New Stock Images – An afternoon at Seririt food market

A year ago, I left the cold late February of my beloved Montreal to depart on a great adventure – I knew I had to be in LA in early March and Tokyo in mid May, but in between was wide open. My friend Adrian invited me to Bali, where he was staying for the Winter, and so I decided to fill the time gap by investing in a 10 weeks photo trip through South-east Asia. It started in Bali, then I hopped to Java, had a short stop in Kuala Lumpur, then spent some time in Vietnam, South Korea and landed in Tokyo. There are no words to convey how brilliant, eye opening, heart lightening and overall wonderful this experience has been. Oh and of course productive. Through my several encounters, many discovery trips and lucky finds, I came back home with close to 15000 images and clips to edit, or, in other words, add to my already heavy back catalog of images to submit. It’s now been 9 months since my return and I’ve managed to retouch and submit 820 images of this journey – which is about two fifth of what should be the final number of available photographs.

So time to present a few of these amazing series. Here’s one. While I stayed in Bali, we would enjoy the great food that Uni cooked for us and one day, wanting to know the source of these delights, she took us to the Seririt food market. In the smoldering heat and humidity, we discovered heaps of colorful food ingredients, various items of clothing and more than one luminously happy faces. Uni introduced us to many of the vendors who allowed us to take their photos while working. The food looked so fresh and good, vibrant colors, gorgeous spices and fruits. I don’t know exactly what it is with Asian food markets, but it makes the return to our cold, huge – dead in a way- supermarkets particularly difficult. Here’s a sample of these images. You can view this series either by itself on Photoshelter (with links to purchase on Istock) or amidst my other Indonesian images directly on Istock.

These are all unreleased, so only available for editorial use.

A. © 2015 Nicolas McComber – Available for editorial RF licensing at Istock 

B. © 2015 Nicolas McComber – Available for editorial RF licensing at Istock 

C. © 2015 Nicolas McComber – Available for editorial RF licensing at Istock

D. © 2015 Nicolas McComber – Available for editorial RF licensing at Istock

Introducing new Stock image galleries: Istanbul IStockalypse 2014 shoots part 1

Last Fall, I took part in my 4th official Istockalypse after Berlin, London and Hong Kong. This one took place in Istanbul, where I spent two weeks in late October. Upon coming back, amidst the stress of relocating, finding a place to live, move all my stuff and rediscover my inner strength, I pushed over 250 images of this event, more than I ever did on the previous ones. I participated in 2 walkabout shoots organized by Getty Images, 2 pitch shoots also sponsored by Getty Images, and 3 side shoots. I also photographed the city whenever I could, in all its historic grandeur: mosques, markets, commercial streets and skylines of piled up apartment buildings. So, yes, lots of images… And I have tons more to go through.

Here are three galleries I put together today on Photoshelter. As usual, links to buy the images on IStock are provided on each image’s page in bright orange. Go ahead and splurge.

The first one, Turkey: Istanbul, is mostly street photography , travel landmark images and panoramic skylines, with some food images thrown in for good measure. You’ll see such images as this one:

The second one, Lifestyles: Two female Turkish Friends shopping regroups images shot during my first walkabout. Here’s a highlight:

The third one, Lifestyles: Business team in Istanbul regroups images shot during the second walkabout, later that same day. Here’s a favorite:

Introducing a new stock image gallery: Four Friends in London

Last September, I made a quick trip to London, UK and had the pleasure of working with four young models/actors for a whole day (and of seeing Kate Bush live -couldn’t help mentioning it). I had spotted some great locations in my previous trip there in 2013 for the London Istockalypse, and so I went back with these awesome young people to expand on some concepts that had been successful and try new one. I hand selected them from dozens of submissions and I’m very happy with the results.

I’m barely starting on editing this shoot, and it will likely go on until next Summer as I’ve thousands of images to choose from and I’m currently editing about 10 shoots at once, madly trying to clear my backlog for next Spring which will be full of new material. Still, the first few shots are available now and I’ve put them together in this lightbox:

Do favorite the lightbox it if this subject is of interest to you. Images will be added on and off all year. Some of the venues will include images shot in Chalk Farm, Camden Lock, a food market, Primrose Hill, Camden, a bus ride, Westminster, shots around the Thames and South bank.

Here’s an image from the first location in Chalk Farm:




 

My 2013 Top Earning Stock Images #15: Bald man using digital tablet while waiting for subway

Stock Image: Bald man using digital tablet while waiting for subway

Uploaded: July 2012
Collection: Vetta

After a few vertical versions of this concept, I decided to shoot one horizontal, as I like these better personally. I was just coming back from Berlin and I had been told to shoot vertical for magazine covers, so I did more of these than usual on this shoot. But as we see in this countdown, way more often than not, it is horizontal framing that catches the eye of the buyer. So much so, that in London this year the tune had changed. I was advised to shoot mostly horizontal, and to not waste my time on square, vertical or panoramic frames. Well, I’ll keep doing all 4 types… it really depends on the subject. But given the results this year, horizontal wins.

You can view all my work with this model in this lightbox.

My 2013 Top Earning Stock Images #28: Swiss alpine medic team

Stock Image: Swiss Alpine medic rescue team

Uploaded: November 2012
Collection: Vetta

On this station, during the Switzerland minilypse in 2012, we were assigned this medic team and a badly hurt biking accident model (all make-up of course) to shoot, well, a bike accident in the alps. I was last to go for the day, and although the scene was well designed, I saw half a dozen other really talented photographers shoot it diligently, so I thought I would use my few minutes to just do portraits of the rescue team with the impressive mountains in the background instead, which no-one else had done as far as I knew. This is one of them, although I must admit that I cheated a little with the background: it’s the same place, only a different angle, to make the mountains just perfect.

You can view all of my Switzerland photos in this lightbox.

My 2013 Top Earning Stock Images #31: Winter Quebec City Skyline on Christmas Eve

Stock Photograph: Old Quebec City on a Winter Night

Uploaded: December 2011
Collection: Sig+ /E+

This one is more than likely to keep moving up before the finalized top 50 emerges in late January, as it is in full sales season right now. Shot on Christmas Eve 2011 on a quick stop to visit my mom, I was really fortunate to find the view and the weather to achieve this. I love how festive the colors are, and how it resonates with history and tradition. It must be because we sometimes stopped in Quebec City on our way to celebrate in Montreal with the extended families when I was a kid, growing up in the Saguenay area. So I do have a sense of nostalgia when I look at this. Performance-wise, it took almost a year a half to get to 10 DL on Istock, and but now that it did, it looks like it will be a more stable seasonal seller for me. It hasn’t sold on Getty yet, but maybe it will before the year is over.

You can view my work shot in La Belle Province (Quebec) in this lightbox.

My 2013 Top Earning Stock Images #33: Four young friends having fun at a Berlin Café

Stock Image: Four young friends having fun at a Berlin Café

Uploaded: June 2012
Collection: Vetta

One of my first images uploaded upon my return from the 2012 Berlin Istockalypse. I don’t know exactly what story the models decided to develop here (I was far away with my long lens during one of the walkabouts and didn’t get to really direct the models until later that morning), but it made this scene work. It looks genuine, candid and fun. One of many during this outing. I put a heavy hand in post processing (I think I had 12 filters in my Nik recipe to do this) as I really wanted to break that Vetta barrier and felt I needed to lay on layers upon layers of special effects to achieve that because the lighting was so drab that day… Well it did land in Vetta, and then sold at both agencies, so I guess I did a proper job.

You can view all of my lifestyle photographs shot in Berlin in this lightbox.

Introducing my London Istockalypse 2013 lightbox

Just a short break in posting my top 50 2013 best earners to introduce my personal lightbox featuring the images I captured while in London last October. To have an in depth account of my activities there, please read this post. I have some 60-odd already available on Istock with a lot more to come. Judging by the raw material, I should end up with about 150. Here is the banner to the lightbox – click on it and see what I have so far:

Nicolas McComber 2013 London Istockalypse lightbox

And here are some early favorites. Many of them failed to initially make the Deluxe (vetta / sig+) collections at Istock (bummer), but, hey, that just means you can get them at a lesser price. So go ahead, splurge!

Here are some skyline and building photos:

Stock Image: Sunset behind the London Shard

Stock Image: Aerial view of the London Shard

Stock Image: London Gherkin and older buildings

And this very wide London UK aerial panoramic stock image:

Stock Image: Panoramic London UK 2013 view

Here is a shot of fellow photographer and friend Lorraine Boogich:

Stock image: Pensive woman commuting by train

And here are a couple of staged shoots with the Getty models:

Stock Image: Hip young Englishman going to work in London UK

Stock Image: Adult woman having fun Autumn gardening

Now that last one is also a test of sorts. Normally, I would never submit such an obviously Autumn-oriented photo in December since designers and art directors are working on Winter, Holidays and even Spring images by then. But there are many thinking that it doesn’t make a difference, and perhaps, since it’s an Istockalypse image and influential people are looking at them while they’re fresh, it’s better to just do them all now. So here it is. We’ll see how it goes.

I’m also putting them up, with some delay unfortunately, on my photoshelter site if you’d rather see them in a larger format.

Featured Stock Image – Tourists looking at Paris map on a metro station

Stock Image – Tourists looking at Paris map on a metro station

Well, here it is, my first sale from my recent Paris trip. No it’s not a striking image of a landmark, or a familiar city scape, or a defocused urban background for graphic designers to make composites with… No, it’s an editorial (unreleased, not to be used commercially) photograph of random people doing something ordinary. I didn’t shoot a great many of them, unfortunately. That wasn’t the point of my trip – and Parisians are notoriously touchy in regards to stealthy photographers shooting them and moving on in the shadows. So I shot tourists, who don’t really care, in very public places. There.

I’m going to London at the end of October – my name was picked again for the official Lypse – yay! If this kind of images continues to sell over the other kinds, I’ll probably keep at least one day to go around shooting unreleased ordinary people doing ordinary things. Heck, if that pays for the trip…

Featured Stock Image: Rear View of Notre-Dame-de-Paris

Stock Image: Rear View of Notre-Dame-de-Paris

So this week I’ve been diligently working on my Paris photographs, and I’m almost done with my first day. This time around, I’m generally editing them in the order I originally shot them, so that it makes the process more interesting – the great one might be just around the corner. I usually start with my favorites and then gradually move down, but that makes for a more boring process on my end. So what did I shoot while in Paris? Well, my main concern was getting backgrounds for composites such as streets and textures, elements for designers such as street signs, neon signs, and other Parisian things of interest. I did also shoot the landmarks for the touristic market, such as this featured shot of Notre-Dame, The Eiffel tower, the Louvre, Montmartre and the other famous buildings and areas I came across, as well as some editorial unreleased shots of Parisians acting in their environment. I didn’t have have time to see it all, of course, but I didn’t waste any time and got all I could during my sojourn. The only thing I didn’t do are night shots – with jet lag and daily excursions of 10-12 hours I just didn’t find the energy. I’ll just have to go back to capture Paris at night!

Today’s featured photo is one of my favorite so far. It’s actually a panoramic stitch of 8 shots done with my 200mm lens. The detail is just astounding when looking full size. You ever detail of the stained glass windows and sculptures. Sue I couldn’t get quite the angle I wanted (there was a damn tree in the way), but it’s close enough. The color mapping, a mix of Google’s color efex and Florabella actions really makes the final punch.

I’m still awaiting my first sale from the trip, but I’ll post the shots here with little notes as soon as they do sell.

You can view my photos from this trip as they become available either on Photoshelter, or by clicking on this Istock lightbox:

Stock Photos from Paris