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Wich photo brought you the highest sale....


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Hi Mirco - I have looked through my best sellers and cannot find a common theme. They are taken both at home and abroad, some in underrepresented places others in very well represented locations of very popular subjects. My guess is that they all stick out from the pack in some way. I am reminded of a very well represented location of which I have many images. A colleague took a similar pic from the same spot. The light, reflection on the canal, colours all stand out fractionally better than mine. His sells, mine doesn't!

 

dov

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My highest sale was for a close up of a rusty, out of use, boat winch taken on a beach near where I live. I just saw it and snapped -  nothing clever or spectacular. There are images I've spent days working on or have travelled miles to get that have never even been zoomed.

 

...not sure what the moral of that story is.

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To date I have only licensed two, (though I do feel a sale or three coming up soon :) !).  Both are of pretty standard, run-of-the-mill subjects, but...

  1. They were taken specifically with stock in mind
  2. They were shot close to home
  3. They are of subjects poorly covered on Alamy (yes, despite what you may think, even with 40M photos, there are some lots of subjects awaiting coverage here -  and always will be).

I used to travel miles and miles, spending a fortune in time and fuel.  That's great in order to take the pictures that you want, but I have begun to learn (it's taken me a while!) that saleable images are to be had close to (or even within the) home.

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My best and highest sellers are not my best images - they are the ones that only I could get because all the other photographers had gone home, or were at an event they considered more exciting, or just didn't realise that something of interest was in the vicinity. If you are there, and the only one there, when something interesting happens, it will pay! Moral of the story? ALWAYS have your camera with you.

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My highest sale was taken in Anglesey while waiting for the ferry to Dublin - I took some rock texture pictures to put in the time and one sold for a textbook.. The only other sale I made from that trip (so far) was a Russian Federation distribution sale which netted me something like $10. 

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Looking back over sales was quite depressing, seeing all those high valued sales from some years back compared to recent years. Consequently I have limited my answer to images sold within the last 2 years. Highest sellers have been of blueberries, tomatoes and a molecular model.

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My best seller is of 6 year old identical Thai twin sisters who lived next door to me and shot some 5 years ago. They've long since moved on but the image is licensed almost monthly. My next best license is a shot of my wife attempting to photograph our (then) 6 year old daughter leaping in the air on the local beach only 100 yards from our home. As others have said, sometimes it's right on your doorstep. Unfortunately however, our now very grown up 12 year old daughter is mortified at the suggestion of a repeat shot.

 

Kids eh!

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It would not be in my interest to say just what subjects are my best sellers at the moment, since they could easily be covered by one and all. My current, newest best seller is a detail of an everyday subject here in NYC. It has sold for a good price each time, too. The second best seller was taken in Rome, another closeup, and again something that's seen everyday. 

 

When I was with Tony Stone, my biggest consistent seller was a head and shoulders shot of a good-looking Scottish bagpiper in traditional dress. It was a grab shot on the street near the Tube station at the Tower of London. So Scots and all Brits, if you can tolerate bagpipe music, go to it. I've never seen a bagpiper in New York. Well, the NYPD pipers always play at police funerals. (Personally, I like pipes music and all folk music.) 

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Interesting, my best sale was for very boring and straightforward picture of an amber jewelry display on a stall in an arcade; I don't think it is even properly sharp. Only sold the once though.

 

Close behind is a straight snap of the plaque on a war memorial. Anyone could have taken with any sort of camera.

 

In 3rd place, just, and sold more than once is a picture of the flights of some replica medieval arrows shot on film and scanned.

 

None of them would have been worth putting on the wall but there is clearly a market for the banal! Mind you I have not got close to 50% of those sales values in recent years.

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I've had one of Wandsworth Bridge that has sold three times for corporate packages and that has netted me the most royalties. My other 3x seller of a sheep with Canary Wharf behind it made modest bucks.

 

My best single sale has been a Basque flag graffitied on a wall in Bayonne.

 

Only the sheep/Canary Wharf image was taken after I joined Alamy.

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Best single sale was an image of a brightly lit burger van on a very gloomy winter's day while walking the dog. Taken with a compact (LX3), which puts overall gear purchases into perspective. This thread coincides with my worse single sale (net $1.94 distributor sale for a web use)for an image taken while on a very expensive catamaran cruise off Sicily. Suspect there are some lessons there!

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