No, I’m not quitting photography or dying.

Since the pandemic began in March of 2020, my photographic outings have been seriously curtailed. I’ve spent a lot of the time since then going through my photo archives, looking for photos that could still be good for stock. I’ve done fairly well too.

When I began 2020, I had approximately 3,000 photographs in the stock catalog. My goal for this year was to increase the size of that catalog to at least 4,000 images. Not an astronomical amount for a stock photography catalog, but enough to earn a steady dividend each month. As of today, I have 4,261 different photographs online on the various stock agencies. I’ll call that a success.

Now I’m stuck though. I’ve pretty much skimmed through everything, and while I may have a few images left in my unprocessed catalogs that I haven’t milked into usable stock images, I’m out. Finished. Kaput. There’s really nothing left to do with finding and editing lost photos.

The pandemic has put a crimp on photo sales this year. I’m probably down YTD by about 20%. The additional 1,200 images in my catalog help buffer the decline, but market forces have swept over the world of stock photography and things just aren’t selling as well today as they were this time last year. When I couple that with the fact that I left Shutter Stock, due to their ripping off contributors by cutting payments for images down to 10 cents per sale, yes, 10 cents per sale, I’ve been forced to do without one of my previous most profitable sales markets due to that nonsense. I’m not going to give my photos away, Shutter Stock can put their hands in the pockets of other photographers and take their money.

So, that leaves me sitting here with virtually nothing to edit for the rest of the year.  I’ll probably get a few more oddball photos before the New Year, but I’ve actually run out of work to do for the time being.

As for living on past efforts, It’s the end of the line.