Dreamstime Shop – Peter Apers Photoblog

Sunset at Noordwijk aan Zee

The colourful sky is one of the most fascinating scenes to take a picture of. Quite often people start to shoot too early, resulting in a very dominating orange ball called the sun. I prefer to start when the sun is almost disappearing behind the horizon. Then the sky and the sun are in balance and the clouds in the sky get an orange backlight.

Sunset North Sea, the Netherlands — © Peter Apers | Dreamstime Stock Photos

The above picture was taken at roughly 22:00 hours at the end of May along the coast of Noordwijk aan Zee, the Netherlands. Right at the time of the sunset. Just a few minutes later the sun had completely disappeared.
What makes this picture special is of course the shape of the clouds and the way they are lighted. Some are dark and others are orange backlighted. Also the texture of the clouds adds to the special atmosphere of the evening. Furthermore, there is a subtle orange glow on the water.
The picture was taken with the zoomlens set at 28mm, shutter speed 1/80th of a second, aperture f/5, and ISO 100. Below you see the unprocessed NEF version. It is not very appealing.

In Adobe Lightroom 6 I did the following:

Lightroom automatically set the temperature to 4900 (I did not change it)
set the correction profile for the lens I used (Nikkor 28-300mm)
set liveliness to +68
set saturation to +2
set the horizon straight
decreased locally the highlight caused by the sun.

The rest remained the same. This makes the picture much more appealing without overdoing is. It is important to only make subtle changes.
Here you will find more of my photo albums. If you are interested in having this picture on canvas, please click here.
The picture got accepted by Dreamstime within 2 days.

Enjoying The Hague

Political center the Netherlands — © Peter Apers | Dreamstime Stock Photos

Normally I visit The Hague for business reasons, for example to visit the ministeries. This time it was a short holiday with the family. We stayed in a very nice, spacious apartment of Stayci near the Grote Markt. Every morning we had a luxurious breakfast with Anne&Max near the Saint Jacob Church. It was a real treat.
It just happened that we walked by an Escher exhibition in the former Winter Palace of Queen Mother Emma in The Hague. M.C. Escher is a famous Dutch graphic artist. Besides his earlier work on sketches of buildings, towns, and landscape when he was in Spain and Italy, he is most famous for his “impossible figures”, like the one below.

One evening we had a wonderful diner in Restaurant La Passione (Italian cuisine). The food was really exquisite. We will definitely visit this restaurant again. Below you will see the owner preparing my dorade with sea salt crust.

One museum that is always worthwhile a visit is the Mauritshuis (see bottom, yellow building). They have paintings of, among others, the famous Dutch painters Johannes Vermeer, Rembrandt, Frans Hals, and Jan Steen. One of their pearls is of course the Girl with a pearl earring of Johannes Vermeer.

Strolling through The Hague was really enjoyable. The variety in architecture gave us the feeling that we were abroad. However, the main reason for going was to show our youngest son the political center of the Netherlands: het Binnenhof, with het Torentje (office of the prime minister; see below), and de Ridderzaal (Hall of Knights, see top).

Here are the pictures of The Hague that have been accepted by Dreamstime. I used two Nikkor lenses: 28-300mm and 16-35mm.

Posts generate traffic to my albums

The posts on Peter Apers Photoblog have two purposes: on the one hand, I like to share my knowledge and experience of photography and, on the other hand, I like to share the beauty of my pictures. To do so, I always include a link to a relevant album in my post. I have been doing this now for more than a year.
Via Google Analytics I have noticed that, besides supporting family members, only every now and then somebody looks at my posts and albums. To increase the traffic to both of them I started a Facebook page Peter Apers Photography and started to write posts on the blog of Dreamstime.
As it turns out both are quite popular. My latest post at Dreamstime about Machu Picchu ended up on the homepage of Dreamstime for more than a week (see picture above). More than 870 people looked at it, genetaring a lot of traffic to my albums on my NAS. Also, the posts on Facebook are doing quite well. The last one on my visit to Yellow Mountain reached more than 160 people.
My albums on my NAS are produced using jAlbum. From such an album I can directly generate a post on Facebook. To also create a link to the relevant post on my photoblog, I include a few lines and a link to the post on the front page of the album. To attract people to my collection at Werk aan de Muur I also make posts on Facebook based on the pictures I have there.
The result is that my albums are viewed by a handful of people on a daily basis. The blogs on my Photoblog still attract only a few people. All in all, the sales have not gone up substantially yet, despite the increase of traffic to my collections at Dreamstime and at Werk aan de Muur. I guess I have to invest more time in this.
Here you find my pictures at Dreamstime and here at Werk aan de Muur. Enjoy!

A total of 500 uploads at Dreamstime

Madonna del Sasso, Locarno — © Peter Apers | Dreamstime Stock Photos

This week I reached a total of 500 uploads at Dreamstime. I am extremely proud of that. As an amateur photographer it is very rewarding to meet the high quality criteria of a professional organization like Dreamstime. It is rewarding to get your pictures accepted and even more rewarding to sell them.

By reading and practicing a lot, by participating in the Dreamstime community, and by trying to match my own ambitions and the preferences of the buyers, I have learned a lot.

In the first year my acceptance rate was 47% and this year it is 100%.

Year	2009	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015	Sept 2016
Acceptance	47%	51%	–	71%	70%	87%	91%	100%

And in the same period the sales, in terms of numbers, have almost quadrupled.

Year	2009	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015	Sept 2016
Sales	22	35	41	33	49	66	85	52

Here you can see all my pictures at Dreamstime: in chronological order, categorized, and the ones that are sold.

Turn of the year 2015/2016: sales and plans

Laguna Querococha — © Peter Apers | Dreamstime Stock Photos

At the turn of the year I thought it was a nice idea to look at my sales at my two shops: Dreamstime and Werk aan de Muur (a Dutch website).
Sales
Currently, I have 478 pictures online at Dreamstime, and a total sales, since 2009, of roughly 300 pictures. The last couple of years there is a substantial increase. I guess that has a lot to do with my trips abroad.
Looking at the sales figures I wanted to know how these sales are distributed over the various categories. The obvious categories are landscape, cityscape, and portrait, however, I have the impression that buyers were more interested in the location they were taken. So, I just made up my own categories.
Below you see that my pictures of major European cities (mainly Budapest and Paris) and some Dutch cities (Maastricht and Rotterdam) are leading. Directly followed by pictures of my two visits to China (Beijing, Wuhan, Yangtze River, and Yellow Mountain). Also, the portraits I made of my two models are doing quite well. The holidays in the Alps with the many hikes produced many sellable pictures. The same is true for the sailing holidays near Corfu and in the Netherlands.

Cityscape	25%
China	21%
Portrait	17%
Alps	14%
Boats	7%
Animals	6%
Peru	4%
Concept	3%
Nature	1%
Coast	1%

Since this year I have more than 50 pictures at Werk aan de Muur, although this figure does not mean much. I can easily add or drop pictures. Two of these pictures belong to their Collection: the Dom Tower in Utrecht and Machu Picchu in Peru. The first one has been a couple of times, this is also the total sales at Werk aan de Muur.
Plans
The upcoming year my plans are:

Gaining more experience in low key studio lighting
Capturing more of the character of historical cities both in the Netherlands and abroad
Capturing more of the atmosphere of landscapes
Overcoming my fear to do street photography.

So, there are quite a few challenges ahead of me! At the top and the bottom of this blog you will find two of my favorite 2015 pictures.

Market at Chinchero, sacred valley of the Incas — © Peter Apers | Dreamstime Stock Photos

Architectural photography

My enthusiasm for sharing pictures started when I submitted my pictures of Maastricht, a city along the Meuse river, to Dreamstime. They were the first two. Both still have a top ranking as far as sales is concerned.

Maastricht at night — © Peter Apers | Dreamstime Stock Photos

Maastricht along the river — © Peter Apers | Dreamstime Stock Photos

Whenever I visit a city I always want to take pictures of both the old and the new buildings. I enjoy the tension between them. Architectural photography has become my thing. For that reason I love to go to Barcelona (see this blog) and Valencia (see this blog) and take pictures. In Valencia they did something spectacular. In a dry river they built some manificent, artistic buildings (Hemesferic and Agora, see below).

Hemesferic and Agora, Valencia — © Peter Apers | Dreamstime Stock Photos

Also Rotterdam is famous for its new architecture. For me Rotterdam Central Station and the Food Market Hall are the winners. Buyers particularly like the train station. It has already been sold nine times.

Central Station Rotterdam — © Peter Apers | Dreamstime Stock Photos

The Dom Tower in Utrecht is popular at Werk aan de Muur.

Roombeek in Enschede is the rebuilt quarter after the fireworks explosion of May 2000. Here are my two favorite pictures.

Museum and restaurant in rebuilt Roombeek — © Peter Apers | Dreamstime Stock Photos

Symbol of fireworks explosion Roombeek — © Peter Apers | Dreamstime Stock Photos

Enjoy the architectural pictures of the various cities I visited and if possible visit the places yourself!

Dreamstime: 25 sales in one month

Yellow Mountain - Huangshan, China — © Peter Apers | Dreamstime Stock Photos

On the average I sell 6 licenses per month via Dreamstime. Last month something spectaluar happened. One buyer bought 14 licenses of pictures of Peru and, probably, another one bought 8 licenses of Yellow Mountain (Huangshan) in China. In total 25 licenses were sold in November. I never sold so many before.
I celebrated this via two blogs on Dreamstime and got many positive reactions from colleague-contributors. Four of them decided to follow me. I regard that as a big compliment.
My trip to Yellow Mountain was actually the start of this photoblog in which I want to share my knowledge of photography and to show the pictures I take. Here are the pictures of Yellow Mountain. Dreamstime accepted 13 pictures.
The trip to Peru was more recent. I wrote quite a few blogs on it, starting with the preparation and ending with processing them. Here are the pictures of Peru. Of these 50 were accepted by Dreamstime.
For me the common theme between these two big sales is that they are about places you really have to put some effort in to reach them in combination with a small number of pictures available. I noticed that especially about Peru. The buyer did not buy Machu Picchu, however, he did buy pictures of Chavin de Huantar (first 8 hours by bus from Lima to Huaraz and then another 3 hours to Chavin de Huantar). The same is true for Yellow Mountain, first you have to fly to Hefei, China (via Beijing or Shanghai), flooded by 4 hours by bus, and then the final climb starts.
Enjoy the pictures and realize the effort that was required to take them 🙂

250 sales on Dreamstime

Generations of sailors — © Peter Apers | Dreamstime Stock Photos

Yesterday I reached 250 sales on Dreamstime. Above you see the last picture that was sold to complete the 250. Since 2009 I have been selling a slowly increasing number of pictures, although it is not a lot (especially not in money) compared to some of the other contributors to Dreamstime, I am proud of it.

2009	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014
22	35	41	33	49	66

I always wonder where my pictures appear. Do they appear in books, magazine, calendars, or on the web? It is impossible to find out because the buyer is known only to Dreamstime and not to me.
Another question is what kind of pictures are sold and which ones sell best. The interest of the buyers is wide spread; the last couple of years of almost all photoshoots I sell at least one picture. The pictures that sell best are cityscape and waterscapes. Also my two models are doing quite well. Furthermore, my Chinese pictures are also popular. The most popular picture is of Budapest in winter.

Donau through Budapest — © Peter Apers | Dreamstime Stock Photos

Here you will see all the pictures that are sold via Dreamstime.