Donnerstag, 29. Dezember 2016

Stock Photography cont’d

It's been quite a while since I've last written anything here, so it's time for an update. I'd like to summarize my experiences from doing stock photography in my rare spare time, besides finishing my master studies in Information Technology and working at Infineon and Intel.

After now about 4 years of shooting, processing and uploading basically landscape, nature and travel photos, I have now
giving a total of 3.807 images online with all of these agencies. By looking at the stats of the top 3 agencies, I can't really say I regret having started that. Of course it takes a lot of time, first planning to get the right images, which might return a few downloads, then processing, uploading and keywording everything, but anyway this feels less like work than doing my daily job.

In sum there have been 4.784 single downloads of my photos up till now, didn't expect that initially and I hope the figures will continue to increase over the following years. More than 90% of all the downloads are generated by the 3 best-selling agencies, so that's why I have focussed on uploading more to these, as the others are more or less just a waste of time.

My most popular photo, which got me the most downloads - already more than 2.500 - is still my aerial image, taken during a helicopter tour in NYC, back in 2012.

nyc

Right now I am still using my good old Canon EOS 60D, but I plan to upgrade to full-frame next year and the work and time invested the last few years in building up these online stock photo portfolios helps me a lot realizing this. I'll try my best also the following years to enlarge my portfolios to hopefully return me even more downloads, so that maybe one day in near or far future I can invest a little more time in doing this, work less and travel more.

Thanks to everyone who is downloading my photos, for your support, I really appreciate this and if you like what you see, feel free to share with your friends or colleagues, who might can use my images for some of their projects, may it be for business or private use.

Dienstag, 17. Juni 2014

Wherever I May Rome

I visted Rome from June 6th to 9th, 2014. This trip was organized by the local travel agency Springer Reisen and it started from the airport in Graz/Styria on June 6th, 8:30 p.m. We arrived at the airport Fiumicino about 1.5 hrs later with Blue Panorama airlines, but still had to wait for the luggage about an hour and it also took some time to get from the airport to the hotel via bus, so I went to bed after midnight. My hotel was the **** Hotel Archimede, Via dei Mille, 19, close to the train station Termini.

Airport Graz/Rome Hotel Archimede
   

I also ordered me the RomaPass, so I was able to use all the public transport systems for free during those days and for the first two sightseeings the entrance was also included and I didn't had to queue, which was pretty comfortable.

On Saturday morning my first way after breakfast at 7 a.m. was straight into the city with direction Colosseum and Forum Romanum. The weather could not have been better, but it was also pretty hot, so I had to drink a lot of water throughout the days. There are many public fountains in the city, where you can fill up your bottles with fresh and tasty water, so keep an eye on it before you're running dry. The water quality is excellent, coming straight from the moutains around Rome!

Saturday Colosseum/Forum Romanum/ Monumento Nazionale a Vittorio Emanuele/Villa Borghese
  

As I exited the Colosseum the queue was like 300m long, so I think the RomaPass is really a must have. Instead of waiting hours you can walk straight in. After being hours out in the hot sun, where I've seen a lot inside the Colosseum and Forum Romanum, I wanted to cool down a bit, so I used the metro to finally find a shady place, the park around Villa Borghese. Had my dinner on this first day in the Hard Rock Café, where else, one of the best places to let a day end!

On Sunday morning I went with the metro up to station Lepanto and from there first to Piazza del Popolo. I took a walk down the river Tiber. There are many trees besides the river where you can walk in the shadows and it's not so hot. I visited the park around the Castel Sant' Angelo, where I just sat down and listened to some quitar player on the street and then went on to St. Peter's Basilica. Basically I've spent the whole day by just strolling through the city and the streets. Of course also went down to the Fontana Di Trevi where close by I got me some delicious ice cream. There were some many people and decided to come back later this day before sunset to take some photos of this place. In the evening I went to the Pantheon which is extraordinary. A dome with a hole in the middle, wherelse to see something like this?! Nearby to the west there's also the quite famous Piazza Navona. There's a lot going on at this place and some entertainers try to keep the crowd happy. On my way back from Piazza Navona to the Pantheon I already felt pretty hungry so I decided to eat something at the Piazza della Rotonda in the restaurant Napoletano's opposite to the Pantheon. Had Spaghetti Carbonara and Tiramisu as dessert.

Sunday Piazza Del Popolo/Castel Sant’ Angelo/Corte Di Cassazione/Vatican/Fontana Di Trevi/Pantheon
     

On my way back to the hotel I stopped by once again at the Fontana Di Trevi to have some better light conditions. Handheld panorama consisting of 4 single exposures. A few days before I've read that the renovation work already started so I didn't expect to get any good shots but this worked pretty nice, though I had to shot through the fence.
Especially for the next few shots I disassembled my tripod at home to fit into my bag and assembled it again in the hotel. Didn't use it during the other days, cause it was too hot to drag it with me all the time. Always important to have a tripod with you, to take some long exposures at night. Perfect timing, right at blue hour I arrived down there in front of the Colosseum to take the photos I wanted.
It was a starry night with also the moon at the right position to enhance the photo a little bit. As I went around the Colosseum a bridal couple and phtographer came across as well a big family of Japanese with professional photographer were down there to make family portraits!


At the last day, on Monday, I took the metro up to station Cipro and took a guided tour through the Vatican Museums, Sistine Chapel and St. Peter's Basilica. The tour took from 9:30 a.m. till 01:30 p.m. First I thought, maybe it works for getting to top of the dome, but I had to be at the hotel again at 4 p.m. and the queue in front of the entrance was too long.

Monday Vatican Museum St. Peter's Basilica
   
For these few days, not even three full days in Rome, I have seen quite a lot from west to east, north to south, of Rome and maybe, who knows, I'll be able to see some more things once again in future, cause it's absolutely impossible to see everything on a weekend!

A selection of my best-of photos I've taken during those days is also available to be downloaded in high resolution online on my stock photo portfolios. Feel free to share if you like!

Dienstag, 3. Juni 2014

4 Days In Italy/Cinque Terre/Pietrasanta

My parents heard about a bus tour to Italy from some of their friends in early 2014. As I took a closer look on the information written in the travel catalogue and seen some photos of the area there, I wanted to see all this on my own and decided to come with them too. In the following two images you can see the route as well as a topview of the area around Pietrasanta.

This represents the shortest path from home to our hotel there in Pietrasanta, not sure if the busdriver exactly took this route .

A Topview from the area around Pietrasanta as seen in Google Earth
Our Hotel, the Hotel Milton, was located in Marina di Pietrasanta very close to the sea, from where we started our daily tours. The weather was pretty cloudy and also rainy, but we were able to do everything what has been planned for us. Been the first time for me to be so close to the sea for a longer time and we have really seen a lot during those days. We started our trip in Radenthein with a bus from the local travel agency Bacher Reisen on Thursday, May 1st 2014 at 6 a.m. in the morning. Our busdriver was Heller Bernd, who knows everything about this region. It took us ~10 hours to reach our destination, but on tour we had two stops for about an hour each. As we arrived in Marina di Pietrasanta a big market was going on in all the streets, where one could find everything one wanted, starting from flowers to food and craft.

Marina Di Pietrasanta Street Market, took place all the days we’ve been there.
On Friday we took a ship tour from La Spezia to Porto Venere and onwards to Cinque Terre. In Porto Venere we had a stop for an hour and took a look around. We went up to the Chiesa Di San Pietro and down to La Grotta Di Lord Byron. Was pretty exciting, sadly no sound on the photos, but mabye you get a feel how the waves crushed to the coast.

La Grotta Di Lord Byron, as it was a rainy and windy day some breakers rolled in, that’s where my facial expression comes from :) Not felt that safe, cause didn’t want to get washed away!

I’ve never been on a ship at sea before and this one had the full power mode on. Really had to spread my feet into the planks to be able to take sharp photos and to compensate the shake of the ship. Our tour guide, named Anna, showed and told us all we need to know. From Riomaggiore we took the train back to La Spezia and with the bus back to our hotel. I’ve never been on a train with so many people. I was surprised the train had the power to transport the masses, a lot of tourists were visiting these cities.

Monterosso & Riomaggiore, we stopped in Monterosso where we had ~3 hours, time enough for lunch and sightseeing
On Saturday we visited the marble quarry in Carrara and had a local guide named Mario who was an police man before he retired and he turned 90  three days before. For that age he was in fabulous shape and a really funny guy, who told us about the quarry and the people there!

Marble Quarry Carrara, pretty impressive there. also took some presents with me from the shop up there. Our guide told us a lot about history and that decades ago they delivered a marvle block 600t heavy to rome pulled by oxen.
In the afternoon we visited Lucca which was also quite interesting, we took a two hour guided tour through the city and we’ve seen a lot of churchs and all the  architecture there.

Lucca, impressive architecture everywhere
On Sunday morning it was the one and only day with more or less blue sky so I used an hour in the morning, before we were leaving, for taking some shots of the Pontile di Marina di Pietrasanta.

Pontile Di Marina Di Pietrasanta, at least on Sunday, the day we left, the weather got me some blue sky for taking some beautful seascape photos, taken right before breakfast
Hope with these pics you can enjoy a little bit as we did and if so feel free to share the links or download photos from my stock photo portfolios and maybe I can show you something more soon.

Samstag, 24. August 2013

Three Days In Salzburg

As I've already mentioned in my last post some weeks ago, I visited the city of Salzburg from August 4th to 7th. I ordered me the 72h-SalzburgCard so I had a one-time entrance to all the sightseeings for free. I started early in the morning on Sunday, to don't waste any time, my way from Carinthia and first stopped in Grödig to go up with the Untersbergbahn to the top at 1.973m. Best to start a trip like this with a great and fascinating view all around the area of Salzburg. You can also find my previous time-table, with all the links to all the sightseeings, by clicking on the following link: Travel plan Salzburg. My list was quite full, not everything worked as planned, but basically done what was most important to me.


After enjoying the time and view up there, I went back down and drove straight into the city to park my car in the mountain "Kapuzinerberg" parking lot near  the AllYouNeed hotel. Next on my plan was to visit the watergames at Castle Hellbrunn and as the bus ticket was also included in my SalzburgCard only thing I had to do was to get on the right bus. In early August temperature here all over Austria were pretty high and best to do was to jump from shadow to shadow, but in Salzburg it was even hotter, so taking a guided tour through the castle and watergames was a pretty good decision. The tour was really interesting and kind of funny presented too. In the photo below you can see the start point. The guides told a bit about the history of the location and then asked some of the group to come down and take a seat at the table in front. What no one knew was, that there were holes in the stone blocks and the table where water splashed out of, after the guide pulled some strings and everyone sitting there, including me, received some cooling splashes of water :) The park around the castle is quite large and there are also many pools and benches to just relax. Spent some time there too after the tour finished and went on to the Salzburg Zoo. It was already a bit late that day and the zoo is really huge. Clouds came up and it was getting darker, a storm hit Salzburg right after I was back at the hotel, so not that good condition for visiting the zoo but anyhow always worth a visit!


Later that night as the storm has passed by, I wanted to get a view from top of the mountain "Kapuzinerberg" onto Salzburg by night, so I went up through the woods with a torch. Always a bit spooky if one's not familiar with the location, but found a nice place up there at the "Bavarian view" looking to the north-west of Salzburg.


The next day, Monday, I started with going south and stopped at the Mirabell Palace and Gardens, which is a simply wonderful but also good visited location with park and fountain. I decided to come back in the evening to take some photos and went on to the House Of Nature. There you probably could spend a whole day or even more to see everything there. There's a main building and a so-called Science Center which is pretty much interesting. Could write lines but just one thing stunning to mention explicitly. There was an exhibition going on called "Human Footprint" showing high-quality large size satellite images, made by a company called eoVision, which was impressive. Seeing these landscape photographs from high above, really makes you think what humanity is able to do with our planet. In one way the images are fascinating, because of all these geometrical forms, but on the other hand it shows you, what might happen, if we continue doing this for decades.



Tried to see as much as possible in there, I went on in the afternoon to go up the Mönchsberg and got me some delicious dessert and a shandy at the M32. The restaurant is located above the city from where I could take some good photos looking down on the old city of Salzburg and the fortress Hohensalzburg. Up there is also the Museum Of Modern Art, which was worth a visit.


For the rest of ths second day in Salzburg I was just straying through the city, also visited the dome, which was quite impressive. Really like these old buildings from centuries ago and it's achitecture. If you're thinking about the tools they were given, it makes it even more interesting, that they were able to build more beautiful buildings and interior with art masterpieces at no time comparable to ones of our days or what will be build in future times!


In the evening before going back home to the hotel, I took a walk down the river Salzach and again through the gardens of Mirabell palace, wonderful place to end a day, where it started.


On Tuesday, my last full day in Salzburg the plan was to visit the fortress Hohensalzburg in the morning, from where I had a great view again down to the old city of Salzburg and up to the north. Seen a lot in there from the mediaeval times, canons, weapons, instruments of torture, interiors, everything highly interesting. Took a boat tour in the afternoon. Before I went to the Misfits concert at the Rockhouse in the evening, I went up the Kapuzinerberg again, to check a location, where I wanted to take a photo by night. Just wanted to make sure I also find this spot at darkness, cause it's not easy as everything looks different by night. The concert was cool, met also some people from where I live, location was also nice, but they maybe could blow up the "tunnel" some metres more into the mountain, cause there were quite a lot of people, hardly room to see anything. After the concert I went up to the place I inspected in the afternoon and could get a good final nightshot of Salzburg.



On Wednesday morning I packed all my stuff and on the way back home I made a short excursion to Bavaria and Berchtesgaden, as it is not really that far and my chance to soon get there again is not that high. Pretty much tourism around the King's Lake, but simply beautiful nature. If I find time to get there again, I should probably get up early and spend a whole day, take a boat tour across the lake and hike up to Germany's highest waterfall.


Hope you like my photos and description here, wasn't less work and took longer than I expected. If you like, feel free to share, maybe download my images, available in high-resolution zoom-in-able, or if you'd like to see more visit my portfolios! Any support highly appreciated and maybe one day I can surprise you with another story ;)

Donnerstag, 4. Juli 2013

Big and small news from 2013

Seems like I haven't been here for long, so I thought it might be time to write a short udpate ;)

Big news first:
I have finished my bachelor studies in Information Technologies  at the Alpe-Adria University in early April 2013 with my thesis: Kerf Data Checker - A Tool To Improve The Process Of Kerf Generation & Mask Layout at the Lithography department of Infineon Austria in Villach, where I'm still working part time for 20hrs/week till at least end of September this year!



And secondly:
I have decided to do a bit of stock photography. Starting at the end of last year with Shutterstock, iStock and Fotolia.

You can find my portfolios by clicking on the links below:
http://www.shutterstock.com/g/Rene+Pi
http://www.istockphoto.com/search/portfolio/9229365/
http://de.fotolia.com/p/202416031


I have now nearly 100 images online in sum at all these 3 agencies and my top seller is my NYC Sky View photo, which has been downloaded more than 170 times since I started and it was also my first photo I uploaded on Shutterstock.

Oh, right, I also forgot to mention, that I have been in New York City last year from May 28th - June 4th, after my 25th birthday, which was really a great experience. Won this one-week trip in a contest sponsored by Microsoft, Austrian Airlines and Bene. Thanks a lot for that. You can find a selection of photo also in one of the albums on my Flickr Portfolio.

Future plans are:
  • Enlarging my portfolios
  • Starting studies again in autumn and
  • Finishing my master studies at least in 2016, though I'm not that motivated right now :)
Gonna visit Salzburg for some days in early August, as I won a 3-night stay in a photo contest of the AllYouNeed Hotels.

If I'm not writing here that often in future, feel free to visit me on my other social networking profiles, to keep in touch if you'd like to get the latest news:
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