Shoreham Airshow Crash:

Shoreham crash scene

Regular readers will know that I enjoy photographing aviation subjects and always try and get to an airshow each year. This year I was set to go to the Airbourne airshow at Eastbourne but bad weather on the day I was going led to the cancellation of all flying. The excellent Dunsfold airshow which I attended last year was out as I wasn't free to go that weekend. This really only left the annual airshow at Shoreham-on-Sea in my area. This became a must see event when it was announced that XH588 -the last flying Vulcan bomber would be displaying on Saturday 22. This is the last year of flying for the Vulcan and, although I have seen it twice before, I was delighted to have the opportunity for one last chance to see it in the sky.

Archive image of a Hawker Hunter

The weather was perfect both as a spectator and as a photographer. Plenty of sunshine and blue skies -ideal for airshow photography. Late morning saw a number of aerobatic displays including Tiger Moths and the RAF parachute team The Falcons. The real action of the day got going just after 1.15pm with the arrival of the Hawker Hunter jet fighter. This fifties vintage jet is a favourite of mine having seen a number of Hunter displays at various airshows. A low level high speed run down the display line was followed by a steep climb and loop to bring it back to the display area. Because of my position this is where I lost sight of it behind the grandstand area as I poised my camera to capture the return run.

The rest is tragic history which has made the news around the world as the Hunter lost altitude before crashing on the busy A27 road next to the airfield. I sensed something was wrong when the aircraft hadn't reappeared as expected. There was then the sounds of gasps followed by a loud explosion. I moved my position a few feet in time to see a large fireball go up followed by plumes of thick black smoke. At this point the thousands of spectators simply fell very quite. The Hunter had been only seconds into its display and there was a sense of disbelief and shock at what had just happened.

Archive image of Vulcan XH588

Initially, most thoughts were for the fate of the pilot but it was only later that the full horror of what had happened emerged as the death toll from the A27 road reached eleven with the pilot (still) in critical condition. Needless to say, the rest of the airshow was cancelled. The one exception was the Vulcan. About an hour after the crash XH588 made one very slow and very quite flypast over the scene in what was a very moving and poignant tribute to those lost in the crash. That, sadly, will be my last memory of seeing the Vulcan in flight.

It truly was an appalling experience and not one I would want to repeat. Far worse, of course, for friends and family of those that died. You always have an awareness at airshows that something could go wrong but, in reality, never actually expect it to happen. An investigation into the crash is underway and currently in the UK all Hawker Hunters are grounded with restrictions placed on displays by other vintage jets.

Will I still visit and photograph airshows? Certainly - I cannot imagine I'm likely to witness something like this again. Regards, David.

July Sales Updates:

The Red Arrows -Extended License at Istock

Somewhat later than I had hoped here are my updates for July. Expect August updates to follow soon to get things back on track :)

In first place (of course) were Shutterstock. A good number of On Demand downloads and a handful of Single Downloads pushed July over the payout limit. In an interesting move SS announced that the minimum payout is to drop to just $35 (from $75). Just go into your account settings at SS and change the figure. This move prompted some cynical speculation that SS anticipate a drop in sales for contributors. I do not buy that theory. Why would they care if contributors had to wait a bit longer for payout? My belief is that as a public company they simply want to clear all that debt (unpaid commissions) off the balance sheet. It doesn't benefit them to have all that money (which isn't theirs) sitting there. In practise, I usually make the existing payout each month but I will now get the certainty of a monthly payment even if I haven't quite made the old limit.

Tentertainment festival - illustrating festivals, summer, events

In second place came Istock with an excellent month consisting of 5 credit sales (including an EL on one of my Red Arrows images) and a remarkable 46 sub and PP downloads. My mainly Editorial portfolio (which now stands at 983 images) seems to be attracting the interest of the sub package buyers.

Third place went to Dreamstime with 8 downloads boosted heavily by a IEL (Increased usage) and a UEL (multi seat) on my image of the Italian street party in Clerkenwell, London.

123RF made fourth place with 5 downloads. They still seem to be having issues getting new uploads reviewed in a timely manner.

Italian street party - EL at Dreamstime

Bigstock made fifth place with 8 downloads -virtually all subs. As noted before, Hastings related images continue to be downloaded here.

In sixth place came FineArtAmerica with a single greeting card sale of my Tower Bridge and HMS Belfast image.

Bringing up the rear in seventh place were Fotolia with just 2 downloads earning 0.72 credits. On the plus
side I contacted them to increase the prices of my Extended License sales. Bronze level contributors can place these sales at 60 credits rather than the default 30. You can change each one manually but much easier to contact Fotolia support and they will do it for you. Whilst I do not expect that many EL sales it is nice to know that I will get a decent amount of commission for them.

Of note amongst the non sellers was the lack of action from Redbubble which had got off to such a promising start in May/June. Maybe I had benefited from a new contributor bounce and things have now settled down? I have continued to upload and hope for better things in the future. Also notable was that is now a full year since my last sale at Cutcaster. A total of just 8 sales ever on a portfolio of circa 1400 confirms my decision to cease uploading new images to them was the correct one (for me).

Octopuses drying on Nisyros - classic Greek image

Shooting in July mainly centered on the annual St.Leonards Festival -a community arts and music event which yielded excellent crowd and festival images. I have yet to edit and upload these but the images from last year continue to sell steadily. I also covered the Tentertainment music festival once again and have already seen sales from these. This local event has proved to be a constant seller over the last few years as an illustration for festivals/summer/outdoor events etc. A Google search finds these images of Kent being used across the world!  

Other uploading in July included my first images from my June trip to the lovely Greek island of Halki. One of my favourites included one from the nearby island of Nisyros of Octopuses drying on a line. In terms of Greek island images it's a real "classic" image which I have seen used many times. Sadly, until now I had never actually seen any drying Octopi in real life to photograph. I was excited, to say the least, when I spotted these on the seafront at Mandraki. As well as several early sales this image recently got chosen by Picfair for their weekly pick of top images -resulting in hundreds of views. I have high hopes for this image :) Regards, David.

June sales updates:

Emborio village, Halki island

As ever, by far, Shutterstock came in the number one slot for June. The month saw a good crop of On Demand downloads but only two modest Single downloads.

Second place went to Istock with a strong performance of 12 credit sales (many of the Tentertainment music festival) plus a healthy 37 subscription and PP sales.

Bell tower on Halki island

New agency Redbubble took third place with two product sales (as previously posted). An exciting start to my relationship with this Print On Demand site.

In fourth place Dreamstime showed a bounce back from the dire sales last month with 8 downloads.

Fifth place went to Fotolia with only 1 download but it was my first ever extended license on the site -paying a healthy six credits. Pleasingly the image was from the same set as my avatar picture here. Fotolia also had some exciting news with the launch of Adobe Stock. Adobe (who purchased Fotolia a while back) will now mirror the Fotolia library within Adobe products such as Photoshop allowing designers to choose and purchase images without leaving the programme. This should certainly lead to a boost in sales once it gets established. In addition, at Fotolia, sub sales now count as full sales towards your ranking. This was applied retrospectively so I jumped from the basic white level to the higher paying bronze level.

In sixth place were 123RF with 7 downloads. My images uploaded in May continued to await review throughout the month (and still do at this time). Not sure what's going on there.

Stefanos volcano crater, Nisyros island

Just pushed into seventh place were Bigstock with 13 downloads (virtually all subs).

Finally, a small subscription sale from Mostphotos gave them a rare appearance here and eighth place.

Very little uploading in June but plenty of shooting as I spent two weeks on the lovely small Greek island of Halki. This was my third visit to the island (population just 280!). As before I took a day trip by ferry to the nearby island of Nisyros where the star attraction is the live volcano crater which you can walk around in -this was still as amazing third time round. I'll be working on my new images in due course but the ones here are from my last visit in 2010. Check out my Greek island blog for more info on Halki. Regards, David.

Redbubble popping up some sales:

Margaret Thatcher - sold as T shirt

As I briefly mentioned in my last post, I signed up with Print On Demand (POD) site Redbubble.com in May. With around 190 images uploaded so far I have already had three sales of products featuring my photographs which is a very encouraging start for just a few weeks. Sold so far are a T Shirt featuring Margaret Thatcher, A laptop cover featuring the Poll Tax Riots and finally a babies one piece outfit featuring cruise liner Norwegian Jade.

The site is very well presented and sets off the various products extremely well. These products cover a large range but include prints and posters, t shirts, skirts, scarves, bags, leggings, mugs, phone and laptop covers, calendars, duvet covers, greeting cards, and more.

Signing up is totally free and you get to set your margin (how much you will make per sale) over and above the basic manufacturing price. How much you set is entirely up to you but obviously the higher you set it the greater the cost to the customer and, therefore, may reduce your sales. You can choose the same margin across your range of products or vary it for each individual item (this can be changed at any time). For now I have mainly set a 30% margin with a higher 50% for greetings cards and stickers. You can also choose your currency to get paid in when you sign up -in my case £GBP and there is a very reasonable payout level of £20 to reach before you are paid.

Poll Tax Riots - sold as laptop cover

Uploading is quick and simple but only one image at a time - this isn't really a disadvantage as having uploaded you then have to spend a few minutes editing your image for the various products and adding your caption and keyword information. To edit you will see a series of templates which show how your image will look on the product. These can each be changed to optimise the look of your product. Obviously, prints and posters etc are going to look OK to start with but for something like leggings or a skirt you will want to do some work. Top tip here is to use the "repeat" button and then the "image size" slider. This will then produce multiple repeats of your image across the garment. Vary the size until your image forms a pleasing pattern. For some items such as a laptop cover you will find that an upright format photo will be cut off and only cover a strip in the centre. Again, use the repeat/size controls to fill across the product until it looks good.

Don't forget to fill out your profile details and include an avatar - this is your sales platform so tell potential customers something about yourself and your work. You can also group your images into collections (e.g. "Halki, Nisyros and Tilos islands") and these collections will show on your profile. Even better, you can choose to highlight images from one of your collections across the top of your profile (changing the collection highlighted whenever you want).

Norwegian Jade - sold as baby outfit

There is quite a lot to learn and get to grips with on the site so take the time to explore and understand the various features. Don't worry, if you get stuck there is an active forum with a help section! Find the forum by clicking on the Redbubble logo at the top left of the page. This takes you to the home page where you will find the link to the forum at the bottom of the list on the left side.

Each time you get a sale you will get an email giving you the details and you can also access your sales information on your account page.

I'm certainly excited by the possibilities here and, so far, consider Redbubble to be a worthy addition to my roster of agents. I'll obviously keep updating in my regular posts (if) and when I have further sales.

You can view my portfolio here www.redbubble.com/people/davidfowler

Do check out the site whether you're a buyer or contributor and I hope you find it interesting. Regards, David.

May Sales Updates:

Anti Austerity march, Hastings

Straight into the May sales to bring me up to date before the end of June is upon us :)

May proved a fairly weak month with even my first place agency Shutterstock down from last month and a much lower number of the higher paying On Demand sales and three modest SOD sales.

Istock leapt to second place with 8 credit downloads and an astonishing 42 subscription and PP sales. PP sales came back strongly after their crash last month.

Straight in at third place came Redbubble with a T shirt sale becoming my first sale on the site.

123RF came in fourth with 11 downloads though without the boost from LEL sales that I had last month. They also updated their uploader which from my perspective didn't seem to have any advantages over the old version. On the contrary, the first seven images I uploaded proved tricky as there just seems no way to include punctuation in the caption field. This is important because they require a specific format for editorial captions (which include comma and dash signs). I have put these in dozens of times but when clicking to save they just disappear. I'm fully expecting them to be rejected for this -that is if they ever get around to reviewing them (been three weeks now).

Protest against zero hour contracts at Sports Direct, Hastings

In fifth place were Bigstock with 14 downloads -pretty much all subs again.

Sixth place went to FineArtAmerica with a sale of two greetings cards. These were of the local island bus on the Greek island of Paxos which I visited last year. Not a fortune but a pleasing sale all the same as it is one of my favourite Greek islands.

Now for the big disappointment of the month. In Seventh place were Dreamstime with just 6 downloads. These were all 35c subscription sales bringing a total for the month of just $2.10 -my worst month ever on DT (even my first month there in September 2009 produced nearly £6 in sales). What happened there? Thankfully June is showing improvements but I am at a loss to account for that May dive.

Finally in Eighth place I got one of my irregular sales on Canstock photo - a 30c subscription. If they ever start taking Editorial images this could become a much better seller for me but meanwhile I'll just add non editorials as and when I have them.

Greetings from Paxos: card sales at FineArtAmerica

Much of May was dominated by my signing up to Redbubble.com and learning all about how that works. I'll be posting an article on that soon -but early results are encouraging :)

The other event in May was, of course, a General Election here in Britain when to a lot of peoples surprise the Conservative party won a (small) outright majority. None of the opinion polls had predicted anything of the kind so the result was unexpected. This led to a number of protests and anti austerity marches across the UK, including here in Hastings. I photographed the march and have already had several sales on Shutterstock as a result. Regards, David.