We have been spending considerable amount of time uploading my pictures on Fotolia, one of the main websites for stock photography.

The Louvre museum in Paris, on my way home after a work visit to Loches, France

It is a lot of work to get them on there, but the occasional reward makes it a lot of fun. You can find my ever-growing portfolio here.

Shakespeares Globe in London, on holiday

I currently have almost 3000 pictures online, and sold more than 350 of them, which makes me mildly proud. It is never gonna make me rich (and you definitely do not want to calculate how very little we earn for an hour of work!), but selling 350 pictures is tremendously more than I would have ever thought possible.

A guanaco in the Chilean Andes, after an experimental field campaign 

It is funny to see what kind of pictures sell the easiest. This posts shows some of the bestsellers in my portfolio, and it is immediately clear that exotic travel destinations do very well.

Cows in a Patagonian valley, after a field campaign in Chile

Landscapes, but also famous cityviews are thus high on the list, but they contrast sharply with the dull pictures that seem to get at least as much attention: car parks, traffic signs, spoons, the more ‘normal’ it is, the easier it sells.

Car park of the airport in Bariloche, Argentina, after a meeting with colleagues

But surprisingly, even my work seems to sell, as illustrated by this detail of stress measurements on our university campus.

Measuring fluorescence in colonisers of experimental gaps at the university, Antwerp, Belgium

For someone who likes to make pictures as an extra to his main job in ecological research, selling some pictures through Fotolia is a nice reward. I will never be able to resist the urge to make pictures anyway, so better make the most of it!