Wrapping up 2022, here’s a look at my top earning photograph from Adobe Stock for 2022.

Train Photos sell and this photograph of the Durango & Silverton NGRR, made in 2018, was by far my best-selling photo on my stock sites in 2022. Though I don’t reveal my sales figures in public, it is safe to say this image has paid for that trip. This is the unedited original version of this photo. Interestingly, I have other photographs from this day of train photography that are also in my top 10 sales for the past year. In a way it’s funny, as this shoot was done more or less on the fly with my friend Jonathan Steele, while out on a autumn photography trip. I think we’ve both made a few dollars with this train.

Trains are a finicky subject for stock photos. One has to edit out anything identifying the railroad, so for stock I scrub off the name of the railroad, the number of the engine, any boiler plate info, serial numbers, and remove people from the image. High level editing but it pays off in sales and there is no question about it, my steam train photos bring in regular income. The Durango & Silverton Railroad is so well known, people don’t really seem to care about all of the deletions, they just want to buy a nice train shot.

The train shot has supplanted my Dallas Divide landscape (below) as my current #1 money making image this past year, but that is by income, not total downloads. The Dallas Divide photo below continues to be my most downloaded image and has been purchased thousands of times to this day.

I’ve been fortunate to have dozens of good selling images. The extra income is nice, and I’m being published around the world regularly.

What more could a guy ask for?

Happy New Year everyone!