What do you do with your photos

[mike_j]

I have just migrated my photos to LR 3 and was a little shocked to find over 20,000 of them. Not first time I wonder why I have, and continue to take, so many pictures.

OK, allow 20% for family pics, a couple of weddings etc, this still leaves over 15,000 general pictures, landscapes, wildlife etc. I'm not inactive, I do a few AV presentations, publish the odd article and enter competitions but few, probably less than 1% will ever see the light of day, either on screen or in print.

What do you do with all your pictures?

[ryme-intrinseca]

Re: What do you do with your photos

I have started selling some of mine through Shutterstock

[ekkl]

Re: What do you do with your photos

Interesting post Ryme, I have never thought of selling any of mine, just not good enough for sale I think although my photography ambition is to sell just one picture for money. To get someone to give me cash for a photo that I have taken is all I want to do, it will make my day if it happens!

As for my pics I have thousands on CD's. I bought an external hard drive last week, 1 terrabyte or something to store them all on. I aim to also index them, putting them into various folders too. It will take some time but I think it will be fun looking through some of the older stuff!

[ash]

Re: What do you do with your photos

I have started selling some of mine through Shutterstock

Hi, Ive just browsed through your gallery on dp now and Im very impresed with some of your work, however I find it amazing that you are actually earning what you say!
Im interested to no how many images you have uploaded to shutterstock and how long you have been registered?
I fell out with shutterstock, as there were far too many iff's and butt's and wat not's, I gave up and found them very picky to be honest!

Is stock photography your main line of work or do you have a full time job?
I would love to be able to dedicate my time to my passion but its just not possible at the moment.
Ash.

[ash]

Re: What do you do with your photos

I have just migrated my photos to LR 3 and was a little shocked to find over 20,000 of them. Not first time I wonder why I have, and continue to take, so many pictures.

OK, allow 20% for family pics, a couple of weddings etc, this still leaves over 15,000 general pictures, landscapes, wildlife etc. I'm not inactive, I do a few AV presentations, publish the odd article and enter competitions but few, probably less than 1% will ever see the light of day, either on screen or in print.

What do you do with all your pictures?

Firstly Cap, Im not familiar to lr3, I assume its some sort of program that organises your pics.
Second, are you asking a question of backing up your shots, ie a safegaurd measure, or filtering them?
And how come you did not no how many pics you have?
I can only assume that you take alot of pictures but never sort through them.

You have to be ruthless, and if you take a few different shots of the same thing, like me, but with different settings, you need to see which is best and ditch the rest!

I really cant see the point in keeping them all.

Its so easy just to dump the card onto your computer and only pic out the best what you need, Im guilty of that mostly, but im really trying to keep a tight shop on things.

I don't no your abilities or your photography habits but my only advise is to try and be organised and after every shoot, sort through and ditch what are not up to the mark!

As for backing up, I back up to 2 seperate drives other than my pc as often as I can find time.
cheers
Ash

[Julia]

Re: What do you do with your photos

We, too, have thousands of photos stored on hard-drives. Most of mine I should delete as they are not that good but Ian and I have printed and framed our favourites; they are on our sitting room and breakfast room walls.

Over the winter we ran a series of articles about scrapbooking. First one here: http://dpnow.com/articles/6519.html. Paula transforms photos, old and new, into lovely works of art. They are given as presents or just made as keep-sakes for future generations.

[mike_j]

Re: What do you do with your photos

Firstly Cap, Im not familiar to lr3, I assume its some sort of program that organises your pics.
Second, are you asking a question of backing up your shots, ie a safegaurd measure, or filtering them?
And how come you did not no how many pics you have?
I can only assume that you take alot of pictures but never sort through them.

You have to be ruthless, and if you take a few different shots of the same thing, like me, but with different settings, you need to see which is best and ditch the rest!

I really cant see the point in keeping them all.

Its so easy just to dump the card onto your computer and only pic out the best what you need, Im guilty of that mostly, but im really trying to keep a tight shop on things.

I don't no your abilities or your photography habits but my only advise is to try and be organised and after every shoot, sort through and ditch what are not up to the mark!

As for backing up, I back up to 2 seperate drives other than my pc as often as I can find time.
cheers
Ash

LR 3 - I meant Adobe Lightroom 3. Actually I am quite organised, most of my pictures have at least one keyword and many have keyword tags. It's just when I did the catalogue report it brought home many pictures there are.

As to backing up, I don't think I asked about it but as an ex IT professional I am fully aware how essential it is. I do the full three generation back sequence with backups stored on separate devices located in different rooms (one in a fire resistant safe).

My point was - what do you DO with all these pictures, spend long evenings poring over them or shoot - file - forget?

[Bear]

Re: What do you do with your photos

I have almost 80,000 pictures stored on my various hard drives - I work in the way Ash suggests. Shoot, import from the card into Lightroom, delete the stuff not up to standard, then file. I choose the most appropriate shots for what ever I am shooting for.

Often just for my own pleasure but also for sale, commissions, prints, newspapers, magazines etc. I work with a small group of local papers who tend to use my library as a sort of private stock site whenever they need anything with an Andalucian flavour. As an example, I had a call from a magazine publisher on Friday needing a selection of pictures for the front cover of the next issue and a selection for fillers inside, all themed Andalucian/green (environmentally aware not just green in colour). I will spend some time this weekend pulling out a selection to send off on Monday.

I back up to three separate machines (two are RAID servers) but probably not as often as I should. My only regret is that I am not as diligent at keywording as I should be.

[ryme-intrinseca]

Re: What do you do with your photos

Hi, Ive just browsed through your gallery on dp now and Im very impresed with some of your work, however I find it amazing that you are actually earning what you say!
Im interested to no how many images you have uploaded to shutterstock and how long you have been registered?
I fell out with shutterstock, as there were far too many iff's and butt's and wat not's, I gave up and found them very picky to be honest!

Is stock photography your main line of work or do you have a full time job?
I would love to be able to dedicate my time to my passion but its just not possible at the moment.
Ash.

http://www.shutterstock.com/g/ryme

Lots of signposts, kind of boring, hehe. It's pretty different from my DPNow gallery, as Microstock seems to like light, bright and artificially 'perfect' images. I started selling with them in November, and have had 1,857 images downloaded so far. I'm lucky in that I've sold a few 'extended licences' at $28 each, which definitely goes a long way towards the $120 average.

If I don't upload at least once a week, I start to see a dip in sales, as the search engine favours new images. When I upload loads of new ones at once, the old ones start to sell better for a while, too - I think having photos / illustrations on the 'new images' pages help to get the rest of the portfolio noticed.

My acceptance rate is much higher now, as I've got my head around the types of images they will and won't accept. It's hard not to take it personally when I get a rejection, but I suppose that's just part of the business. Sometimes I just resubmit, get a different reviewer and it's accepted. They are pretty strict though, particularly about noise and focus.

I also have some images at Fotolia and CanStock, but have earnt much lower sums on there - only about $35 in total since December. I have a very small portfolio at Alamy, and have sold none there at all! iStock don't like me - they rejected my initial submission - so SS look set to stay my biggest earner at the moment.


EDIT: I've just worked out the exact average (it's the 'geek' in me that felt the need to do that ). I haven't been paid for June yet, obviously, so from the middle of Nov to the end of May, I earnt $728.09 = average of $112.01. So slight overestimate with $120, but not far out.

[ryme-intrinseca]

Re: What do you do with your photos

Interesting post Ryme, I have never thought of selling any of mine, just not good enough for sale I think although my photography ambition is to sell just one picture for money. To get someone to give me cash for a photo that I have taken is all I want to do, it will make my day if it happens!

I think your photos are beautiful, ekkl. I haven't seen them at high resolution obviously, but from what I can see, there are plenty that look sellable there to me!

[ash]

Re: What do you do with your photos

My point was - what do you DO with all these pictures, spend long evenings poring over them or shoot - file - forget?

Its a pretty strange thing to ask if your a keen photographer asking another keen photographer what to DO with all your pictures!
Its your work, your passion and how you have expressed to capture little snipits of time, they should be your gold dust to cherrish for ever and make sure they are passed to your offspring so they can enjoy them to.

I print alot off, hang them up, give them as presents, enter competitions, send in to stock agencies, send in to magazines etc etc
Every now and again we all sit round the tv and look at some, if you have a hd tv and never seen your pictures on it, then I recommend it. You will probably never print your pictures off to the size of your big lcd, and they look so sharp and crisp, and viewing on the tv, everyone can see round and enjoy them, put some music on and just go through some old stuff, its a right laugh.

[Ian]

Re: What do you do with your photos

I have just migrated my photos to LR 3 and was a little shocked to find over 20,000 of them. Not first time I wonder why I have, and continue to take, so many pictures.

OK, allow 20% for family pics, a couple of weddings etc, this still leaves over 15,000 general pictures, landscapes, wildlife etc. I'm not inactive, I do a few AV presentations, publish the odd article and enter competitions but few, probably less than 1% will ever see the light of day, either on screen or in print.

What do you do with all your pictures?

Well I have 60,000 images in LR2 and I reckon I have 10-15,000 yet to import!

The great thing about LR is that it can be set up to refuse to import duplicate images - I have loads of those.

Ian

[Patrick]

Re: What do you do with your photos

Its a pretty strange thing to ask if your a keen photographer asking another keen photographer what to DO with all your pictures!
Its your work, your passion and how you have expressed to capture little snipits of time, they should be your gold dust to cherrish for ever and make sure they are passed to your offspring so they can enjoy them to.

I print alot off, hang them up, give them as presents, enter competitions, send in to stock agencies, send in to magazines etc etc
Every now and again we all sit round the tv and look at some, if you have a hd tv and never seen your pictures on it, then I recommend it. You will probably never print your pictures off to the size of your big lcd, and they look so sharp and crisp, and viewing on the tv, everyone can see round and enjoy them, put some music on and just go through some old stuff, its a right laugh.

I agree with Ash, in so much as for most of us its a hobby, we love making pictures. The enjoyment is in doing each stage, the taking, the processing then the printing, if something is done with them after well that's a bonus.

Patrick

[Jocelyn Walker]

Re: What do you do with your photos

I bought an external hard drive shortly before getting a new computer a while ago! I put all my photos on that! Plus I have some on DVD's! Unfortunately, some holiday pics I had a camera shop copy to DVD a couple of years back, don't have EXIF data! So they can't be used where data required! Lumix Life (Australia) have a competition on at present, calling for submissions of Australian photo's to 'cover Australia'! The winning entries will be printed to a book! There are monthly prizes of a camera too! For me, just having a few of my photos in the gallery is great! I like to keep my photos for a number of reasons! A lot of people don't explore the variations or opportunities of creativity with their photographs! By this I mean, either taking an interesting element of 1 photo & combining it with another! Making montages! Applying Duo/Tri/Quad tones! Converting to Line drawings! A myriad of opportunities in fact! In the old days of processing film & printing in the home, (B&W that is) it was fun playing about with burning in areas etc! Solarizing other shots! I was involved with a Photographic Journalist at the time!