Quote from: AM24 on February 20, 2025, 14:42

Quote from: Big Money on February 20, 2025, 14:18

Just did a quick skim on Annie's book and I love the visuals! My biggest complaint of many restaurants is lack of images of their food items in their menus.

I will be showing my age but I like the story board templates and what each color means! Within minutes I learned that I am over lighting my food pics thus making them look like plastic.

Also all the folks comments on this string have been very positive and helpful- you all have great talent and will to help others.

Off to try new tip from you book on some fine salmon salmon.  Thanks Annie!

Thank you Tom!!

Are you using natural light?

When I was first accepted by The Picture Pantry, I changed over from studio lighting to natural light because I knew the premium food photography industry prefers natural light. And now when I compare my old stock photos to my new ones, there is such a huge difference. Of course, working with natural light has a lot of challenges, but I found it was worth every moment of my time learning and exploring this new dimension.

Good luck! I can't wait to see the salmon!

My first round--used lighting from large windows and one white board to splash a little bit on the back part of the image.

That is one very delicious piece of salmon!! And I love the color of the dish you served it on. It complements the fish perfectly.

I took the liberty of making a few changes to show you how to really hone in on that scrumptious salmon. First of all, your lighter background distracts too much from the meal, so I replaced it with a darker wood background. I didn't realise just how great that piece of fish was until I started playing around with the edit. There are so many incredible textures that make it look superbly delicious. That's what you need to do - focus on what it is about the food that makes it look delicious.

I think you had too much ambient light in the frame. I wouldn't have bothered with the white board. As I mentioned in the book, the lighting aesthetic needs to match the food.  Choose which direction of light works best. Here I would have just side lighting coming in slightly in front of the salmon - once again to pick up those gorgeous textures. In my quick adaptation, I increased highlights to demonstrate that. (Click on my photo to see what I mean). I am guessing you haven't got to the section on Editing yet, but you can enhance a lot with some very minor adjustments. (I didn't add saturation or anything else except increase highlights)

Backgrounds, props, plates and light should complement the food and not distract from it. Textures, highlights and shadows are what makes food look authentic, 3-dimensional and delicious. The basics of what you photographed is all there, though. All you needed was some tweaks.

Thank you Stoke!

You are being very kind and helpful - plus you have a lot of technical knowledge. (You should be like this, more often  )

Sell ​​your book on Amazon, I read it sells well there.

There's a problem with the size of the book and Amazon's royalty structure that I have to work through, Stoke.

Amazon has 2 different royalty plans for authors. One pays 35% and the other 70% royalty. Both have different book price ranges. For example, if you want to receive 70% royalty, you have to price your book between $2.99 and $9.99 - BUT books over a certain file size are charged with extraordinarily high 'download' fees. My book, because of all the photography is 630mb. I would end up paying them because of these excessive fees.

So, I would be forced to accept the 35% royalty, but you cannot price your book between $2.99 and $9.99 on this plan. I would have to go higher, or lower, plus receive half the royalty.

Also, if I try to sell my book via my website (at its current price of $9.95) and Amazon finds out, they can get pretty narky. So, I would have to sell at their price, not mine.

Yes, I would get more direct traffic on Amazon, but I have to think through all the pricing to arrive at the best solution. I really don't want to sell my book higher than $9.95 USD. Also, I currently sell through Payhip, a UK firm with a good reputation for providing shop fronts and lots of great data and I pleased with their service - plus they only take out 5% per sale.

So, its a bit of dilemma at the moment, which I will have to work through. At the moment, I just want to see if my type of book is appealing to readers. If not, then the other option is to forget about my current format and just write a normal how-to text book, which is not really my plan.

This is what I wrote in the beginning of my book. Hopefully it explains why my book is different:

"Because I specialize in visuals, I wanted to make this book as visually exciting as possible. This is not your typical how-to textbook. As I explain later, people remember visuals more than text.

I studied various training techniques as part of my former business career. It was here that I discovered a whole new world of exciting ways to teach. One of the newest methods was to incorporate the use of visuals, together with key issues, over just text and data. Research has found that this method greatly increases our capacity to learn, problem-solve and create. It compacts the time necessary for students to absorb and understand information by means of a very practical application. It allows students to reach their goals faster and is a more enjoyable way to learn.
 
A handbook is a wonderful tool for this type of learning by shortening the length of time students need to absorb information and to provide them with a ready reference manual rather than wading through volumes of text. They are compact practical guides with easily accessible information.

Ultimately, I want you to have fun with this book. Use it to enhance your imagination and creativity because that is what this format is all about."

Heavens above. And this has all got to do with food photography, how?   

A big thanks to the wonderful person who has just bought my book. Please let me know what you think of the different format. Is it easier to absorb all the information?

Hi guys!

Well, I finally got around to writing a book, something I've been promising myself for the past few years. It's called, Delicious Photography, and it's available now from my website.

My target audience is actually food bloggers but from the feedback I have received, photographers have gained insight from it too, so I thought I would promote it here too.

Delicious Photography is in the form of a handbook, not a textbook, and includes chapters on Photography, Styling, Lighting, Editing and Marketing for food photography. It is a summary of my knowledge gained from 12 years in this industry plus more recently from selling food photography through a premium food photography agency, and what it takes to create images that stand out from the crowd. I also have a background in graphic design and business (marketing and accounting).

I launched it last week, selling only through my website at this stage. This is what I call a 'soft' launch because the book is a bit different from the typical photography books and I wanted to gage readers reactions before I put it up on Amazon, which will cost more there due to the size of the book (630 mb - lots of pictures!!). Its short (100 pages) and I designed it to be more like a magazine than a book. It's only available in eBook PDF format at this stage.

So, if you know any food bloggers or are interested in food photography, you can find it here:

https://milleflore.com/books

I also want to thank my dear friend, Steve Heap, who has been extremely supportive, helping me with understanding publishing, plus all his expert critiques along the way.

Cheers,
Annie

My heart goes out to all the people here that are affected by these devasting LA fires. Please let us know if there's anything we can do. Any links to places we can donate to, Red Cross, or whatever. The destruction from the fires looks devasting.

To others, please don't blame political parties, governors or mayors. I know people want these things never to happen again, but we need understanding not blame in matters like this.

A few years back, I was contracted to our State's Department for Environment to go around to all the main regional offices and train their Rangers on Asset Management. These guys were so wonderful and loved their jobs and were so committed to keeping our country safe. They would take me out to lunch after the training sessions, and I learnt a lot. South Australia is one of those areas similar to California that is very prone to bushfires (USA calls them wildfires). Apparently hilly areas are the most dangerous for bushfires because they cannot come in and create container zones between townships and the fires. This is often impossible on hillsides. Also, fire travels faster up inclines than on level ground, the hilly terrain also means bush fires can move more quickly and become harder to control.

Anyway, my heart goes out to all of you and wishing you all the very best. Please let us know what we can do.
Annie

Quote from: AM24 on December 23, 2024, 11:59

There's an old marketing rule that says, when faced with an oversaturated market, there are two options. You either go up or you go down. (Sell Rolex's or sell copy watches). But don't stay in the middle. Its the middle ground that will be eroded.

Very well said!
For my part, I'm trying to go up. Actually already since 2020, when SS cut royalties and I left them. Which in my case means doing social media, selling prints, licensing content directly to customers and so on. It took some time go get going, but this year I was able to outperform my previous best year (2016) by over 30%, while my earnings from microstock fell to around 50% of 2016's level.

Thank you - and well done!

Yes, its takes a bit of time to develop something new and, understandably, it's easy for some people to give up too soon.

Here's my full blog article on the subject, if anyone is interested. (My target audience at that time was online sellers, but the principle works for most markets.)

https://milleflore.com/blog/small-business-blog/saturated-market

The other is research. 80% of what is coming is just fluff and duplicates.

Find a few niches

That is soooooooooooooo true!

Ok, because its Christmas and because I don't compete in this market anymore, I'm going to give everyone one of my major tips on how to find niches that ARE in demand.

Remember above, I said that I uploaded some AI to DT agency just out of curiosity, and 7 sold really quickly. Well, 4 more sold this week. And that's NOT because they were AI. Its because I found a niche within Christmas that was popular but with hardly any relevant images.

For those who don't know this trick, its quick and easy. Go to one of the agencies and type in your main subject, eg Christmas. On SS, there's 10.7 million images. Then look at the dropdown menu and click on something else. All of these represent popular searches. Then keep drilling down. Also, look at the line of phrases just underneath it that says, Related Searches. And just keep drilling down until you find one that has a lot less images. Remember these are popular searches! Buyers are wanting them.

I found one that only had 6,000 images - compared to 10,700,000! For Christmas that's a big deal. I uploaded 25 images - correction I uploaded only 11 images for this particular search, plus some for other holidays, about a month or so before Christmas (a bit too late really) and had 9 sales, ranging from 35c to $4.41 commission. And that's just on DT - one of my least performing agencies. I don't like AI, I don't like AI images, and I won't be doing it again, but it was an interesting exercise.

Remember, as a photographer you are here to shoot what buyers want. Not the other way around. 

Merry Christmas everybody. Cheers 

.....

PS. I think microstock was just a stepping stone to lead me to what I love doing most (here is just a sample below). I hope all of you find that too!

With love,
Annie

https://www.instagram.com/p/DDx3y85CMbb/

Yes, Go High or Go Low.

Yes, but the important thing (as per my marketing post above) is not to stay in the middle.

There's an old marketing rule that says, when faced with an oversaturated market, there are two options. You either go up or you go down. (Sell Rolex's or sell copy watches). But don't stay in the middle. Its the middle ground that will be eroded.

Unfortunately, that middle ground is where most stock photographers are, and what you said about the top 1% is so true.  The people who went AI (copy watches ) have a good chance as well, but that area is becoming incredibly saturated as well, so only the smartest ones (finding sought-after niches, etc) will survive, I fear.

That's the segment that will always go first in an oversaturated market. That's what people forget.

And that's what we are seeing at the moment, the middle market is crumbling. And that's the sad part. 

Yes, it's brutal how AI is eroding the market for classical photographers.
When I think about it, Yuri Arcurs was earning between 25k and 50k USD with a single photo shoot 15 years ago.

Nowadays, the earnings after costs such as photo equipment, insurance, models, props, etc. are brutally low. If you don't have top 1% skills, it's not worth it anymore.

The same applies to Illustrators, who earned really well back then. There was a time when shutterstock had no subscriptions for vector graphics. The buyers had to pay the full price (20 - 30 USD / download).

So all those who take or create generic motifs will slowly switch to AI.

But this trend won't be limited to the creative industry. With intense competition across other industries, businesses will need to automate processes and leverage AI to boost productivity in order to survive. This shift is inevitable and we can expect to see the outcome in various sectors in the following years.

But let's end on a positive note!
I'd like to wish you and everyone else here a merry christmas and a wonderful start to the new year!

There's an old marketing rule that says, when faced with an oversaturated market, there are two options. You either go up or you go down. (Sell Rolex's or sell copy watches). But don't stay in the middle. Its the middle ground that will be eroded.

Unfortunately, that middle ground is where most stock photographers are, and what you said about the top 1% is so true.  That's why I decided to go to a premium specialty agency and there's room to move there (not that I am top 1% but it has made me into a better photographer this past year). The people who went AI (copy watches ) have a good chance as well, but that area is becoming incredibly saturated as well, so only the smartest ones (finding sought-after niches, etc) will survive, I fear.