Apparently, this is where my photography comes from

tulip_town-114
Originally uploaded by punkd0rk

Well, PhotoShelter just finished another batch review of my uploads. Results, 4 in, 16 rejected. Ouch. Granted, some, like the one on the right here are a little, well, bla. I thought it was an interesting little outhouse, didn't really have a better way to capture it. I need to start looking at things a little differently.

I really wish we could get something other than gray skies out here in Washington. I noticed all of my pictures rejected from the Tulip festival included some of the sky which was trademark Washington gray. I got an idea for a shot today at work. I'll try it out tonight and if I like the results I'll send it up the wire. Problem is, if I want to get anything sold, I'll do better with more shots. More shots are a bit of a problem with nothing but GRAY SKIES. Can I have some spring yet, please?

On a side note, my profile is now into the double-digits with a grand total of 12!

A shopping wish list

I think every photographer is always hungering for another piece of gear. I'd love a Canon 1Ds body. I won't be getting one of those any time soon unless all the sudden I have a massive amount of sales on PhotoShelter. However I also have a reasonable shortish term wish lish:

1. I want at least three flashes. I've got a Sunpak PZ40X. I have a used Canon 540EZ in the mail (picked it up for $50 shipped off Craigslist). I'd love another, perhaps with built in optical slave like the Nikon SB-28.
2. Enough wireless recievers to control all of my flashes. Since I'm on a budget I go with the Cactus V2 triggers commonly referred to as Poverty Wizards on the Strobist Flickr group. While not having the reliability or range (without hacking) of Pocket Wizards, they come in at about 1/10th the cost or about $30 a set or $20 for a single receiver. A popular strobist shop, Midwest Photo Exchange carries them. I've got my first set and they work great for me, but I don't push the range, yet.
3. I posted before discussing a Graduated Neutral Density filter. I'd love one of those for when the sky is just too bright. Yes, believe it or not, we do get bright skies in Seattle.
4. A Canon "nifty fifty" 50mm 1.8 prime lens. Apparently, these things rock, especially when coupled with the smaller sensor in the "cheap" digital cameras. The 1.6x conversion gives them an 80mm equivalency which is supposed to be great for portrature. Not to mention that maximum (or is it minimum?) aperture is insane at the price range and the lens is made by Canon and sells for under $100. I'd be interested to see what working with a prime lens does for my shooting too.
5. A mess of PVC and some fabric for my own backgrounds and light modifiers. For more info see the "Tinker Tubes" notebook and the original Strobist post that introduced me to this idea in the first place.

Not too bad of a wishlist I say. Probably less than $300 all said and done. For my pie in the sky wishlist... I don't even know enough about high end gear. I would like a nice image stabilization lens though. So if you have an extra you're gonna throw out, gimme a buzz.

Edit: I forgot, I also want a remote shutter release for my camera. Adorama has one for $19.95 shipped or I can snag one off ebay for a few bucks less.

It's a botanical weekend

mt_si_nursery-5
Originally uploaded by punkd0rk

So Saturday was the tulip festival. Sunday was the trip to the Nursery at Mt. Si. We picked up a bunch of flowers and veggies for our Pea Patch (which will become another one of my photo projects).

Everyone loves to take pictures of flowers. Stock sites have tons of them. The trick is apparently to make sure to know a little bit more about it than "pretty orange flower". For instance, this flower is an... awww crap I don't know. Not to mention, while nice to look at, the composition isn't great. One flower, dead center, lots of empty room on the sides. The lens I was using isn't great for macro so I couldn't get any closer. That means this pic stays in my personal collection and every once in a while I can go... "ooh pretty flower" and then I'm happy.

That's something I try to remember, while it's great if I can sell some pictures, its nice too for me to capture our experiences. Occasionally I have to put down the camera and participate too.

Oh yeah, light

tulip_town-41
Originally uploaded by punkd0rk

So yesterday my wife and I headed up to Skagit Valley for the annual tulip festival. First thing I have to say is I hate Everett. We got stuck in stop and go traffic no less than three times. This is about noon on a weekend day. This makes a 90 minute trip approach two hours. We then get stuck in traffic just getting off the freeway in Mount Vernon. Okay, so that is to be expected, small town, big event and all. We stop, grab lunch and then on to the tulips!!

We went to Tulip Town. There are several gardens in the area and most of them charge a small admission fee. Tulip Town was great, $5, cash only. Oh, no cash? One of you can go in and use our ATM, enjoy the $3.50 service charge!!

So we make it in and it is just crowded, as heck. It feels like high school again with large groups of people just standing in the middle of walkways talking to each other. We push through and make it out to the tulips. What then happened was a huge surprise. There were a ton of beautiful tulips, but the overall planted area seemed rather small. I would estimate an acre perhaps. And the people! My god, they were everywhere, standing in the tulips as the signs clearly said not to. Picking tulips as the signs clearly said not to. Getting in each others way and in general just milling about like a herd of cattle.

Thus began my problem. I was there to take pictures of flowers, not people. I spent the next hour or two carefully trying to compose my shots to keep people out of the majority, while not taking so long as to drive my wife nuts (she was carrying the baby afterall). What seemed like a small amount of flowers ended up taking quite a while to go through so in the end, it wasn't a bad place. Next year however, we'll go during a weekeday.

Now, back to light. I get home and download the ~150 pictures from my camera and start processing them (I shoot only in raw now for the added tweaking ability). I notice that I had some interesting light in a lot of the pictures. Not interesting good, or interesting bad, just a little different. Perhaps not the most flattering light. I realized I got so overwhelmed by the crowds and composition and keeping people out of my pictures that I totally ignored what the light was actually doing. It's rather easy to lose focus in this setting, the flowers are amazing and ever shot looks good, I mean, it's filled with flowers! To really take it above and beyond though I wish I would've paid a bit more attention to my lighting and shooting angles, I could've had a lot better results.

Playing with fire

glass_float_trial_and_error
Originally uploaded by punkd0rk

Here's a little shot I've been working on in practice and in my mind for a while. We picked up these glass fishing floats in Lincoln City, OR during a vacation one year. Looking at some of the other cool things people have done with lighting beer bottles, etc., I thought this would be a perfect subject.

After several different shoots I'm starting to get some very interesting results. Some neat colors and textures are really starting to show. I think the trick on this on though is to get rid of the super bright highlight caused by the flash firing directly back at the camera. I tried a little post processing but nothing would reasonably clean that up.

The trick I believe will be to light this thing from below so the flash highlight is straight out the top. I've seen it done with a lot of other objects and the effect is just awesome. If it could make a relatively homogeneous bottle of corona look amazing then it should make this float absolutely pop.

Check back soon and I'll probably have gotten this thing lit the way I really want to see it.

The approvals keep pouring in

License this picture at PhotoShelter.

I just got five more pictures up at PhotoShelter. It actually counts as a total of three since they count stacks as a single photo and this submission included two stacks. That brings my total up to 9 whopping pictures! I'll keep on submitting and maybe some day end up with a sale.

From all accounts there are three areas to focus on, quality, quantity and niche. No matter your quantity, you're not going to sell without quality as well. Niche is where things can really happen. If you can find a corner of the market that is underrepresented, you can make yourself and your clients very happy. Unfortunately, I doubt my 9 pictures are going to be diverse enough to help me find that niche, so, (you've heard it before) I'll keep submitting.

Now for a brief bit on stacks, I love 'em. In case you don't know what they're for, stacks are for when you have multiple, related angles of a similar subject. We all know utter junk and our bad photos when we see them, but maybe you have a shot narrowed down to 2-3 frames and you're not sure which is best. You might like shot 1 but shot 2 might give the designer who buys your picture more room to work. So you can take your best couple shots and drop them in a stack which indicates multiple related views. This keeps from browsing stock and seeing 50 related shots by one photographer with little variation while still allowing an interested designer access to angles that might work better for them. PhotoShelter allows these but appears to want them used within reason, i.e. not every photo you submit should be a stack. We'll see how things go.

Laying the foundation

construction-1
Originally uploaded by punkd0rk

So I continue to upload new pictures to PhotoShelter. One thing I realize is that is takes a fair amount of time to generate a lot of pictures. I spent maybe 20 minutes after work at a local construction site and I came away with basically 4 new shots, empty graded lot, lot with foundation, earth moving equipment and a shot of the sun behind a storm cloud (now that's original).

PhotoShelter has two main categories, creative and news. I submitted the construction shots as both since they could be used to depict home construction issues, etc.

We'll see how thins go. Meanwhile, I'll just keep shooting.

Strobist gets more attention

Here's a fun post. I'm going to post a link to a blog referencing an article. The blog entry and article are about David Hobby of Strobist fame. The sum of it is USA Today printed a profile of him today. I'm glad to hear he's getting all that publicity. His work is great and the fact that he shares so much is awesome. It mentions he might go back to work at the Baltimore Sun and that if he does he'd probably slow down on blog posting. Selfishly, I hope that doesn't happen. But everyone has to do what's right for them.

Keep up the good work David!

Here's the full article.

Rejections and approvals at PhotoShelter

Well, I got an update from PhotoShelter. A few more pictures were approved and a several more were declined. Now everyone says, don't take rejections personally. I completely understand and agree. As a an amateur I welcome any feedback I get.

Here's my gripe with PhotoShelter, for the most part you get no explanation. I don't expect them to make me the world's best photographer, I don't expect feedback of "overexposed 1/2 stop, should've moved subject to lower 1/3 of frame and set whitebalance to 4357K". What would be nice would be simple categories such as "technical issues, not marketable, or complete crap". That would be great in helping me target my materials for PhotoShelter. The more experience I get, the more I'll be able to guess at what is/isn't on target. When push comes to shove its always a subjective call too so again, I don't take it personally.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, the inset picture, declined.

Focus!!

So I have started taking my camera with me whenever I leave the house, in case I see anything interesting to photograph for myself or PhotoShelter.

Today I came across some rhododendrons (man that's a fun word to spell) in a local parking lot. What caught my eye first was a neat bush with red and green leaves. I took a bunch of pictures and came away with a few lessons learned.

1. I need a graduated neutral density filter man those skies were bright.


2. In hindsight, my Strobist side says I could've balanced the sky with a well placed flash or two.


3. Autofocus can't always be counted on.

First, I realized I could've used some light stands and strobes to bring the plants up to a level to match the sky or better work with it. But I didn't have my flash with me and I currently only have one. I do have my eye on a used SB-28 though. I can't wait to try some of those techniques. It would be nice to have more control over the exposure of the sky. A GND filter would be an alternate solution and in some cases, more flexible, however, I don't currently have one of those either.

As far as autofocus is concerned, about 10 pictures of the red and green bush and not a single one in focus. Sometimes I wish manual focus was a more reasonable solution for my Rebel XT.

Never count on the weather

So today we happened to be in downtown Seattle for Baby Loves Disco (don't ask). There were a couple of old buildings that looked interesting but I figured, we're in a rush, lets go ahead and get inside. Sure enough, when we come out, its raining (go figure, rain in Seattle). We'll I risked life and camera and snapped of a few frames. The camera is still in the car because we were out too late so I'll check the shots out tomorrow. I know the sky will be a lot more boring without the clouds that were there before we went in.

On a side note, I guess there is really no point to shopping in brick and mortar stores anymore. I went to a used camera store in search of a Nikon SB24 speedlight. Well, I found one, for only $199!! Thats ebay times about 2.5. So I'll just head over to KEH and pick one up. I've already tried several local pawn shops and I'm just getting too antsy to wait any longer.

Dear lord, the global warming is upon us...

snow0005
Originally uploaded by punkd0rk

April 18th and we're getting snow outside Seattle. This certainly has been an interesting year for weather. This shot shows another Strobist philosophy, don't let good light ruin a photo. If you actually read that post I just linked you'll realize the photo he's talking about might be a tad more important than a picture of a dog in the snow.

However, to our family, this is an important photo, our dogs love the snow. We like to see them in the snow. Plus, it's cold outside and I wasn't about to run outside and set up a light stand and strobe. I'd rather have a couple quick shots with hard light on the camera than no shots because there wasn't "good light". So I threw the flash on, cracked the back door and took a couple of quick snapshots.

To Micro or not to Micro

So I've done a little digging recently and I'm getting concerned about the microstock is destroying the photography world debate. There is a post from 2006 at Strobist that takes one look at it. I've seen other discussion in forums.

Three days into this blog and I'm already taking action. I'd rather have one or two sales through PhotoShelter and be taking photos that interest me than be wedged into an uninteresting corner by the confinement of microstock.

What about my pictures already out there? I guess I'll let the few that are there, sit. Meanwhile, I'll focus my new shooting on technique, styles and subjects that interest me. If I were already making thousands a month on microstock, it might be a hard call. But for now, I'd rather have fun and explore than bring in an extra $10/month.

So what are my feelings on the microstock industry overall? Well, its just likes what has happened in many other businesses. It's basically outsourcing/off-shoring of photographers. Not convenient for those who had been enjoying the stable market, but for those willing to adapt and work at it, there shouldn't be a ton of concern.

Fighting "perfection"

telephone pole anchor
Originally uploaded by punkd0rk

It seems that I'm attempting to reach two opposite photography goals simultaneously.

First, I'm working on my microstock skills. This means ABSOLUTELY NO NOISE. Set your camera to ISO 100. Get LOTS of light. Shoot it bland, no feeling or emotion that isn't marketable to a business man please. "Perfect" exposure. No shadows, shadows are the devil. Extreme depth of field, no brokh.

Secondly, I'm trying to work things from the Strobist angle. This means, play with light. Have fun. Shoot organically. Drop the ISO to help you balance the ambient light. Blow out highlight? No problem as long as you meant for it to happen. What's in the shadow is as important as what's illuminated. Imperfect white balance? Okay, again, as long as it's intentional.

So I present to you this picture. A perfect example of my what in the hell is going on style. First, I just like looking at everyday objects from a different point of view. This is taken just outside a parking lot at Target in Issaquah. Its an anchor for a telephone pole. I took this thinking about things from a stock photography mindset. But oh no, look in the background, the sky is Seattle Gray(tm). That's not acceptable, all sky must be blue blue BLUE! Also, what will this sell? I guess it could represent an anchor or strength, but really, who would recognize it?

So the challenge for myself is to shoot what I want, how I want. If I want to shoot stock, then fine, work within the rigid standards. There is nothing wrong with building up my technical skill. If I want to shoot something interesting, then by all means, fast and loose. If I want to shoot my son, do whatever it takes to get the shot. Time's to precious to waste trying to get everything right.

I do find I can throw up a light stand and flash up really quickly and get some decent light to give me better depth of field and shutter speeds and start shooting in less than 3 minutes. This is where practice comes in. Almost every night I find myself coming home and shooting 10 - 100 frames of my son. If for no other reason than to experiment.

As everyone says, they grow up so fast. At least with the number of pictures I'm taking we can look back and see it all happen.

Another approval, this one has me excited - Photshelter

This site is definitely a lot more interesting to me. You can see the start of my portfolio. What I really like is that they are primarily a site geared towards photographers. They don't have the same stringent style standards that the microstock sites have. You can sell art there whereas most photographs that aren't cookie cutter are rejected by microstock sites.

The pricing structure is much higher, so without very cool photos I don't expect to make a ton. But when one picture will sell for $55 at its lowest price, you don't need a ton of volume for things to become significant.

Things are happening, sort of...

I just cheked in on SnapVillage and they finally approved some of my photos. They were in the queue almost two weeks. From all of their communication they are really gearing up for a big launch so hopefully they'll speed up soon. I'm still looking for a way to link to my portfolio there.

Finally approvals from Dreamstime

Well, I got my first images accepted at Dreamstime. So far they've been the pickiest that have actually accepted any of my photos. Crestock still hasn't accepted anything of mine. We'll see if that changes.

In honor of my first uploads I'll be dropping this Dreamstime counter in the right column of my blog. It links directly to my portfolio at Dreamstime.

Flash doggies

Flash doggies
Originally uploaded by punkd0rk

Two things I experienced during this "shoot". Hard light and fall off. Basic principles are the harder the light, the sharper the shadows and the closer the light to the subject vs light to background, the quicker you'll get fall off. There just wasn't enough ambient light to get a decent balanced exposure on anything higher than maybe iso 800 which a huge aperture. Next time I can just move the flash back, throw on an umbrella and get light everywhere. If only I had another flash. Well, somebody go buy some of my pictures!

Misty Falls

snoqualmie falls 1
Originally uploaded by punkd0rk

I don't know if there's anything more overexposed on the microstock sites than waterfalls. But hey, I have one less than five minutes away from my house so I ran by this morning and took a few shots. You can see from the lighting that I'm dealing with overcast skies. Hopefully I can stop by on a sunny day soon and even catch a rainbow. Anything to help it stand out. I also plan to drive down to the bottom of the falls and see what I can grab as well as bring a tripod to get some long exposure, smooth water shots.

Third time's the charm?

iStockPhoto is another one of those sites who has an approval process. Submit three pictures, if they pass, you're in. They differ a bit from Shutterstock after that. If only one of your shots is accepted then next time around (after a one week wait) you have to submit two shots. Throw your next set at them and then another might be approved and then you wait another cycle and hopefully your third submission is your last. If you're lucky and or have better pictures to start with then you can easily end up accepted all at once. Sine iStockPhoto seems to be one of the biggest earners you definitely want to get in. In the long run, stricter entry policy should mean better quality photos which should mean better traffic to the site from serious buyers. We'll see.

For the examples of what was and wasn't accepted so far, look below.


Rejected for lighting. The lights are too bright and the shadows too dark. Hindsight being 20/20 this is a no brainer. I do love the look of the geckos though.


Rejected due to artifacting. I think this was a nice way of rejecting rather than saying that I should leave the vacation snapshot at home.


This one was approved. Looking back I'm a little surprised as the composition and lighting are only so so.

Round two.


Rejected, lighting composition. Interesting technique using a snoot. I learned about snoots from Strobist. However, not really stock photo styling.


Approved.

Now I'm waiting for round three. 47 hours to go.

10 swings, 8 strikes at Shutterstock

Shutterstock has a policy that before you can submit as much as you want, you must become an approved submitter. This process involves submitting your "top 10" pictures for review. In order to be approved, 7 of 10 need to be accepted. If you fail, you're on time out for 30 days. I bit the bullet and through 10 at them today (I don't really have a large portfolio of stock work as of yet) and got turned down. Here's what I submitted and their reasons for refusal:


Poor lighting. This photograph was accepted by 123RF and Fotolia. Declined at Crestock, out of focus (depth of field I think).


Poor lighting. Accepted at 123RF. Declined at Crestock, out of focus (depth of field I think).


Poor lighting. Accepted at 123RF. Declined at Crestock, out of focus (depth of field I think) and sharp shadows.


Composition/Limited Comerical Value. Accepted at 123RF and iStockPhoto. Declined at Crestock, Limited Commercial Value.


Accepted. Also accepted at Fotolia and 123RF. Declined at Crestock, sharp shadows.


Potential trademark or copywright infringement. Declined at Crestock, out of focus (depth of field I think) and sharp shadows.


Potential trademark or copywright infringement. Accepted at 123RF. Declined at Crestock, out of focus (depth of field I think).


Accepted. Declined at 123RF and Fotolia for lighting. Declined at Crestock, out of focus (depth of field I think). Declined at Dreamstime for lighting and "lack of concept" (its an image of a Kokopelli, what other concept do you need?) I need to re-shoot this guy with better lighting and the camera on a tripod. He's got sharp edges and is very reflective so it's challenging.


Focus. Accepted at Fotolia, declined for lighting at 123RF. Declined at Crestock, out of focus (depth of field I think).


Composition/Limited Commercial Value. Approved at iStockPhoto. Declined at Crestock, doesn't meet their creative standards (snapshot I suppose).

From this you can see there is quite a bit of varience of what is considered acceptable at different agencies. Standards will also vary from one reviewer to another. I'm still waiting to hear back from other agencies and I'll update this post when I get results

Another thing you might've picked up from this post is how limited my current stock photography skills and portfolio currently are. Hopefully, by the time another 30 days rolls around I should be into Shutterstock with no problem.

To accept or not to accept

anubis on white
Originally uploaded by punkd0rk

So I made a DIY table top studio. Actually, it was a big, clear sided storage bin. And I tried my hand at some "isolated" shots. I guess the idea behind these shots are that the buyer can easily crop the white area and drop the picture into their product as appropriate.

This statue of Anubis is one of the first I took. Just to prove how fickle the sites are, Fotolia turned it down and 123RF approved it. It was another of my shot down pictures from Shutterstock.

Microstock Photography

santuko
Originally uploaded by punkd0rk

There's already a couple other microstock blogs out there. Not gonna try and compete with them either. What I am going to do is just track my own progress. For example. This shot was playing around with specular highlights ala strobist and an attempt at stock photography.

As of this writing, this image, which I do consider a little flat and has a bit too shallow a depth of field, has been accepted at 123RF. Fotolia has turned it down, it didn't make it for my first submission at Shutterstock and the other sites are having a much slower review cycle so it's still pending at several others.

Anyway, I'm not hoping to strike it rich with microstock, but it'd be interesting if I could pull in a few hundred dollars a month. I'll track my progress here.

So it starts...

I'm starting a blog. I've already done this sort of thing, erraticly, on my "personal" site, http://www.punkdork.net. I'm really doing this for myself to follow my own progress as I attempt to become a somewhat competent photographer.

Two things that have really piqued my interest in photography are my son, Carter and Strobist. Strobist is a website all about lighting and photography written by David Hobby. He's got an amazing writting style that has really helped me to understand the techniques and benefits to getting the flash off the camera.

There's so much a flash can add to a picture but when its sitting on top of the camera typically everything ends up flat, burned out and red-eyed. I'm not going to try and duplicate the lessons and information he has on his site, I'd be wasting my time (and yours if anyone reads this). What I will do is log my own experiences as I learn through reading and playing around with my camera.