As I’ve been working to increase my stock photo portfolios this year, I thought I would look over some of my old photos to see if there were any I could add. When I finally got around to it, I couldn’t believe how much potential stock I had just sitting on my hard drives.
I started way back, with photos I took in 2011. That is the year when I went on my very first workshop with Great Escape Publishing, so I was a rank beginner in those days, having only just taken up photography as something to keep me occupied in retirement.
The first time I submitted images to a stock site, most of them weren’t accepted for one reason or another, although one or two did get through. I must say, that was a blow to my confidence. Because I was taking travel photos, many of those early rejections were because of “identifiable people” which I didn’t have a model release for. This presented difficulties for me as a travel photographer, as I wanted to show people enjoying their travel experience. Much later I discovered that I should have submitted those early images as “editorial” with the correct captioning, but for some reason I never looked back at those old photos—I just kept moving forward.
However, looking at them again made me realize that I now also have photo-editing skills that I didn’t have back in 2011. Thanks to Bonnie’s Lightroom Mastery course, and the monthly Lightroom editing tips in Breakfast Stock Club, I have become somewhat of a whiz at it.
Now, with just a bit of tweaking and proper captioning, all those rejected images from 2011 are being accepted into my stock portfolios, plus a whole lot more that even I thought not worth uploading at the time.
Here’s just a sample of photos from 2011 that have now all sold on Shutterstock!
Images which once looked dull and boring, I now happily upload after adding a few touches in Lightroom. The strange thing is, I never imagined any of them were sale-worthy at the time. If only I had uploaded them in 2011, instead of waiting until 2018, I probably would have made many more sales. I have definitely learned my lesson. Besides my skills and my eye, my confidence has also grown. So thank you Great Escape Publishing and Breakfast Stock Club for leading me along this path.
I can now legitimately call myself a stock photographer, and I have my portfolios–and my sales–to prove it.