I’m looking for guest bloggers on a couple of topics.  I’ll keep this short.

- graphic designers, microstock buyers – what are you looking for, what’s the thought process, frustrations, etc.

- agency heads for interview style posts – bring your own agenda. Want to talk about DT keyword flags? Your new site?  Lemme know!

- iStock exclusivity – why, how, etc.  I know a lot of people, some very successful, use this method. Why don’t the rest?  Will we eventually?

- web gurus: how  can photographers market themselves on their own sites or do it better?  Hotlinking to our own images?  Are there solutions to do this entirely within our own branding?  And not cart-style like Photocart?

I’d love to have you!  I get: one exclusive  post to be posted here on N2M.  I reserve the right to edit and you reserve the right to remove the entire article if you don’t like my edit.  You get: link back to your own site, blog, portfolio, agency, etc. in the post.

Guest blogging is a great way to gain exposure and market yourself. As most of us bloggers  know Problogger loves guest blogging too.

After noticing the lack of roast beef sandwiches on Dreamstime and confirming with iStock the same, I decided to do a sandwich shoot.  I thought it would be my first “easy food” shoot.  I mean..how hard can it be to style a sandwich? 8 toothpicks and 2 frustrating hours later I can honestly say it’s WAY harder than it would appear.

The second part of my foodie weekend was a birthday party / dinner party.  We combined an adult-based dinner party for the family with our 14 year old’s birthday party to come up with a menu of: pizza bites (slice in between each and every pepperoni) and tomato skewer appetizers, one huge tossed salad and saute of chicken and broccoli over penne as the main course.  We followed that with birthday cake of course!  Since we technically had my birthday to celebrate as well and 15 guests, we made two cakes.

Here are some quick images I shot this weekend – not the best of the best but at least a few I have already edited.  I’ll post the recipe for the chicken and broccoli on my MattAntonino.com site later today.

I wanted to document a bit of how we prepare for a new stock shoot.  Unfortunately I’m not shooting hot models a la Chase Jarvis so I’m not going to be live demo’ing anytime soon!

Our thought process on a new photo shoot works something like this:

1. Overall concept/theme/ingredient
2. Specific recipe
3. Lighting/angles/technicals
4. Shop
5. Shoot Day

1. Overall concept/theme/ingredient

We shoot two days a week – Friday and Sunday. If we shoot more that’s fantastic.  If not, oh well.  We plan those two days to have one breakfast or lunch type shoot (Friday) and one dinner/dessert (Sunday).  It’s easier to spend a long time cooking/shooting on Sundays for us and dinner/dessert usually seems to take longer than breakfast/lunch.

I follow some really great foodies on Twitter/Facebook/blogs.  One thing I always look for is a recipe that a) will taste great and b) will LOOK great.  As a bonus I often look to see if I can find a healthy version so nobody gains 10 pounds per recipe I shoot.

2. Specific Recipe

So Friday we need to create a lunch. I bookmarked a delicious looking recipe two weeks ago and decided quickly I’d try that this week.  The recipe will be 3 Cheese Chicken Cacciatore Manicotti.  That was easy.  We also need to figure out dinner for Sunday.  I wanted to find something not as “fancy” as cacciatore manicotti so we looked at several recipe sites, some cookbooks and finally decided on something the Biggest Loser Cookbook called “Mom’s New Beef Stew.”  That fits my requirements: tastes great, looks super yummy and bonus: it’s fairly healthy at 275 cals per serving.

Some weeks I will decide on a recipe by ingredient.  Take Kahlua for instance.  We have leftover Kahlua from the chocolate mousse we made a week ago.  This Chocolate Truffle Pie also uses Kahlua.  If we don’t make that Sunday for dessert I’m certain we’ll make it next week.  Using ingredients you have on hand greatly reduces wastes and product going bad/old.

3. Lighting/angles/technicals

After printing the recipe and making a shopping list we write on the back of the recipe some ideas for the shoot.  Mostly this is just note-form.  Here are some examples from our banana split shoot:

• Yellow/orange
• high key
• OJ – don’t think milk will work
• Balance the color
• Angles: will be propped up?
• Spoonful

Generally meaningless until you get in the shoot.  We did end up using a yellow napkin and orange juice – it balanced the color very well.  We did some shots near the end of the shoot with a spoonful of split in front of the dish.  We tried but didn’t use milk because it did, in fact, look bad.  We ended up propping the bowl with a small bottle cap for a few shots.

4. Shop

Shopping day is Thursday.  That dictates our Friday shoot – if we need something super-fresh we may have to pick that up Friday morning before the shoot.  Sunday’s shopping is done except fresh on Thursday as well.  WE have a local Farmer’s Market on Saturday mornings year-round so we do our fresh shopping for Sunday then.

With our recipe and our ideas already in place shopping day is generally pretty straightforward.  Pick the best items you can find.

5. Shoot Day

Well, shoots are shoots.  The only thing we try and do specifically at each shoot is pre-organize our ideas so we don’t cut up the food before we’re done with it.  The further into a shoot we get the more we “mess” the dish and the more we feel free to cut, chop, move, adjust, add to, take from, etc.  We want to get those setup shots first, the meat of the shoot, then start playing with the outer edge of the shoot – closeups, eating, some unusual stuff just to see how it works, etc.  Get the bulk of work done when the food is as fresh and perfect as possible.  Once you get that THEN experiment.

Wrap Up

So that’s the way a typical shoot has been going for us.  We are pro photographers but very amateur food photographers. The combination is sometimes an interesting one.  I can figure out how to light something I’ve never shot before but I may not know how to drizzle syrup “correctly” yet.  We continue to read foodie sites, blogs, watch food stylist tutorials on Youtube and read food photo books.  Many many ways to learn in 2010!

Hope you enjoyed the post!  It’s great to be back and thank you for all the comments and well-wishes recently.

I’ve started to push images and get reviews.  I was pending this morning but a lot of batches were reviewed and now I’m starting to go live everywhere.  I can’t wait to see how the food images sell!

Our shooting has started off very well too – I want to get ahead a little. We have now completed 6 food shoots in the last 9 days – about 200 new photos to submit now.

We need to plan our dishes for this week – we’ve done a lot of desserts so I think it’ll be great to get a few lunches and maybe an entree out this week.

What are your favorite foods?  What foods do you really LOVE to cook?  And eat?  I’m really interested in the types of things you enjoy.

I know a lot of readers were concerned when I said I was going into food photography. Why the change?  I told you then and I will say it again – I’m OBSESSED with food now! I’ve made some healthy recipes, lost a few pounds and will keep shooting food.  I LOVE this job!  These images are all shot in the last week.  This is our 2nd, 3rd, and 4th food shoot.  We’re still learning but hopefully you like em!  Actually, hopefully stock photo buyers like em!

Hi & welcome back! NiltoMil is officially off and running again – I’m keywording, submitting, pushing images and then working on shooting some new today.  I’m going to be pushing some older images even though I know they won’t sell as well as I’d like simply because I want the momentum to begin NOW not in a month when I get new stuff edited.

I’m ready for 2010!  January will be a very poor month since I’m starting so late but February should show some recovery.

In the last 6 months when I was mainly gone:

• Shot weddings – and we have 4 other photographers who shot during that time as well.
• Sold my house/bought a new house – a fixer-upper.  We’ve been working on it almost everyday since Nov 20th for 12+ hours per day.
• Delved into the food styling/preparing/photo world.  I’ve read almost every post on Still Life With, Matt Bites, and many other foodie blogs.  I’ve devoured four entire food photography books including Rinder/Smith’s new book and Lou Manna’s classic.
• Redesigned our business brand
• Traveled to Maine, twice.  Traveled to NYC.

Now that I’m back my goal is to create an income that will pay my mortgage first, other bills later.  Our mortgage is $680.  This is an achievable goal that I do have to reach for. I’ll do a more extensive goals post in the next week or so but that’s the start of it.

Current BME: $575.46, July 2008

During the last few months one of my major goals has been to shoot more food photography.  I am really interested in the subject, I enjoy all aspects of it, and I think I can do it well (eventually).

So my past few months have been focused on learning – studying food photos, “becoming” a foodie, learning styling techniques – I never wanted to jump straight into food but rather be a food person who knew how to photograph.  I’ve been studying food, food photos, collecting recipes, deciding on what I want to focus on. In learning to “be” a food stylist/chef  you learn about presentation.

Thus my thought for the moment – become involved in the shots you want to shoot.  You shoot sports?  Go PLAY sports more – referee for the kid leagues, shoot hoops more at the park and watch more games.  See how the pros present sports.  You want to shoot business people?  Get deeper into business – meet with SCORE, talk about business planning and attend a seminar so you can see how someone has designed their speech.  Desire to shoot more animals & nature?  Interact – get out there, follow wildlife, hunt (with or without the gun), track animals – learn their behaviors.

— Related tangent —

When I first started learning to be a wedding photographer I listened to everything wedding photographers said. Advertising, marketing, sales, websites, SEO, photography & lighting, everything!  Eventually it dawned on me that photographers were good at making images.  I should learn advertising from an advertising specialist.  I no longer pay much attention to wedding photographers when they speak on subjects other than booking or shooting weddings.  The thought is very similar to what I’m talking about above.  Learn to be great at your subject – not just aware of it.

Sometimes when I want to shoot something I just pull it up, shoot it, wonder why it doesn’t sell.  I think the main reason is because someone else understands the subject while I just wanted a good photo of it.  Can I take good photos?  Yes.  Absolutely!  I shot models for years – and then I realized that because I don’t enjoy it all that much, the images weren’t high-class.  I can shoot well enough but the connection wasn’t there.  The question is – how involved are you in the shoot?

It doesn’t make sense for a city-dweller to go shoot cows and barns.  It doesn’t make sense for a sporty jock to shoot ballet.  Who are YOU and what can you shoot better than everyone else?

Images are going up now – mostly stuff I’ve shot in the past because we’re moving and my photo stuff is packed.  I am working on submitting older images.  I know they won’t sell quite the way I want but honestly I need to start getting momentum back and start submitting, get into all the right habits and patterns, etc.

Once we get moved a lot of our work is going to be focused on fixing up the house, prepping the new studio locations, shooting some new images, and so on.  I hope to get a bunch of great images from the move but who knows what will happen when we actually get moving.  I don’t want to be the slacker who’s taking photos while my friends & family lift boxes.

So going forward – momentum, new submissions, new imagery, a solid approach to the new 2010.

Let me quote myself.

I am not going to stick around and pretend to be something I’m not.  Too many people set goals and fail to reach them, yet still continue the journey unfazed.  I often share my experiences and ideas in hopes of helping you.  If I can’t help myself first, I can’t help you.

If I fail to reach both goals (10k images, $25k for the year) by 12/31/09, NiltoMil.com will close for good whether I continue to shoot microstock or not.

At this point in the year it is obvious that I will not reach 10k approved images OR $25,000 this year.

I am modifying what I wrote above.  I am not going to destroy or delete Nil. I am going to stop posting earnings, stop posting ideas until they are working better.  I AM going to keep Nil up for the archives and the posts that often get referenced.  I AM going to continue to put up posts of interest to me – whether that’s of interest to anyone else or not.  My journey will continue.

I need to help myself first.  I need to figure out the steps I should be taking to reach my goal  and when I do, I’ll be back full force with the full effort I can give Nil.  Until then, expect sporadic updates on what I’m doing, how stock is going and what I am trying to do to improve.

Total Earnings: $440.55

That’s a number I can live with.  Granted it doesn’t get me a lot closer to the “mil” portion of this goal but it also represents an increase over August of $13 and an increase over last Sept of $31.  I upload no new photos, keyworded nothing and submitted not a dang thing.  So an increase in my earnings with no new work is definitely motivating and exciting.

As always my fully detailed results are in my Google Spreadsheet here.

Well, the summer is almost over and I’m almost back to work.  September represents the next-to-last month of me not able to focus on microstock.  That being said I’m always happy if I make a few dollars anyways.

Specific results that are important:

Shutterstock finished +$74 from last month.  I would expect something more in the middle like $160 for October.

Dreamstime was way down but Fotolia was up.  I can’t wait to see what happens with Bigstock since the SS acquisition.

NO BMEs for the first time since I started tracking stats – that’s a little disappointing but gives me some new goals and motivations.  I’d like to have one month set EVERY BME just so I had a guideline to improve from.

Others reporting microstock income:

Microstock Diaries

jrtb

CJ Photography

Driftless Ramblings

PDTNC

MelastMohican

Pixels Away

Bankizdjec

Microstock Experiment

MyStockPhoto

Stock Illustrator