Ed Rooney Posted April 6, 2014 Share Posted April 6, 2014 On my last post, the subject was "location." A lot of forum members decided it was really about "subject." So here we are now talking about subject or subjects. I shoot a lot of "street," that is things I may go looking for or things I happen upon outside my home. Most of it is people doing things, not at my direction, but just doing whatever they're doing--working, shopping, riding a bike, crossing in traffic, whatever. I prefer that they're not aware of me, but if they are, I deal with that. Next I shoot details: items in windows, fireplug on the sidewalk, stuff that I feel looks interesting. And I shoot a lot of food, but not as a dedicated food photographer with a lot of control; I shoot mostly food in restaurants, which could be thought of as an aspect of travel photography. And I almost forgot landmarks. What subjects do you prefer to shoot? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Mitchell Posted April 6, 2014 Share Posted April 6, 2014 I'm a fairly eclectic sort as well, Ed. I don't do much food photography, though. Perhaps I should. Here are four "Made in Vancouver" shots that have sold on Alamy recently. (L to R: outdoor chess tournament, vegan chef, Chinese lanterns, autumn church) Not earth-moving images, I realize, but I had fun taking them and actually made some pocket money (in one case $360 gross). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Brook Posted April 6, 2014 Share Posted April 6, 2014 Rubbish dumps Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed Rooney Posted April 6, 2014 Author Share Posted April 6, 2014 No, they're nice shots, John; they have an alive feel about them. Funny, but in the thumbnail, the food pictures next to the vegan chef, look like sausages and hotdogs! I think about 25% of my sales are food. Maybe I need to add an autumn church? No, but I did forget to show and mention cityscapes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jill Morgan Posted April 6, 2014 Share Posted April 6, 2014 I of course like to shoot the stuff that doesn't sell well: wildlife and funky landscapes. Love to hang at the zoo and around the many lakes where I live. Today I got some nice shots of a breeding pair of Canada Geese and a breeding pair of Mallard Ducks. Went to Peterborough and hung out at the lift locks, although its closed for the winter of course. Won't open till May. Once the snow prison is totally melted (man this winter has just been awful) I plan to spend a day at the Toronto Docks and at Billy Bishop Airport on Toronto Islands. I found the docks fascinating when I went there in Grade 12 for our Urban Geography studies. Container shipping is cool. Jill Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike Posted April 6, 2014 Share Posted April 6, 2014 I only photograph law enforcement, prisons, forensics, and related topics which includes "tools of the trade" which varies greatly from handcuffs and fingerprint brushes to fired bullets to illegal street drugs. Ironically enough, one of my all time best selling images is a close-up of illegal street drugs. Uploaded about three years ago and has been licensed well over 100 times by now,,, So crime pays, kind of... finding myself shooting more and more prisons - which these days is also my "day job - when the economy tanked I went from selling on average 4 to 8 packages of text and photos to all kinds of magazines but that virtually died over night.I took a job in a US state department of corrections late in 2010 and in November of 2013 I was promoted to sergeant at our state maximum security prison. The fact that I now have a job with health insurance also allowed my wife to quit her full time job in 2010 and work full time with that she laves and is her calling in life, ironically she heads up a local, state-wide prison ministry...Mike Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Mitchell Posted April 6, 2014 Share Posted April 6, 2014 No, they're nice shots, John; they have an alive feel about them. Funny, but in the thumbnail, the food pictures next to the vegan chef, look like sausages and hotdogs! I think about 25% of my sales are food. Maybe I need to add an autumn church? No, but I did forget to show and mention cityscapes. Thanks, Ed. They are indeed sausages and hot dogs, the vegan variety, 100% non-meat. They taste much like the real thing believe it or not. This young lady knew what she was doing. What I enjoy the most is photographing in faraway places, usually Latin America, but can' afford that much these days. Plus I no longer get invites on free press junkets (bummer). Fortunately, prowling the streets of Vancouver NEX-in-hand can be fun, even lucrative at times. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Mitchell Posted April 6, 2014 Share Posted April 6, 2014 Rubbish dumps Hey, one person's trash can be another one's treasure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed Rooney Posted April 6, 2014 Author Share Posted April 6, 2014 Nice stuff, Jill. I suppose that cheetah is in your zoo . . . or looking in your kitchen window? My son and his family live in Montreal, so I know the difference between a rotten winter here and one north of the border. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jill Morgan Posted April 6, 2014 Share Posted April 6, 2014 Nice stuff, Jill. I suppose that cheetah is in your zoo . . . or looking in your kitchen window? My son and his family live in Montreal, so I know the difference between a rotten winter here and one north of the border. Yes at the zoo. I did get to Africa last year, but just got the camera and didn't have a telephoto lens. And the 2 landscapes I took when visiting my sister in Grand Bend on Lake Huron. This winter is the first time Lake Huron has had a total surface freeze in a gazillion years. That's how awful this winter has been. Normally this time of year I should have green grass, buds on the maple trees and be able to drive with the window down. Currently I still have a 5' snow drift at the end of my driveway and I had to get hay in for the horse as no grass in sight out in the fields. It was +10C today (around 50F) so spring has finally made a very late arrival. There will be a lot of flooding and mud this year. Love shooting at the zoo. New baby gorilla, so have to go and get a few of her. Strangest animal in my kitchen window has been a raccoon. A few coyotes about, but no cheetahs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed Rooney Posted April 6, 2014 Author Share Posted April 6, 2014 Mike, that is indeed a unique specialty. Thank you to you and your wife for your important service. I've never been in the system in the USA. I was convicted of assault in Rome (suspended sentence) and once "questioned" by the White Mice in Saigon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Linda Posted April 7, 2014 Share Posted April 7, 2014 With more than 300,000 images in my 2 company archives if I knew what would sell,I'd be so rich I could buy my friends mansion and have enough left over for a night on the town. However,reality is,at least looking thru my Alamy sales,appx 40% of my sales have people.About 1/3 of those people photos have model releases. I've sold shots from locations other than my own city from a few tourist attractions but most have been day to day things we see. On this site,not that many sales of 'celebrities' but just a few and not for big prices. I am not part of the newspaper scheme. I have enough headaches... I do not think I've sold any food photos here but the same ones here have sold thru other outlets in the past. I like to shoot food and like when it sells...makes it a bonus tax deduction! :-) L Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ann Posted April 7, 2014 Share Posted April 7, 2014 For me, place and subject are largely intertwined.I love recording life on Long Island - especially political, cultural, and community events; historic aviation & cars; and our marshlands. (Happily it's led to challenging &/or fun assignments....) And I occasionally cover some of the above in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryan Posted April 7, 2014 Share Posted April 7, 2014 For me, place and subject are largely intertwined. Yes I feel that there needs to be something happening at that place, even it is only a couple walking by, person walking dog, reading newspaper, cyclist whatever. But there's no magic rule that I can see, my best earner and most of my best sellers are people free. Never licensed a food shot, but have had a couple of recent zooms. so living in hope..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dov makabaw Posted April 7, 2014 Share Posted April 7, 2014 I shoot a whole variety of subjects from travel to street, my favourites, to everyday things such as lifestyle, artwork, flora, fauna, documentary/events/places/landmarks etc. I guess Jack of all trades and master of none!! dov Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Allan Bell Posted April 7, 2014 Share Posted April 7, 2014 I shoot a variety of content for stock from landscape through street to studio, with and without people. Non of which sells well. Allan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndyMelbourne Posted April 7, 2014 Share Posted April 7, 2014 Rubbish dumps According to my stats I also shoot rubbish. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sheila Smart Posted April 7, 2014 Share Posted April 7, 2014 I shoot people (with a camera of course) - http://www.pbase.com/sheila/streets_of_sydney and convert to monochrome. Doesn't sell too well but its what I love to do. So much so, I turned it into an e-book http://store.blurb.com/ebooks/434892-streets-of-sydney-light-and-dark Sheila Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Martin P Wilson Posted April 7, 2014 Share Posted April 7, 2014 Rubbish dumps According to my stats I also shoot rubbish. Me too, seems ruubbish is over supplied! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted April 7, 2014 Share Posted April 7, 2014 I love to shoot/produce concepts so I guess my favourite subject is a keyword string - money, potential, business.... etc My 'therapy' work is garden images, mainly plants, especially pests and diseases - I love to text my other half pics of my office (a cafe at whatever garden I am shooting in) just to remind her how hard my work is Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Brook Posted April 7, 2014 Share Posted April 7, 2014 If I may creep in here, before New York awakes, this is one I would like to have taken. It's by a certain Mr Rooney. One of the great things about Alamy - aside from the pay, that is - is that every so often you can come across an image that takes your breath away. This does it for me. It’s a great image. And it’s not about shopping in my view. I won't embarrass Mr Rooney any further by boring on about it. RB Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Inchiquin Posted April 7, 2014 Share Posted April 7, 2014 I take a variety of subjects, but my favourites are where I can create a harmonious context between person and place. I know they won't sell but it's my way of saying "Look, there's room for people in the world without spoiling it". I guess it's a kind of antidote to Robert Brook's wastelands and rubbish tips. Alan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Brook Posted April 7, 2014 Share Posted April 7, 2014 Mainly night photography nowadays. For a while this was a personal project, but now I get some good money for it from Corbis. Much more recently I have started to create scenes and situations - actually, not in photoshop, but because of the complexity, photoshop is an important ingredient. Corbis again. And one or two for SPL. Still-life images that play with light - SPL - anything rejected, hardly any, go to Alamy. And those dumps - but that's an old story. It started in South London back in the 1980s and Essex was just a hop and a skip away. They still sell, particularly for textbook use, and I have been uploading them to Alamy. They are far too old for anywhere else. They earned me thousands p.a. back in the 1990s. RB Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Robinson Posted April 7, 2014 Share Posted April 7, 2014 Recent sellers: I enjoy doing the travel (though logs on a train aren't really travel, even if they were Czech) but kitchen table stuff sells better, is far more profitable, and some of it can even be eaten later and tax-deductable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CandyAppleRed Images Posted April 7, 2014 Share Posted April 7, 2014 I try not to specialse, but I do take quite a lot of signage images and they sell quite well, about 20-25% of my sales on Alamy. The majority of my sales, I reckon over 50%, are of London street scenes, signs, hospitals, art deco cinemas etc. I do concentrate on London as it sells well and I can get in there easily. The rest of the UK is well covered in area and subject matter, but out of over 300 non-UK shots I have only sold one from Central Park NY and one from Bayonne in France. I have also done a few studio shots but sales there are limited to statin tablets, which are frequently in the news. There was a nice irony recently when two days after I told my GP I was ditching statins due to side effects, this sale popped up http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/10535238/Millions-of-patients-may-be-on-statins-needlessly.html Other recent sales below. The Woolwich Market one has become my best performer on Alamy with 3 pretty hefty fees. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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