right now except “Don’t be me”  This is going to be by far my worst month in the last 3-5 months and it’s due to a lack of uploading ANYTHING.  So I’m going to try and get back on the bandwagon but with 17k WORK images on my desktop, I dunno when I can.   Very sad about this - need to plan Oct trip and have fun on that though!

As some of you know, over the next 2-3 years, Sarah and I are going to become traveling photographers, doing 3-5 major trips per year.

We’re going to try and meet up with as many friends & new friends as we can along the way. To help us out, if you’re interested in our journey and meeting up, add yourself to our map so that when we plan our routes, we can incorporate you into it!

Here’s our map

To create a marker, push “Edit” then the markers come up.

If you haven’t yet seen our plans, our travel blog is in my sig. It’s going to be a LOT of fun and a LOT of work! We’re shooting for 100+ hours per 3 week trip. CRAZY! :w00t:

So here are those delayed results - July was a BME! Crazily, Dreamstime was amazingly good. 123RF also had a BME. Not bad for as little work as I did. August is worse for my schedule. I can’t WAIT until October.

Total - $575.46

So I didn’t beat Lee this month…dang!

My hand is rested (mostly) and feeling much better. I’m getting back to work but just threw up a quick post on our travel blog. I thought I’d share some of the images here as well.

I’ll post July’s final totals tomorrow. This had to come first.

Moose hunting:

Emma, our newest fam member

Acadia National Park

Sarah and Brian

Last day, last images:

There are more photos on the blog and a cool story about a couple doing a WILD adventure aboard two motorcycles.

WeWillExplore.com

This post was scheduled to unveil on Monday but Steven has guessed one of the stats and tried to guess a few more so I’m going to reveal it now. It’s always more fun when someone plays along so thanks!

Statistics for November

19 days

12 cities

110 hours of shooting

200 models

5000 submittable images after the trip (great guess Steven!)

48 hours driving

3150 miles driving

4000 dollar budget

Statistics for November

19

12

110

200

5000

48

3150

4000

Any guesses on what each stat goes with?

Ideas can come from anywhere.  As a stock photographer, your job is to make them come from everywhere.  There are 2 steps to coming up with great stock ideas:

1) Create or visualize the concept.

2) Record the idea in a medium other than your brain.

Create or visualize the concept

The area most stock photographers struggle with is the creation of new stock ideas.  If you are sitting at your desk everyday, you won’t come up with many ideas.  Ideas for stock are based on activities and the world.  Activities are based in magazines and on websites as well but mainly, ideas are what life is - go where there’s life and your ideas will flow.  Visit a beach.  Imagine your model walking on the beach, swimming, maybe there’s a volleyball game going on.  Anywhere you see people doing anything - that’s an idea.  Maybe a family is having a bbq and another a picnic.  Two ideas?  What about twenty?  Photos of the bbq grill, photos of the meat cooking, photos of veggies cooking, photos of people eating, photos of a family around the food, photos of the picnic table setup, photos of the charcoal while it’s hot & red.

Record the idea in a medium other than your brain

If you don’t carry a notebook, start.  Write down EVERY idea you have - you may not have it again, at least for a long time.  You don’t want to let your ideas slip - either abstract & conceptual or specific like “woman wiping sweat off her forehead, woman drinking from a clear bottle” whatever.  Just write it down, type it out, record it somehow that doesn’t rely on your brain.