Stock Images – February Uploads

A sticky pear toffee pudding I made after watching a Mary Berry recipe that was on TV last week. The Grandchildren loved it.

After a disappointing month for sales in January, things picked up in February and I returned to my rough average of about 10-15 sales per month. On a negative note, I also had a problem with a Alamy’s exclusivity rules and they fined me $150.

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Walking – Winchcombe, Cotswolds, Gloucestershire, UK

The main High Street in Winchcombe. We stopped in the Old Bakery, on the right, for a coffee and cake when we got back after the walk.

We decided to fit another walk in this week. We wanted something a bit longer than Mondays Cheddar Gorge ramble so we decided to drive in to the Cotswolds. The area is not too far away from us, about 50 miles. I had a look through our OS Cotswolds Pathfinder Book and chose a nine mile circular walk starting at Winchcombe. The route loops around a ridge to the east of Winchcombe, taking in Hailes Abbey and Sudeley Castle. I found the same route in my Outdoor Active App with no problems and used that to guide us.

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Walking – Cheddar Gorge, Somerset, UK

Cheddar Gorge, Somerset, UK is well known for it’s deep gorge and caves and is one of the top tourist attractions in our part of the world. Like all these things, it’s somewhere I’ve never properly visited even though it’s only 25 miles from home. So, yesterday we decided to take advantage of the good weather and walk the 3 1/2 mile cliff-top circular walk around the gorge.

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2025 – New Year Stock Image Uploads

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.

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Thursday Doors – The Stage Door

This is quite an old pic. I took this in 2013 on a visit to the NJ Shore

This is my entry for this weeks ‘Dan’s Thursday Doors’. It’s a nondescript door that, on its own, doesn’t warrant a second look but lots of famous musicians have walked through this stage entrance.

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Vintage Lenses – My lenses paired with a Canon 5D MK2

Canon 5D MK2 paired with my Pentacon 135mm F2.8 – Superb when I nailed the focus, trouble was, I didn’t most of the time.

I’ve enjoyed using my vintage lenses with my Fujifilm X-T cameras over the last few weeks. It’s been really good to slow down, using manual focusing, and I like the colour rendering and sharp images my Auto Takamar 35mm F2.3 lens has produced (it’s a 50mm lens on my crop sensor Fuji cameras). The other vintage lens I’ve been using is my Pentacon 135mm F2.8 – known as the bokeh monster, with good reason.

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Monochrome Madness

Fresh sourdough bread, given to us by our neighbour (she’s a superb and generous baker). I think it works well as a BW conversion. I used the Gradient Map process for this image, outlined below.

Last weekend I submitted a few images for the weekly Lens-Artist Challenge, Colour vs Black and White. I rarely convert my images to BW as I’m mostly shooting for stock. I leave it to others to convert my images if they want a BW version. They can’t convert it the other way.

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Thursday Doors – Photo Challenge

Here’s my submission for this weeks Thursday Doors photo challenge. I spotted this note tacked to the front door of a house in the Horfield area of Bristol, UK. It’s quite common to see comical notes like this around our streets. I really like the huge tacks they’ve used to hammer the message home (see what I did there).

Posted for Dan’s Thursday Doors

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