#100 Accepted

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 iStockphoto 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

Indeed it has finally happened, I have hit my 50th download on iStockphoto. 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

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

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

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

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"

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.