BIG NEWS!!
I’m excited to announce that my photography is now officially available on Shutterstock!
My Patreon subscribers were the first to hear the news that I had submitted a handful of photographs to Shutterstock in April (along with another new project that I’m still keeping under wraps for now). And I was ecstatic to recently learn that my work had been accepted!
But what exactly does that mean?
Licensing & Commission
Partnering with Shutterstock means that people now have the opportunity to purchase a license that grants royalty-free copyright permission to use my photography. This can include web distribution, email marketing, social media, printed materials, blog articles, small video productions, personal use, and more.
Enhanced licenses are also available and allow people to use my photographs for commercial use, merchandising, web templates, retail, et cetera.
As the photographer, I receive commission payments when someone purchases the rights to use my work. It’s another passive income stream for me, and every little bit helps to sustain my business so I can continue publishing books and making art.
Portfolio
My portfolio is very small at this time. The first batch of photographs I uploaded was a test to see if my work would meet the qualifications to be accepted.
Now that the first batch has been approved and added to Shutterstock’s massive database, I plan to periodically upload additional batches and slowly build up my portfolio over time. This is just a side project, and I don’t want it to take too much time away from publishing Book IV in the Chronicles of Avilésor series (as well as a long list of other projects that still require my attention).
AI Learning
At this time, I have opted to NOT allow data licensing for my photographs.
Data licensing allows AI models and computer software to utilize images for training. Although the photographer does receive compensation (unlike a lot of artists whose work is being used to train AI without their permission and with no compensation), I still have mixed feelings about this. For now, while I’m still new to the process and just getting started, I would prefer to not have AI involved.
If I change my mind in the future, I can choose to enable this feature and make my photographs available for data licensing.
Personal Use
The photographs I choose to share with Shutterstock are not ones that I intend to use for my own projects. This includes my online portfolio, gallery exhibits, monthly newsletter features, publication submissions, books, et cetera.
When I do photoshoots, I end up with a lot of unused photographs after I pick just a few of the best ones for my own use. Those discarded photos end up getting buried in folders on my computer, rarely to be seen again. Thanks to my new Shutterstock portfolio, I now have a place to share some of those photographs that have been stored for years in my archives.
My business has been moving away from photography to focus more on my books and art… so I’m excited to find a place for my photography again!
I'm an award-winning fantasy author, artist, and photographer from La Porte, Indiana. My poetry, short fiction, and memoir works have been featured in various anthologies and journals since 2005, and several of my poems are available in the Indiana Poetry Archives. The first three novels in my Chronicles of Avilésor: War of the Realms series have received awards from Literary Titan.
After some time working as a freelance writer, I was shocked by how many website articles are actually written by paid "ghost writers" but published under the byline of a different author. It was a jolt seeing my articles presented as if they were written by a high-profile CEO or an industry expert with decades of experience. I'll be honest; it felt slimy and dishonest. I had none of the credentials readers assumed the author of the article actually had. Ghost writing is a perfectly legal, astonishingly common practice, and now, AI has entered the playing field to further muddy the waters. It's hard to trust who (or what) actually wrote the content you'll read online these days.
That's not the case here at On The Cobblestone Road. I do not and never will pay a ghost writer, then slap my name on their work as if I'd written it. This website is 100% authentic. No outsourcing. No ghost writing. No AI-generated content. It's just me... as it should be.
If you would like to support my work, check out the Support The Creator page for more information. Thank you for finding my website! 🖤