CJM Grafx

#100 Accepted

2009-07-17T22:14:00.002-04:00

With everything around here as hectic as it has been, I am a couple days behind on posting this, but I have finally had my 100th photo accepted into my iSto ckphoto portfolio.

Number 100 is this photo taken of my lovely daughter in her cap and gown from graduating her Tiny Tots program. Providing for her and her older sister are the whole reason I am working so hard these days.

In fact, as I post this, I just had four new photos accepted and I am currently sitting at 105 photos in my portfolio.

The BIG 5 - 0

2009-06-02T17:31:00.003-04:00

Indeed it has finally happened, I have hit my 50th download on iSto ckphoto. I couldn't be happier about this image being my 50th, as it was taken as an experiment with the Alien Bees Ring flash to simulate a television that the two young girls were watching.

Thank you Zoe and Savannah for being such wonderful sports all weekend for our shoot together.

iStockphoto Image in Use

2009-05-03T08:56:00.010-04:00

When shooting photography for iStockphoto and seeing your images sell, you often wonder where you photos are being used.

I had yet to find out where any of mine were being used, mainly because my portfolio on iStockphoto is still very small (82 photos with 40 downloads) in comparison to those that have been shooting stock longer or on a more full-time basis.

I found my first photograph in use this weekend, thanks to an e-mail from iStockphoto Administration. I had to read it twice to make sure I read it correctly.

My photo of a Bald Eagle sitting on a stump, shown here, was used in a cover design that is being submitted as one of iStock's Designer Spotlight Entries.

Needless to say, I am walking on cloud nine over this at the moment!

What the Heck is It! May 2009

2009-05-01T10:18:00.006-04:00

I have been thinking about a new blog entry that would help make my blog a little more active. Here is a new addition I am starting this month, "What the Heck is It!".

After I post the image on the first of the month, if you would like to take a shot at what it is, post a comment. The first comment to show up with the correct answer is the winner, easy as that.

If this idea gets enough interest, I may start offering the winner a print of one of my photos. Does this sound like a good idea?

Queen City Lypse - March 6 & 7, 2009

2009-03-31T19:23:00.005-04:00

As I have stated in previous posts, I was disappointed with only 8 photos uploaded to iStockphoto in 2008, I have vowed to upload a lot more this year and have even posted a list of goals for 2009.

On March 5th I drove to Belmont, North Carolina to attend my first iStockphoto mini lypse event titled Queen City Lypse. I was nervous attending an event like this considering I was one of only two photographers attending that was not already exclusive with iStock, not to mention my portfolio only numbered in the mid 20s.

My nervousness quickly faded when we met at dinner Thursday evening. Everyone was very friendly, willing to share any knowledge they had and the evening ended with one great photographer showing me around the iStockphoto web site giving me pointers.

On shoot day, I found out just how exhausting a shoot like these can be. Forty-one, yes 41 models over two days, six studio positions on Friday and a park, vet clinic, acupuncturist, coffee shop and a reception hall on Saturday and I was ready for a vacation to recoup from this weekend... and I still had the 10 hour drive home on Sunday.

All said and done, I shot over 600 photos on the weekend. As of this posting I have had approximately 35 photos from this shoot accepted to iStockphoto and have even had a few sales. You can see my iStockphoto Lightbox for this mini lypse here.

Home Studio Preparation... Part One - Measuring

2009-02-16T19:59:00.013-05:00

The more I shoot portraits, the more I learn I need a space for myself. If you live in Florida or have visited Florida, you know that homes here have very little space for storage, let alone a layout conducive for a home photography studio to shoot stock.

What I am in the process of doing is creating a permanent background holder in my garage. While I will have some items in the garage to move when I want to use my seamless paper, I will not have a stand that needs to be assembled and tore down every time I want to use it. Instead I will have multiple rolls of seamless I can pull down and roll up as needed.

Looking at our garage from the driveway is the first issue, we actually park our vehicles in the garage. This isn't a huge issue, it only takes a moment to back the vehicles out.

The second AND real issues began once I backed out the SUV and looked at the only available wall to mount the seamless roll holders. The garage is 19' long, but some permanent items such as our water heater and door rail along that wall looked to pose a problem and "derail" my project before it got started. After some quick measurements, it would appear the game was back on, I would just need to make a few adjustments to my original idea.

I plan to use 107" (9') seamless on the holders, which needs to mount beyond my water heater (right side of this photo). Mounting the holder to the left of the water heater and gas line will push the opposite end holder behind the garage door rail, ending approx. at the point where the rake handle is in this photo. The rake has now been moved and the other items, mainly lawn maintenance junk is easily movable when it comes time to shoot.

The original idea was to make the mounts large enough to hold at least three rolls of 107" seamless, but as I measured, it would appear that is not going to be possible. Measuring from the wall to the outside portion of the rail was approx. one foot, as shown in this photo to the right.

I have checked the Savage, B&H Photo and Adorama web sites, but they do not list roll diameter, core size or weight on their web site. I e-mailed Savage, but have yet to get a response.

This concludes this portion of the design phase. I will be back soon with Step two once I have an answer to the roll size and weight.

Week 6 - 2009 "Photo-per-Week"

2009-02-09T22:41:00.010-05:00

A rare moment as my wife (sans makeup), while practicing off-camera flash techniques, allows me to take her photo and I posted it for my 2009 Photo-per-Week set. See the other weeks photos on my flickr page.

A new year begins...

2009-01-28T16:39:00.004-05:00

As I stated in my last blog post of 2008, I was very disappointed in my stock photography growth (or lack there of) last year and I had a new freshness revived in me.

I already have more photos uploaded to istockphoto this year than I uploaded for all of 2008. So for that, go me! I am continuing to come up with ideas to shoot and adding to my portfolio. More exciting news of note, I am also attending my first Minilypse iStockphoto event in March.

I am getting a much clearer idea of shooting images for stock as opposed to my own style. The image shown here is one of seven photos of a series shot for my iStockphoto portfolio. I originally uploaded eight images, but two of them were nearly identical, so the duplicate was not included. Of the last sixteen I have uploaded, fourteen were accepted.

Another year down...

2008-12-31T07:42:00.003-05:00

It is hard to believe that 2008 is coming to a close!

In some ways I am glad this year is over. In other ways, I look back and I am sad that somewhere down the line, I lost track yet again and did not accomplish all my goals for the year.

While contemplating that failure this week, a new freshness has been revived in me. That along with some new "friends" I have met through iStockphotography and a friendly competition between us, I have a feeling I will meet the new goals I have set for 2009.

Happy Holidays to everyone and Happy New Year... may 2009 be a blessed one for you!

Brandon Photo Club Studio Lighting

2008-10-15T12:27:00.002-04:00

Thanks to Donna, Jim and Rich for bringing in their equipment, we held a studio lighting evening for the October Brandon Photography Club meeting.

I brought my kids dressed in their Halloween costumes, dance outfits that belonged to my wife when she was a kid... which brings up the question, does her mom get rid of anything?

Another member, Kyle, brought his Batman Costume which made for some nice photo opportunities as well. You can see one of the images I took of him on my Flickr site. I still need to work on a few images I took of Donna with a zombie prop that Rich brought in.

It was a fun evening of teaching members of the club how to use a light meter, set up the lights and move them around for different lighting effects. I for one got a lot out of it, as I am trying to decide if I want to buy studio lights or continue using my dual SB-800 setup.

Too Hot?!?!

2008-08-30T14:07:00.001-04:00

I e-mailed my friend Gary Borland from work and asked if he or his wife were doing any shooting lately and his response was it's too hot. I thought his answer was crazy at the time, it can't be too hot to get out and shoot.

WOW could Gary's response never made more sense than my trip out this morning. I took my wife and kids to Eureaka Springs Park, which is a favorite spot of mine to take pictures of flowers and insects. Between the heat and humidity, after about 30 mins, I was soaked with sweat.

I heard they finished replacing the boardwalk, which had been destroyed by a storm, so I wanted to see it. They did and the boardwalk is nice, but I wish they would have planted some flowering plants along it.

As for the flowers, this is a "botanical garden" after all, the park was pretty barren this morning, which was a real disappointment. It looks like all the flowering plants around the place had been cut back. I hope this is just maintenance that they do and the flowers are back the next time I arrive... AFTER it cools down!

South Brandon Little League

2008-06-15T08:55:00.002-04:00

I have been out shooting a lot of little league games again this year. There is something about youth sports that I really enjoy shooting. Mainly the younger kids, there just seems to be an innocents there, they just enjoy the game for fun... it's just that to them still, a game.

You can see some of the images from those games on my flickr page or on the Backprint Gallery I am using to sell images. I used to post images to a different gallery site to sell, but a couple of friends / local photographers Jim Sykes and Donna Cuic told me about Backprint.

If you have a moment, take a hop over to my flickr site and view the images, even better, leave a comment if you see something you like!

Computer Blues...

2008-03-09T07:40:00.000-04:00

I tend to use my computers until I have literally killed them. Upon getting back home from Ohio, I apparently did just that to my wonderful Dell. Not that I am complaining, the thing was going on 6 years old after all.

My wife doesn't understand these things as well, unfortunately. Her first comment was "what's wrong with your computer that wasn't wrong with it before we left for vacation?", which I couldn't answer at first. But thanks to Dell's web site and the indicator lights they have for errors, I found out that my ram wasn't being recognized... an easy fix IF Dell hadn't chosen to put RAMBUS memory in their computers back when I bought this one.

After diagnosing the problem and not getting the computer to boot at all, I checked some prices on ram from my laptop... I then immediately called a friend to find out how much it would cost to build a new computer. Yes, for the just a little more than the RAMBUS would have cost, I have a brand new Core2duo PC that screams.

More importantly, my wife has a new 19" LCD instead of the old 17" CRT she was using, so she is happy too! :^)

Happy New Year

2008-01-01T05:45:00.001-05:00

I hope everyone had a safe and happy new year.

Stay warm and for all those college football fans out there, enjoy the upcoming bowl games!

I am still in VERY cold Ohio and on my way out to shoot some photos of the area around my wife's parents house. On the slate today are an 1800s Quaker Cemetery, an old covered bridge and a heavy equipment "museum" of sorts.

I am not sure how they classify it as a museum, as it is just a whole lot of old heavy equipment, mining and farm equipment in an open field, but it is all neat stuff none-the-less.

Merry Christmas....

2007-12-25T08:40:00.003-05:00

Happy Hanukkah, Kwanzaa or what ever you decide to celebrate during your holiday time.

We are in cold, gloomy Ohio visiting family and friends. You couldn't ask for a better way to spend the holidays!

Until next time, stay safe stay warm and enjoy the holidays.

Kerby's Nursery

2007-11-24T10:22:00.002-05:00

As most people know, some photographers are a little weird, but also very resourceful. If you don't believe that, just check out the Strobist web blog and see the things photographers come up with.

Well, on Black Friday, while the masses were swarming the malls and other retail stores the Brandon Photography Club made arrangements with Kerby's Nursery to allow us to use their business for our group macro shoot.

While I love Kerby's for their knowledge and great selection of landscape items they offer, they were even more gracious in letting us shoot there. We were told to move any of their displays around as we needed, use their hoses to wet down any of the plants, you name it and they were accommodating!

To see a few of the images I was able to get while there, please click here. While I am new to macro photography, I think I came away with a few keepers!

Brandon Photography Club

2007-11-07T01:07:00.000-05:00

The first Tuesday night of every month brings our club meetings and this one was especially exciting. Tonight we had featured presenter Blake Shadle of Wild Florida Photography.

Blake, accompanied by his wife, dad James and a couple friends, showed us a slide show of the images he takes throughout the Tampa Bay area. He shared his tips on taking photos like he was presenting and gave us some of his secrets on capturing the perfect photo.

Check out their web site at the link above and if you are interested, check out taking a workshop with them.

iStockphoto...

2007-08-17T01:16:00.000-04:00

After a long debate and a lot of research, reading and indecision I made the leap and signed up to become a contributor with iStockphoto.com and was accepted. I have submitted three images and two of those were selected for my portfolio.

I am hoping to go through some of my older photos and start shooting a lot of new stuff to add to my portfolio soon.

Please check out my iStockphoto images and if you know anyone needing to buy some stock photography for an upcoming project, point them my way!

Florida’s Heritage, Lands and Inhabitants

2007-04-30T07:42:00.000-04:00

I recently had two of my photographs selected to be displayed in a photography exhibition entitled “Florida’s Heritage, Lands and Inhabitants”.

The show is being held at the City of Largo Library in their “Art Gallery” for the month of May, with the opening reception being held on May 6th, from 2 to 4 pm.

You may see the show ad, read more about the exhibition and get the library’s address here.

Big Cat Rescue

2007-04-11T13:03:00.001-04:00

I had the honor to be given a tour of Big Cat Rescue in Tampa, FL recently, lead by the owners of the sanctuary.

These cats are very beautiful and some of their stories are disturbing to say the least. Though a huge attraction, the stories regarding the white tiger are some of the worst. Stop by Big Cat Rescue's web site to read about them.

To see some of my images from that day, see my flickr page.