Travel Photography - Preparation, Shot Lists, and Gear

While I've been on a few trips, this is the first trip that I've been preparing for with a specific plan to take potentially marketable images - either for stock, fine are, or editorial.  I'll be traveling to Vietnam for a few weeks in March, and will be taking in the major site of Hanoi, Halong Bay, Hoi An, Ho Chi City, Mekong Delta, and Island. 

Preparation

Researching the different locations, noting the top sites, times of day that might be best in certain locations.  For stock photography I've visited a number of existing sites to see what types of images exist already, what ideas I may generate from these images, and how I need to make my images different and unique to become more salable.   Some of the sites I've visited, searching for various keywords, have been: Photoshelter, iStockphoto, Alamy, and Getty Images.

Shot Lists

Knowing what you want to shoot, when, and where will be key in saving time and making the most of the limited time you'll likely have at each place.  A few major categories I'll be concentrating on in each place:

• Skylines, expansive views with a sense of place
• Street scenes, people, restaurants (exterior, interiors, food)
• Culture (customs, juxtaposition, old/new)
• Historic monuments and buildings (hopefully with unique angles / perspective)
• Shopping (markets, buying/selling, interaction)
• Story telling close-ups or details (image series, multiple angles of same subject)
• Special events, holidays, etc. in each place

A couple articles I found with more information on putting together and researching a shot list are here and here.

Gear

In previous trips, I either didn't have an SLR Camera or chose not to take it, trading off image quality and flexibility for a lighter load and less liability.  From those trips to this one I'm much more focused on images and capturing that sense of place, than I am on a camera that fits in my pocket.  I'll still be taking a relatively small amount of gear with me, which would be considered Amateur and not Pro, but the potential for better images has increased ten fold from my previous point-and-shoot trips. 

Nikon D80, with 18-200mm VR II DX lens
GorilaPod tripod, mainly for night shooting or indoor
Memory Cards (4-16 GB)
Charger
GPS / Battery Pack for Geotagging photos (see previous post)

Monetize Your Images :: With Microstock

I've recently gotten back into the idea of monetizing my images and there are a number of options one can pursue to make money from your photos.  Microstock is one of those options...

Microstock

A contentious avenue for sales to some and one I haven't put a lot of time into.  I've been getting back into it, but slowly.  Keeping the motivation going through rejection, a large amount of time editing and keywording images, with little payoff in the beginning has been a struggle.  But I'm determined to give it a go and see where I end up - I'll be updating my progress here in future posts.

Microstock is mainly Royalty Free images requiring a model/property release (if applicable) and counts on multiple sales of the same image to recoup the cost of production due to the low cost per image in microstock.  Sales typically range from $1.00 - $20.00 per image, with only a percentage of that going to the photographer.  It is open to anyone with a decent camera (usually 4-6 mega pixels and above), but most sites have quality standards that you must meet in order to submit images for sale on their site.

A few of the major microstock sites to check out if you're interested in this:

iStockphoto
Shutterstock
Dreamstime
CanStockPhoto
Fotolia

Alamy Upsize Tool

I’ve recently started using Alamy for an avenue of image sales. One of their requirements is that the image must be over 48Mb uncompressed. At first I was a little confused as to what that means for the actual image size and the resulting dimensions that are required. After finding some info on the web with formulas, etc. I came up with this spreadsheet that allows you to easily figure out how big your new files has be to get the right size file. Simply enter in your original image dimensions, desired final uncompressed file size, and the resulting new image dimensions appear in the cells below. Try it out below.



This information is all I need to enter into many resizing software programs in order the get the right file size every time.