Took a few days’ rest from shooting stock to shake off what was a pretty dismal June (earnings results here). Spoke with a few other veteran contributors and seems like many others are experiencing some strange declines, even after uploading new content.

Anyway, the show must go on! There’s no way I’m going back to a fucking tedious 9-5 boring legal job (even if it pays much better), so need to make the most of this gig with the opportunities I have. Must keep pushing.

Getting into shape

After three years in Italy eating pretty much all sorts of pizza, pasta and gelato and not enough cycling, now in Portugal, I decided to get back into shape…and make some money while I’m at it! Why not!

In May, I blogged about uploading my swimming clips. Those haven’t sold yet but I’m cautiously optimistic. Here’s one of the (unedited) clips:

The RAW version wasn’t that good….with the advice gathered from Doug Jensen’s e-course, I decided to break it down into smaller clips with colour grading. See result as uploaded on Pond5 here.

Another sport, of sorts, is poker where I’ve uploaded loads of content from capturing poker tournaments – blog post here.

Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu training

While I turn my body from cookie dough into beast-mode, I had the brilliant idea to record some of the lessons (with the consent of other students and the instructor, of course). Simply set up the camera at the corner of the class using a gorilla-pod, frame it correctly, and press record.

I subsequently uploaded these to the usual suspects as editorials. Sure I could ask everybody to sign model releases, including myself, but can’t be bothered. In addition, there are loads of logos around the gym and on the kimonos which would be quite difficult to clone out in videos. Anyway, here are some examples:

5 clips on Pond5 and latest one on SS

My favourite was defending and eventually succumbing to an arm-lock against a tough black-belt:

What’s the point of sharing all this?

Avoiding nihilism, the point is that most of my stock work, as you’ve probably gathered by now, is incidental to my everyday life. For instance, since I enjoy traveling anyway, my goal is to amortize some of the costs! Investing purely on stock travel probably won’t give you a return on investment as travel, in general, is a tough market to crack.

Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu niche

However, but I might be onto something with Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, as it’s quite a niche sport. A quick search on Pond5 for “jiu-jitsu” yielded 629 hits, with my clips coming right at the top. Upon closer inspections, many of the clips aren’t even related to jiu-jitsu and are just pure keyword-spamming, which is even better for my clips. Now, whether they being just editorial will hurt sales is difficult to say…I will let time tell.

Gonna get a gimbal

Which brings me onto my latest news, I recently purchased a Zhiyun Crane Plus 3-axis handheld stabilizer to use with my Panasonic mirrorless. I got myself a good price on eBay for a brand-new for about $300.

Looking forward to trying it out! Goodbye static shots!

Should receive it in a few weeks and will be back with some updates on how I get on. Should be interesting to record these Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu bouts using such a device. Stay tuned!

Would appreciate if you could help me out!

Above and throughout the blog, as you can appreciate, I’ve given quite a bit of my time to help you make sense of this complicated stock industry and focus on making money. I’ve also given away some of my best-sellers which will directly lead to those images reducing their value (how much is impossible to say).

If you feel that the information above and at other posts is useful and if you’re so included, kindly donate as much as you feel is reasonable (such as a price of a coffee) by clicking on the following link below:

Donate Now!

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About Alex

I’m an eccentric guy on a quest to visit all corners of the world and capture stock images & footage. I’m determined not to waste my life away as a corporate drone and have devoted six years to making it as a travel photographer and freelance writer. I hope to inspire others before it’s too late.

I’m proud to have written a book about my adventures which includes tips on making it as a stock travel photographer – Brutally Honest Guide to Microstock Photography