I am a stock photographer, I make a living by selling photo licenses for publishers, designers, editors, and others who need to use pictures in their work. I have a large portfolio online, photographs I took over almost two decades.
Photography was a hobby for me. Back in 2004, I was doing my Ph.D. in physics and I loved to take pictures. I had a small digital compact, the Canon A40, but I thought I will invest in the digital camera marketed as ‘the first DSLR under $1000’, the Canon Digital Rebel. It was a good camera and I took lots of pictures whenever I could. I wanted to monetize my hobby somehow, so after searching online I found iStockphoto.com and I started uploading and selling my pictures there. If I remember well I was earning 10 cents per sale. It wasn’t much but it was something and you could have many sales of the same image. It was the pioneer years of microstock which revolutionized stock photography. I was in a good place at the right time.
I remember, if you had pictures with over 100 sales you were great, if over 500 sales you were a hero and over one thousand sales you were a legend. So that was what I was aiming for. Slowly but steadily I increased my portfolio, to the point when in 2007 I finished my Ph.D. I decided to stay with photography and make it my main source of income. Many years have passed since and here I am, thankful for this opportunity, that I can earn a living by doing what I love.
