My Real Career Is Getting In the Way
| Oh, I've been busy. That's a good thing, it's GREAT in fact, but it isn't doing much for my microstock career. I even have about 100 model shots in the can that need to be sorted through and would produce at least 20 uploads (I'm not a fan of too many similars) - but my microstock hobby tends to get pushed to the bottom of my to-do list when I have paying clients. Not uploading to Shutterstock in particular has been absolutely devastating. My sales have dropped by at least 50% because I haven't fed the beast. May sales have actually been quite disappointing everywhere so far, except for steady Dreamstime and Istock, and a few $5 sales at StockXpert. I wish I knew how much of the decline is due to my inactivity. |
 (My niece Carley who also models for me from time to time. She's the happy lady in the wheatfield on my current header.) |
So what have I been doing? Apart from working from home and shuttling kids back and forth from school, and preschool, and lunch and soccer and friends.... At the end of April I shot a dance school and worked like a mad woman for days processing photos, making magazine covers, uploading jobs, preparing receipts, sorting and packaging orders - all so I could have it completed a week early to leave for a my niece's graduation in Saskatchewan (an 8 hour drive away). I was also there to take photos, of course! Some graduates, a family, some headshots and a lady with her beloved little doggie.
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Now I've been a crazy woman creating thank you cards for the graduates. The new designs took a lot longer than I had estimated. (Maybe because so many of them were created after midnight when I wasn't so fresh!) I wanted each graduate 3 different samples to pick from, and the town that they live in has only 1000 people so I didn't want any of the cards to look too similar in any way. They will only use 9 out of the 30 that I made, but the upside is now I have about 30 fresh templates for next time! Now that the graduation shoot is in a bit of a holding pattern until the orders come in, I start shooting a soccer league. I shot 2 teams last week... just 51 more to go over the next three weeks. I can't foresee feeding the Shutterstock beast in the immediate future. |
Did I mention it's nice to be busy.
I'll leave you with some of my favourite thank you cards (just to prove that I haven't been slacking!)
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