Jeez, luck is not on my side

A while ago I got a hankering for a wider angle lens than my sigma 28-70. I thought, what the heck, I mothballed my kit 18-55 that came with my Rebel XT, what the heck a soft wide shot is better than no shot at all, right? Well I pulled it out and threw it on the camera and what do you know? It fails to autofocus. I'm a few months out of warranty but seriously haven't used the lens in at least a half year. Oh well, crap lens, I can live without it.

Today my Sigma 28-70 is showing problems. The focus ring is stiff to turn and it''s interfering with the autofocus motors. I took a quick look for my lens box, receipt, warranty card, etc. Can't find em. I assume I registered the lens online. I just emailed Sigma about this lens. Lets cross our fingers that this puppy is still under warranty.

Made it this time

All nine pictures I submitted from our family's trip to the zoo were accepted at Alamy. So, am I better at self editing or did I get a lucky QC pass?

One thing I will say is I had a lot of soft shots when viewing them at 1:1 pixels. Most of these shots looked great zoomed out at 50% - 75% but once I got to 100% they looked really soft. I'm trying to figure out the culprit. I was using my telephoto that doesn't have image stabilization and I didn't have a mono or tripod. I was often at focus lengths over 200mm with shutter speeds around 1/120th and the lighting was crappy and overcast. So, it it camera shake or soft lighting or a cheap non-stabilized lens?

Wow... I've been busy, but not with pictures

I've been busy doing other things apparently. After my last round of rejections at Alamy its been almost a month since I submitted new pictures. I went to the zoo with my wife and son and got some more pictures there that I am submitting to Alamy and PhotoShelter today. I got my first lightbox add at PhotoShelter the other day but nothing has come of it so far. I really prefer Alamy's stats because you know which images are hitting on which keywords and which are actually being looked at.

One thing is for certain, it takes a lot of work, time and opportunity to get decent pictures. I wish I had more of all of the above as well as some nicer equipment. It's still a fun process and having an early success like I did last month gets me in an irrational mindset. I already sold one, so they should be flying off the shelves right? I realize though that this is an unreasonable expectation since overall my catalog is still really small.

Who wants to come model for me? Who wants to give me free equipment? I promise to right good reviews like "This new Canon 1ds is super!".

It finally happened, I'm a "pro"

Well, it happened, and rather quickly all things considered. I got my first sale! I sold a picture of Travis Pastrana that I took at the Oregon Trail Rally. Before you ask (or think), yes it was sold under editorial license so I didn't need a model release.

Here's the picture:



Here's the link to it at Alamy.

That's the nice thing about stock. I've been a little busy and a havevn't put up any new pictures in a week or two but the pictures are still out there. One even sold itself. June will only be my first full month on Alamy as well. Here's hoping I can keep the streak going and get some more quality up there!

Rejections Rejections

Well, I had a ton more pics rejected at PhotoShelter. This is the same series that got me rejections at Alamy. I'm wondering if my self editing skills are lacking.

Perhaps its my post-processing? There's a book on processing RAW files that I have on my Amazon wish list - Art of RAW Conversion: How to Produce Art-Quality Photos with Adobe Photoshop CS2 and Leading RAW Converters. I understand the very basics of the histogram and mainly I work on my processing to keep things from being to over or underexposed and have proper color correction. I'm probably missing a few tricks that could really help.

Its gotten a little frustrating but oh well.