It's Tedious Work...

     ... setting up a Stock Image library. I've been wanting to do this forever but the priority during each competition season (May-November) is posting proofs as quickly as possible and fulfilling orders. Processing anywhere from 1000 to 4000 images from any one event leaves little time to devote to building a Stock Image Library. 

        Selling images to equine products catalogues, magazines, newspapers, websites etc. is not new to me. My first sale was to Purina, back in my film days, an image of Sue Bourassa jumping out of the water at Senator Bell H.T. on the bag of Purina's Omalene 200. 
    
    Anybody own a VISA card from Dover Saddlery? The photo on the sample card for eventing is one I took of my good friend and awesome photographer Brant Gamma jumping out of the water at Groton House Farm H.T.
     Two years ago I sold 4 images of horse's hooves/legs to Dover Saddlery for use by Farrier's Forumula in their ads. Then there are the innumerable images sold to Yankee Pedlar, Practical Horseman, Chronicle of the Horse and other publications to illustrate articles.  

       It's one thing to be contacted by a buyer looking for a specific image, which is the way all of mine have been purchased thus far. This way is terribly time-consuming because I spend hours searching the hard drives for images to fit their needs (I know I have something here somewhere!)  If the buyer likes what I have, then begins the dreaded "negotiation" for a license and fee that is fair to both of us.


Thus my desire to build a website filled with hundreds upon hundreds of images to which buyers can come and find what they want quickly, on their own time, by way of a sophisticated search engine. It will also have a convenient price calculator. Punch in the various options of use. Out pops an estimate of what I would charge. 
Sounds great doesn't it?!  

    I think so too, until I sit down at my computer connected to eight external hard drives holding the thousands of images taken since starting Hoof Pix® and begin the overwhelming task of examining each and every image, selecting, categorizing, processing, adding keywords (ugh). Not to mention designing the Stock Image website which is still on the planning table.

Tedious indeed, but I have a window of time while here in Aiken to grind away at it.