2025 – New Year Stock Image Uploads

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A typical stock image I shot this week. The picture looks a bit empty but I try and leave an area for copy space at the top, side or both of the main subject.

It’s been a quiet time, for me, stock wise although the start of year is always a quiet time for my sales. I’m still trying to upload new images regularly. Most of my stock images come through street photography. However, the grey blanket of cloud we’ve had covering the UK for most of February hasn’t been conducive to going out anywhere special with the camera. The light has been useless.

Most of my sales, over the last few months, have come from my food images so I’ve spent some time recently shooting more drink and cake shots indoors, where I can control the light.

Lin busy in the kitchen making a custard tart. This was shot through a softbox so the shadows are softer and the light is a bit more flattering.
Images of traditional British cakes and treats sell well, like this cream tea setup. I’ve recently gone back to using a bare flash head (no diffuser) for my lighting as I prefer the results. This gives those sharp shadows and brings out textures.

I find still life photography can be very time consuming and sometimes, getting an image set up to point I’m happy with can take me an age. I’ve also been experimenting with my lighting setups although I still tend to keep it simple with one light and a reflector.

Moving away from cakes and drinks we’ve recently got in to making our own ‘British Indian’ curries after buying an excellent book written by Dan Toombs – The Curry Guy. The idea is to make a curry that tastes just like those you would get in a British Indian restaurant or Takeaway, i.e. nothing like an authentic curry you’d get in India. We’ve tried three curries from the book so far and they’ve worked out really well. I still haven’t nailed photographing them but I’m getting there.

Last weeks curry from the book – A Chicken Dhansak.

We’re trying one new recipe, from the book, every week. The plan for this Friday is to make a Chicken Chilli Garlic Curry (now that Valentines Day is out of the way). I picked up a new Indian style bowl in a Charity Shop this week so I’m hoping that will be a good prop for the new curry.

Other than food pictures I’ve also been stumbling over old files, I’d previously overlooked, whilst going back over my images for blog posts. So I’ve been uploaded some of those. Some of the old files have been given a new lease of life because modern software can process them so much better or I’d just simply overlooked or forgotten them.

A typical older image I could use for stock.
Here’s an image of mine I found today in The Sun, a UK national paper. It’s not been reported to me as a sale yet, that can take up to three months. It was spotted by another Alamy contributor and reported in the Alamy Forum.

I still have blogs to write, catching up on some more of our travels in recent years. I’ll be getting back to those soon before we look to get away and escape dreary, grey England next month.

All images: ©Stephen Hyde 2007-2025 – All rights reserved.

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