Sondra Eacker just moved to Havre and opened a family photography business. Eacker and her husband, Anthony, as well as their two children, Aubrey, 8, and Tanner, 6, sold their home in Kalispell and bought a home in Havre this summer.

“We absolutely love it here. We are thrilled to become members of the community… we were looking for a smaller slower pace for our family and Havre is perfect,” Eacker said, “My husband is a born-and-raised Montana boy who served his country doing two tours in Iraq during the years of 2001-2009.”

Eacker discovered a love for photography that started seven years ago with shooting models at various modeling workshops and functions for a few high-end Montana-based modeling agencies. Gradually, that turned into working with children and local families in outdoor sessions.

“My dream of opening a studio was put on hold during 2020 for obvious reasons, but I was able to find a very small studio space in 2021 where I made my full focus newborns and children and holiday mini sessions,” Eacker said, “I absolutely love to get creative, and I make lots of my own props and outfits at home. I have a huge passion for creating fun sessions for my clients. I am so very excited to be able to expand my service in my larger space.”

Eacker plans to continue utilizing the techniques she has so far, but also intends on adding a new style of photography.

“I will be doing a monthly theme change that I will be offering as a mini session,” Eacker said. “Also, I absolutely always want and strive to be affordable. It’s my opinion all families should be able to have professional keep sakes on their walls and shared via social media.”

As the school year begins, Eacker and her family settled into Havre before beginning her journey of opening the business.

“Our daughter is 8 years old and just entered second grade and she is really loving the new environment, it’s a bit different, wide open and you can see for miles and miles,” Eacker said, “She was born into the mountains of the Flathead Valley, but she really has taken to it here.”

“Our son, Tanner, is on the autism spectrum and is 6 years old. He is home-schooled and is just truly starting to bloom,” Eacker said. “For so many years, this was a boy who had spoken no more than three chosen words at a time, if he wanted. Now, he has quite the little vocabulary and even told a stranger ‘thanks’ for holding a door open for us the other day. She didn’t quite understand why I was so excited over something so small, but it was huge, really.”

“I am so very excited to get to work with the great people of Havre. I have already welcomed two brand-new teeny clients here and captured a bump for a mom to be,” Eacker said.

The studio is in Suite 404 in The Atrium. Eacker can be reached at 406-471-1596.

A home-making mason bee, a motherly possum’s midnight munchies and a macaque lying on a deer’s back are just some of highly commended images from this year’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition.

Other images include a bison kicking up a flurry of snow, a pair of storks against burning grasslands in Kenya and a distressed elephant following a collision with a train.

Wildlife Photographer of the Year is developed and produced by the Natural History Museum in London, where a selection of 100 images will be exhibited after the winners are announced on October 10.

In its 59th year, the competition received 49,957 entries from photographers hailing from 95 countries, organizers said.

Entries were judged anonymously based on their originality, creativity and technical skill by an international panel of experts, organizers added.

Kathy Moran, chair of the judging panel, said they felt a “powerful tension between wonder and woe” when selecting the images this year.

“What most impressed the jury was the range of subjects, from absolute beauty, rarely seen behaviors and species to images that are stark reminders of what we are doing to the natural world,” she said in a press release.

Doug Gurr, director of the Natural History Museum, lauded the competition for showcasing “some of nature’s most wondrous sights whilst offering hope and achievable actions visitors can take to help protect the natural world.”

Photography is a “powerful catalyst for change” when faced with “urgent biodiversity and climate crises,” Gurr added in the release.

Images from the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition will be exhibited at the Natural History Museum from October 13. The exhibition will then go on a UK and international tour, organizers added.

Call to Earth is a CNN editorial series committed to reporting on the environmental challenges facing our planet, together with the solutions. Rolex’s Perpetual Planet initiative has partnered with CNN to drive awareness and education around key sustainability issues and to inspire positive action.

The Natural History Museum (NHS) is previewing the best images it has received for its 59th annual Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition.

While the top 100 photos that will be featured in an exhibition in London on October 13 (including the winners for each category and the prestigious Grand Title and Young Grand Title Awards), the Natural History Museum is highlighting some of the top photos it received from the 49,957 total entries from 95 different countries.

While many more photos are to come, this set of preview images features an unusual interaction of a macaque jumping on a deer photographed by Atsuyuki Ohshima, the drama of a snow leopard hunting a Pallas’s cat witnessed by Donglin Zhou along with photographer Michał Siarek’s capture as a team opens a crate to check on a tiger cub evacuated from Ukraine. Jasper Doest shares the heart wrenching story of an elephant struck by a train in Gabon.

“What most impressed the jury was the range of subjects, from absolute beauty, rarely seen behaviors and species to images that are stark reminders of what we are doing to the natural world,” Kathy Moran, chair of the judging panel, says. “We felt a powerful tension between wonder and woe that we believe came together to create a thought-provoking collection of photographs.”

As is the case every year, after the flagship exhibition of the winners at the Natural History Museum in London concludes, the photos will embark on a tour across the United Kingdom and around the world with the goal of showcasing the best in wildlife photography to millions of people around the world. The Natural History Museum also says that it hopes it will call on them to act on behalf of the planet and help preserve its natural beauty.

Tickets for the London exhibition are available now.

Image credits: All photos are individually credited and provided courtesy of the Natural History Museum.

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A scar-faced fox, a hitchhiking macaque and two storks hunting by a controlled fire are among the first images released in this year’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition.

Developed and produced by the Natural History Museum, the competition showcases some lesser-known behaviours and habitats while exposing human impact on an increasingly fragile natural world.

More than a dozen images which received highly commended awards in their categories have been released ahead of the winners’ awards ceremony on October 10, announced by wildlife TV presenters and conservationists Chris Packham and Megan McCubbin.

The 59th competition received nearly 50,000 entries from 95 countries, with photographers judged anonymously on their creativity, originality and technical skill.

Caitlin Henderson was able to snap a possum munching on insects in the middle of the night outside her balcony window in Queensland, Australia.

“There were heads here, wings there,” she said after capturing the marsupial dismembering a green cicada.

Atsuyuki Ohshima caught the moment a macaque sprang from a tree on to a deer on the Japanese island of Yakushima.

Young male primates have been known to land on female deer and try to mate with them, but in this case the macaque was a young female who appeared to be enjoying the ride.

Among the 15 images is a fox in a Kent rehabilitation centre after being attacked, most likely by dogs, and two white storks hunting alongside a fire in Kenya that had been lit to clear bushland.

A rare snow leopard hunting a Pallas’s cat in China, a mason bee building its home from twigs, the swirling spores of a mushroom in Greece and a tiger cub being evacuated from eastern Ukraine also feature.

Chairwoman of the judging panel Kathy Moran said: “What most impressed the jury was the range of subjects, from absolute beauty, rarely seen behaviours and species to images that are stark reminders of what we are doing to the natural world.

“We felt a powerful tension between wonder and woe that we believe came together to create a thought-provoking collection of photographs.”

An exhibition will run at the Natural History Museum from October 13 until June 30 next year with a UK and international tour of the photos afterwards.

Dr Doug Gurr, director of the Natural History Museum, said: “We are facing urgent biodiversity and climate crises and photography is a powerful catalyst for change.

“The Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition reveals some of nature’s most wondrous sights whilst offering hope and achievable actions visitors can take to help protect the natural world.”

One of the biggest questions for many is how to make money from photography. There are many ways of doing it, such as photographing weddings, pets, portraits, or even products, but there are also ways to make money, such as stock photography. In this article, I discuss my experiences of using stock photography websites. 

Over the past few years, I have signed up for several stock photography websites, such as Shutterstock, Getty, and Wirestock. My experiences using these stock photography sites has been very mixed, to say the least. While Stock photography may not work for everyone, there are plenty of photographers or even videographers who it can and will appeal to as a side hustle. 

Committed

The key thing I have learned from stock photography is that if you want to earn a good side income from these websites, you need to be committed. The payouts from most of my images are incredibly low; some of my sales have only gone for as little as $0.07, which is pretty awful. In order to make stock more viable, you will need a large portfolio. 

The equation is simple: the more images you upload equals the higher potential for more sales. Many dedicated stock photographers will have a selection of thousands and thousands of images out there on the market. If you only have 10 or 20 images, be prepared for a long wait to get sales and even withdraw the funds. 

Many stock photography websites have a minimal withdrawal limit such as $100. If you are only selling an image for $0.07 at a time, you would need to sell it over 1,428 times before you can even withdraw that $100. Of course, not all images will sell for $0.07. Some will sell for higher amounts depending on the usage rights of that image.

This is absolutely where commitment comes into it. If you want to make stock photography work for you, then be sure to upload as much as possible and continue to do so. It is a very long process for little immediate rewards, but it could still add up in the future. 

Competition

The reality is there is so much competition out there in photography. Every day, thousands, hundreds of thousands or even millions of images are uploaded to the internet. When uploading your images to stock, you will need to make sure that your titles, descriptions, tags, releases, and any other data are spot on. The more details you can add can increase your images’ chances of being seen and then hopefully being purchased. 

Some images or concepts will do better than others. For example, wildlife images such as the headline image are tough to sell in stock unless there is a specific event that creates a buzz. 

Sites like Getty can help provide you with ideas of content to shoot by providing you briefs. The briefs by Getty are a call to action for you to create content matching Getty’s requirements as much as possible. Getty may want images relating to “Back to School,” so from this, maybe you will photograph stationery, school bags, or workbooks. With any luck, once you upload images relating to that subject, as long as you tag them correctly, you will see an increase in views and sales.

As you can see from the image above, there are always several briefs with Getty that can give you inspiration or creative ideas you can capture and upload. Depending on exclusivity contracts, you may be able to upload the images across several stock photography websites in order to increase your chances of sales. 

Stock Video

Stock video, if anything, seems to be the way forward in the long run, as the amounts you can earn are potentially much higher than standard stock photography. 

I do not currently have many video clips uploaded on Stock sites yet, but so far, my biggest sales has come from video. In the example above, I made $9.47 with Shutterstock for a 30-second 4K clip of a Kingfisher. If you have the potential to record good footage in 4K, then this could be very beneficial for you going forward. Again, I must stress that in order to make it worthwhile, commitment, along with having photos, videos, or both in bulk is the key to making it.

Every time I go out to do photography now, I try to capture video footage in different frame rates and focal lengths, with the idea of editing them and uploading to Stock websites. You never know what will sell, and your footage could even end up on television shows!

In Summary

So, is stock photography worth it in 2023? From my experience, not really. While I have had sales over the past few years, I am still nowhere close to even withdrawing my earnings. My portfolio needs to be much larger in the hope of earning more sales, plus I have to consider the time it can take to upload all those images, tag, and describe them all. 

Some sites, such as Wirestock, will tag them for you, which can save time, but you may be limited on how much you can upload unless you pay for a premium plan. 

There are much faster ways to make money from photography, but if you want to earn money in the long game and have thousands of images or videos to upload, then there is no reason why it would not be worth a shot for you.

On Shutterstock alone this year, I have made the combined total of $0.90. I will be sure to put that money towards my next camera purchase! Of course, I say that jokingly. However, it is very important to state you get out of it what you put in. If you put in the work, then hopefull,y you will see a good increase in sales, which will only benefit you in the long-term.

If you have ever seen a British comedy called Only Fools and Horses, you may know the quote: “This time next year Rodney, we’ll be millionaires!”