Benz World Blog » Enhanced License

Exhibition Building

Jason Benz — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 00:22:37 +0000

This is a view of The Royal Exhibition Building from Carlton Gardens in Melbourne, Victoria. It was the first building in Australia to be awarded UNESCO world heritage status as it is one of the last remaining 19th Century exhibition buildings. Today it is the largest item in Museum Victoria’s collection.

This image has been accepted by Shutterstock for Stock Photography and is available for download here.

Enhanced License

Jason Benz — Sat, 16 Mar 2013 01:51:30 +0000

Shutterstock recently sold an enhanced license for this road image from Western Australia. All stock photography sites offer some form of extended or enhanced license. It is a hangover from the traditional way of selling photography whereby the price is determined by the use of the image rather than its quality. In this case the enhanced license gives the buyer the right to reproduce the image more than 250,000 times. It also grants the buyer the right to incorporate the image into merchandise for resale. The good news for the contributing photographer is they receive $28 instead of $0.25-$0.38 for a standard subscription sale. Shutterstock began by only selling subscriptions. This is attractive to businesses, who require high volumes of images at low cost. Since then they have introduced several different ways of buying images. “On demand” sales are a subscription free method of buying, where the photographer receives between $0.81-$2.85. If further rights are required then special “Single Image” licenses can be issued. In these cases the photographer receives between 20%-30% of the sale price up to a maximum of $120. These new ways of selling images have significantly increased the amount of money you can earn from Shutterstock.

I have recently rewritten my Guide to Stock Photography in a more concise form for this photoblog. The full version is still available on the old website.

This image has been accepted by Shutterstock for Stock Photography and is available for download here.

Three Huts

Jason Benz — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 23:20:07 +0000

These three buildings are in Negril, Jamaica. This is some of the earliest photography I had accepted for stock. I don’t know if it would be accepted for today as the agencies seem to be getting more strict or maybe the need for turquoise ocean shots allowed them to overlook the camera and jpeg quality. This image needed work in Photoshop to remove speckle.

I plan to post a few more images of the Caribbean as I copy the best content from the old website to the new blog.

This image has been accepted by Shutterstock for Stock Photography and is available for download here.

Circular Quay

Jason Benz — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 05:46:15 +0000

This is Circular Quay in Sydney, Australia. I used the HSL / Grayscale panel in the Photoshop developer Camera RAW. This allows you so shift specific colours towards its neighbouring colours. In this case I used it to warm up the street lights and push the blues towards the purples. I also added the green reflection in the water.

This image has been accepted by Shutterstock for Stock Photography and is available for download here.

Melbourne Skyline

Jason Benz — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 19:50:13 +0000

I took this shot of the Melbourne Skyline last night. As all Australia’s cities are on water I tried to get the same type of shot I have for Perth and Adelaide. Maybe I will publish an Australian Skyline calendar with all the cities in it. We decided to go in on a Sunday as it was the best chance to get free parking near the city. We parked near the Kensington train station and as it was a nice evening we chose to walk into the city. After taking this shot we wandered around the city for a while and found a very reasonably priced place to eat called Equinox. We are now back at our usual truck stop between Melbourne and Geelong and are making the daily pilgrimage to nearby libraries to use their free internet and look for work. I got a response from one today. Its a freelance photography position for the Australian National Construction Review. They seemed more interested in the quality of my camera and if it had a full frame sensor than if I knew how to use it. So its lucky I upgraded to a Canon 5D Mark II before I left for Australia or they would not have offered me the job.

This image has been accepted for Stock Photography at Shutterstock and is available for download here.

Adelaide Skyline

Jason Benz — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 15:53:29 +0000

This is the Adelaide Skyline looking across the River Torrens. This is similar to the first blog I posted in Australia of the Perth Skyline. We have decided to spend an extra week in Adelaide as our van needs some further maintenance and it makes sense to fix it while we are in a city. We are waiting for a new air in-take hose to arrive from Sydney and our 3 way fridge only seems to work on gas. 12v and 240v no longer chill so its more like a 1 way fridge at the moment. The weather is very warm too.

This image has been accepted for Stock Photography at Shutterstock and is available for download here.

Roo Sign

Jason Benz — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 16:43:36 +0000

This was taken on the way to the Stirling Range. Since then we stopped at the micro town of Borden and met a very helpful fellow traveller called Alan and his pet chihuahua Kira in a very fine custom made ’85 kombi. On the other hand we have seen and met dozens of Harley Davidson riders on their way back from a 1000 strong Rally in Margaret River. One thing they all have in common is the genuine friendliness of Australians. We took another detour yesterday to Bremer Bay to capture some stock shots and bumped in to a group of professional photographers called 90 degrees 5 shooting the same beaches. After quizzing them about how survive as a Photographer in Australia we headed back inland to Ravensthorpe. The landscapes in Australia are full of colour. Even the roadside offers many possibilities of Red, Green and Blue. These signs warning of Kangaroo, Emu, Wombat, Camel and some which I have yet to identify are all over the highways. The only thing we have hit so far are countless insects. We saw our first Emu and Snake yesterday but each encounter was too brief to capture. We are looking forward to arriving in Esperance on Thursday.

This image was accepted for Stock Photography at Shutterstock and is available for download here.

Enhanced Ride

Jason Benz — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 10:57:41 +0000

This shot was taken in Bournemouth when Karen and I were on the Great British Poker Tour. It has just sold as my eighth Enhanced License. These licenses allow the image to be used for unlimited runs. The good news for the photographer is you get $28(£17) instead of the more numerous subscription sale of 33c(20p). Some places refer to them as an Extended Licenses. If you want to sell you own photos read this guide to stock photography

This image has been accepted by Shutterstock for Stock Photography and is available for download here

Enhanced Firework

Jason Benz — Mon, 31 May 2010 09:33:58 +0000

All stock agencies offer some form of extended or enhanced license, in which buyers are given unlimited rights to reproduce photographs, typically over 250,000 times. In the case of Shutterstock the contributing photographer receives $28 instead of 0.25c/0.33c. Its always a nice surprise when you sell one. This is only the sixth enhanced licenses image I have sold compared with over 3000 regular sales.

Download high resolution image.

See other five Enhanced sales

White Desert

Jason Benz — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 01:27:00 +0000

This shot of the White Desert in Egypt has become my fifth Enhanced License sale. The original image had a very narrow tonal range giving it a dull greyish look. It is situations like this where it helps to shot in RAW.

If your camera saves jpegs or any 8-bit format the tonal range will start to exhibit banding when you apply a Tone-Curve to fix the image. This banding results in the image breaking up and in extreme cases giving an old poster look.

By shooting in RAW you record more data. In my case 12-bit. This means you can stretch the tonal range over the full 8-bit range without losing the nice smooth gradients between tones.

Both images are available at Shutterstock. Original Image / RAW Curved Image