Why you should submit your photos to EyeEm

If you are in any way a serious photographer you will, at some time or other, have asked yourself "how can I make my photography pay?"

Well, one way is to submit your images to a stock library, of which there are many. Personally, I have images all over the place and to be honest, it's a bit of a mess. Trying to keep track of what images were submitted where is a real nightmare at times. However, of late, I have decided to submit images to just two places, Adobe Stock and EyeEm.


When I say 'images' I am referring to stock images. I still enter images in contests and also to sites like Zazzle and Redbubble. These last two are sites where can upload your images and add them to various products (mugs, postcards, prints, garments, clothing, phone cases... the combinations seem endless. Check out the link to see what I mean).


Stock libraries offer a great way to get your images seen by thousands of possible clients. Everyday millions of images are used in blogs, corporate websites, magazines, books, leaflets and these images have to come from somewhere. Also, these potential clients want fresh images so there is a constant demand for new images. This means that potentially you can earn some good money if your images are good enough. The stock library does all the hard work of promoting your images to potential clients around the world. They also manage the website where your images are hosted, deal with royalty issues and at the end of the day, hopefully, sending you your share (usually 50% of what clients are charged).


So, looking at EyeEm, what is on offer. Well, before we get into money, let's look at some other benefits of submitting your images to EyeEm.


1. You are joining an online community of 20 million photographers from 150 countries;
2. You will not only connect with some of these photographers but you will receive (and hopefully give) encouragement;
3. You will find endless inspiration for the craft of photography and I guarantee it will make you a better photographer;
4. Finally, you may even make some money!

Taking each of these points in turn, let's look at them in more depth. Twenty million photographers from 150 countries - I know, it's somewhat mind-blowing! Just think for a moment.... it's better than the UN in some ways and I bet more folk actively engage in the online community that is EyeEm than do with the UN. I am not, in any way, saying let's abolish the UN. No, all I am saying is that when you join EyeEm (no joining fee by the way, just to be clear) you are part of something bigger, much bigger, than your self. Think of all the good that can be done by interacting with folk from another country, who may be of a different gender, hold different political views and follow a totally different religion (or none at all).


This leads me onto my second point, that you will receive encouragement from other community members, and hopefully, give it in return. This will be through likes and comments on photos as well as following other photographers. Now of course, I am not saying that this interaction will be on a deeply personal and meaningful level. But it can be. There is nothing to stop you, through the use of the comments facility, building deeper relationships with other photographers. You could, for example, make links with others who live near you and even meet up to work on a project (say street photography in the nearest city) or start a friendship up outside of the community. It's up to you.


Thirdly, you will find plenty to inspire your photography on the site, simply by being able to view the work of other photographers. Also, EyeEm run regular 'missions' on a theme, often with prizes. For example, as of this moment, they are running one on the theme of 'Yellow', supported by Nikon (who have a yellow logo - hence the link) who are offering actual camera gear. By participating in these 'missions' you will improve your photography as they provide not only encouragement but an incentive to get that shot for the mission and claim the glory!


Finally, we come to money. Now to be absolutely clear, you will not become a millionaire through submitting your images to EyeEm. But you can, if you work at it, increase your chances significantly of making some money from your craft. By hard work I mean taking lots of diverse images and uploading them on a regular basis. Just remember that and accept you are unlikely to be an overnight success.


So, how much money are we talking? Well, EyeEm's fee structure for use of your images is as follows:


Subscriptions

When you sell a photo through EyeEm Market, you will always receive 50% of the revenue.

The amount the photo sells for depends on the license purchased:
• Social Licenses sell for $20 per photo.
• Web Licenses sell for $50 per photo.
• Full Commercial Licenses sell for $250 per photo.

If you want to know more about licensing and copyright issues, please refer to the Terms of Service page.

The Difference between EyeEm Market pricing and partner pricing

EyeEm Market Pricing offers a set price. More details about these licenses can be found on the Subscriptions FAQ. Photos sold through Partner Pricing can vary in price according to the partner’s own set pricing systems.


The Difference between Commercial and Editorial License

Photos with a Commercial License are more likely to sell because buyers can use them for a wider range of purposes. Photos that either require no releases or have had all the releases signed qualify for a Commercial License. Photos that haven’t had their releases completed are made available only with an Editorial License.

So, its possible to earn up to $125 (£93 approx) from an image. The thing about stock photography though is you can earn repeat fees as each image could be licensed more than once. In fact, some popular images may be licensed several times.

Just remember that you need to upload images on a regular basis and that they have to be images that not only technically good but also relevant. By that I mean that market for images is just that, a marketplace and like all marketplaces, what the customer wants, the customer gets in theory!). People want different things at different times. There are trends in the stock photography market as in any other. So, it's worth checking out what images you see on TV, in magazines and more importantly, online.

EyeEm help with this in a very clever way. They look at trends and then post on their blog articles about the latest trends and what actually sells. If you want to be a very successful stock photographer you will need to upload images that buyers are looking for. For example, as of this moment, the Four Top-Selling Photo Themes in September were:

1. Millennial Pink

2. Sources of light

3. Winter is coming (I blame Game of Thrones!)

4. Linework

For more details check the article on their blog. It's full of useful and inspirational stuff that is sure to get your creative juices flowing. If you do join EyeEm, let me know your username in the comments and I will check out your images. Alternatively, check out my profile and follow me and I will follow you back.

How good is Macphun's Aurora HDR 2018?

Yesterday I posted about the upcoming release of Macphun's Aurora HDR 2018. Aurora HDR 2018 will be available for pre-order on September 12, and released on September 28. As well as including the press release information in my post, I also included an example of before and after images.

Well, just one example is not enough to judge (before you can get your hands on the software) of what it is capable of. To help remedy that I include a couple more examples. First up is a dramatic shot of Dubai by Dima Sytnix. You can clearly see how Aurora HDR 2018 has brought up the detail in the shadows and improved the highlights in the sky.

Dubai Before image (by Dima Sytnik)

Dubai After Image (Dima Sytnik)

The second example is a photo of a path through trees, also taken in Spain by Dmitry Sytnik.

As you can, once again the software has managed to improve on the original image, with more detail in the highlights and better contrast all round, without losing detail in the shadows.

So, I hope this has wetted your appetite for the software. If you would like to pre-order and benefit from some time-limited bonuses, go to Macphun's site here. It won't cost any extra but if you use this link it will help me spend more time writing posts, creating tutorials and tips for my readers. Speaking of which, I want to thank everyone who has helped me to reach over 2,000 pageviews last month.

Want to create stunning HDR images? Try Aurora HDR 2018.

HDR images are very popular these days. If you want to create HDR images you need to edit your photos in an image editor that supports HDR. You can use any of the many photo editors available such as Photoshop, Lightroom, Affinity to achieve an HDR effect in post-processing.
Macphun, the creators of several image editors also have one specifically for producing HDR images. They have just released details about the latest incarnation of their Aurora HDR. Keeping things simple, its called Aurora HDR 2018 and you can pre-order it today by clicking on this link here or by clicking on the image above.

There are various deals available so check out the press release below for more info.

In the meantime check out some Before and After images:

Brazil Before (с) 2013-2017 Dmitry Sytnik

Brazil After (с) 2013-2017 Dmitry Sytnik 

About Aurora HDR:

Aurora HDR is not just a tool for merging bracketed images, it also provides numerous tools and countless options to create perfect HDR photos for every taste - from one-click presets and advanced tone-mapping, to layers, noise reduction and powerful luminosity masking controls. 

Offer Availability: 

Aurora HDR 2018 will be available for pre-order TODAY, September 12th, and released on September 28th. 

Pre-Order Pricing: 

• Current users of Aurora HDR may upgrade at a special pre-order price of $49 ($59 MSRP)
• New users can purchase Aurora HDR 2018 at a special pre-order price of $89 ($99 MSRP)
• A collection of bonuses will also be included with every purchase.

Pre-Order Bonuses:

• Trey Ratcliff Deep Dive video (HDR Training by Trey Ratcliff) 
• Travel Photography Tutorials by Matt Granger (2 hours of tips, tricks and techniques to capture the best travel photos) 
• Source Brackets (5 sets of HDR brackets)
• 3-month Zenfolio Pro website, including a complementary design consultation. $60 value.

What's new in Aurora HDR 2018:

• Next-generation Tone Mapping – A new smart Tone Mapping algorithm automatically reduces noise, and produces more realistic and natural initial results.
• Mac and Windows versions – Aurora HDR 2018 is available both for Mac and PC users, enabling mixed-computer households to share the same product key.
• Lens Correction Tool* – The new Lens Correction filter easily fixes all kinds of lens distortion, from barrel and pincushion to chromatic aberration and vignetting.
• Transform Tool* – Easily scale, rotate and shift your image to better fit your vision.
• Dodge & Burn Filter – Selectively lighten or darken specific areas of an image to artfully direct your viewer’s eye towards the key subject of your image, similar to a traditional darkroom technique.
• HDR Enhance Filter - Adds details and clarity to an image, adjusting colors, details and contrast without creating artificial halos or other problems.
• User Interface – A new, modern and responsive user interface brings a powerful, yet joyful experience to HDR photo editing.
• History Panel – An easy-to-reference list of edits made to your image, the History panel allows you to click on any editing step to revert the photo to an earlier stage of editing.
• Touch Bar support for Mac – Aurora HDR 2018 adds Touch Bar support to give new MacBook Pro users fast access to key editing features and speed up their workflow.
• Image Flip and Rotate* – Perfect for correcting photos with incorrect horizons or making creative compositions or other stylistic changes to an image.
• IMPROVED: New Structure Algorithm – The re-developed Structure tool allows you to adjust detail and clarity of an image to get a classic HDR effect with great detail or a smoother effect with less details.
• IMPROVED: RAW handling – An improved RAW conversion brings out more details in shadows/highlights, displays colors more accurately and reduces noise in RAW files.
• IMPROVED: Crop tool update – Now specify custom crop sizes for even more versatility.
• IMPROVED: Speed – Faster merging and masking performance, improvement in RAW image processing.

* Lens Correction and Transform tools, as well as image flip and rotate will be available in the Mac version at launch, and arrive in the PC version with the first free update in the beginning of October. Other tools and features that are currently available for Mac only would be added to PC version by the end of the year.

How to earn money from your photography.

At some point or other, if you are keen photographer, you may have thought about making some money from what can be a very expensive hobby. One of the ways to do this is to get into stock photography. Now, in case you wonder what all this is about, here is the Wikipedia entry on the subject:

Stock photography is the supply of photographs, which are often licensed for specific uses.[1] The stock photo industry, which began to gain hold in the 1920s,[1] has established models including traditional macrostock photography,[2] midstock photography,[3] and microstock photography.[4] Conventional stock agencies charge from several hundred to several thousand American dollars per image, while microstock photography may sell for around USD 25 cents.[4] Professional stock photographers traditionally place their images with one or more stock agencies on a contractual basis,[1] while stock agencies may accept the high-quality photos of amateur photographers through online submission.[5]

If you think that your photographs are good enough, this can be a way to recoup some of the money you have spent on your hobby. Not many people get rich this way, but you can make an income that may or may not cover all your costs but could help to some degree in paying for your equipment, travel costs and internet connection.

One of the many ways to get into stock photography is via an app on your smartphone. In fact, some photographers only submit photos taken on their smartphones and that is perfectly acceptable to some stock libraries. One of these is EyeEm and I myself have over 1,000 images on their site (see image above). You can also upload images from your computer as well as from your smartphone.

As well as EyeEm there is also Foap and I am sure there others. You can also join Adobe Stock to sell not just photos but graphics, video, type and other graphic related items. Adobe Stock has the advantage that you can upload directly from within Lightroom etc.

Check out my premium images on EyeEm here.

Photolemur is now available on PC and Mac!

Photolemur is an innovative and fully automated program for getting perfect photos. It is now available on both Mac and PC. Photolemur works by automatically analysing your images and doesn't require you to do any manual editing.

Designed for anyone who takes photos., you just drag and drop your image onto the program and leave the rest to Photolemur. Using artificial intelligence, smart tech and a bit of magic, Photolemur doesn’t rely on hard-coded filters or presets. Rather, by applying specific targeted enhancements to every pixel and object in your photo, it will automatically come up with the best result possible. Photolemur is powered by artificial intelligence that recognizes objects, faces, trees, sky, foliage and more; distinguishes between portraits, landscapes and macro photographs; and applies the appropriate enhancements for each type of image.

Why not check out the video above that will introduce you to what may just be the most innovative photo editor out there. You can purchase Photolemur for just $30 (single install) or $50 for the family edition (up to 5 installs). Click here now. Get the Free Version with watermark and no batch export.