For some years I generate some income from the sale of picture rights of bird photographs. Right now a big project with Professor Dr. Michael Wink, director of the department of biology at the University of Heidelberg is in preparation.

Up to now the procedure based mainly on personal communication. An author inquires pictures, which he or its friends do not have, with me. Often only a few days before press release. On the basis of my preliminary work of many years birding, the many ornithologist journeys and the back office organization with access to a well linked ACCESS/EXCEL data base and the picture documentation software it is possible today to access and select some 200,000 digital images and additionally well over 10,000 slides images of altogether well over 3,200 species of birds. In order to develop „the business “with the sale of picture rights of bird images on a more professional basis, I decided to set-up an own website with a webshop for the download of images. In addition preliminary work were necessary. An analysis of the inquiries, which came in the past mainly via personal relations, resulted in some conclusions.

Besides the pictures, which I could publish in the Standard work for the Ornithology „Handbook of the Birds of the World “of the publisher Lynx the biggest part of inquiries focues on western palaearctic species. Here mainly the rarer species – of course.

The idea is, to create a One-stop shop. Thus everyone interested in western palaearctic species of birds shall focus on www.bird-lens.com and finds every species, which is needed. The process of payment & download is very straightforward and supports a professional approach of image selection for authors and publishers.

Some substantial investment in journeys to complete the image-database was necessary. The coverage of images of western palaearctic of birds is now with the common bird almost complete – only a substantial number of high pelagic birds and island endemics are missing. I detected/ encountered up to now 788 species of the official number of 963 species which has already occured in the Western Palearctic. The total image coverage of the official list is 75%, which means 726 photographed species which are on the WP-list plus several subspecies.  For the proper performance of my website project this is sufficient. But further trips to relevant sites will exceed that percentage even more.

 www.bird-lens.com is currently ranked in the Alexa ranking at place 1,389,814, which in view of the topic and the short actual working time is worth mentioning. www.bird-lens.com is  on-line from December 2011 on and shows in its shop (rider „Picture shop “) already altogether 1,907 images of birds in an English and a German language version. The particularly interesting “specials” of western palaearctic bird species are shown prominently in a separate window.

 Johannes Ferdinand

Projects

Book: Ornithologie für Einsteiger“ Teil I: Vögel Beobachten- Wie, wo und wann? Teil 1 – Evolution, Biologie und Ökologie der Vögel von Prof. Dr. Michael Wink

I-Phone/Pad: „Vogel Id – Gartenvögel Deutschlands – Vögel Erkennen, Bestimmen und Zählen“ von Mullen & Pohland GbR