About photo: Clay angel praying towards God

You can buy the picture on top by following these links:

• Buy the photo at Shutterstock
• Buy this shot with red background at Dreamstime
• Buy this picture with red background at Fotolia
• Buy this angel photo on iStockPhoto
• But the praying angel photo above at StockXpert
  

The subject of this blog entry is my best earner image that was submitted in November. This is the sixth blog entry in the series I have started to introduce my best photos: best earner photo, overall best earner in November, most downloaded photo.

History: This photo was shot as the closure of my Christmas series. I have been shooting Christmas themed pictures since early August. Most of them I have published by early September. I have decided that I will submit some photos even after the majority of my Christmas shots were already available, because I wanted to make sure my little portfolio gets some exposure in the huge crowd of Christmas photos. The best earner of this series is a composition of Christmas spheres and a plastic pine branch.

In this series I have made shots about the Christmas related objects of our home. We have started with the more obvious ones, that we use for decorating our home for Christmas. Then we have progressed towards those that could have some relation with Christmas. Since the Christmas season seems to be over, it is most likely that the series will not be extended till next August.

Content: This photo presents an angel praying towards the top right corner of the image. The direction suggests it is praying towards God. This is a plastic statue used for decoration. Even though it is plastic it has tremendous amount of detail imitating strokes of the hand during the formation of a clay statue. This can be best observed around the eyes of this little statue. The focus is on the face of the angel, therefore its wings and its kneeling legs are a little bit blurred. Finally the statue has a yellowish or brownish coloration. This however I don't think adds to the overall look of the photo so I recommend you to use it in black and white.

Technique: Finally let's talk about the creation of this photograph. It looks like this photo is easy to isolate. However because of its color is so close to white it is easy to burn parts of the statue. Since I still only have a single light setup isolating this object would be much better on a non white background. I have tried several backgrounds, but for me only the white and the red was working. The white background of this photo becomes gray if you don't want to burn parts of the statue, therefore this image needed a little more fine tuning than the red background ones. (You can see the red background ones here, and here.)

About photo: Single honey biscuit

You can buy the picture on top by following these links:

• Buy the photo at Shutterstock
• Buy a darker verison of this shot at Dreamstime
• Buy this picture at Fotolia
• Buy this cookie on iStockPhoto
• But the cookie above at StockXpert
  

The subject of this blog entry is my best earner image during November. This is the fifth blog entry in the series I have started to introduce my best photos: best earner photo, most downloaded photo.

History: This image is part of two series. The scattered particles series that was born during the making of my longest series with the honey cookies (so called "Puszedli" in hungarian). In this series my wife thought it would be nice to spread some cookie crumbs in some of the shots. The honey cookie series however did not make a breakthrough, but the photos with the crumbs were the most popular. Thus we decided to take take the idea with the crumbs and since then we made a shot of scattered particles in every series in which it was possible. I have already introduced a prominent member of this series in august: a wheat pike with seeds. Another example is our coco biscuit bite (on ShutterStock) shot. This shot is actually the one that has established the scattered particle series.

Honey cookie is one of my favorite desserts. They are frequently part of my daily diet. I know it is quite unhealthy and too sweet, but still it is the best kind of cookies mankind can make around here :). Therefore it was obvious that I have looked around for shots in the area of honey cookies. I have searched both on Fotolia and Shutterstock as I usually do my research on new photo ideas, and I came to the conclusion that we can make a long series because it seems like there were no shots of honey biscuits in these huge photo galleries. So we have created a series of shots, and this one is the most popular among them.

In November this photo became the best earner with the help of two over dollar downloads on iStockPhoto even though there were more frequently downloaded newcomers in the month. This is one of my steadiest earner photos anyways so it is not surprising that it has achieved the best earner state in November.

Content: This photo shows a single honey biscuit after I took a bite. The crumbs are still scattered around the biscuit. These crumbs are mainly out of focus and only lead our sight towards the cookie. This photo is isolated as this is my favorite technique.

Technique: This shot uses a more complicated but not so successful isolation technique. I pointed my lighting directly towards the biscuit through a huge white bed linen. This linen has surrounded and covered the biscuit and the A4 paper I used as a base for the isolation. The only hole I have left in the linen was for the camera lens. As this technique did not let too much light towards the object, this image required heavy post processing in order to replace the gray background to a white one.

About my most viewed photos

This blog entry is about those photos that attract viewers only. Currently I have two really disappointing photos. One is my most viewed photo at all agencies where it has got accepted. And one is the photo with the highest number of views in the past two months. It seems like both of them present an interesting idea, and they both have really good keywords also. They even come up early in search results somehow (surprisingly because I thought search results are influenced by the number of image downloads). Finally they also look promising in icon sizes. But they still could not earn a single download. After all, I decided to present them here, and share some of my ideas why did these photos are not among my best earners as their view count would suggest.

The first one is my all time winner of the most viewed photo awards:

This photo is about an old sniper scope (and you can buy it at Fotolia, ShutterStock, StockXpert and DreamsTime). It was so heavily used it shows heavy wear. I believe this wear is not the main cause of the non buyers. This is one of my images with some distracting shadows that shows the deficiencies of my earliest isolation techniques. However I don't think this could be the full reason behind the small sales potential. In the same series of shots I have got really successful earners also, and they all share the shadow problems you can see above. For example the photo about the isolated gun is highly successful even though you can clearly see these problems on it. I guess the main problem with this photo that people has preconceptions. This scope was used only by real snipers. Meanwhile my photos about telescopes for hunters are the ones people want as sniper scopes if I am not mistaken. You can see a scope used exclusively for hunting on the right. The surprise that this photo has significantly less views but already has several sales (if you are still not convinced you can still buy the hunting scope on the right on these links: Fotolia, ShutterStock, StockXpert, Dreamstime). So it seems like people don't like the photos that does not match their preconceptions of an object.

The second shot is my most viewed photo in the past two months:

Red parfume bottle: buy at ShutterStock, Dreamstime, StockXpert

Oxeye daisy in a tin: buy at ShutterStock, Fotolia, Dreamstime, StockXpert, iStockPhoto

This photo is part of a less downloaded series (you can see some of its members on the sides of this paragraph). It presents an open perfume bottle and oxeye daisy decoration (you can purchase it from Fotolia, ShutterStock, Dreamstime, StockXpert). This photo is one of my favorites. The contrast between the sharp blossom and the slightly out of focus red perfume bottle beautifully presents the idea "gentle care". This shot however still did not catch up with downloads. I see three main problems here, first there is a quite sharp edge between the leaves and the white background. Secondly the leaves in the background might be distracting entirely. Finally the buyers want the bottle sharper than it is currently. This last reason came when I first seen the photo on the left sold on ShutterStock. However I don't think it is the strongest one, because the shallow depth of field might even help a little to emphasize the gentleness of the photo.

Feel free to comment if you can think of any further reason about why my viewers turning back before they would buy.

About photo: Hungarian highway

You can buy the picture on top on these links:

• Buy the photo at Shutterstock
• Buy me at Fotolia
• Buy this picture at Dreamstime
• This photo is also available at StockXpert
• Finally you can also buy the above photo from iStockphoto
  

The subject of this blog entry is my new best earner ever photograph. You can find the previous one about the blue vase here. This is the fourth blog entry in the series where I introduce my top photos according to the buyers. I have already wrote about my best photo in July and the all times most downloaded photo. However this entry is about the new king of the hill.

History: This is the first time my D90 was with me on a flight. I took this shot from a plane back from Lyon. We almost reached Ferihegy Airport, and just before landing the plane crossed the M0 highway that surrounds Budapest. I made this shot just when the plane crossed M0. When I got back to my computer I immediately loved the shot, so even though I read it several times that it is not a good idea to upload photos taken from a commercial flight I still tried. And as it turns out this photo became one of my most predictable earners.

Content: This photo shows the M0 highway of Hungary in westward direction shot from the air. You can also see that a junction of the highway is just outside the photo. The four lanes cross two small bridges, first to avoid some rural roads and secondly to pass over a small brook. There are several cars and trucks coming and going, but it's not too heavy traffic. Finally the road disappears on the top right corner of the photograph.

Technique: If you are familiar with my portfolio (for the portfolio links see the left side of the blog), then you know that I am not too familiar with moving subjects. I mainly take photos of isolated objects. So this photo was different. I had an entire flight to exercise to finally come up with a recipe for the shot. The result was simply using focal lengths between 60-80mm to avoid the wing of the plane, and to use apertures between F8-11 to make sure the lens is giving me the best sharpness, finally I used 1/200-1/500s shutter speeds to avoid blurring. During landing even 1/500 seems slow... So don't be surprised that I don't have photos about landings yet. To avoid reflections on the window of the plane I pushed the lens as close as I can to the window. While I also tried to make the front element of the lens parallel to the window.

About photo: Wheat spike with seeds

You can buy the picture on top by following these links:

• Buy the photo at Shutterstock
• Buy me at Dreamstime
• Buy this picture at Fotolia
• Buy this wheat spike on iStockPhoto
• But the wheat spike above at StockXpert
  

The subject of this blog entry is my most downloaded image during July. This is the third blog entry in the series I have started to introduce my best photos: best earner photo, most downloaded photo.

History: This image is part of two series. The scattered particles series that was born during the making of my longest series with the honey cookies (so called "Puszedli" in hungarian). In this series my wife thought it would be nice to spread some cookie crumbs in some of the shots. The honey cookie series however did not make a breakthrough, but the photos with the crumbs were the most popular (see the most popular photo of this series: Single honey biscuit on iStockPhoto). Thus we decided to take take the idea with the crumbs and since then we made a shot of scattered particles in every series in which it was possible. Another example is our coco biscuit bite (on ShutterStock) shot. Therefore by the time we have arrived to the creation of the wheat series it was straightforward that we are going to do some scattered particle photos with the wheat spikes.

Once upon a time we passed a wheat field on the way to my in-laws home. The harvest was soon due. My wife immediately thought the spikes would make good stock photos. So we took action and collected some wheat from my in-laws's little farm. After we arrived back home I take several shots about our newcomers. This photo is two of them one used entirely the other only with its seeds.

This photo became my second best selling photo at StockXpert in early October 2009.

Content: This photo shows a single wheat spike right before it would have been harvested. It has a single long dried leaf and the photo is cropped close to the beginning of this leaf. Several wheat seeds are scattered around the head of the spike. These seeds were collected from another spike by hand in order to make sure there will be no scratches on their surfaces. The scattered seeds make this image unique on some level.

Technique: This shot uses a simple isolation technique, I pointed my lighting towards the ceiling of the room and I put an A2 sheet of white paper underneath the subject. This image required little post processing because neither the seeds nor the spike has reflective surfaces, the only new technique I found out while making this shot that I can lower the brightness of the raw photo by some level before the burnt out whites start to become grayish. Previously I used only the exposure controls in post processing however the whites are transforming to gray much faster when I change the exposure.

About photo: Isolated gun with a telescope

You can buy the picture on top by following these links:

• Buy the photo at Shutterstock
• Buy me at Dreamstime
• Buy this picture at Fotolia

The subject of this blog entry is my most downloaded image at all times. This is the second blog entry in the series I have started with my best earner photo here.

History: This photo is one of my earliest isolated photos and it is part of my hunting series. I made it in a weapon and hunting shop, where I had access to some of their inventory items for a short photography session. This is one of the very first photos I took during that session, while I was still experimenting with the isolation techniques. I have got very surprised that the later photos I took in this session are not so successful, even though I thought I mastered a little more about photography during the photo session. Until the very end of last month this was also my best earner photograph.

Content: This photo is a portray of a hunting rifle regularly found in hunting shops in Hungary. This particular one also has a nice telescope mounted on top. This telescope is not just there to help the aiming, but I also believe it is the primary cause of the popularity of this photo.

Technique: Rifles are long items and it seems like they are really hard to light from a single source. So I made a bridge over the rifle on which I hang my incandescent lighting aimed on the middle of the gun. This resulted shorter shadows on the middle, but the ends of the rifle cast longer ones. I have not used any diffuser or light softener so the shadows are really harsh on this picture. Therefore it needed a lot of post processing. Even with this level of post processing iStocphoto did not like the lighting. So later on I started to use reflectors as cheap secondary light sources to eliminate the disturbing shadows.

About photo: Blue vase with sunflowers

You can buy the picture on top on these links:

• Buy the photo at Shutterstock
• Buy me at iStockPhoto
• Buy a similar photo at Dreamstime
• Buy another similar photo at Fotolia
  

As I already wrote I plan to publish here my best photographs according to the microstock sites. As a starter this blog is about my best earner ever photo. (This photo was my best earner between July and September in 2009, the it was superseded by a photo about a Hungarian highway.)

History: As you can see it follows my style of isolated on white photographs. I first made another photo about an orange vase that also sells really well. So I decided to have a series of vase photographs about our better looking vases we have home. This is the second in the series of vase photos and it recently became the best earner of my entire portfolio.

Content: I choose this vase as the second because it has sunflowers painted on it. It seems like stock buyers like sunflowers so I thought I give it a try to have my very own sunflower related image. These two sunflowers really pop out in front of the blue background of the vase similarly as real sunflowers would do with the sky as their background. Like the real sunflowers this image also shows their leaves, however the curvature of the rounded vase hides a leaf partially.

Technique: This photo was taken with no extra lighting as the sun. I put it in the shade of an A2 sheet of paper. Also I put another sheet underneath the vase, and that was it. I did the shading of the vase during my camera took the picture from the top of my stand.