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How do you decide where to go for Stock?


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Curious to know people on the forum decide on where to go for stock trips - is it on the basis of careful  cost/benefit analysis, or is it more based on opportunity and/or personal desire to visit?  Nowadays, with the cost of transport and parking etc, even a day trip in the UK needs some consideration as to cost vs likely sales.  A couple of days abroad is a significant call against my limited stock budget and I recall a trip to Athens a couple of years ago that was blighted by wet weather and few good images.

 

When I was in full time employment, often my employer would be factor in where I was going as I was often able to tack stock taking opportunities on to business trips.  However, now I'm retired, all trips are fully at my expense.  This has had the effect of causing me to re-evaluate opportunities in my local area, but I still feel the urge to get away a few times a year exclusively for Stock.

 

Nowadays, for stock specific trips I look to visit places where I can feel confident of getting 80-100 usable images per day (weather permitting), which keeps me pretty well on the well beaten track with the obvious downside of knowing that these areas are pretty well covered already.  Can getting off the beaten track as a deliberate policy pay dividends - perhaps fewer usable images but more chances of a sale?

 

 

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I don't do stock specific trips, but I'm not retired (yet).  I take my camera with me at all times (the benefit of the RX100M2) and take opportunities as they come along.  There just isn't enough money for someone with a small port to start spending on stock trips.  I'll certainly never get rich, especially with the really low stock prices of today, but certainly look to supplement my income while I enjoy shooting.

 

Jill

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I had that thought recently and then found myself looking at how many pictures the locations had.

Having said this, noted the number of pictures on Aberystwyth - soon it dawned on me that the number of pictures (available on Alamy) may not be a sophisticated measure. 

 

 :rolleyes:

 

 

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6 minutes ago, arterra said:

 

  1. Look from your comfy chair at a BBC nature documentary about Alaskan grizzly bears.
  2. Think "How nice! I would like to see that in real life."
  3. Go to your local travel agency.
  4. Book a trip to Anchorage
  5. And then, Allan ...... only then ......... think "Oh God, what have I done :o
  6. But then it's already too late and you HAVE to go.

 

Now that, Allan, is DISCIPLINE -_- 

 

Cheers,

Philippe

 

 

Thanks Philippe but there is a serious underlying reason why I am travel limited and if we still had PM's I would tell you what it is but I am not going into it on the forum.:(

 

Allan

 

 

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I'm over 65, which means I'm of retirement age. However, I won't really be "retiring" until mother nature decides it's time. Like Jill (see above), I now take my camera with me most places that I go, including on holidays (such as they are). My slim budget no longer allows for international travel, so I stay close to home for the most part.  Once upon a time, I wrote travel articles for newspapers (Remember them?) and magazines. Tourism boards would sometimes invite me on press trips and pay most of my expenses. They were terrific opportunities for photography. But those days are over...

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1 hour ago, arterra said:

Anyone wondering what travel will be like when we'll be forced to drive only electric cars with a range of a measly 300-400 km (in good flat conditions) and a charging time of 4-6 hours :unsure: That'll be fun when the holiday seasons starts and everyone is heading to the south of France or Spain ......... on the same day. Now THAT keeps me awake at night :blink: Jeremy Clarkson, where are you?

 

Cheers,

Philippe

 

For me might be an improvement. 

Currently I use trains, public transport, bicycle and also my legs at times.

The bicycle is 100% muscle powered. 

That decision was made consciously, as I have to travel between most of the main cities quite often. 

Using a car, driving myself, was not really an option and trains being much faster between metropolitan areas. 

 

When it comes to more rural areas, say volcanic eifel (eifel volcanique, vulkaan eifel, vulkan eifel), the bicycle is the best but not fastest method of transport. 

At that point an electric car may at times come in handy, but for me not an own one. 

 

Going with the bike has also the "advantage of slowliness" to me, being able to see the place before it passed. 

 

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Day trips to London (1hr each way, £17.20 on the train). Most of my recent sales have been from London.

If I really need a holiday, I go somewhere photogenic and do a lot of research, take my cameras and hope the trip will pay for itself at least in part, eventually.

 

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1 hour ago, arterra said:

Anyone wondering what travel will be like when we'll be forced to drive only electric cars with a range of a measly 300-400 km (in good flat conditions) and a charging time of 4-6 hours :unsure: That'll be fun when the holiday seasons starts and everyone is heading to the south of France or Spain ......... on the same day. Now THAT keeps me awake at night :blink: Jeremy Clarkson, where are you?

 

Cheers,

Philippe

 

Didn't you watch The Flintstones when you were a kid?

 

Fred's car is the future of transportation IMO. :D

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Guilt at my emissions (the car, not me), and the cost of diesel, means I tend to shoot in places where I have cause to visit for other reasons too (family days out etc). Only rarely do I travel exclusively for shooting stock (always within the UK and usually in the northern half of England) and when I do I try to arrange to stay in the area for a few days where possible.

 

I am really looking forward to getting my bus pass in three years time. Then the world will be my oyster, at least as far as the world  is encompassed by walking distance from any bus stop or railway station within the bounds of the Greater Manchester Passenger  Transport Executive.

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90% of the time, the places I take pictures of are places that I happen to be rather than places that I go to specifically to take pictures. For example, I quite often (maybe every 3 or 4 months) go into London at a weekend when my wife has a social appointment there.. I end up driving her there (she doesn't drive.. and it's much cheaper to drive and park in London on a weekend than take the train). She meets her friends and I walk round a random part of London taking pictures.

 

I take a lot of pictures at home both inside and in the garden... a picture taken in my kitchen sold for good money this month. My two young children are usually willing models too.

 

It's rare for me to go somewhere just to take pictures.. and when I do, it's not more than 20 minutes away from home.

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Even before my "freedom 56", 5 years ago, I make a point of going on one international trip a year.  It keeps me busy processing pictures for 3 months and I need the deductions to minimize my tax bite.  Trip expenses and new stuff like the D850 means I get several thousand dollars back from the tax man rather paying that in.  So even though the raw business income doesn't justify travel, overall I need it.

 

And just to try to answer the OP:  I look for something that interests me, has stock potential, and if it's slightly off the beaten track (China, Kazakhstan, Slovenia, Turkey...)  all the better.

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I take advantage when traveling to see family. 

I drive around my city for opportunities. Lots of storefronts/shopfronts.

I usually try to get some farmland/crop/harvest images every year.

Go to a lake area 5 miles away that has great trails and shoot people walking, running, biking, canoeing, paddleboarding.

I shoot food that I cook. And some tabletop.

Betty

 

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34 minutes ago, Reimar said:

Even before my "freedom 56", 5 years ago, I make a point of going on one international trip a year.  It keeps me busy processing pictures for 3 months and I need the deductions to minimize my tax bite.  Trip expenses and new stuff like the D850 means I get several thousand dollars back from the tax man rather paying that in.  So even though the raw business income doesn't justify travel, overall I need it.

 

And just to try to answer the OP:  I look for something that interests me, has stock potential, and if it's slightly off the beaten track (China, Kazakhstan, Slovenia, Turkey...)  all the better.

 

The thing is that there are now lots of photographers in those 'off the beaten track' places to compete with, and they know their countries really well.

 

Just sayin' -- not trying to spoil your travel plans. B)

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9 hours ago, geogphotos said:

 

9 sales locally is enough for you to live on?

9 sales locally and also sales from several places we have been for work/holiday! 

 

No, we could not live off our Alamy income....luckily we also run a successful print business that keeps us quite well. 

Alamy just pays towards our holidays! 

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Just now, geogphotos said:

 

I am not a professional.

 

In which case you probably don't need to 'live on' whatever you make here then. Either way, hypothetically if you were to scale Thyrsis's portfolio to be the same kind of size as your own, that would equate to ~400 sales of locally taken pictures sold. So i guess that although travelling is fun, for those who can't or don't want to go far, salable pictures can be taken very locally. 

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2 minutes ago, geogphotos said:

 

I am not a professional.

 

Sure, no argument pics taken locally are just the same as pics taken far away.

The photographer in my case is a professional and has been for 40+ years!

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