Great Escape Publishing

Posted April 20th, 2014 by Bonnie Caton & filed under Travel Photography.

My best-selling stock photo is the result of a playful accident. You may have seen it before. It’s one I took a few years back in a tulip field near Portland. Here it is: It was overcast that day. And white or gray skies in photos tend to be boring and make your photos look like snapshots. So, I got down on the ground and shot up through the tulips. I didn’t really know what I was doing, but just for fun, I tried over-exposing the sky, so that the tulips would be properly exposed, but the sky would be completely white behind them. It almost looks like I took the photo in a huge studio. But the sky was my studio that day. I love it when you decide to play around with something… just to give it a try… and you get a result that works (and even comes out better than expected). This photo has made me hundreds of dollars, and it’s still selling every week. Since that photo sells so well, I went back to the tulip farm last year to see if I could get some similar shots with a few variations. I tried the same technique, and took some macro shots and blue-sky shots, too. The following tulip photos came from that trip… A few weeks ago, I uploaded these to my stock agencies, and they’re already starting to climb the ranks in my sales. I can’t wait to see how they do over the next year or two! That’s the beauty of submitting to stock agencies – once your photo is up on their sites, you can make money off of an old photo for years to come… … and all because one day I decided to try something different with my camera. I hope you’re enjoying this weekend and the Easter holiday. If you can, take some time to get out your camera and try something new. Play with your settings. Experiment. You never know… you may come away with a photo that will make you hundreds of dollars or more! Share on Facebook