Sunday, January 21, 2007

Working


Busted
Originally uploaded by garmil.
Working doesn't leave a lot of time for writing. Things have been going very well at work. It has been a little slow somedays, but that's good because it has given us time to do stuff around the studio. Like cleaning the garage for 4 days.

We've spent a lot of time reconfiguring a lot of the equipment, servers and printers and stuff. The idea is to make room for another printer as well as prepare for the graduation portriats.

The boss left me in charge of the studio on Thursday and Friday. It was a little lonely, but I managed. We had a couple of pretty big sales and I had a pretty good time. It showed me that would be possible for me to have a one person studio, but that it would also be a lot of work. I would probably have to learn photoshop a little bit better than what I know now.

I've been uploading a lot more photos to Istockphoto lately. It is going really well for me. On a daily basis I'm making about 3% of what it would take for me only do Istock for a living. If I could make 33X that I wouldn't need a regular job at all.

I have a spreadsheet that is predicting that it will take four and a half years at the rate I'm going now. That may not be the most realistic prediciton for several reasons. I could be working at it a lot harder than I am right now, even in my spare time, I'll probably learn what sells much more as time goes on, and I'll also be improving as a photographer. Also, once in a while they raise the price for photos and this lowers the number of sales that it would take to be a stock photographer full time. Another thing is that as more and more of your photos have been downloaded they give you a higher and higher royalty on each sale. In december I made an extra 5% on each sale. I'm prediciting a raise again next december.

House sitting is going well. The house is nice. The start button on the microwave in the kitchen doesn't work. Luckily there is a spare microwave downstairs. But what a pain. You miss half your tv show when you are making the popcorn. Why can't they just make a microwave/fridge/tv combo device? You'd win the nobel prize for sure.

-Gary

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You could invent it yourself and make loads of money. Consider it Plan B if the four year projection doesn't fulfill itself.

Bob Milner said...

Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever...it remembers little things long after you have forgotten everything.