As I recently mentioned in the morgueFile.com forums, I set a goal for myself to build my tiny portfolio of images on Shutterstock up to the not-quite-as-tiny size of 250 images before the end of 2010. In January, I only added one (and it was a fractal, not a photo), so I'm not exactly making good strides toward that goal, yet.

The big news in the microstock photography world today is that Shutterstock (where you can buy or sell stock photos, illustrations, and video clips) acquired BigStockPhoto, another microstock site that uses a more typical "credit"-based system instead of the subscriptions used by Shutterstock. I have photos on both sites, so it will be interesting to see how the two companies merge their operations.

Not a single post to this blog all year! That's not just a commentary on this blog, it also leads into the topic of this post. My time has been stretched thin, and things have not been working out as well as I'd hoped. Therefore, I've decided it's time for a change in my "strategy" (if you can call it that) when it comes to photography. This is true across the board, but especially so regarding microstock.

This isn't exactly about my own photos, but it's about my involvement in photography in a more general sense.

I decided to dump my infrequently-updated, rarely-visited, virtually-pointless blog in which I recommended various stock images, usually by photographers other than myself. A key purpose for the blog was to use the referral program of Shutterstock to earn more for myself, Shutterstock, and other photographers. I never had the time to promote it, though, so it was just one more blog lost in the wilderness.

Has it really been over three months since I posted something to my photography blog? ugh... I'll let you guess whether that's because my life is boring or because it's exciting.

Speaking of exciting, I finally had a chance to use a service called TinEye, about which I'd read rave reviews from other photographers. TinEye lets you search the Web for your digital photos. Now, why would you want to look for photos that you already have on your computer? Because, innocent reader, the sad, dark truth is that if you have ever put a photo on the Web anywhere (Flickr, Facebook, etc.), there's a chance that somebody grabbed a copy and used it somewhere, without your knowledge. (Probably without your permission, too, unless you specifically licensed it for that sort of thing.)

It wasn't very long ago that I mentioned in this blog that I had been accepted as a contributing photographer on Lucky Oliver. Well, the news is out that the site is closing its doors. That was short lived, at least for me... I didn't make any sales there in that short time with what few images I had online, but apparently there are some who are wondering about their accumulated earnings. I don't envy the position of the site owners at all!

Last week I bought a lens off eBay for the first time, and it arrived yesterday (sooner than I expected, which is just the kind of surprise I like). It's a "double-X" Minolta Maxxum 50mm 1.7 lens, which -- if I can believe what I read on multiple sites prior to bidding -- means it's a model from early in the production run for this lens, and may have better optics than later-produced units.

I recently got the good news that I've been accepted on Lucky Oliver as a contributing photographer, so now I can start uploading there too. The "third shot" (mentioned in an earlier blog post) ended up being a new photo, which was also accepted on Shutterstock and Dreamstime.

After reading about LuckyOliver on a site dedicated to discussions of microstock, I decided I would give it a shot. So I created an account and three photos for them to consider whether to accept me as a contributing photographer or not.

I recently decided to add some more photos on Dreamstime, because I never really took advantage of it for its revenue potential. Since I'm currently not offering any image exclusively anywhere (other than free images on morgueFile that would probably never be accepted on microstock sits), I picked three of my best-selling photos on Shutterstock and uploaded them to Dreamstime.