New photos up at PhotoShelter

After a slow period I have managed to get some new photos uploaded at PhotoShelter. These are from a trip to the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, WA. Click on the pictures to be taken to their pages at PhotoShelter.

Here you can see two flamingos making the famous heart shape with their heads. As far as I could tell they were actually two males fighting as opposed to lovers.


Here I presume is a female flamingo tending to her nest. There were several nests in the enclosure.


This giraffe was not too camera shy and stared right back at the camera.


Here's a pretty nice statue of a lion. Unfortunately the live lions were a little bit more reclusive and just laid in the grass.

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!