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Stock photography, how to move to video footage


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To add some points to this:

 

1) You can do just fine with 8GB of RAM. My iMac works perfect for all of the time lapse that I do and create.

2) Colour grading isn't that bad in footage and especially if you are creating time lapse from Raw files.

3) When creating time lapse DON'T extend the footage as you will create obvious and detrimental effects.

4) Editors - depends on who you to submit to.

5) Remove all birds in time lapse footage. Expect to spend a good amount of time doing this.

6) You mention about some of the legalities. You have footage for sale that states "Time lapse of escalators with people rushing through in a shopping centre in Canary Warf, London" as RF. Should you really be offering this footage as RF when you don't have a property release? As well, you have the Eiffel Tower at night as RF which is a BIG no no.

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47 minutes ago, Jools Elliott said:

 As well, you have the Eiffel Tower at night as RF which is a BIG no no.

Only in France, to be fair. No other FOP country's copyright law would support it. So a French publisher would just discount it.

Surely it's largely a matter for the publisher? Vic isn't claiming to have releases.

 

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4 minutes ago, spacecadet said:

Only in France, to be fair. No other FOP country's copyright law would support it. So a French publisher would just discount it.

Surely it's largely a matter for the publisher? Vic isn't claiming to have releases.

 

 

But offering them for sale as RF suggests to the buyer that all is well and that the footage can be used without recourse when this is not the case.

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I don't think you need to be quite afraid of it as he makes out in the video, I have started working with video recently (not for stock) and whilst what he says about memory requirements is true you can edit in proxy and then it is all quite manageable with 8MB RAM. Colour correction in Premier Pro actually, the basics at least work in a similar manner to Lightroom.

Yes it is a steep learning curve but not something to shy away from if you wish to tackle it.

Whether there is any money in it is of course another matter and it does require a lot of additional kit

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5 hours ago, Steve Tucker said:

I don't think you need to be quite afraid of it as he makes out in the video, I have started working with video recently (not for stock) and whilst what he says about memory requirements is true you can edit in proxy and then it is all quite manageable with 8MB RAM. Colour correction in Premier Pro actually, the basics at least work in a similar manner to Lightroom.

Yes it is a steep learning curve but not something to shy away from if you wish to tackle it.

Whether there is any money in it is of course another matter and it does require a lot of additional kit

 

Wait until you get into time lapse proper. Dust spots etc that would have to be cleaned over 700 frames or so. Times by 30 and then let's talk ;)

 

Did 30 time lapse sequences in Budapest last week. 5 days or work to clean; process and stabilize where required.

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13 hours ago, Jools Elliott said:

 

Wait until you get into time lapse proper. Dust spots etc that would have to be cleaned over 700 frames or so. Times by 30 and then let's talk ;)

 

Did 30 time lapse sequences in Budapest last week. 5 days or work to clean; process and stabilize where required.

 

Sorry @Jools Elliott - just thinking out loud/analyzing for fun and/or for personal business circumstances feasibility purposes and wanted to test @geogphotos scepticism "I can't see how it make financial sense to stand there in one spot for several hours and then spending all this time in post-production is valid or not"

  • 5 days x 8hrs = 40 hours or one work week (using "normal" jobs as reference). Don't know how much time and expenses (travel, lodging, setting up/breaking down, length of time to shoot etc) should be attributed to these 30 time lapses. One work week equates to 1 / (52 weeks - 5 weeks holiday (Swedish normal)) = 1/47 of yearly work capacity or 2.1%
  • Average ("Average") regional (Sweden, west coast) gross annual salary $32,910, average gross annual salary at my educational level ("UniDegree") (3 years of uni, not photography unfortunately, but finance) $59,584. Re-worked to hourly wage; for $32,910/(40x47) = $17,50 per hour for Average or $59,584/(40x47) = $31,69 per hour for UniDegree.
  • What these 30 theoretical time lapses need to generate (for me) to be time well spent (remember this will be low end requirement level as it is excluding directly associated costs and dead time, as well as overhead costs) 
    • On "Average" level 40 hours x $17,50 = $700 which equates to $700/30 or $23,33 per time lapse, but collective gross earnings are more important/interesting for the purpose of this "test"
    • On "UniDegree" level 40 hours x $31,69 = $1,268 which equates to $1,268/30 or $42,27 per time lapse

 

So the question or the criteria to be able to say whether the time/effort/investment is worthwhile is

"Will these 30 time lapses collectively earn at least $700-$1,268 during a reasonable time frame?"

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2 hours ago, Martin Carlsson said:

 

Sorry @Jools Elliott - just thinking out loud/analyzing for fun and/or for personal business circumstances feasibility purposes and wanted to test @geogphotos scepticism "I can't see how it make financial sense to stand there in one spot for several hours and then spending all this time in post-production is valid or not"

  • 5 days x 8hrs = 40 hours or one work week (using "normal" jobs as reference). Don't know how much time and expenses (travel, lodging, setting up/breaking down, length of time to shoot etc) should be attributed to these 30 time lapses. One work week equates to 1 / (52 weeks - 5 weeks holiday (Swedish normal)) = 1/47 of yearly work capacity or 2.1%
  • Average ("Average") regional (Sweden, west coast) gross annual salary $32,910, average gross annual salary at my educational level ("UniDegree") (3 years of uni, not photography unfortunately, but finance) $59,584. Re-worked to hourly wage; for $32,910/(40x47) = $17,50 per hour for Average or $59,584/(40x47) = $31,69 per hour for UniDegree.
  • What these 30 theoretical time lapses need to generate (for me) to be time well spent (remember this will be low end requirement level as it is excluding directly associated costs and dead time, as well as overhead costs) 
    • On "Average" level 40 hours x $17,50 = $700 which equates to $700/30 or $23,33 per time lapse, but collective gross earnings are more important/interesting for the purpose of this "test"
    • On "UniDegree" level 40 hours x $31,69 = $1,268 which equates to $1,268/30 or $42,27 per time lapse

 

So the question or the criteria to be able to say whether the time/effort/investment is worthwhile is

"Will these 30 time lapses collectively earn at least $700-$1,268 during a reasonable time frame?"

 

It doesn't work that way for me because my clips aren't going into the OPs point of sale.

 

With the OPs point of sale you choose your own price. In other libraries it depends on the usual things such as how much buying power etc they have.

 

Time lapse is a different animal to straight forward video clips. Ian has said about not wanting the hassle BUT for straight lockdown clips that for him would be a far more viable route. Those type of clips can be edited in just about the same time as a still if there are no issues with it. The only factor that elongates the process is the rendering.

 

And lastly returns. You know as well as I do that you get various prices for the same thing in library A. What might sell for $5 today can then sell to another client for $1000 the next depending on the various factors.

 

I have sold a straight lockdown clip off a Canon 5D Mark II with nothing fancy done to it apart from trimming the start and end where I pressed the button with a little shake for about $800 net. It can and does happen and the rough always has to be taken with the smooth.

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Nice that since Alamy doesn't take footage we can all be more open about it on here...

 

I had my first video sale last week for Copacabana fireworks on NYE. $19 which is nothing to retire on. Nevertheless, I feel that licensing footage, along with bread and butter photos, is a great way to diversify income in this game. A quick search using popular keywords suggests that there's much less competition than stills, although obviously less buyers. 

 

I'm quite enjoying the experience of creating footage, especially timelapses. I put together a blog post ("First Steps as a Footage Fanatic") on some of my latest 5-second timelapses (stills combined together not sped-up video). If anybody has any input on my videos, I would appreciate! Not the highest quality timelapses but love the Nikon built-in timer to speed up my workflow. I really don't want to spend 5 days post-processing 30 timelapses.

 

Keep the videos coming, Vic! 

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48 minutes ago, mickfly said:

Julian mentions removing all birds.
I was plagued with bats!

http://www.mickflynnimages.com/blog/2018/1/timelapse-with-sony-rx100-mk3

Timelapse is something I had been messing about with for fun, but I may try to up my game and submit for stock.

 

 

Here's a time lapse I did of London. Hours of work!

 

 

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I'm feeling people shouldn't be dissuaded  from having a go at producing video, even if the OP's discussion makes it sound like you have to be competing at a really high level. Nearly every contributor to Alamy will have the facilities for producing HD video at a standard 25 or 30 fps and this standard stuff still sells (when the subject is right), even if the future is in 4K, drones and ultra-slow motion. The key thing is that the new video contributor can dabble in video now with minimal additional outlay and learn the ins and outs of a craft that is in many ways quite different to taking still images. The investment, should one chose to undertake it, can come later. I never have done and continue to dabble in the shallows of video, but it still earns more for me than still images (and I split my time and effort about 50/50 over the two mediums). It takes longer to shoot and edit video than stills, and video colour grading is not as forgiving as working with a still RAW file, but it is not an impossible to produce very acceptable video stock in a short time.

 

Filming and processing timelapses is hard, time-consuming, work. They look great, but that great look does not come easy and I try not to think too much about how much wear and tear it imposes on my DSLR shutter. Unless you are deeply motivated by a love of timelapse, don't feel that you have to jump in this particular deep end as a video beginner. Find your depth first.

 

One noticeable feature of video clips is that if the purchaser finds the right clip for their purposes, they seem less price sensitive about it than the still image buyer. At the one video microstock site where I  am able to set my own prices, my bog-standard HD clips are priced at $50 -$100 gross (50% commission). The limited experiments I have done with lower pricing haven't produced extra sales and I have a gut feeling sometimes the lower price induces a must-be-lower-quality feeling in the prospective buyer. Have a go at video and don't undersell yourself. My final thought would be, think twice before getting into a video bed with a microstock Big G . Unless, you go exclusive, you will be on a miserly 15% commission - I stopped uploading the fruits of my labour to them years ago.

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Thanks all!

 

Some have sold for stock and for decent prices.

 

Ian, don't discount using your Canon 5D Mark III to do simple lockdown clips. You have Photoshop I believe so you don't additional software and it is VERY easy to process.

 

I know of one agency you're with that takes RM footage so you're sorted in that respect.

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On 4/28/2018 at 05:28, Jools Elliott said:

To add some points to this:

 

1) You can do just fine with 8GB of RAM. My iMac works perfect for all of the time lapse that I do and create.

2) Colour grading isn't that bad in footage and especially if you are creating time lapse from Raw files.

3) When creating time lapse DON'T extend the footage as you will create obvious and detrimental effects.

4) Editors - depends on who you to submit to.

5) Remove all birds in time lapse footage. Expect to spend a good amount of time doing this.

6) You mention about some of the legalities. You have footage for sale that states "Time lapse of escalators with people rushing through in a shopping centre in Canary Warf, London" as RF. Should you really be offering this footage as RF when you don't have a property release? As well, you have the Eiffel Tower at night as RF which is a BIG no no.

Hi Jools,
thank you for your input.
Just my thoughts about a couple of points
1) I have 32 GB of RAM and I am upgrading this week to 64GB. I spend about 2 days per week post processing timelapses and video 4k, with 64 I hope to go down to 1 day and a half. When doing stock footage I have constantly open Lightroom, After Effects, Premiere Pro, Media Encoder, LR TImelapse and Photoshop. On top of that I work with 45M pixel RAW files from a Nikon D850. If I had 8GB of RAM I could not even open a RAW sequence in AE
2) Color grading RAW timelapses is great, real footage is horrible, much worse than JPEG due to the huge compression (and I am using a decent camera), even much, much worse when is footage coming from a drone (Phantom 4 Pro)
6) None of the stock footage agencies has RM, they only do RF. But royalty free can be specified as editorial only; it is the responsibility of the agency to decide what goes as editorial

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20 minutes ago, Justin Case said:

Hi Jools,
thank you for your input.
Just my thoughts about a couple of points
1) I have 32 GB of RAM and I am upgrading this week to 64GB. I spend about 2 days per week post processing timelapses and video 4k, with 64 I hope to go down to 1 day and a half. When doing stock footage I have constantly open Lightroom, After Effects, Premiere Pro, Media Encoder, LR TImelapse and Photoshop. On top of that I work with 45M pixel RAW files from a Nikon D850. If I had 8GB of RAM I could not even open a RAW sequence in AE
2) Color grading RAW timelapses is great, real footage is horrible, much worse than JPEG due to the huge compression (and I am using a decent camera), even much, much worse when is footage coming from a drone (Phantom 4 Pro)
6) None of the stock footage agencies has RM, they only do RF. But royalty free can be specified as editorial only; it is the responsibility of the agency to decide what goes as editorial

 

None of the stock agencies has RM? You are correct. It is known as Rights Ready and but it is definitely NOT RF. I can think of two agencies off the top of my head that sells footage as Rights Ready.

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29 minutes ago, geogphotos said:

 

But I don't have any interest in doing video Jools so not much point trying. Doing stills is enough for me without trying to think of two things at once.:(

 

Thanks anyway :)

If you change your mind let me know as it is very very simple :)

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never say never. Especially where additional incomes streams are concerned ;)

 

Time lapse definitely isn't for you. You would do your brains in trying to sort that lot out!!!

 

In any case, as you like submitting non-exclusively and want RM then it would be a challenge!

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On 29/04/2018 at 19:24, Jools Elliott said:

 

Here's a time lapse I did of London. Hours of work!

 

1

 

Superb..!

 

I've been thinking of doing something similar around Manchester - I was wondering if you needed to get permission to photograph in some of the locations and, if so, did you have any difficulty with this?

 

Edit - off topic but whenever I quote a post it seems to add a number 1 at the end but I don't seem to see this in others' posts.  Anyone know why?

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1 hour ago, Vincent Lowe said:

 

Superb..!

 

I've been thinking of doing something similar around Manchester - I was wondering if you needed to get permission to photograph in some of the locations and, if so, did you have any difficulty with this?

 

Edit - off topic but whenever I quote a post it seems to add a number 1 at the end but I don't seem to see this in others' posts.  Anyone know why?

 

Yes, in a number of places permission was granted. The high elevations especially.

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On 4/28/2018 at 06:15, spacecadet said:

Only in France, to be fair. No other FOP country's copyright law would support it. So a French publisher would just discount it.

Surely it's largely a matter for the publisher? Vic isn't claiming to have releases.

 

Hi Spacecadet,
I believe that those night images of the Eiffel tower at night are all for sale as editorial, which is allowed.
The copyright for the lights is only for commercial use, editorial is still allowed

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On 4/28/2018 at 09:36, funkyworm said:

I had to laugh about the model release requirement for a paella.

 

But these things happen in the stills world too. One agent contacted five times in one day to ask if I had a model release for Samuel Eto'o, a rather famous footballer who probably at the time earnt more in the 1/800th shutter speed needed for the photo than I do in a year. 

Ahahahah,
once they asked me for a model release for the Royal pavilion in Brighton (which of course is not copyrighted), I told them that I had written to king George IV, but he had not replied yet

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On 4/29/2018 at 13:34, Brasilnut said:

Nice that since Alamy doesn't take footage we can all be more open about it on here...

 

I had my first video sale last week for Copacabana fireworks on NYE. $19 which is nothing to retire on. Nevertheless, I feel that licensing footage, along with bread and butter photos, is a great way to diversify income in this game. A quick search using popular keywords suggests that there's much less competition than stills, although obviously less buyers. 

 

I'm quite enjoying the experience of creating footage, especially timelapses. I put together a blog post ("First Steps as a Footage Fanatic") on some of my latest 5-second timelapses (stills combined together not sped-up video). If anybody has any input on my videos, I would appreciate! Not the highest quality timelapses but love the Nikon built-in timer to speed up my workflow. I really don't want to spend 5 days post-processing 30 timelapses.

 

Keep the videos coming, Vic! 

Hi Alex,
your timelapses have improved a lot recently.
Video sales take a very long time to materialise, so be patient.
I would go for longer clips: 10-20 seconds, they sell much better.
You would get much better results if you create motion blur. In your timelapse including cars or people your shutter speed should be at least 1/2 second or slower (if shooting in full daylight you need ND filters for that); at the moment you are shooting at least at 1/20 or even faster.
Try to look for day with good clouds (I know it is not easy in Milan, where the sky tend to be greish), or shoot close to sunrise or sunset

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Quote

Hi Alex,
your timelapses have improved a lot recently.
Video sales take a very long time to materialise, so be patient.
I would go for longer clips: 10-20 seconds, they sell much better.
You would get much better results if you create motion blur. In your timelapse including cars or people your shutter speed should be at least 1/2 second or slower (if shooting in full daylight you need ND filters for that); at the moment you are shooting at least at 1/20 or even faster.
Try to look for day with good clouds (I know it is not easy in Milan, where the sky tend to be greish), or shoot close to sunrise or sunset

 

Thanks Justin for your comments and suggestions. 1/2 seconds sounds good. I was thinking that since for video it needs to be about 1/50 second then it should be more or less the same for stills in view of making a timelapse but that's not true. Also, yesterday I put on Aperture Priority and got some dreaded flickering so have to remember to always shoot in full manual. Anyway, it's OK for me to make these sort of mistakes in early days. I hope to get to your level in a few years + that D850 has really impressive dynamic range! 

 

I'm quite enjoying making these timelapses. Also people in Italy are quite open, as you know, and standing around for 30 mins, people ask me all sorts of questions on what I'm doing and give their own tips. It's like they know I'm a foreigner and proud that I'm taking such interest in their culture. 

 

Grazie mille, amico,


Alex

 

 

 

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