The story of one stolen image here is pretty crazy.  It’s both disturbing, interesting, amazing, scary and infuriating all at the same time.  This type of story always plucks my heart strings, because I can relate to the way he’s feeling.  It just shows the power of the internet in this media age we are living in.  Any image you post online can end up anywhere… period.  Case closed.  I don’t care what you shot it with, how you designed it, digitized it, where you posted it, or what it is.  High res, medium res, or low res.  If the image is something of value to another person, or another person sees the potential value in it, it will be used.  It’s only a matter of time before it ends up all around the world.  Beware of how you share your work online.

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The creative imagery of Carlos Caetano has always amazed and inspired me, ever since beginning my journey as a stock photographer.  Born in the sixties, Carlos Caetano started and developed his career as a graphic designer in studios and advertising agencies. He stood a few years in a magazine and multimedia publishing house and, later, worked as web designer in a major internet portal in Portugal. Self-taught, Carlos took advantage of his privileged access to the digital graphics tools and specialized in the use of Photoshop for image post-processing and optimization.

Being a photo enthusiast since a very early age, Carlos took a course in professional photography between 1994 and 1997. Today, he works as a freelance graphic designer and photographer and is a contributor of stock imagery to several online image banks. The royalty free stock photos that he creates can be bought and downloaded by designers that use them in various marketing and advertising products, books, blogs, or editorial pieces.

Carlos Caetano is a “Pentaxian” and actually uses a Pentax K10D DSLR, several Pentax and Sigma lenses and Manfrotto tripods. When not outdoors shooting landscapes, he is at home, busy with tabletop shoots of objects in his improvised studio: the dining-room table next to a big, luminous window, and a piece of white paper or styrofoam to bounce light into the shadows. This is all he needs as studio gear, allied with his Photoshop skills.  His images can be found for sale on stock photography sites such as Shutterstock.com,  istockphoto.com,  dreamstime.com,  fotolia.com,  bigstockphoto.com,  and several others. He is available for photographic assignments, photo post-processing and manipulation.

To contact Carlos or to view more of his work, check out:
ccaetano.com
picsweep.blogspot.com
facebook.com/ccaetano

Would you like your work to be featured on the Arena Creative blog?  Whether you are a photographer or a graphic designer, if you have something creative to share we would love to feature your work!  Contact us if you are interested.

When it comes to searching for the right stock photos, I know from personal experience as a past image buyer that it can be a huge hassle.  You can many times get lost or even sidetracked very easily when browsing through the ocean of stock photos and graphics.  The sooner you find what you need, the sooner you will get your work done, nailing those time sensitive deadlines.  Searching for stock photos can be pretty annoying if you’re not going about it the right way.  Here are some tips and advice I can offer that might just make your next “hunt” a little more successful, or at least maybe a little less time consuming.

Be Specific

Let’s face it, there is a sea of images out there for royalty free licensing.  You can sometimes search for “cat” and get “dog”.  Unfortunately, image keywords are prone to mistakes, spamming, and more.  You don’t want to have to dig through a sea of crap before finding the types of images you’re looking for.  Read the rest of this entry »

Over 150,000 images licensed in a little over 4 years in microstock.  Holy crap…

I was definitely taken by surprise with this statistic.  I only wish each one of those images sold for $30 each instead of 30 cents – Haha! I don’t even know what the total size of my portfolio is right now, so that’s the next thing I’ll have to figure out.

Want to know how many images I’ve found in use?  Ha, probably only around 100.

Alright; you got me.  Let me be totally honest with you.  As of today, I’ve only sold 149,110 images.  But close enough… I know I must have missed a bunch somewhere, on some random site I’m forgetting to record.  In another week or so it should be there It’s fun running business related stats once in a while, and you’re going to be surprised with the results, almost always.  Give it a shot with your own accounts, if you sell stock.  I think you just might be pleasantly surprised!

Aaron Goodman is the man. I’m blown away by his stuff. He knows his gear, his lighting, and (even more importantly) his Photoshop; and he’s not afraid to use all of these skills in unison. His concepts are mind blowingly creative – enough to knock your socks off. Some of them are so simple, yet effective, that you think to yourself, “gee why didn’t I think of that?”.  The SAT’s with the pencil girl is one of my favorites. I want to try and think of more of these types of conceptual images, to add to my stock photography portfolio; as long as I can afford to spend the amount of time on them that they will obviously need. In the past I’ve spent hours and hours on images that have a very low return, so obviously when it comes to selling images like these through microstock outlets, you have to use your own good judgement and planning.

Read more in this excellent article by AfterCapture magazine here.  All images Copyright © Aaron Goodman.