Well Here is Hoping

I have sent 4 more pictures from Downtown Orlando to Istock. I am learning a TON of stuff when it comes to Istock in general. The biggest one being how to remove CA. First off I would like to say that CA is the devil…if the filter in photoshop won’t remove it, then it truly sucks because you have to remove it by hand…and that is very rediculous. I think I”m going to go reshoot the train at Church Street Station today, and I MAY reshoot the courthouse…but I”m not positive. I don’t want to take too long because I have plans tonight.

This is what I have learned so far in regards to stock:

ISO 100 ALWAYS

Mirror Lockup is a must

F8-F11 only (sharpest point of the L Series Lenses I am using)

CA is common on buildings especially against a blue sky…be ready to deal with it.

Tripod must always be used

Make sure you turn noise reduction and sharpening off within your in camera settings.

That’s it for today…ohhh by the way I got my 5th sale today and I only have two images up on the site. My friend Jan Tyler has been an incredible encouragement to me and really has helped me out a ton in regards to photoshop. Yeah if you don’t have photoshop to fix your images up, it’s going to be a difficult path to do Stock Photography.

I will post the images up as soon as they get approved. I am pretty sure these 4 are strong enough to all make it. We will see though.

NEW IMAGE APPROVED!!

I”m so excited because I have my second image approved for ISTOCK. It’s a series I plan to continue to work on as I have so much access to production gear and it was the only image that ISTOCK approved from my video switcher and audio console series !! . I”m heading out today to potentially get the Lake Eola sunset, but mainly I am scouting for the week after this one so I can find some good spots and imaging downtown Orlando to fill out the Orlando lightbox. Here is the link if you guys wanna check out the video switcher !!

- Jeff

13 uploaded, 13 denied

Well they were all denied, but I know I can get one through without a problem. 12 of them, I may just leave alone and rework later, because I’m not sure I am going to be able to get them to a point where the inspectors will approve them without blasting a ton of light at the consoles to get that shutter speed up.  So if I have to do that anyway, might as well redo it. Been an incredibly long day, but we finished up a stage changeover at work, so that kept me up late. I”m up too late now as it is. More later !!

Adding New Photo’s For Approval Today

Well it’s been a difficult couple weeks in regards to the entertainment photographs. Obviously I need enough ambient light when I am shooting something, and higher F-Stops are also needed. This puts me into a timed exposure situation. Which isn’t the easiest, not going to lie. It has created artifacting, also the lit LED buttons have created issues also with Chromatic Artifacting which is the worst kind out there !!

I have learned quite a bit in this particular project though. I have learned that I should shoot in the F8-11 range and nothing more than that or it adds to the problems. I have also learned that I should try and stay away from the timed exposures if I can because it adds what are called “Hot Pixels” which are pretty much just blown out pixels that make my life very difficult.

Learning more than I ever thought I would in regards to photo manipulation. I love it really !! It’s been a ton of fun ! We’ll see how these 14 images do. I expect maybe 3-4 to make it through. Once you become competition, people aren’t quite as willing to give you their particular secret formula, although the community at ISTOCK has been very very friendly. And I haven’t gotten any “THIS IS COMPLETE CRAP” notes yet…which I guess is good.

Ok time to take off, I will upload the images to this post ASAP.

- Jeff

I am now an ISTOCK CONTRIBUTOR!!!

Well everyone, the hard work definitely paid off !! Jan Tyler and Donald Gruener really helpped me hone my processes. I have learned a TON in a very short amount of time. Jan has been great and open with me on what makes good stock and what makes poor stock. Donald has helpped me through the actual process of producing imaging that will be suitable for stock. You would be amazed at how just taking the wrong step in photoshop with your imaging can mess the whole thing up. Or how a rogue setting in your camera can mess up the picture. Thank you again Jan and Donald.

If anyone out there is truly interested in selling stock I would reccomend that you put aside your ego, and learn from all the mistakes others are making. I watched the critique forums for three weeks before I finally contacted a couple of the heavy contributors and admins.  I watched those forums to see the common things that people are getting declined for. And really many of the images I saw being declined were for the same things. Lots of artifacting, lots of people not running their ISO’s low enough. I have a great camera body so I know gear will definitely help me out.

You have to have the desire to truly learn what makes good stock no matter how much training you have had. I find myself to be pretty maliable still so the pointers that I got from Jan and Donald were great. I also brought one of my mentors along for a couple of my shoots so that I could make sure I was taking superior quality images. Thanks again to John Radcliffe (John Radcliffe Photography) for really helping me through some very different techniques and always helping me with my composition. Heck he was there during the Kaley shoot helping poser her. It was awesome and he’s been an amazing friend and mentor!!

I was being really hard on myself for a while until Jan started walking me through what will work and what won’t work. We have talked for long periods of time of how many photographers can’t handle the rejections…while I feel I can take the rejections and the critisisms it was hard to know what would be accepted. Jan was super supportive through the process and I can’t thank her enough.

Anyway, it’s going to be a long journey and you don’t make money overnight doing this…but I know at least now I’m on my way to hopefully some decent residual income! We’ll see though, the economy is struggling but hopefully people are still buying imaging =- )

Second Attempt at ISTOCK

Ok everyone,

Here are the three images that I am going to use for my second attempt at ISTOCK, a special thanks to Jan Tyler and Donald Gruener for working with me even though I’m not even a full contributor yet. The shot of Kaley may adjust a little more, I have been working pretty hard to make sure these images are as good as possible so that I don’t have to take a third attempt Looks like the blog compressed the images, but they don’t look like this I promise = -)

Lake Eola

I am finding myself pushing to get some different shots that take me away from the Wildlife, at least until I get approved at IStock. I had my first rejection letter this last week but I knew I probably wouldn’t make it on the images that I submitted. This week I learned that my camera is adding noise reduction on my long exposure pictures. This is an issue for stock, so I know that for next time. I still struggle knowing how much processing is too much, I feel like I”m being overly critical now and it’s leading to frustration. I will make it though…only a matter of time =- ). Here are the pictures from the last 24 hours. I had to do my first batch of HEAVY clone brushes this evening. It’s kind of crazy, but I think it’s not bad for the first pass although I will admit I have to do it again, because I thought I saved the TIFF and it didn’t save…*sighs* that’s ok, I can always use the practice.