Oh Bonsai Rock. One of the most beautiful spots on one of the most beautiful lakes - Lake Tahoe. If you are a photographer who's visited the lake and did your homework, you probably read about and photographed this spot. It's often busy with photographers at sunset, and for good reason. The little pine trees growing on the rock have a tiny bit of dirt to dig their roots into. The trees have been on the rock for a long time but they don't have the space to grow very big. The water around the boulder can go nuclear with green, aqua, and blue colors when the light hits the lake at the right angle. It's a perfect little paradise.
One day, I was driving by in between photo shoots, so I decided to stop and check out how the beach and Bonsai Rock were looking. To my surprise these little pink flowers were blooming on some plants along the shore. They made the perfect colorful foreground to an already colorful scene. Shooting this was somewhat of a challenge in that there was a strong breeze moving the flowers. I wanted to be at an aperture of f22 in order to get the foreground and background in focus. This meant that I had to have somewhat of a slow shutter speed of 1/20 of a second. I had to wait until the breeze would stop for just a second. Many of the photos had blurry flowers but this one was sharp.
I have sold a decent amount of prints of this image. But recently, I licensed the image to a calendar company that used it for the cover of a 2019 Lake Tahoe calendar. They have also licensed my images for previous calendars and other gift items that are sold at many of the local gift shops. I love this type of income. The image was shot in April of 2015 and I am still making $ off it. All I had to do was send a high res file and an invoice to them, no extra work on my end. Photographers, make sure your portfolio website has good SEO, they found me, I did not reach out to them. Photoshelter has great websites for photographers, it's what I use, here's a referral/info link: https://www.photoshelter.com/referral/SC9TH9ZX8F
Thank you for looking. Cheers!
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