Moving on

I'll soon be moving my blog to WordPress, and giving it a new name "Jan's Words and Pictures". Of course, it will primarily be about writing and photography, but I'll still address travel, knitting, cooking and food as well. It's just time to use something that will get my name out there more. See you over there!

Stock...not

So, I've gotten a flurry of rejections from Bigstock and Fotolia. I think it's time I go back to the drawing board and figure out where I'm going wrong with these pictures. Some are out of focus, others are poorly exposed, and the one reason for rejection I get most of all is "limited value for stock". This is so much harder than I thought it would be, and now it's become a vendetta. I'm determined to make this happen, so I will do what I can to get this off the ground.

First, I'll take pictures every day. Lots of them, and see if I can get the controls of my camera under my command. Second, I'll study everything I need to about the technical aspects of photography, and relearn then as much as I need to. Third, I'll keep studying the stock websites and understand what they accept. It's about all I can do at this point.

So...does this look like a stock picture or not?



Apparently, not. But it's still lovely.

Another article done...

I've finished another romantic travel article for Examiner.com, this one is on skating on Evergreen Lake for a date with your significant other. At some point, I think I'd like to try to move to being a national Examiner, which would give me more to write about.

Here's the picture I used for the article:



I'll post the article through hyperlink on Facebook, once it's been approved. Probably on both the Travel Writer's page as well as my own. Hopefully someone will read it!

Also, I have to get cracking on taking more pictures. I suppose that's something I can do today, since I'm home with N who is sick. Having pictures to submit to stock would be a good thing, I think. :)

Today's the day...

I'm hoping to become a paid photographer. With stock, yes, but now I'm thinking about doing portraits as well. I have some good equipment for taking portraits, such as some rolls of muslin backdrop, studio lighting units and a good solid tripod. I've also thought about doing real estate photography, something I learned about one of the AWAI workshop recordings. It sounds like something that is doable, makes decent money and doesn't require dealing with difficult people.

Until then, my younger daughter N is a willing model, as shown by the portrait I did below:



This is supposed to be one where I'm demonstrating a rainy day. Kind of hard to do that when there's still a foot of snow on the ground, and our last rainy day was back in October. Shooting "rain" shots was difficult, and this was probably the best one out of the bunch. Oh well, you do what you can...

Up on the mountain

We're skiing today at A-Basin - or, more accurately, I skied this morning, R is skiing now because he likely didn't want to spend too much on two lift tickets. So we split the day. Even though i'm getting work done, I wished I could've gone with him, the girls and our friends. It's kind of a bummer being here stuck in the lodge (with really poor wi-fi connections and no cell phone service, natch) and everyone else is having fun on the mountain.

I'd like to include some pictures in this post, but I can't even do that, since my cell phone battery is almost dead. So, no proof that we actually skied today other than my own word. Which you trust anyway, right?

So, I'm thinking that I can get the article done tonight, upload my photos to the agencies (here's hoping some of all get accepted), and maybe get some ironing done. Oh yeah, and take a shower. Perhaps my outlook would be better if I took one now.

My apologies for such a whiney post. But if you were here with me, seeing the clear blue day and feeling the warm temps, wanting to be out skiing and getting really annoyed with this nonexistent tech connections if I have to be waiting for everyone else, just maybe you'd feel the same way.

I'm a writer!

Here it is

Woo-hoo! I'm finally on my way. Now I'm writing my next one, and going through my pictures for stock submissions. Finally making things happen!

An attitude of gratitude

I have an Apple app called Gratitude. Since downloading it about two years ago, I hardly ever use it. I think I've made about three entries total. If I actually used it as intended, I'd be writing down five things every day that I am thankful for. I could do that in my written journal, but as with everything in my writing life, it gets shoved to the background. In this case, almost off the cliff.

Well, I probably should take that app up again. I have an opportunity to write travel articles now. I'm making a concerted effort to get accepted to stock agencies and set up portraits with my photography. My family and I will travel to the Bay Area and to Seattle and Vancouver this year. I just ran my first marathon, and I'm itching (believe it or not) to run another. Yes, I have plenty to be thankful for. But this is the most important one of all (and my wonderful husband too, who took this picture):



They are the reason I strive to be the best person I can be, every day.