Don’t search for a four-leaf clover. Good luck is shinning right above you. All you got to do, is believe. Happy St. Patrick’s Day.

Here is a toast to a long life and a journey as wonderful as you are. Have a Happy St. Patrick’s feast.

Irish blessings to you and your loved ones. wishing you a very Happy St. Patrick’s Feast.

Keep love in your heart for people you love
Wish you get that Irish luck
Think beyond the words to say
For it’s the lovely St. Patrick’s day,
Hope you enjoy and have a nice day
Wishing you a lovely St. Patrick’s Day!

Leave all your worries behind. Smile, because life is a gift. Happy St. Patrick’s Day.

Thanks to each member of Pixabay community, let’s create together and share with the world.

Your Pixabay Team!

An interview with world famous photographer Adam Senatori. Learn more of what it’s like to be a professional and renowned photographer today.

Meet Adam — a former commercial airline pilot and an extraordinaire aerial photographer. His name has become a big deal in the photography world. Adam jokes that although he has worked with some of the world’s largest companies during his 15 years in commercial photography (General Electric, Louis Vuitton, and Ray-Ban are just a few names you might recognize from his resume), he mostly works for the world’s smallest companies.

Here is Adam’s interview for Pixabay community.

You started your career as a commercial airline pilot. But how and when your journey into photography started?

Hello my name is Adam Senatori. I’m an American photographer from the Midwest. I have been interested in creative works all my life but I have been a commercial photographer for 15 years.
I have worked with some of the worlds largest companies and agencies like General Electric, Louis Vuitton, Ray-ban and others. But I mostly create work for the worlds smallest companies.
Aside from my commercial work, I’m shooting as often as I can, for nothing more than to refine my skill set and craft.

You take photos from inside moving objects (planes, helicopters). Can you share some tips with our readers how to make photos from a moving object?

Tips for shooting from moving objects… never set the shutter speed below 1/250. Since depth of field isn’t as important, shoot and open, allowing you to keep those shutter speeds fast thus avoiding blur.

What do you enjoy about aerial photography?

I love aerial photos because they offer such a unique view, perhaps views never seen before in history depending on the location and pov.

Where do you get your creative inspiration from?

I get my creative inspiration from historical photos. I love antique aerial photos and often go to historical libraries to view them in person.

What gear do you use?

I shoot exclusively with a Canon 1DX II and a Canon 16–36mm lens. Sometimes a tilt shift lens.

Which places have been your favourite ones for shooting? Why?

Dubai UAE is one of my favorite places to shoot because of the architecture, and the way the light bounces off all of the glass and chrome.

What are your future plans for photography?

My future plans for photography are to push beyond my creative crutches of shooting the common views. Always thinking of new ways to show old topics.

What is the one thing you wish you knew when you started taking photos?

Things I knew when I started taking photos… the importance of light. It’s everything.

Find more Adam’s work here.

I am a Photographer — Interview with Adam Senatori was originally published in Pixabay. Get-Togethers on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

An interview with world famous photographer Richard Koci Hernandez. Learn more of what it’s like to be a professional and renowned photographer today.

Meet Richard Koci Hernandez — a national Emmy Award winning visual storyteller and one of the most famous world iPhotographers. A two time Pulitzer Prize nominee, he is currently teaching Media Journalism at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. His photographic work has appeared in The New York times, The New Yorker, Wired, Time, USA Today, and a National Geographic Book on iPhone Photography. In the interview Richard is going to tell Pixabay Community about his creative process and his thoughts on iPhotography.

Can you tell our readers a bit about how your journey into photography started?

I grew up in Southern California in a small town called Santa Paula. At 14 I left home for boarding school and taught myself photography with a camera I ‘borrowed’ from an uncle. As a self-taught photographer, I practiced more than most, shooting tons of film and spending countless hours in a darkroom with fixer-stained fingers. I also learned from the masters of the craft by studying their monographs in local libraries.
At 19 on a lark, I bet a friend I could land a job as a photographer at the local newspaper before him. It was ‘game on!’ I went to Radio Shack and purchased a police scanner and started chasing fires and car crashes in an attempt to build a portfolio.
One rainy morning around 3 a.m. a local oil refinery exploded. The scanner tones jarred me awake. I grabbed my Nikon FM camera and rushed out the door to snap some images. I arrived on the scene at the same time as the local photojournalist, who I later learned was the director of photography at the Ventura Star Free Press, the newspaper at the center of the bet. He was so impressed with my ‘initiative’ (his description) ‘naiveté’ (my description) that he hired me the very next day as a darkroom lab assistant.
I spent the next year mixing D76 developer for the staff photographers. Needless to say, I won the bet and a year later worked my way up to a full-blown staff photojournalist.
I spent the next 15 years working as a photojournalist, most notably at the San Jose Mercury News. In 2009 I left the newspaper to teach new media journalism at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, where I sit writing this account, now with the title of Professor, :)

How and when did you start to make iPhone photos?

My transition from “traditional photographer” to iPhone photographer started in late 2007 during my work as a photojournalist. I was sent to the scene of a police action and was pressured to send a photograph back ASAP so that we could post something to the website. Instead of trudging back to my car and taking out my laptop and firing up the Wi-Fi card, I realized that there was a faster way to get the job done. There was this new device in my camera bag called an iPhone and it actually had a camera. I immediately shot a picture of the scene and attached it to an e-mail and it was immediately sent back to the picture desk. So for me, it started as the realization that the iPhone was a fantastic photojournalistic tool for immediacy not particularly photography. After that incident, it was then that I began to play around with the camera and apps and really started to think about the device as a potential for serious photography on my part.

What do you enjoy about iPhone Photography?

My main reason for using a cell phone in my photographic work is the devices immediacy and its reach. In my experience as a photographer, there has never been a device better suited to shooting, processing and delivering photographic images so immediately. it has become my camera, dark room and printing press, not to mention delivery truck all in my pocket. I am in love with the potential of shooting, post-processing and sharing globally in just a few clicks. It’s a device that’s always with me and allows me to be more creative and experimental and receive immediate feedback.

How does black and white and color play in your works?

First off, I shoot everything in color with the native iPhone camera app and sometimes Hipstamatic app. I really don’t seek anything in black and white, to be honest I truly believe that masterful color photography is one of the hardest aspects of photography and I really suck at it. So it’s much easier to distill an image to its basic form of moment, light and composition and do my best to arrange and capture those aspects and not have to worry about the dangerous and complex aspect of color photography, if I convert to Black and White, it feels like my native photographic language, if I might be so bold.

Which iPhone Photography tool apps do you use?

ProCamera, Snapseed, Hipstamatic, Blackie, and Instagram of course.

How do you choose what you are going to shoot?

For me, there is very little to no thought about what I might shoot beforehand. Almost all of my images are a byproduct of my daily life, walking to work, shopping, walking my dogs, on my way to a meeting, etc. It’s very very rare for me to leave the house with the intention of shooting images for any particular reason. Everything comes after I have the shot in-hand, then the storytelling begins. I take what’s given by the gods of photography and do my best to choose an image that I have captured that I feel — during the edit — first speaks to me in some way — a very complex in dialogue issues — then ‘might’ speak to someone else, but always expecting it to speak in ways I did not intend. In truth, it doesn’t really matter what my motivations and inclinations are because I believe that once an image is in the public stream-of-consciousness it belongs to the person viewing it and really leaves my grasp and its intentions. What you see and described is your perspective on my work which may or may not be truthful intentions that I carry with me as I snapped the image. I’m not a big fan of the idea that it reveals something about the photographer, because sometimes a photograph is just a photograph and nothing more to the creator, but can have an enormous impact on the viewer. Beauty, mystery, obsession, “Hitchcockian” undertones are in the eye of the beholder.

Where do you usually share your works?

Only on Instagram. And a physical Gallery in Oakland, Ca. — Slate Contemporary.

What is the one thing you wish you knew when you started taking photos?

I wish I had learned to shoot more often. Practice, practice, practice. I was kinda lazy as a young photographer, I’m making up for it now, :)

All images courtesy of Richard Koci Hernandez. Discover more of Richard’s work on his website and on Instagram.

I am a photographer — Interview with Richard Koci Hernandez was originally published in Pixabay. Get-Togethers on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

2018 was a very productive year for Pixabay. We celebrated 1.5 million free images that have been generously contributed by this wonderful community of photographers and artists. The content has been contributed by over 100,000 people all over the world! And 2018 was very productive for reaching such results. The past year 319,210 new images were uploaded to Pixabay.

Let’s recognize those who’s made these all possible!

30 Best👏 IMAGES 👏 of the year — Editor’s Choice!

Works by (in alphabetical order)
analogicus
annca
ATDSPHOTO
bichnguyenvo
ColiN00B
Couleur
darkmoon1968
hschmider
jill111
jplenio
kareni
Myriams-Fotos
Nietjuh
peter_pyw
pixel2013
qimono
rawpixel
RitaE
SarahRichterArt
skalekar1992

30 Most 👏POPULAR👏Contributors

according to the number of downloads

geralt — 18,977 images and 28,230,695 downloads
Alexas_Fotos 19,606 images and 20,505,505 downloads
pixel2013 2,144 images and 12,027,776 downloads
Couleur 1,974 images and 10,565,032 downloads
jill111 1,360 images and 7,415,631 downloads
jplenio 557 images and 6,791,500 downloads
rawpixel 2,733 images and 6,630,454 downloads
Capri23auto 4,011 images and 5,818,401 downloads
congerdesign 2,496 images and 5,624,923 downloads
Pezibear 7,017 images and 5,542,716 downloads
MabelAmber 3,222 images and 5,175,642 downloads
cocoparisienne 2,607 images and 5,155,601 downloads
3dman_eu 8,716 images and 5,055,224 downloads
stux 6,441 images and 4,950,496 downloads
TheDigitalArtist 5,132 images and 4,949,142 downloads
Engin_Akyurt 6,594 images and 4,747,356 downloads
stevepb 541 images and 4,641,921 downloads
PIRO4D 2,403 images and 4,535,757 downloads
Tama66 1,218 images and 4,533,923 downloads
Myriams-Fotos 1,465 images and 4,450,041 downloads
Gellinger 3,291 images and 4,083,105 downloads
jarmoluk 1,451 images and 4,056,574 downloads
RitaE 2,120 images and 3,759,287 downloads
dimitrisvetsikas1969 11,621 images and 3,728,482 downloads
annca,1,393 images and 3,705,274 downloads
GDJ 2,821 images and 3,417,018 downloads
MichaelGaida 3,696 images and 3402799 downloads
ArtsyBee 3,615 images and 3,204,303 downloads
werner22brigitte 5,430 images and 3,185,705 downloads
Skitterphoto 2,037 images and 3,069,531 downloads

10 👏Most Successful👏 Newcomers in 2018

jplenio 557 images and 6,791,500 downloads

analogicus 545 images and 1,745,769 downloads

KleineKiwi 542 images and 734,032 downloads

KIMDAEJEUNG 396 images and 294,479 downloads

marijana1 177 images and 285,260 downloads

edmondlafoto 241 images and 268,703 downloads

ollivves 33 images and 235,238 downloads

Papafox 59 images and 227,531 downloads

xeppo 24 images and 222,479 downloads

GORBACHEVSERGEYFOTO 383 images and 193,522downloads

Thanks to each member of Pixabay community, let’s create together and share with the world.

Your Pixabay Team!

Pixabay: the Best of 2018 was originally published in Pixabay. Get-Togethers on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Makning a cool insect photo is an art — they are small, intricate, and require attention to details. making photos of insects — it’s like discovering a new wonderful world. And the “models” are everywhere around us — in the fields, woods, in our homes and gardens. You just need to watch closely.

Let’s say 👏THANKS 👏 to the photographers who share such cool images! Here are the ones our team likes most of all.

Ladybug on a flower by Schwoaze

I’m watching you by skeeze

Smart dragonfly by liggraphy

Baterfly’s hover by jill111

Day rest on the leaf by nidan

Detail shot by ekamelev

Colourful wings by Uschi_Du

Meet a grasshopper by nockewell1

Fantastic eyes by Virvoreanu-Laurentiu

Tiptoe by ROverhate

All images and videos on Pixabay are released free of copyrights under Creative Commons CC0. You may download, modify, distribute, and use them royalty free for anything you like, even in commercial applications. Attribution is not required.

10 Best Pixabay “Insect” Images: Editor’s Choice was originally published in Pixabay. Get-Togethers on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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 —

MY JOURNEY AND WHAT I FOUND ALONG THE WAY ON PIXABAY was originally published in Pixabay. Get-Togethers on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Thanks to all our contributors! The list of images is given in the alphabetical order (photographer’s name).

Alexas_Fotos

cocoparisienne

Free-Photos

Gellinger

kellepics

QuinceMedia

suju

ulleo

webandi

Have a nice Halloween!

10 Best Halloween Images. Editor’s Choice was originally published in Pixabay. Get-Togethers on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.
Albert Camus

Autumn is really charming! It’s time when everything bursts with its last beauty, and the colours are amazing — thousands shadows of red, yellow, brown, misty mornings are charming… But it’s not so easy to convey this rave of colour in photos. Not everyone can do it.

We’ve chosen 10 best autumn images (that means the images which you’ll see searching with the keyword “fall/autumn”) at Pixabay. Let’s say thanks to all the contributors below (in alphabetical order).

cocoparisienne — Anja Osenberg

Dana Tentis

ekamelev — Egor Kamelev

esudroff

jplenio — Johannes Plenio

ljcor — Lorraine Cormier

lumix2004

petraboekhoff — Petra Boekhoff

pixel2013 — Silvia & Frank

xusenru — Khusen Rustamov

And a bonus — one more extra image, it was uploaded not long ago, but we’ve decided that it’s worth being in this list. So +1 image from our team.

qimono — Arek Socha

The Geography of the best “autumn” images at Pixabay.

10 Best “Autumn” Images at Pixabay was originally published in Pixabay. Get-Togethers on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

So many changes has happened during these years. The total amount of images (including photos, illustrations, vector graphics and clip arts) is about 1.5 million. Today you can meet our images everywhere — they are used as illustrations for articles, images for landing pages, backgrounds for quotes, illustrations for printed books, cool remixes, etc.

Here are some quotes from Pixabay forum to understand why people love Pixabay.

I just wish to say THANKS to Simon and all the Pixabay team for creating Pixabay! It is by far my favourite website! When I get a better camera I plan to donate many photos.
 — Stan Williams —

I used Pixabay images and clipart as artwork for book covers and on my blog. Wanted to say thank you to all who images and clipart I was able to use for these ventures. Pixabay and you guys are the best!
 — D. H. Allen —

Thanks — your photos made this awareness video possible!
Today is international awareness day for a very painful afflictions in the face, trigeminal neuralgia. It’s a rare disease and many of us who have it suffer unnecessary as also the medical profession needs more knowledge.
So thank you for helping us helping others, both sufferers and their surrounding, getting information out in an easy to understand way.
 — Beate —

Just wanted to say a big THANKS to the Pixabay team and contributors. I have used many of your images on my writers’ website (and a couple of associated websites) and while I haven’t been able to donate coffees, I have added a Pixabay banner ad to the website (at the bottom of every page).
 — Robert Fairhead —

Today we have over 100,000 different people all over the world who contribute their great works. thanks a lot to them! And very often we hear a question — “WHY do people contribute images to Pixabay FOR FREE?” We will not share our thoughts on it. Let’s listen to those whom all of you know very well — our contributors whose works are downloaded hundred thousands of times.

When I discover Pixabay, I thought that I have the chance to see if my pictures are good. I never thought that my pictures will be successful and it was a big surprise for me, that so many people are interested to my photos, they like them and get inspired from them. I was amazed from the quality of the pictures in Pixabay and the talent of the photographers. Their amazing work have a big influence on me and help me to improve myself. Thank you very much, that you give me the opportunity to participate in this magic world of photography.
 — Dimitris Vetsikas —

Initially, Pixabay was for me an obviousness. Before being retired, I used Pixabay for my work and then it was a site that welcomed all forms of art. This allowed me to have many real contacts. So as soon as I retired, I naturally contributed to share. Pixabay is the only sharing website where I come with pleasure even if the rules change often and are not always fair. For example, I regret that there is no longer the name of the contributor on the images. This shocked several contributors and users. And finally, it’s quite funny to see that today we find the same human aspects as in “real life” . Jealousy, individuality, certainty of being right and greed being the evils of this century even if it’s unfortunate. Fortunately, on Pixabay, it’s a very small minority and it’s nice. Human nature is done so, that’s why I don’t use Facebook, Twitter or any social network and so Iam sure that my “likes” on Pixabay, are real “likes” and not “likes” of cronyism. My motto: “do well and let say.” This is just my feeling.
 — JL G —

Why do I provide my images to Pixabay? Well, I’m convinced of public domain. I would like to give back what I have learned from the Internet. And the best way to do this is to make your works freely available. That gives me satisfaction and as a side effect I also get a lot of recognition, which spurs me on even more. Pixabay is a great website that has found a wide distribution. Plus a large community, and, as the icing on the cake, great operators!
 — Johannes Plenio —

Well, if Pixabay did not exist, I probably would not have landed in photography until today. I started about 3 1/2 years ago, when I discovered Pixabay. The concept of the site seemed interesting to me and I became curious.The first pictures were made by my cellphone camera, but it quickly became clear that I was in need of a real camera. It’s really fun to share the pictures on Pixabay and see how many people enjoy my pictures (today I have over 16 million downloads).
Last but not least, I’m always fascinated by the fact that there are people who voluntarily pay for something they would not have to pay for, in the form of a coffee donation to the author or Pixabay.
 — Alexandra —

Doing good things makes me happy and that’s why I share my pictures on Pixabay. AND, I think Hans and Simon are great. They are always correct and helpful. That’s why I upload my pictures on Pixabay.
 — Ilona —

Thanks to every member of Pixabay community! Let’s build great things together!

WHY DO I CONTRIBUTE TO PIXABAY? was originally published in Pixabay. Get-Togethers on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

WHY IS STOCK PHOTOGRAPHY SO EXPENSIVE?

Remember back in the 90’s when everyone used cheesy clip art? It was incredibly tacky, but it was free — so everybody used it. Stock photography was available but used more by professionals, designers, and people who saw value in spending money on images.

However, as people began to realize their clip art was less than appealing, stock photography started becoming mainstream. More and more websites selling stock photos began springing up — some poor or average quality, but some very good. As the popularity of stock photography grew more and more — to the point where now, even the average person will purchase stock photography rather than using clip art — so did the prices. The sites falling into the “excellent” category realized their value, and also realized that people would pay more for nicer stock images. As a result, prices have risen and risen over the past several years. Today, you can find stock photos for sale anywhere from a few dollars to $15+ per photo.

FREE STOCK PHOTOGRAPHY

There are so many free stock photo websites and image galleries all over the web. Some are generic submit-your-own sites such as Flickr, whereas others cater for specialized niche markets such as travel photos, Architecture, people and Nature photography. Stock image providers such as an Istockphoto charge per image download; at the other end, others such as Pixabay.com offer quality stock photography free of charge. Other stock photography websites fit somewhere in between.

WHY PIXABAY?

• The leading free stock photo website in 2018, with other free stock websites like Pexels, Unsplash, battling to keep up with the pace of Pixabay.
• The largest database that is 13 times more than any other website in its category, here you get more search result to choose from. This means that if you search for an item such as “Flower” you get, for example,12,532 results from Unsplash and 167,000 results from Pixabay.

• Apart from the fact that Pixabay has a huge collection of great photos to choose from, it also has quickly become the favorite resources for free stock photos. The website is simple to use; the licensing is easy to understand.
• Pixabay brings you over 1.5 million royalty-free stock photos and 8,500 Free stock videos shared by its generous community. When you have found the image you want, simply download. If you want to support Pixabay, you can make a donation to the site.

PIXABAY IN NUMBERS

Our servers deliver about 100,000 requests per minute. Just imagine! That’s about 144,000,000 requests per day.

Are you a blogger looking for some free stock image for your next post, or a graphic artist in search of great quality video to add elegance to your jobs?

Pixabay is a great place to start and it offers you different types of imagery categories such as: Nature, Travel, Animals, Architecture, People, and variety to choose from.

Pixabay.com is great for finding pictures you can use, and the best part is that it is FREE for commercial use with no attribution required.

PIXABAY: THE BIGGEST FREE STOCK PHOTO WEBSITE was originally published in Pixabay. Get-Togethers on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.