PhotoShelter more picky?

Or am I just a poor self editor? 2 of 8 pictures accepted yesterday. Not a great run. Again, I don't take it personally. However, I don't like wasting their or my time. I really wish they had a subject/technical checkbox for rejections so I could figure out why things were rejected and better self edit for their collection.

That's where the issue is. They have something in mind for their collection, a certain feel. They want "pictures of real life". The quote is something like that. Anway, one of their editor's choice is a father sitting on the messy floor of an apartment changing a diaper. Its almost a snapshot (who am I kidding, I can't tell that piece of art from a snapshot). When we were out at the Tulip festival I took a picture of my wife holding my 6mo son while he grabbed a tulip. Cute picture, real life. To me it had more composure than a snapshot without being posed. It was rejected.

So did I miss the ball technically? Did they hate the composure? Or do I not get the "real life"?

Oh well, as I keep saying. Just gotta take more pictures.

Stock whiners

Something I've noticed in the forums on a lot of stock photo sites. Whiny photographers. There's a few typical complainers.

There's the guy with 4 pictures online for OVER A WEEK who hasn't had a single sale yet!!!!?!?! Don't mention that all four pictures are of the same subject, his cat.

Then there is the PROFESSIONAL Photographer. He's the one convinced that cheap DSLRs are going to put him out of business. Hey, if all you have is your equipment, you've been overcharging your clients. There should be some skill, technique and experience you have that Joe Schmoe with his Rebel XT can't match.

Last is the microstocker alarmist/gloater. Very closely related to the above. These are the people convinced that anyone with a high megapixel digicam is going to put them out of a job. They also gloat heavily when anything bad happens to a microstock agency (see Lucky Oliver).

Lastly are the ones who complain about editors. Listen, the deal is, if your image is declined, the particular editor feels it doesn't meet a technical or subject matter bar and its not marketable. If the image is so great, sell it yourself.

Granted, I'm doing this part time and my livelihood is not dependent on this. However, I've also yet to make a sale so I don't see how I'm digging into their profits.

Got my first hit at alamy, no sales yet...

Well, I was checking my "Alamy Measures" and I got my first views and zooms on Alamy yesterday. A "view" as termed by Alamy is when one of your thumbnails shows up in search results. A "zoom" is when one of your thumbnails is clicked on.

Not bad, as of yesterday I only had about 20 pictures online. I've got over 40 today so I'll keep my fingers crossed.

One quick note about Alamy. I HATE their image tagging setup, if you accidently click the wrong link you lose all your unsaved data. I really need to get ITPC (I think that's the acronym) worked into my workflow.

Alamy's rocking and rolling

Alamy is certainly different than PhotoShelter. For one, they are better known and currently have stronger sales stats. Secondly, they are not an edited collection. They have quality standards that must be met but they don't edit for content. After your initial submission is approved, consecutive submissions are only spot checked (if the spot check fails, the whole batch is rejected).

This has allowed me to toss a lot of images up rather quickly in comparison to the much slower review cycle at PhotoShelter. This is both a good and a bad thing. If I just toss up noise, I'm diluting the quality of Alamy's catalog and its value to its customers. On the other hand, if I think a particular image is marketable and PhotoShelter disagrees I have another avenue to sell on. Neither site requires exclusivity so the only real investment is time.

Time time time. I really need to crack down on this. I have all of my images up on a server. However I currently do a lot of editing via a laptop that is joined to my work domain. I have a domain at home but that is just becoming an administrative nightmare. I keep intending to install a Windows Home Server instead and use Lightroom to catalog ALL of my images from a share hosted on the server. If I put all the relative data into the tags on the images I could save a lot of time on processing accepted uploads. Man I hope I can see some success at stock photography. Just enough to let my wife stay at home and take care of our son. Two working adults is well and great before kids, but those boogers take a lot of time and money.

Alamy says yes

Well, Alamy accepted my submissions so now I get to upload to them as well. I'm feeling better about my self-editing capabilities now. I submitted 4 pictures to Alamy and all 4 were accepted.

When populated, my gallery will be available here. The 4 images I applied with should be available there within 24 hours.

Now I get to learn a new agency!

Breaking news..

My first Breaking News submission has been process at PhotoShelter and the following pictures were accepted from the 2008 Oregon Trail Rally.

Here a car is worked on at the service park held in Vernonia, OR.


A fan-favorite Jamie "SubieGal" Thomas navigates a water splash at a spectator stage.


The winner of the Oregon Trail Rally '08, Travis Pastrana, talks to the press on Saturday morning at the Parc Expose.


Later, Travis Pastrana can be seen blasting through a water splash to the delight of spectators.


The team Rockstar cars wait following service to continue the competition.


A vintage Saab navigates a corner and heads to the water splash.


The youngest driver at the event, Kyle Sarasin, is only 18.

Three more pictures accepted

Just a few pictures of some P.O. Boxes from the Issaquah post office. As usual, click on the pictures to see them at PhotoShelter.

The one that got away...

Normally its about fishing. This time its about photography. I was out at the Oregon Trail Rally this weekend (I'll post some pictures once I get some stuff over to PhotoShelter) and I saw a shot I desperately wanted.

I was in Vernonia, OR to take a look at the service. There's a Kwik-E-Mart in town that probably does more business on the Oregon Trail weekend than in any other month of the year, spectators and competitors stop in for cold drinks and fried food that has probably been sitting under a heat lamp for far too long. I ordered a bean and cheese burrito and ended up with a BBQ meat burrito (who thought that was a good idea). I sat down to eat it while my dad used the restroom.

As a budding photographer, I'm always looking around evaluating everything to see if it would make a good shot. Honestly, I'm probably missing the good ones and taking the cookie cutter shots. I digress. A large man, most likely a local sits down at a table across from me. He's heavyset, tall, and has a bushy salt and pepper beard. That's just the start, he's wearing overalls and aviator glasses, and a breathe right strip (I thought those were for sleeping, but for him, a fashion accessory). He also proudly wore a headband, brand name Everlast, and the logo was upside down. He then proceded to eat a corndog with great enthusiasm. It was beautiful.

I couldn't think of a way to pull out my camera and take the picture without drawing his attention to me. I was right in front of him. I also thought that basically, I found his appearence amusing, not really a good thing to say when directly asking him for permission either. I couldn't find a way to respectfully get the shot so, unfortunately, I had to let that one go.

Back that thing up!!!

I was thinking this morning about my backup solution and I figured it'd be a good thing to write about here. Using a second/external hard drive or DVDs is all well and good, but it doesn't really offer as much protection as one needs. In case of a fire, likely everything is gone. Thats where using an Internet backup solution is a big win. Its already located "off-site" so you don't have to worry about any problems you have locally

I use http://www.idrive.com. For $4.95/month they offer "unlimited" personal backup space. Fine print says 150GB = unlimited. Which is interesting because when I checked my account, I'm up to 190GB. Yes, it takes a while to upload that much, even over broadband but the piece of mind is worth it. Not to mention they offer a few things that most local backups don't.

1. They actually back up your data. Lets face it, most of us are lazy about backups. With this service, install the software, configure it and let it go.
2. Multiple versions. They perform differential and incremental backups. What does this mean to you? Say you're working on a letter or a book. Something you're working on for several days. You make a bunch of changes, save it and then realize, no, this is crap, I want to go to last week's version. Connect to the software and download last week's version. If I remember correctly they either keep 30 days or 30 versions, I forget which.
3. Off-site, which I already touched on.

There are many players in the online backup game, do some research, find the one you like and go with it. In the long run it is not that expensive and the cost is well worth the time you will save if you ever have to use the restore option.

Hidden bonuses of cheap flashes

So a quick update on the flashes I got. I couldn't salvage the 540EZ so I sold it on ebay. I got about $13. That put me at under $40 for my 430EZ. Not a bad deal.

The other night I wanted to take a couple quick shots with my camera and my house is lit like a cave so I grabbed my 430. I've got a Sunpak P40Z but that thing doesn't fire consistently. I need to send it in for warranty.

Back to the 430. Everyone says oh no, its not ETTL, won't work on digital, yada yada. This is partially true. For those not in the know, ETTL is an automated mode of flash to make sure you get the "right" exposure. Exactly what is "right" is up to the camera so results may vary and may not be what you want. Since my P40Z has been so unreliable I never use it in ETTL mode any more, based on that I went with the 430 since it fires every time (so far).

Well, I turned it on and my camera. Then I framed my shot (probably my son). I heard something, sure enough, the zoom motor in the flash was synched with my lens... cool! I pressed the autofocus and I noticed red dots on my son. The focus assist lights work too! So the only thing I'm missing is ETTL which I don't always want in the first place. All of the other advanced features on the flash worked fine. This wasn't something I'd heard much of when people used these old flashes on new cameras and of course I was using a Canon flash on a Canon body. YMMV with other brand bodies and flashes.

Eggs and baskets

As the saying goes, you shouldn't put all of your eggs in one basket. Well, that's what I'm doing right now with PhotoShelter. Not to mention its a growing basket and they're still working on getting the word out.

Now I know I don't have a ton of stock quality pictures available yet. Still, I believe I should investigate another avenue for sales. Following this line of thinking I have applied today at Alamy.

Alamy has some interesting requirements. The most interesting is that they want the images that you submit to be 48MB+ when uncompressed. Well my Rebel XT is a 10MP camera, you can see a disparity there. Here's where it gets strange, they have no problem with you resampling, all they care about is the quality in the end result.

So I picked four and upsized them and shot them up to Alamy. Now it's time to sit and wait through another approval process.

More images accepted

I just got an email from PhotoShelter, six more images accepted. Seven declined. That still should raise my acceptance rate. It also gets me over my next threshold. I hit 20 pictures! Still, that's not much in a field of thousands. What is it I always say? Oh yeah, gotta keep shooting.

So what made the cut? Click on the pictures to see them on PhotoShelter.

What didn't make the cut? Well, my little ducky friend below, some pictures I took of unlit fireworks (I think they didn't like the tablecloth I used as a backdrop, it had wrinkles). I'll try reshooting them on white and see what happens. A picture of my son grabbing a flower. Also declined were a variation or two of the shots above.

The kindness of strangers, the perils of shipping

Last week I was poking around Craigslist looking for some flashes to augment my current one flash. I stumbled across a pair of Nikon SB-28s for $35 each. I know I shoot Canon but since these would be off camera, the brand doesn't matter. If you follow Strobist at all and have been out to ebay, those things normally go for around $100. I emailed the person, they were in the Spokane area, to see if she'd be willing to ship. Unfortunately I was too late, they were snapped up by locals.

So I continued my search. A few days later I found a gentleman in Oregon selling an old film Canon with a 540EZ Speedlite. I shot him an email and no one was interested and they were still for sale. He was asking $50 for the set. I asked him if he'd take $50 shipped for just the flash and he accepted. We discussed what I was after as he had some other equipment. I sent him the money and began the wait.

Saturday was the glorious day. I opened the mailbox and saw the key to the parcel mailbox. Woo hoo! I grabbed the box. It was quite large for only having a single flash in it. I went inside and immeadiately tore it open. Then I was confused. I found the flash. I also found a book on lighting for products. There was another item too... it turned out to be a 430EZ Speedlite. I got two flashes and a book for $50. That's an amazing deal. The flashes showed some wear on their cases but otherwise looked great. LCDs intact, etc.

I grabbed some batteries and tossed them into the flashes to test them. The 430 fired off, no problem, the zoom motor worked, everything was great. I grabbed the 540, inserted the batteries. Nothing, no dice, the flash wouldn't even power up. This is the one that's supposed to be working according to the Craigslist add. Damn! I tried the batteries a few more times, no dice, I did research online. I just couldn't seem to get it to power up.

So now I have a 430EZ that works great and a failed 540EZ. I emailed the guy who sold them to me. Hopefully he insured the package or there is some trick to this older flash to get it going. However, I don't feel ripped off, why would this guy send me a second, working flash if he was trying to dump crap on me, and why include the book. A local used camera shop has 430EZs for ~$50 so if I can get the 540 working too I made out like a bandit. We'll see what happens.

Batting .500 for the day

Another day and more approvals at PhotoShelter. This time I had a 50/50 approval rating. I took a couple pictures of some lots prepped for new home construction. One of my rejected shots had a big puddle that was reflecting the sky. I wonder if they didn't like it or if they just didn't consider it as good as these and didn't want to saturate the search with all the same style image, just different views. Of particular interest to me is that I finally got some pictures accepted with non-blue skies. Post-processing on these was a pain, it was hard to determine exactly how to set things. Perhaps next time around I'll try doing some HDR images to keep detail on and above ground or maybe I'll finally pony up for a GND filter.

If you're interested on licensing these images, click on them to go to their pages on PhotoShelter.

So what was accepted yesterday

Three shots from Tulip Town when we visited the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. Of note is the fact that I had uploaded more. Not a single picture that included other people or ANY horizon/sky was accepted.

Here are the shots. Clicking on them will take you to their pages on PhotoShelter.

The last picture was taken here in Issaquah. This is from a rails to trails conversion just down the street from my office.