Announcing My Foray Into Stock Photography, with Shutterstock

(Edit: In the interest of full disclosure, I am not under contract with Shutterstock, nor have I been paid by, or accepted any sort of compensation from, Shutterstock for this post. With that said...onward!)

With the New Year comes new ventures! For 2019, I've decided to add stock photography to my endeavours.

I've been a bit off-grid with the blog, but that's simply because Event and Real Estate photography was keeping me happily busy the last half of 2018. There is nothing that makes me happier than being behind the lens, whether it is for my own creative projects, helping real estate agents create beautiful, eye-catching listings, or documenting events to help my clients preserve their memories. Behind the lens is my "happy place". And the work doesn't stop there, because with events and property shoots there is always the time spent editing and crafting the images before delivery. I enjoy that aspect of photography quite a bit as well, although some days, it can feel like this:

Hahahaha! Yes, some days, I can walk away from my little office feeling like my eyeballs are on fire and my brain has melted....but it's still fun.

However, in the "slow season" (and don't misinterpret that term-- I still find things to shoot in the dead of winter, and I still practice honing my craft and learning new skills!) I find myself, just for fun, poring over the myriad images that never got used, or I shot for the simple fact that the subject was calling to me. Sometimes, I am stuck indoors when the temps are in the teens, and the North Wind is howling, and find myself reminiscing over images I shot in Spring and Summer....and that is when I come across some little gems that really had no purpose in the shooting of, but would make great images for web and print publishers in those images' genre.

That's when I thought to myself, "Hey, somebody ought to get some good use out of these...." And the idea of using stock photography as a passive income stream was born. So the first couple of weeks of 2019, I spent some time browsing my collections, fine tuning some images, and uploading to Shutterstock. This venture is still in the experimental stage, and I don't expect to "get rich quick" doing this. However, since stock photos get downloaded and purchased repeatedly by various tech teams and designers, I know from my research into the world of stock that over time, it can become a decent little income stream to have running while I am sleeping.

Better than that though, I feel that shooting strictly with stock in mind, whether I have current assignments and jobs or not, will help me continue to develop my eye, and help me build on necessary photographic skill sets.

Plus, it keeps me where I prefer to be the most-- behind the lens.

To see more of my available stock images on Shutterstock, click here.