Welcome to the special edition of the monthly report where, on top of discussing my monthly earnings and restoring and licensing old prints from my dad’s collection, I’ll be delving deep in discussing the latest AI craze and whether it may soon pose a threat to Stock contributor incomes. Let’s get started!

Table of Contents

As this is a record-long blog post with just over 5,500 words, see the following headers for quick access to individual sections:

– May 2023 Highlights
– TRAVEL UPDATE – INFLATION PAIN!
– Trying to be responsible with my drone
– Scanning old prints to be licensed as stock
– Topaz AI Sharpener is a Life-saver
– Update on giving away some of my images for free
– Detailed Earnings Breakdown
– Accepted Images at Arcangel
– Does AI Pose a Threat to stock Contributors?
– SupportING the Blog!

May 2023 Highlights

May was a relatively quiet month in terms of highlights. Nevertheless, sticking to the theme of AI:

• I Finally Sold My First AI-Generated Image! Here’s the story…

• TikTok Updates

Travel update – Inflation pain!

As reported in the 2022 Year-End Review: Good, Bad and Ugly post, one of my goals is to go island-hopping in 2023. Here’s an extract from my goals section:

“Bucking my lack of travel in 2022, by the end of 2023 hopefully my passport will be well worn out as I’ll maintain my goals for some island-hopping to the following:

• Azores
• Madeira
• Malta
• Cyprus”

My passport is certainly not worn out, in fact it’s been barely used this year. From the above list I was eyeing heading to Malta in May…

#Allineverywhere

As you probably know already, I’m a keen cash/tournament poker player and also enjoy shooting such events. I’ve teamed up with Damino Nigro, another fellow poker junkie and photographer, who’s motto is “Never Going Home” and #allineverywhere as the dude is constantly on the travel to various poker events. In fact, he’s heading to Vegas in a few weeks for the peak summer poker season.

Fucking expensive to travel

So, I was checking flight options to Malta from Lisbon and I was in for a real shocker when the least expensive flights were being offered for 450 Euros with some pretty lengthy layovers even if I have maximum flexibility. To my disgust, I’ve had to postpone this trip. I can only feel sorry for those with traditional jobs that have no choice but to work around more expensive weekend flights.

Ryanair charging premium prices – rant alert

What the hell is going on when a 2 1/2-hour flight with fucking no-thrills Ryanair (only carry-on luggage), costs as much as a transatlantic flight just three years ago. So, out of pure spite and anger, I decided I wasn’t going to acquiesce to this type of extortion brought on my the greedy airliners. On a side note, I’ve also begun boycotting local businesses that have raised their prices over the past year above 20% and there are many…with some going as far as doubling prices.

I know that airliners hemorrhaged money during the pandemic but doesn’t mean that they can pull these stunts and keep prices artificially highly while providing mediocre services. This post may provide some clues as to why flights are so expensive.

Then outside of flights, everything has gone up crazily in prices, food, accommodation, etc…as you probably have already noticed.

Trying to run a profitable microstock business is almost impossible in 2023

As you can see in this post, I track all my travel expenses and earnings and no way I can make up even the cost of the flight with puny pathetic microstock earnings, and that’s before even taking into account other travel costs.

Doubt prices will go down ever again, but as you can see month-in month-out my earnings on here sure aren’t going up (this has been a very poor month in terms of earnings), so something has got to give and that’s my travel freedom. Perhaps prices will drop in the Autumn and will have to keep checking. End of rant.

Traveling around Iberia is still quite affordable

Plenty of places to visit around Iberia at affordable prices. In fact, in end of June I’ll be heading to northern Portugal where I hope to replicate my successful wine shoot in Porto and capture some drone content. There are even bus services from Lisbon to Porto that cost just 5euros each-way. Or similar prices heading down to the sunny Algarve.

Now, let’s move onto my latest news with my drone.

Trying to be responsible with my drone

When I was a kid growing up in Brazil I loved flying kites, which gave me a feeling of great freedom even if they weren’t that high up! Here’s a pic of me as a kid which I scanned (more on scanned prints later)

Fast-forward some 30+ years, I would have never imaged that I would be remotely piloting a flying camera which could go up hundreds of metres and as fast as 67km/h.

It’s so easy to push the stick and make it go almost anywhere and super tempting! But I’m often controlling myself to avoid situations where I’d potentially be invading people’s privacies and/or causing danger. It’s also part of the rules of holding an EU A2 Pilot’s License in the Open Category.

Offending members of the public

I had a situation this month where some young women were visibly upset at my drone hovering close to them, which I tweeted.

Even though I wasn’t that close to them, I could see on my phone screen that they were flicking my drone off, so I did my business and got out. The scene were quite spectacular as the water was really really green (you can see above the RAW preview) with Arcangel accepting most of the batch, so it was worth the risk/effort, here are the ones they selected.

It’s just a case of having to break a few eggs to make an omelet and I’m sure many of you feel the same way. I’ll track her down and send her a copy of the book when it sells…or not!

Scanning old prints to be licensed as stock

You saw an old pic of me above and that’s because I finally got ’round to a task that I’ve been putting off for ages. My parents have dozens of albums of prints with prints going back to the 60s. One day I finally had the motivation to go through each of those albums and select prints that would lend themselves to potentially strong book covers or archival editorials. Took me a good four hours and I shortlisted some 50 prints to be scanned.

My dad was once a decent photographer!

Maybe that’s how I inherited some skills :). He traveled lots in the 60s/70s/80s, both for both pleasure and work and some his prints were pretty cool! I particularly enjoyed going through images he captured while in New York during the winter/spring of 1971.

“The New American Church”

Check out this vintage McDonald’s restaurant with those golden arches where “decent wholesome people share values”.

Reminds me of this scene from the great movie, The Founder, starring Michael Keaton:

Suburban 70s New York

…or how about this for a potential book covers of a suburban street in Long Island, New York, which I’ve uploaded to Arcangel and both have been accepted.

These scenes remind of settings in the movie, Lovely Bones where the murdering neighbour lived…:

I once saw Michael Jordan play live!

Closer to the present, I’ve been shooting since I was 15. I’m proud to boast that I once saw Michael Jordan play live in 1998 when I lived in Vancouver and of course took some shots. Having watched the movie Air, it gave me the idea to dig up the set.

As well as the Netflix documentary, The Last Dance.

I remember that those tickets were quite expensive at the time – something like $150 haha – as it was Jordan’s last season with the Chicago Bulls when they played the Vancouver Grizzlies (before they moved to Memphis in 2001). I wasn’t there just to see Jordan play – the team was full of superstars, including Scottie Pippen, Dennis Rodman, Ron Harper and Steve Kerr.

Uploading to Alamy as Rights-Managed Exclusive (Archive Collection)

I was silly that I originally uploaded one of the vintage NBA shots to Alamy under the normal stock collection (as a test) and it was duly rejection for focus and noise. Then I remembered that Alamy has an archive collection for exactly these types of images that wouldn’t pass QC quality control. Lo and behold, all have been accepted and I’m going through each one to keyword accurately.

If you want to see all the scanned images I’ve uploaded to Alamy, click here, including when England played Brazil at Wembley in 1992.

Topaz AI Sharpener is a Life-saver

Now, these prints were all quite blurry and noisy. I’m often slow to try out new technology but have heard great things about Topaz for a long time and finally decided to invested on a license to use Topaz AI Sharpener. I must tell you, this software is amazing to restore old images – here are some examples of the before and after.

I’ve also begun experimenting with Topaz with noisy/blurry images I’ve captured with my full-frame Nikon. Results have been quite impressive, especially for situations when I missed the focus slightly.

Here’s a YT video with some examples:

Update on giving away some of my images for free like a fking idiot!

I’ve continued tracking the number of downloads for the free images over at Pixabay and Pexels as part of the experiment. In summary, I’ll upload some 100 images to both Pixabay and Pexels (never Unsplash as they’re the most giant of turds out there and they hide their donation button) and wait one year to track results, including whether I receive any donations.

Then I’ll gladly delete the accounts and to be brutally honest as well, I’m really looking forward to flushing these turd agencies down the toilet forever, although doubt the images will be completely deleted.

Agency	Number of Images (reluctantly) Uploaded	Free Downloads	Donations earned!
Pexels	78	283	0
Pixabay	57	45,199	0

Greedy fucking leeches

It’s not looking great for the experiment. In fact, I’m getting super annoyed that none of these leeches even bother to donate $1 after 50,000 downloads on all.

Giving them quality, reluctantly

To make this experiment worthwhile, I’ve had no choice but to give away some quality images that are indeed selling regularly on micros, including the LGBT+ Progress Flag. As part of the experiment I’ll measure whether this and other images will keep selling on micros, knowing full well that it’s only a matter of time before these thieves grab a hold of them to re-sell.

Spotted one of my free images used in a major publication in Brazil

Anyway, enough about this nonsense. Onto my monthly earnings breakdown.

Detailed Earnings Breakdown

Image Earnings

Agency	Number of Images in port (images added May)	Net Revenue for May (US$)	Avg Return Per Download (US$)
Alamy	15,180 (139)	28	1.47
Arcangel (RM-exclusive)	2,575 (113)	TBD 1st week May	TBD 1st week May
Adobe Stock	4,291 (37)	82	0.59
Creative Market (closed account this month)	1.644 (0)	0	0
DepositPhotos	8,383 (90)	18	0.33
Dreamstime	8,433 (99)	11	0.69
Freekpik	866 (65)	10	0.07
Fine Art America	373 (0)	0	0
iStock (Apr 2023)	8,289 (199)	61	0.46
Robert Harding (Q2 2023 monthly average) – exclusive	448 (9)	5	1
Shutterstock Editorial	923 (0)	0	0
Shutterstock	11,617 (80)	158 + 58 (AI Fund)	0.56
Pond5	1,816 (0)	0	0
Photo4Me	389 (0)	0	0
SignElements	1,378 (10)	2	N/A
Vecteezy	502	1	N/A
Wirestock	1,960 (0)	3	N/A
Total		437

Clip Earnings

Agency	Number of clips in port (added May)	Net Revenue for May (US$)	Avg Return Per Download (US$)
Adobe Stock	899 (17)	6	3
Pond5	2,240 (37)	73	24
iStock (Apr 2023)	636 (14)	1	0.50
OverflightStock – exclusive	92 (0)	0	0
Shutterstock	1,669 (30)	21	3.50
Wirestock	104 (0)	0	0
Total		101

Net Totals: $538

Salamis (Shutterstock + Alamy + iStock)

Shutterstock

Decent month at SS in terms of volume at 295 images sold but average prices remain somewhat depressed with not many high-selling images except for a street scene in Seville. No footage sales above $3, which is just depressing.

Helping to train AI earned me a cool $58.29, although I know it’s just a small token for what will be pretty much the redundancy of much of my port in a few years. More on this later.

Alamy, a microstock agency

No matter what Alamy themselves say or some of their loyal yet deluded contributors say, Alamy is a microstock agency. How do I make this bold statement? Well, just need to look at the individual average prices…19 sales earnings me a net $28, which comes to a very microstock $1.47/download on average!!!! My historical average on there is 7x that at $8.10 net.

Only one “decent” sale which I captured in 2018 of the control room of public operations in Rio de Janeiro earning me a whopping $7 net.

Just come out of the closet already, Alamy and admit it – you are microstock and not even top-tier. I’ll still love/hate you nevertheless. Perhaps my vintage prints, as discussed, will sell for a decent amount though but not going to get my hopes up.

Adobe Stock

Decent month at Adobe Stock at $88 although the average image download was worryingly low at only 59cent which is almost half the historical average of $1.07.

Three decent sales to report:

However, clip prices remain depressed – the usual story:

Adobe Stock up-front payment is back

The good news is that I might earn some $5 here and there giving away my images for free (without being a complete idiot). Hope they select more this time ’round.

Pond5

Some license upgrades and one OK sale taken in Madrid in 2020 of the facade of some government buildings. In total, I earned $72.61.

iStock

My expectations are so low with iStock that anything above $90 for me is considered a decent month. Volumes were OK at 134 downloads but no sales above $5. So nothing relevant to report, I won’t bore you with tiny sales. Overall things seem quite grim, particularly when comparing with prior to 2020.

Robert Harding

I left the worst to last as Robert Harding, supposedly a premium travel agency reported on my Q2 2023 results (448 images).

Disappointing results

It’s disappointing for sure as you can see above but keep in mind that I’ve only started to re-upload to them about 6 months ago and they have a silly procedure that they keep files exclusively with them for the first 6 months before distributing around to the likes of Getty and others. If the next quarterly report comes in equally disappointing I’m going to have to re-think my strategy when it comes to where I place my best travel images, including this one that I’ve captured of Lisbon recently.

Would just feel wrong to otherwise place them on micros as it’s such a unique shot, such as this one (which was accepted at RH)…

Why do I keep insisting with Micros despite less than positive results?

That’s an excellent rhetorical question, which I’ll happily answer. I’m not really insisting, the images that go to micros are just incidental, trust me. My goal remains to upload book covers to Arcangel and travel aerial drone stock footage and images going to Robert Harding. Both not producing the results that I’m expecting just yet but I’m being patient and disciplined.

I’ll still upload some micro images here and there but I often do it with so much rage and distaste that I’m probably messing up the keywording since I want to finish it as quickly as I can (probably another reason for low sales). Before I used to just dump them at Wirestock (for peanuts) but don’t have that option anymore. In any case, I’m really really pessimistic when it comes to micros in the coming years, one main reason is the rise of AI, which I’ll discuss shortly.

Enough about microstock earnings, let’s now discuss my accepted book covers for the month.

113 images accepted Images at Arcangel!

No sales to report in May, unfortunately, which is a long time since my last sale, which was in December 2022. I’ve been working super hard to up my game with more creative and commercially relevant content.

This includes investing in new brushes and light overlays to create more polished effects. I purchased a package from Pixel-Monkey and experimenting widely – here’s an example which was accepted where I subtly used the light ray overlay.

I’ve put together a slideshow on TikTok with my top 35 accepted images from the month and happy to share with you:

@brutallyhonesttravels

Some of my favourite Arcangel book covers accepted in May 2023 #bookcover #bookcovers #bookcoverdesign #stockphotography

♬ Chill Out – INOSSI

Now let’s move onto the pertinent discussion on AI…

Does AI Pose a Threat to Stock Contributors?

My pathetic microstock results (relative to my port sizes) detailed above bring me swiftly to my next point, which is it seems that our days as microstock contributors for many niches are pretty much numbered anyway in large part due to advances in AI. In this detailed analysis I’ll discuss:

• Key features of Adobe Firefly;
• which niches are most likely to be affected by AI;
• AI opportunities outside of Stock;
• Rise of the Realism Movement.

Commercial photography is most at risk from AI

It’s only natural that commercial stock photography will be the first hurdle to fall primarily due to the nature of the specific usage, which is for a practical end with little to no care about the contributor themselves, their artistic vision or their even livelihoods. This is clear to see from my free-download experiment where I’ve received zero donations despite over 45,000 downloads.

Not all commercial work will be affected equally. Some specific high-end commercial work will have a place, the kind that is not easily manipulated/created with AI. But generally speaking, the why the hell would a business really need to license generic stock content when they can do the “work” themselves in-house within a few seconds with a few prompts, such as inserting a vintage car, lake and cloud in a desert scene.

Introducing Adobe Firefly

Just check out the amazing features of Adobe Firefly, which creatives have been trailing out on the beta version and posting the results all over social media.

Any news on compensating Adobe Stock contributors for AI usage?

After all, that vintage car and pond were sourced from the existing collection. Would they be compensated? Straight from Adobe’s FAQ page.

“Will you compensate contributors if their content was used to train Adobe Firefly to generate outputs?

We are developing a compensation model for Stock contributors, and we will share the details of this model when Firefly exits beta.”

RIP to Microstock Illustrations, Studio and Lifestyle Contributors?

I’ve been thinking about whether certain microstock niches are more likely to be made redundant than others. The conclusion I’ve come to is that such redundancies will eventually come in phases depending on niches. The first niches ones to be affected may be first illustrations, still-life and lifestyle.

Lifestyle has the most risk of redundancy

Still life and illustrators generally have low costs of production. However, lifestyle contributors have the most to lose since their cost of production is substantial for a professional shoot. Just think about the average costs in Europe to hire models/make-up artists/scouting and hiring locations and all the gear.

Although AI still has a ways to go, it’s making strides in re-creating “fake models” doing strange and wonderful things as you can see from the following examples.

You may argue, correctly, that the images below and others created by AI still look fake-ish or wrong (6 fingers) but you have to keep in mind that this technology is at its infancy.

I must reiterate that soon we won’t be able to tell apart what is “real” and what is AI-generated as this technology evolves with companies investing billions and millions of hours of manpower.

News / editorials still have hope, for now

News/editorial photography will have its place for a long time ago as authenticity of content must be preserved for due to journalistic / ethical rules. Whether what agencies pay news/sports freelancers is worth it for their time is for another discussion. From my experience, shooting breaking news to upload to stock agencies as soon as possible isn’t worth my time.

What is “real” and what is AI in a dangerous world

We are rapidly reaching a point in the AI evolution that we won’t be able to tell the difference between what is real and what is AI. I was shocked to read that on May 22, 2023, the following tweet by the crypto-news outlet, Whalechart caused the S&P 500 to drop by 0.29%.

The “image” was quickly verified to be fake and the market recovered within a few minutes. But it just goes to show that we’re becoming prone to hysteria and knee-jerk reactions in a dangerous world in the brink of a world war between NATO and Russia + proxies. The cloud of war thickens with advances in AI, especially when protagonists will use all means necessary to confuse rational actors.

What about commercial travel photography?

I keep going off on a tangent in this discussion because AI is so complex and pervasive. Back to micros, whether conventional commercial travel photography will be affected is difficult to answer.

The truth is that commercial travel photography hasn’t been 100% “real” for a long time as contributors are constantly changing skies, deleting/adding people, creating effects, etc…so this is just a further (giant) step in the evolution.

As with lifestyle, the more generic commercial travel agencies will probably quickly become redundant, as there’s more than enough out there to mix and match to create a final product for the end-user. That is for the popular landmarks.

To be able to remain relevant and fight AI, myself and fellow travel photographers will need to become specialised in our field. This includes capturing and uploading content from less popular places and from unique angles, such as the following captured by drone of coffee fields in Minas Gerais, Brazil.

On the other hand, editorial travel that is “untouched” will continue to be relevant for reasons already discussed that authenticity is required to preserve journalistic principles, such as the young man sleeping rough on a pavement in a wealthy district in Rio de Janeiro.

Are microstock agencies going to survive?

So far only a handful of agencies accept modified AI, most notably Adobe Stock. Here’s the latest list and this will certainly change, so read this blog often to keep up to date on these scary/exciting times:

Interestingly, many readers of this blog are having a go at AI. Here’s the result of the poll from last month’s report:

Still early days

And it’s not by accident that Adobe Stock is so pro-AI since they’re promoting Adobe Firefly aggressively. However, it’s way too early to know if the new AI collection is having an impact on the “real” collection as we’re still sort of shell-shocked with developments as we and buyers try to make sense of it all.

Give it a few months/years and the one-million dollar question will be whether small/medium marketing company, which make up the bulk of microstock purchasers, will decide to cancel their already-cheap subscriptions at microstock sites. After all, with a little bit of training and an Adobe Photoshop package they may be able to do the work in-house. Soon competitors will emerge that may be able to offer different options as there’s heavy investment in this exciting/scary field.

More details, including data perspective on “Is AI Killing the Stock Industry a Data Perspective“

In summary, risk of microstock redundancy:

Microstock Niche	Threat of Redundancy due to AI
Illustrations / vectors	Extremely high
Still-life	High
Lifestyle	High
Commercial travel	Medium
Editorial travel	Low
Architecture	Low
News/editorial	None, but can be dangerous when used in “bad faith”

What about the threat posed by AI in the book covers market?

Since I’m investing so much time/effort into creating book covers for Arcangel I should discuss whether AI will pose a threat to that niche. I would say that the threat is low for the following reasons:

• No established publisher would deliberately use AI due to the risk to copyright, especially when the books printed in 1000s of physical editions;
• For large publishers, the cost of licensing a Rights-Managed book cover is generally quite small compared to the overall marketing budget and such savings don’t make sense;
• Agencies don’t accept AI-generated book covers, even composites, which is a little beyond the point but relevant to mention.

However, the self-publishing book cover market niche will soon be ripe with AI-generated covers. Those authors wouldn’t have licensed with a reputable stock agency anyway, so no harm done.

Mistakes by publishers can happen, which goes back to the discussion whether an “image” is real or AI-generated. Recently, BloomsburyBooks used an AI image for a book cover – ooops.

Although they mentioned that their “design team was unaware of the $79.99 stock image they purchased from Adobe for a book cover was AI”, when it clearly mentions on the description. Hmmmm…

Opportunities outside of Stock Photography

Outside of microstock (which has little future anyway, save for a few niches), some industries may experience a boom due to AI. These include, but are not limited to, architecture / design and weddings / events as they still require some form of realism.

With some training, these photographers will soon be able to post-process those images much quicker to scale their businesses for greater margins, potentially. Just don’t let the clients in on how long it actually took!

For instance, removing distracting objections / people with simple prompts when before it would have taken literally hours of tedious work.

@mikejeffreyphoto

This NEW AI Generative Fill Tool in Adobe Photoshop is insane! I can’t believe this 🤯 #photoshop#ai#photoshopai#photoediting#aiphotography#aiphotoediting#artificial_intelligence#adobephotoshop#photoeditingtools

♬ original sound – Mike Jeffrey

Here’s an example of removing someone on the background from a street photo with a model, with one click. It’s not perfect but pretty damn good:

@taylorreyesphoto

Crazy AI feature in Photoshop BETA- #photobombing #photoshop #generativefill #streetphotography

♬ original sound – Taylor Reyes Photo

Nevermind, Adobe Firefly’s Generative Fill Tool is a game-changer

However, by far the most exciting feature of Adobe Firefly is the “Generative Fill” to extend scenes with impressive results, such as extending these six famous album covers (source):

More on this neat feature:

…and finally AI has uncovered the truth about the “moon landings” 😀 :

Rise of the 21st Century Luddites?

In principle what is happening is nothing new in terms of rapid technological advances making people’s jobs redundant, just do a quick research on the Luddite movement of the 19th century to draw parallels. Although the pace of change nowadays is exponentially quicker.

“The Luddites were members of a 19th-century movement of English textile workers which opposed the use of certain types of cost-saving machinery, often by destroying the machines in clandestine raids. They protested against manufacturers who used machines in “a fraudulent and deceitful manner” to replace the skilled labour of workers and drive down wages by producing inferior goods”

Wikipedia

AI Revolution is Pervasive, including in the Music Industry

Don’t think for a second this is isolated to image/video industry, what is happening in the music industry when it comes to AI is equally groundbreaking and there are similar discussions about copyright.

Check out this awesome AI-generated mix of Freddie Mercury singing Michael Jackson’s Thriller:

and one “by Nirvana”…

Perhaps we don’t have long to go until we have a Top-10 chart hit that is 100% AI-generated…

As usual, got a little sidetracked there, now back to photography industry…

Rise of Realism Movement in thre steps

Perhaps we’re reaching a point where a group of artists (will keep this definition broad which includes game designers, illustrators, architects, etc.), will rise up and resist the AI threat to theuir livelihoods.

The first line of defense is regulation and rule of law in the form of civil class-action copyright infringement claims against the likes of Midjourney and Stable Diffusion. However, regulators/law-makers are slow to catch up and these cases take years while the technology evolves. Which brings me swiftly to the next point, a lack of coordinated class action.

The second line of defense would be for creatives to come together to form a sort of lobby / coalition to stand up for rights against the unfair use of AI. Alone, as creatives, we are powerless against the mighty corporations…and have been since the beginning of capitalism.

An attempt was made to create by the Stock Coalition to engage in a dialogue with Shutterstock following its cut in commissions. Not sure what is happening on that front.

The third step is the most radical and simply to stop contributing to such agencies (or delete whole portfolios) that will use any of our images to create AI without a fair compensation. In such a fast-changing landscape, one month an agency may not accept AI-generated content and the next they may allow some…in the end the market dictates what will happen.

A real worry is that some of the smaller agencies will make deals without a fair compensation to contributors and when contributors pull their ports it may already be too late.

Realism Certified!

Soon, perhaps “genuine” works created by humans without any interference of AI may have to carry a certification by an independent third party (ironically checked by AI, perhaps!). Such realistic work will perhaps carry a premium.

This distinction between those that support AI and those that don’t may even spill over towards animosity in the same way that when photography emerged in the 19th century some painters saw photography as a threat to their livelihoods.

Brave New World

The AI developments are so serious that a group of leading technology experts from across the world have warned that artificial intelligence technology should be considered a societal risk and prioritised in the same class as pandemics and nuclear wars.

Are our children and grandchildren going to one day attend dystopian “Celebration of Life Flesh Fairs”, where the future mankind makes symbolic spectacle of the destruction of artificiality? Who knows but it’s excellently depicted in Steven Spielberg’s A.I 2001 film:

Or perhaps something more positive, such as depicted on a short clip from Star Trek the Next Generation, which takes place in the 24th century where humanity embraces artificiality, with some humour.

Probably somewhere in between if you ask me!

Buy me a synthehol whiskey!

Throughout my 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 help you to focus on making money. If you feel that the information below and throughout the blog is useful I kindly ask you to buy me a synthehol whiskey.

-> Keep Supporting the Brutally Honest Blog! <-

Keep in mind that I’ve put in many many hours of my time to compile these comprehensive reports!

Until next time!

Hope you enjoyed reading this special report. Would love to hear your thoughts on your earnings, AI, or ask me anything. I’m an open door…

About Alex

I’m an eccentric guy, currently based in Lisbon, Portugal, on a quest to visit all corners of the world and capture stock images & footage. I’ve devoted eight years to making it as a travel photographer / videographer and freelance writer. I hope to inspire others by showing an unique insight into a fascinating business model.

Most recently I’ve gone all in on submitting book cover images to Arcangel Images. Oh and also recently purchased a DJI Mavic 2s drone and taking full advantage and perhaps a Mavic 3 soon.

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