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

• 578 images on Shutterstock
• 780 images on Fotolia
• 674 images on iStock
• 347 images on Alamy
• 546 images on Depositphotos
• 475 images on Dreamstime
• 248 images on 123rf
• 96 images on CanStockPhoto
• 63 images on Bigstock

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.



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.

Hiking the Mölltaler Glacier

On this late summers day, it wasn't that warm but not too cold so the ideal weather and temperature to go for a hike. We drove about 1,5 hours west from Radenthein (745 m.a.s.l) into the Mölltal and then up to 1900 m.a.s.l. a quite nice gradient from the valley up to a little beautiful mountain hut which was runned by some kind landlord and landlady! There we asked for a short hiking tour for about 2 hours and the landlord also provided us a very experienced and fit guide, named Karla, as you can see in the picture below.

 

She lead us up the hills, took some short baths in the streams sideways, hunted a chamois and a grundhog and played tag with a cow!  

We made some short break halfways at another mountain hut to eat some bread with smoked sausage and cheese before our leader took us to a small lake at above 2200 m.a.s.l. where Karla took a bath!

   



After about 3 hours of hiking we came back to our start position the "Patschgeralm-Hütte" and ordered alocal speciality called "Bretteljause" with self made bread, butter, sausages, ham and quark which you really have to try if you are in Carinthia around, it is available at almost every mountain hut, with some different flavour!


Really a nice activity to get the sunday around!

Sauzipf Rocks 11

After 2 years of abstinence, the last Sauzipf Rocks was in 2009, this unique festival took place again in Austria/Carinthia/Döbriach near Millstätter See. For information about the bands which played there and some historical facts, visit the homepage and if you want to get some updates via mail order the newsletter! Everyone couldn't wait to get there! This year, there was a ticket limitation of 1500 2-day-tickets for the first time! The tickets were already sold out some weeks before the festival and a lot of people tried to get some tickets from others who weren't able to come, so the inquiry to take part was quite high! Even a contest was held in the last days before the festival to give away the last tickets to some people.

 On the second festival day on midday it started with the well known "Schweinsaugenweitspucken" contest, which can be translated as "Pig-Eye-Long-Spitting" and more people than ever participated in it. The winner spitted the pig eye over more than 11 metres and some people who hadn't poured enough alcohol down their throat swallowed the eyes to get a bottle of vodka as a present!

To have some more entertainment in the afternoon before the bands started their shows the local Highlander team Mc Stingler organized 3 competitions of the Highland Games which were, "Bierle zupfen", "Bam sagln" and "Maß heben", in english it's called "beer drinking", "wood sawing" and "stein lifting". The participants took part in it in teams of two. Some impressions below!

And for all of you who have the possibility to come and attend Sauzipf Rocks for one time you want to get there each single year of your life, cause you will hardly find a festival with such a extravagant character, non-mainstream music, musicians and people, like this one. And i really have to suggest you to drink there one or even more "Goaß" and also the bartenders are quite handsome there ;)

So I've shown you some pictures and gave you some information about this festival and now it's your choice to come there the next years, but I know you miss something deep inside your heart and it for sure is Sauzipf Rocks, and you will never ever get that hole filled until you've been there ;)

For more pictures check out the links below or the Sauzipf Rocks homepage:

PyranhaPhotography
Sauzipf Rocks Day 1
Sauzipf Rocks Day 2

The First Post

Some time ago I decided to make me also an blog here, but haven't really finished the design till now, but will do it by time so that it might look better than just this first impression.

Nevertheless I want to show you here the pictures I make, everything is also up on Flickr, so if you have an account there just check out and connect if you like.

I also share my Flickr Stream on my Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/PyranhaPhotography.
If you want to get some updates there from time to time Like my page there. Hope you enjoy it!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rene_p/5880943783

I also have 7 quite cool Geocoins travelling around the world, Just check them out in my Flickr PhotoStream and maybe once if you're lucky you see them in real world too ;)