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5 Cool Spring Break Photos

Jan 232013

Hello again designers, bloggers, and image searchers!

If you live in the northern latitudes, it is probably pretty cold where you are right now. Coming soon to a beach not so far away, is a little thing called Spring Break. Whether we are referring to college students migrating south for a week of fun in the sun, or families hitting the beach during Easter vacation, it is big business for the travel industry.

So as you put together your articles and layouts, you will probably be in need of Spring Break Photos. That’s what we are looking at today. We’ve put together a list of 5 excellent royalty-free, high quality stock images focusing on the Spring Break phenomena that you can easily drop into your layouts.

All of these images are Fair Trade Images, which come from the Warmpicture Images project. Warmpicture is the only stock images agency founded by, and run by the artists themselves. Fair Trade refers to the artists receiving a minimum 50% commission each sale (iStockphoto gives their artists as little as 15%). Because Warmpicture does not have shareholders, and a large amount of company overhead, Warmpicture is able to offer images at significant discounts to large stock agencies.

Let’s get right to it. Here are our 5 favorite Spring Break Photos, ready for any article, advertisement, or graphic design layout dealing with warm weather vacations and Spring Break.

Teens on the Beach – by Mandy Godbehear. This image depicts two pretty, natural teens on a tropical beach enjoying the sun while listening to their mp3 players.

The perfect tropical beach photo. This image by Katrina Brown shows a pristine beach, with clear blue waters, and a lone palm for impact and interest. The beach photo has plenty of copy space.

Here’s a fantastic beach vacation image! Luis Santos brings us this excellent photograph, depicting a boy with snorkeling gear getting ready to enter the beautiful blue waters of a tropical beach. Lots of copy space here to get your message across.

Here is an image which you can melt into. This photo captures the silhouette of a grove of palm trees against the setting sun over the ocean waters off Hawaii. This spring break photo will make you feel the warmth of the tropics.

Surf’s Up! Steve Cukrov captured these colorful surf boards at the beach. The colors are very complimentary, and the blue background waters and puffy cumulus clouds tell a great story about the fun that awaits.

These are our personal favorites, but there are plenty more where that came from. The Warmpicture Images Project has an entire category’s worth of travel images. We recommend you also check out the Fun and Leisure category, or simply use the Search Box to zero in on exactly what you are looking for.

That’s all for today. Remember to support Fair Trade when searching for stock images. See you at the beach!

Top 15 Warmpicture Keywords

Warmpicture Updates No Responses »

Oct 072012

We hope everyone is having a wonderful weekend! It’s a cool Autumn day in upstate New York where the Warmpicture main office is located. A good day for hot apple cider, pie, and NFL football.

Want some ideas for image topics to search for? Here are the top 15 keywords searched by your fellow designers and bloggers at Warmpicture.

Top 15 Stock Photo Keywords for 10/7/2012

Halloween, flower, background, Christmas, computer, autumn, abstract, beach, business, wedding, fashion, grunge, dog, party, and heart.

Halloween Jack-o-lantern by Jo Ann Snover

Save on Your Next Image Purchase

We want to thank all of our new customers for making Warmpicture the fastest growing stock image gallery on the web! Remember that you are purchasing your images direct from your fellow artists and photographers. We believe in supporting the artist community, and we know you do too.

To save 15% on your next stock image or subscription purchase before the end of October, we invite you to use the coupon code: pumpkin at checkout.

And once again, thank you for supporting the independent artists of Warmpicture Stock Photos!

Evolution of a Stock Photographer

Photography, Stock Photography No Responses »

Sep 052012

Warmpicture photographer Steve Cukrov is a successful stock photographer whose career spans 3 decades. Today Steve outlines his evolution as a stock photographer, from learning what to shoot, to developing his skills in Photoshop.

“You say you want an evolution….”

I started this stock photography journey long before digital (1980’s). It never really took off for me. I couldn’t crack the big houses and between the two small regional agencies I was with, they only ever managed to sell one image. This one, a favorite on mine, was taken while helping to photo ID Gray Whales for a research project in Baja California.

Sunset, Laguna Guerrero Negro, Baja Sur (scan of a 35mm Kodachrome 64 transparency)

All of my beginning submissions to MS agencies in late 2005 were scans of trannies from those early days. Armed with only a Microtek Flatbed Scanner I began scanning my 35mm, 2 ¼ and 4×5 images. Much to my surprise many were accepted at the top sites and began selling right away.

This is how one of those first really questionable scans has evolved and continues to be a best seller. Scanned from a 4×5 Kodak Ektachrome transparency. Notice the lovely greenish cast.

Without any PhotoShop skills to speak of, not a clue about keywording, and no digital camera, I set out on this endeavor with optimism and a steep learning curve.

A few months later, as I began to figure out Photoshop and calibrated my monitor, I deleted that image and uploaded this new cleaned-up version.

Sales began to take off.

The next incarnation came with the advent and over use of the PS plug-in called ‘Flood’. This version did OK but version #2 remained the bigger seller.

The most notable change in sales came when I had a good hard look at the keywords I had chosen for the image after I saw it in use for an article on ‘Molecular Gastronomy’. That article provided me with some additional suggestions. But an even bigger boost in sales came when I made two additional changes.

The next version took even more PhotoShop Skills than I possessed a few years earlier.

It seems rather simple now, but at the time I had not done anything like this. Taking that original scan I kept the basic composition but took out the blue bottles top that was lying next to it. I then copied the top of the orange bottle and placed it on top of the blue bottle. I then created the reflection by duplicating the layer, flipping it and lowering the opacity.

This final version, as-well-as Versions #2 & #3, are all still online but this last version, online for the shortest amount of time, outsells all of them combined.

Another revitalization came when I found it in use for an Aroma Therapy site. Again I updated the keywords and sales have been even stronger.

The evolution of this image chronicles my own evolution from a film photographer to a digital artist. With a few tweaks and some revisions to keywords, I have managed to keep this image fresh and a consistent best seller.

Back to School Images for Designers

Stock Photography, Warmpicture Updates No Responses »

Jul 222012

Don’t tell the kids, but it is time for designers to stock up on back to school images! Lucky for the graphic design community and bloggers, there are a plethora of low cost, high quality education based images to choose from at Warmpicture.

There are a lot of recent uploads which cover back to school and education themes. Today I’ll show you some of my favorites to help you generate ideas for your designs and layouts.

Steve Cukrov has produced some of my favorite education and back to school themed photos over the past few years. His images convey clear themes, and utilize natural looking models (including his daughter in this image).

In this image the stacked books provide a very interesting composition, while at the same time conveying the amount of work students will be facing during the school year. The lighting is soft, and even, which is perfect for stock. And there is enough copy space that a designer can put text on the image without covering the main subject matter.

Edie Layland, also know under the username LaylandMasuda, brings us another natural looking education image. This time she takes us into a school computer lab where a student and teacher are working together on a modern notebook computer.

As technology continues to evolve and computer skills become even more integral as part of overall educational development, images such as this will become increasingly sought after.

Bullying is an unfortunate reality for school children, and has become a hot topic of discussion in America and abroad. Mandy Godbehear tackles the problem with an effective image which depicts an outcast teen girl trying to ignore the taunts of the other students.

Natural lighting is utilized here, adding to the believable atmosphere. The image is well composed and contains a great deal of copy space.

LaylandMasuda is back with another great entry for education and back to school designs. This image features an adorable girl painting in school, with a nicely lit backdrop of class paintings hung on the wall.

This is another beautiful image which graphic designers and bloggers will appreciate for its wide range of potential uses. The very light background doubles as a possible template for copy space without covering the model.

LisaFX has one of the most extensive collections of students overcoming disabilities. This is one of our favorites for many reasons. Depicting a teen student who is confined to a wheelchair, this image shows us that students can still be active and participate in recreational activities like basketball.

The image is also expertly lit, with the subject completely isolated from a pure white background. This allows designers to easily manipulate the image by pulling out the subject and dropping him into a page layout. It also provides the ultimate flexibility for copy space, which can be added as pure white to either one of the image’s four sides.

While these images are some of our favorites, they are just a drop in the ocean of school based images available through Warmpicture. To see the entire collection, we invite you to visit our Back To School Images page. Or simply visit Warmpicture Stock Photos and type a specific keyword into the search box, or browse the education category.

We hope these images gave you some good ideas for your designs and blog posts. Feel free to give us a shout if you need help finding a specific image.

This week we will take a look at our favorite Autumn images to get you ready for the coming change of seasons!

5 New Travel Images That Rock!

Stock Photography, Warmpicture Updates No Responses »

Jul 212012

At Warmpicture we are always amazed at the beautiful images our photographers upload. Today I want to focus on Travel Images because they rarely go out of season. At any point in the year, there is a demand among designers, bloggers, and article writers for travel photography.

Today we take a look at 10 travel photos recently uploaded to Warmpicture, and why I think these stock photos absolutely rock!

Dawn at Waikiki Beach by Jo Ann Snover

Jo Ann Snover’s beautiful photograph of Waikiki Beach at dawn is one of the most stunning travel photographs I have seen in a long time. I refer to this as a “postcard” style image, in that it would look great as a postcard, a framed print, or as part of an ad copy for Hawaii travel. The vibrant colors of the sky, the water, and the hotel are striking.

Summer Vacation at the Beach

While Jo Ann’s Waikiki Beach is specific, Mandy Godbehear’s Summer Beach Vacation photo is a great example of an image that has a multitude of uses. Expertly lit with a combination of warm sunlight and bounces for fill, Mandy created a beautiful composition.

The image tells a story, and it leaves important copy space for designers to personalize the photo for their own campaigns. This travel image could be used in any beach travel design or advertisement. And it could also be used in a more abstract (wiki) sense, such as a design project related to relaxation and the joys of a simple life.

Speed Driving in the Big City

Not all travel images need to feature a tropical location or a tranquil vista. In “Speed Driving and Big City Lights” by Katrina Brown, the essence of the city is captured in raw power. Katrina’s image was taken on the streets of Los Angeles using motion blur. However, like Mandy’s beach vacation image, Speed Driving is non-specific and will fit a wide variety of uses. This image was once featured in the cover art of a rock-and-roll CD, and could be used in a variety of designs from fast cars to city night life.

Vintage Travel Suitcase

Danny Smythe’s very popular Vintage Travel Suitcase photo is a best seller at Warmpicture. The image does not indicate a specific travel location. Rather it tackles the topic of travel in a more generalized way.

Smythe, also known as Rimglow, created a perfect isolation of a vintage, antique suitcase complete with stickers from around the world. It is quite simply a perfect travel stock photo.

Hiking Along the Ocean

Diego Cervo’s ocean hiking image is a beautiful example of a travel photo that can be used for a multitude of purposes. When I look at this image, I can see beyond the obvious uses for travel photography related to nature trails, hiking, and being near the ocean.

I also see potential uses for designs related to goal setting, finding religion, getting more enjoyment out of life, and so much more.

Warmpicture has one of the highest quality image banks of Travel Images online. We invite you to browse the entire gallery. If you need help locating a specific travel image, we invite you to contact us so that we may assist you.

In our next update, we will look at our favorite Back to School Images!

11 Cool Examples of Silhouette Photography

Photography, Stock Photography No Responses »

Apr 142012

I find silhouette photography to be incredibly intriguing. It can be utilized in such a way that an interest generating subject is in silhouette (wiki), offering a sense of mystery and adding to viewer engagement. Or it can be done so that the majority of the subject matter is completely back lit and in silhouette. This latter case offers a very different look at an everyday subject.

The photographers of Warmpicture are always uploading exciting images, so I decided to run an image search in the database using the keyword “silhouette.” There were some spectacular results! I compiled my 11 favorites to inspire your future work, and also lend you ideas for your graphic design projects.

If you are looking for a good primer on silhouette photography, check out our post on shooting silhouettes of people.