May Sales Updates:

Panagia Tinou ferry listing in Piraeus harbour, Athens

A late update for my sales in May. I was lucky enough to visit the exciting city of Athens for a few days which has put me behind with other things.

The month saw the usual dominating Shutterstock in first place as ever. A good number of One Demand downloads and a reasonable Single Download pushed things higher. Acceptances remain high at the moment and the days of weird lighting/focus/white balance rejections seem to be fading. This, in turn, has encouraged me to start uploading more with my portfolio now standing at 1941 images. I'm looking forward to passing the 2K mark in the not too distant future.

In second place were Istock with 7 credit sales and a further 38 sub and PP downloads. Editorial reviews remain super fast (a few minutes to a few hours) while commercial image reviews have slowed to nearly a month. Hopefully, they will speed this up going forward.

Redbubble made it to third place in May with 4 sales. Three stickers of Greek island subjects and a T Shirt featuring cult Seventies band The Flamin' Groovies. This Print On Demand site has really paid off for me in the year since I joined. By contrast, Fine Art America (for which I pay $30 a year membership) has produced nothing in sales since last December.

In fourth place were Bigstock with 12 downloads.

Skala beach on Agistri island, Greece

Fifth place went to 123RF with 13 downloads. I'm pleased to say that the problem with long review times seems to have been resolved with all taking place in a timely manner.

Sixth place saw Fotolia produce 7 downloads. Possibly a record month (but given it's only 7, not worth checking back to see!).

Almost at the bottom in seventh place were Dreamstime with 7 downloads (all 35c subs). I've said plenty before about Dreamstime, so won't repeat myself here.

Bringing up the bottom in eighth place were Mostphotos with 2 sub sales paying a few (euro) cents each. As ever, the sales were in their home country of Sweden. They just do not seem to have got any traction around the rest of the world -which given that it is an online business is surprising.

Creating a buzz on Hastings pier

Uploading in May mainly concentrated on my Athens trip images. Piraeus harbour provided some interesting shipping images not least the Panagia Tinou ferry boat which was listing badly after taking on water. Research revealed that this once the Folkestone-Boulogne Sealink ferry Hengist which famously beached near Folkestone during the Great Storm of October 1987. I also spent a day on the little island of Agistri which is just under an hour from Piraeus by hydrofoil. This was the very first Greek island I ever visited back in 2001 and it was really interesting to visit it again -this time with a camera. Little had changed there in all those years. You can read about my first visit there on my Greek Islands blog. Back in the UK, I also continued visiting and photographing the newly re-opened Hastings pier and was lucky enough to get an image of a swarm of bees on a life ring -which made for an unusual picture. I'll try and get my June updates posted more promptly next month :) Regards, David.