Sat - April 12, 2008

Daily Microstock Shooting - Are You Up to the Challenge?



Lee Torrens from Microstock Diaries is starting a series of challenges that will create a helpful habit, develop a skill, or stretch boundaries. He will introduce each challenge at the start of the week and share what he created and learned on the weekend. Everybody is invited to participate.

The first challenge:

Starting Monday, the challenge is to shoot daily and contribute nightly. The quantity of shots you create and contribute is up to you - the point is to get yourself into a flow where creating microstock photos becomes a natural daily routine. Shooting during the day and then post-processing and uploading at night suits me, but choose a routine that works for you.

Also choose a target quantity that’s suitable for your lifestyle. If you’re a full time microstocker your number will be high. If you have a full time job and are the parent of young kids, your number will likely be lower. It’s important to pick a number that, as Matt suggested, is both challenging and achievable. Stretching helps you grow, but if you can’t make it work you’ll get discouraged. It’s better to start low and increase if you find you can.

He is starting off with 15 pictures per day and has a number of followers with similar goals. Are you up to the challenge?

Well, I am not ...

I am actually thinking about slowing down with microstock photography. After 5 months of intense work on my microstock portfolio I fill a little bit tired and burnt out. I also think that I am using too much time to process my pictures in Photoshop.

So, I am going to shoot in my current pace - about 30 pictures accepted by iStock per month. However, I am going to work on my Photoshop workflow and skills to make the entire process more efficient.

I also want to photograph something just for fun like another fashion show and to work on some pinhole images of flowers growing up in my garden. It will help to keep a balance between fun and business in my photography.

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