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...

Bummer

I just got a rejection from one of the microstock agencies, because of poor lighting with one of my pictures. Here it is:



It's a little frustrating, because I'm having trouble understanding what constitutes "poor lighting". I'm trying to understand what makes a good stock photo, and I'm not sure where to get the answers. I'm doing on online stock photo program, so maybe that will help. Perhaps too, I can study the Lightroom book more closely. But I've done it, and now I just have to keep trying.

This must be some kind of record...

So...I don't know if I've ever written four blog entries four straight days. Must be something in my water. :)

Right now, I'm just getting ready for my vacation. Highly uncharacteristic of me, but I'm the last one to pack. Maybe I'm a little intimidated with having to get 10 days of clothes ready, and 7 of those days mean we can't do any laundry - unless we want to shell out $25 a bag for Royal Caribbean to do it. No thanks.

I'm also trying to figure out what to do with my articles. I've written about 5-6 of them that, with a little polish, could be ready for submission to a website, maybe a publication. Now I just have to find the right ones - that's the tough part. There are so many out there, and I guess I fear that anything I've written is not suitable for any of them. I also have to think about what to submit to stock agencies, too. I've applied to Fotolia, Dreamstime and Shutterstock, but haven't submitted anything. There's also Bigstock Photo and iStockphoto (this one I did submit stuff, and got rejected).

Those are my somewhat modest goals for the summer: have my photos accepted for stock and have an article published. Also finish my NYIP course, which I have to do by September.

Who said my summer wasn't full??