Phil Hawley Photography » Featured

Photography – Trying to make money from it

Phil — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 17:45:27 +0000

I have been thinking about ways I can make a bit of cash from my hobby of photography, it looks like I have two options, building a portfolio website or selling via stock photography website.

Portfolio Website

I could use this option to display my best work and hopefully sell some work directly and get offered work by publicising the site. The problem with this option is that I will need to get hosting for the site, select the right Content management system (CMS), get the design right, provide a purchase mechanism.

There are solutions out there that have all of this built into an overall solution such as Clikpic, but they have their limitations and associated costs. The other way is to approach this is to use a good CMS I am used to and like the functionality of by using WordPress, the issues I have there are the design, the hosting, and how to integrate a purchase mechanism that will allow people to instantly purchase and download copies of my work.

I think I prefer the second option due to the flexibility, I just need to overcome the associated problems for me, the main one being design as I am not a web designer, although initially I could use/purchase a template and work with that until I can learn the required skills. The other problem of purchase/download mechanism is one I will need to look into.

Stock Websites

I have been looking a few stock sites as recommended in this article on DPhotoJournal and have been banging on about it on Twitter for a while for some feedback on photos I should submit initially. So I did sign-up to IStockPhoto but as yet have not submitted any shots, and I have recently signed up to ShutterStock which to me looks a little more promising.

Now have to pick out 10 of my ‘best photos’ as they say, I am not totally sure which to submit though as the shots I like might not necessarily be what sells on stock photo sites. I think I have settled on the shots below for my initial submission and i would appreciate any feedback comments as to what people think of my choices and whether there are better shots on my Flickr Feed.

Visiting the Folks

Phil — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 17:43:13 +0000

So after Moscow and a bit more work on the house I went off to Spain for a few days to see my parents last week. It wasn’t exciting, nor full of incident, but I enjoyed it all the same, just seeing them. Most people reading this won’t know that my Dad was pretty ill during the run up to the Christmas just gone. He fell whilst doing some building work at my Parents’ house and banged his chest on the edge of the concrete base for a covered terrace he was building. Anyway, a few days later he had to have an emergency doctor out to him and ended up in Hospital with fluid on the lungs. A day or two later they discovered a broken rib was the culprit which was good news as at first they thought that it was pneumonia. Anyway, it made him quit smoking after maybe 50-odd years as a smoker which was a good thing and when I saw him over Christmas he was better than I had seen him in a long time but he was on Oxygen for 2/3 of the day. Anyway it was good to see him (and my mum and the dogs obviously) after 3 months and he looked loads better, back to his usual moaning self and busy doing work around their house and on the land around it. I got there and he had finished the terrace and it looked great. The dogs were mental as usual, with the older one shadowing me most of the time and pouncing on the other one everytime it tried to jump up at me.

After the recent run of bad weather in Oxfordshire and having visited Moscow it was good to see some warm sun the morning after however it was misty and cool and we were due to go up to Vince and Gill’s cave house in Caprés in the Mountains overlooking my Parents’ place. Anyway it cleared up just before we went, and was very warm with brilliant blue skies whilst we were there.

Anyway, such is the way with BBQs with my parents and their friends it was a beer, wine, and sangria filled occasion with lots of great food courtesy of Marcel (a visitor from Belgium) and his wife. I did fire off a few shots before the drink was flowing, but later efforts proved to be slightly out of focus and discarded.

The cave house itself is a great piece of architecture, this shot was added on as a terrace above and to the side of the main house, but below shows the main chimney that just rises out of the ground:-

Their dogs however had been having a rough time, looks like they were both abducted/escaped but one returned on her own and so she was being spoilt for the afternoon, the other one was a similar looking dog but all black, such a shame that these things happen, and hopefully he will turn up at some point.

Of the other shots I took, this is about the best I think, the winding road running up the mountainside from the Cave house:-

The next few days were spent helping my parents by digging a log trench at the end of their garden for them to plant fir trees, this was great, blisteringly hot (30 degrees Celsius) and digging rock solid ground; I managed about 40 or 50 feet with it being a foot deep and a foot wide.

The rest of the time I sunbathed and read and my thoughts again turned to the move to Moscow, the latest is that the likelihood is that we could go for three months then have to leave the country for either a day, 3 months, or 6 months depending on who we are speaking to, or which way the wind is blowing it seems. I would love to go, even if it is just for 3 months, then if we have to return we can decide on what we want to do longterm at that point. But, it is frustrating not getting straight answers from the company, but I guess whatever will be, will be. Meanwhile in the airport on the way back I had a call about a job for me going in Barcelona, so we will see what happens.

My last day in Spain I got up early to see the sunrise and to snap off a few shots of it, some were better than others and the HDR ones seem to have come out the best:-

Anyway, this post was a little self-indulgent, mainly about my trip to Spain, but it was important for me to go there, and it did give me a lot of time to think.

First Moscow Visit – Part 2: Falling for the City

Phil — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 14:24:31 +0000

We arrived at our hotel early in the morning at about 5.30am on Thursday and pretty much went straight to sleep. After having a lot of sleep we spent the afternoon looking at three different temporary apartments in Aparthotels with Elena (from my Wife’s company), they were all tiny and really designed as an alternative to a hotel room, and not best suited to an extended stay. This, combined with heavy traffic, and still being a bit tired from the flight left us a little deflated when we got dropped off at the hotel. We decided to go for a little walk from the hotel, this helped to clear our heads, and obviously I snapped off a few photos:-

Seeing a little of the city made us determined to explore more, so the next morning when we were due to meet Elena at the first of several apartments that were suitable for long term rental we decided to walk from the hotel near to the Kievsky Rail Terminal to Patriarchy Ponds which is a fair long work, but one which allowed us to take in more of the city. On the way there we took in a few different areas of the city with the morning Rush hour in full swing. The area around this apartment however was so quiet, with lots of little cafes, and the apartment itself looked great, it was smaller than we would have liked on paper, but looked great all the same and didn’t feel cramped. The next place we saw was huge, almost twice the size, but the walls in the living room/kitchen were pink – this didn’t go down too well with the wife, neither did the location, nor the sparseness of furniture in this ‘fully furnished’ apartment. Anyway, the next two places were immaculately presented, newly renovated places, one of which was in an apparently ‘up and coming’ location (no shops, bars, cafes, supermarket nearby), the other in an established location. After leaving the agents behind we headed onto the Metro for our first experience of the Moscow metro with its beautifully decorated stations, anyway after collecting Elena’s car we headed to a place which I considered to be a waste of time going to before we went, a kind of Private International village/town outside of the city. This one was called Rosinka and I really didn’t want to like it as I would have considered moving here from the UK to be cheating the whole experience of living in Russia as everything you need is there. Firstly we would be staying in a house rather than an apartment, and these houses were a decent size with a wood burning fire in the living room, and a garden. The complex was built next to a huge lake and forest, the air was clean and crisp, and there were ample leisure facilities that were included in the rent. Like I said, I didn’t want to like it, but I found the open space to be attractive, and the facilities great. Both my wife and I were impressed but ultimately I doubt we would move there, certainly whilst we have no kids because it really could be anywhere in the world, and as you can tell by the title of this blog we were starting to enjoy the city, and this place was certainly not Moscow!

Anyway, we are still left with a dilemma of where to live is and when we move over here that will largely depend on the results of the visa application which we should know about in 2 weeks time.

Last night we decided that we probably should go and see the site that is synonymous with Moscow; Red Square, and the Kremlin, this took us on another trip on the Metro, but when we got there and walked around to Red square, seeing it all lit up at night is truly breathtaking. After taking dozens of photos from various angles of the different aspect of Red Square we wondered off down a few different side streets and found a bar that served some food and settled down with some beer and food.

Today we have been on a fascinating one-to-one tour of the city with a guide who seemed to have encyclopaedic knowledge of everywhere in the city, from everywhere from the original 16th Century wooden British Embassy to the various famous graves in Novodevichy Cemetery. Unfortunately today has been cold and dull and although I have dozens of photos I took quite a few from multiple exposures read to combine in HDRs. Tonight we are off out for a meal with a Russian couple, and that will only leave us tomorrow morning here before we have to leave, both of us will be sad to leave, but are more determined than ever to make Moscow our home for a while at least!