Finally achieved my 10 000th regular credit sale at Istock!

Took me a few years, but I finally achieved the gold canister. I guess I’m doing fine… many people are reporting dropping sales, but mine are relatively stable – and hopefully will start growing again soon. Anyhow, huge thanks to all of you who support and use my work, and to all of my fellow photogs, ADs, my teachers (and students) at Marsan College of photography, everyone who posed and acted for me for one or many shoots, sometimes in the strangest conditions, and to the wonderful people at Istock and Getty Images whom I’ve met all over the world these past few years and who have taught me so much. I feel very lucky to be able to do this line of work which I love, so thanks also to Benoît without whom I would certainly not be where I am today. And here’s to many more years of making better and better photographs (and videos – watch out for this new 2015 line of production!).

Here’s one of the stock images that pushed me over that milestone today. It was shot at the City Beautiful 4 event last year in Orlando, organized by the wonderful Evelyn Peyton, and features the most amazing 6 year old girl I’ve ever worked with. Great talent and a lovely personality. Winning combo!

A reminder of where you can buy / download / license my photographs:

Getty Images

Istock

Again thank you all for your continued support. Let’s celebrate!

 

Featured Stock Image – Panic at the loos

Stock Image – Panic at the loos

I don’t often do humor, potty humor even less, although maybe I should… lol. This sold earlier this week and was shot in Switzerland last year, while the photog team was moving from one set to the next. I noticed the little outhouse by itself on a hill and I just had to get a group of people I got along with to act in this little scene. So you have three photographers there (Lorraine Boogich, Adrian Koeppel and Chris Pecoraro) and our lovely model Cheryl. I think Lorraine is awesome in her desperation there. We joked afterwards that this would probably be the best seller of the whole trip. Being uploaded in 2013, it’ll have a real hard time. We’ll see.

Featured Stock Photograph – Elderly couple laughing at a newspaper article

Stock Photograph – Elderly couple laughing at a newspaper article

I’m back at work on post production for the many, many shots I made at the 2012 Istockalypse in Berlin. This one just made Agency so I’m delighted to share it with you all today. Lovely work from the two models. They look so natural and intimate, it’s hard to think they only met each other a few hours prior. I was fortunate enough to work with them way beyond my allotted 20 minutes since strangely enough they were under-utilized after I did my time. Plus they kept hanging around me so I guess they liked my style. I’ll make a special lightbox for Ingrid once that feature returns on IStock.

It’s been 10 days since the big 2012 update introducing the cash sale on Istock. I’ve had a few of those and so it’s probably a good move on their part. Prices appear to be high, but of course it’s meant to show new buyers that they’d be better off buying credits and in doing so to come back to the site for further purchases. It’s all good marketing.

What’s not so good is the way the update was pushed without proper testing and quite a few unexpected bugs showed up. Reporting for contributors is now dodgy with cash sales and a large chunks of “views” not showing up in the latest sales screen and people have reported concern over bugs preventing people from completing sales. Some have also reported wrong commissions made on cash sales under a foreign (non US$) currency.

My top two ego-driven selfish concerns at the moment are these:

Bring back the Zoom function at once! My sales above medium size have decreased a great deal since this was taken away.

Bring back the lightbox option! Maybe they want to lead buyers to enjoy the new cart function… still, it’s not that practical.

Featured Stock Photograph – Visiting Scotland

Stock Photograph - Visiting Scotland

Hehe. Ok, so I rarely attempt humor in my work, but how else can you approach traveling halfway across the world and finally reaching that world famous 3 stars view only to find yourself in a wall of rain and fog? So I shot this, had a laugh, moved on… Not much of a downer really: weather in Scotland changes so quickly that we had some sunshine twenty minutes later. And then rain again. In any case, we soon found out that the play between the weather and the amazing scenery is visually as appealing as the sights themselves, and very much part of the charm of this magical part of the world. There are areas, such as Glen Coe that are actually much more striking in bad weather, so in a way we got very lucky.

This shot is my first sale this month. I’m happy to report that January was my best month ever in revenue, besting November by a few bucks. Very nice to still see some growth. Let’s try and meet the next royalty level in 2012. It is feasible too with some work. Big thanks, you guys. I’ll keep coming up with better material, too. Promise.

You can view more photos (and some new ones – I’m still submitting them on a regular basis) from my UK trip in this Istock lightbox or on my photoshelter archive site.