My Journey and What I Found Along the Way on Pixabay
It’s always interesting to know what is Pixabay for our contributors. Here is a story from one of them — Tim Hill. You all know his great landscape images. Let’s see, how sharing images on Pixabay has influenced on his life.
“My name is Tim Hill and I live in Pontefract, West Yorkshire, England (UK).
I started taking photography seriously, in a pleasurable sort of way, in 2013, so fairly recently. Since then I have made many photography and social media friends.
My images have been and still are used as backgrounds (for example) on Google digital products such as Hangouts and Chromecast. I even have one of my images on a double page spread in the Royal Academy of Music 2018 diary/calendar. I have also recently done paid work for Grand Central Railways here in the UK.
I am predominantly a landscape/seascape photographer but can turn my hand to many other aspects of photography. Equally, I am competent with and love using Lightroom, Photoshop, Luminar (to name but a few), to really take images to a place you would not expect.
How I started posting at Pixabay
The decision to start posting my images to Pixabay was not an easy one at first to be honest. After all, I would be giving up almost all rights to the work under creative commons (CCO), did I really want to do that? In the end I decided my images were of better use to many than sitting here unseen on the hard drive and backed up to the cloud, I am now so glad my decision was yes, I was and still am shocked at how many times some of the images have been downloaded and viewed, Pixabay certainly does have a large reach and following.
I’ve been sharing my photos at pixabay for a year, and here’s what I found…
Since starting posting to Pixabay in the summer of 2017 my images have had more than 550,000 downloads, almost 1,000,000 views and I have gratefully been selected for Editors Choice 8 times which has boosted my exposure on Pixabay enormously, one of my most popular Editors Choice images is this Winter shot of RibbleHead Viaduct in the Yorkshire Dales (UK) which alone has had 145,230 views and 121,047 downloads!
Other images that have proved to be very popular are:
Scarborough, North Yorkshire, England (UK) — 116,513 views and 95,929 downloads
Spurn Point, North Yorkshire, England (UK) — 118,712 views and 93,435 downloads
Bolton Abbey, Yorkshire, England (UK) — 51,614 views and 21,346 downloads
Bolton Abbey (Autumn) UK — 35,848 views and 11,078 downloads
What I did not except when I posted my first images to Pixabay was the amount of kind people who made donations (bought me a coffee) as a thank you in recognition of the time, expense and work that I put into my images, I was pleasantly surprised and shocked how many nice people there are in the world, no one has to buy me a coffee but bless them they did and still regularly do! Thank you to anyone who has who may be reading this post, you are most kind.
Around a year ago I started sending some of my images to stock photography sites such as Shutterstock and Adobe Stock in the hope of bit by bit making enough money to buy a new lens or eventually change my camera body. To me taking images is not about making money but making a little online seemed the only way I could see of affording new kit, my day job pays Ok but leaves very little for luxuries such as lenses or a new cameras. I am sure many of you can associate with this and are in the same situation.
… and what I did not even expect
Around the same time as I started also sending images to stock sites, just for fun I ran a little experiment, Pixabay coffee’s vs Stock earnings. A year later I am very surprised with the results, I do regularly sell stock images for small amounts but by far the largest part of my saving for new camera kit has come from Pixabay Coffee’s! Human kindness at it’s best. Also through a message on Pixabay I have recently been contacted by Grand Central Railways here in the UK with an offer of 3 days paid work photographing landscapes and places of interest around there train stops. I have since completed and delivered this work and the money went into my camera fund, again all through having my free work seen and liked on Pixabay, amazing!
See you at Pixabay!
This article may seem like it is all about money but it really is not, it is more about Pixabay as a platform to share your work, be seen by many, make new friends and let the world know of your passion for photography, stills or video.
I look forward to seeing your wonderful work on here and sharing more of mine for the world to download and use”.
— TIM HILL —
