CoolIris showing Flicrk photos

I just played around with CoolIris. Here's my flickr photostream running through it. This may not display correctly, so we'll see how blogger handles it. If you are reading this through a feed reader you will probably have to go to the full page to see it. What do you think?

Stock links

In my previous I failed to mention this list of stock sites. It is the source I plan to use for doing more research into other options that work for me. There are other non-stock links there that might prove to be valuable as well.

Down the road, Stockmodels.com could come in useful for locating models. (NOTE: Be warned that some images on that site might be NSFW.)

Stock situation

Well by now everyone knows the Photo Shelter Collection news. It leaves lots of people like me wondering where to turn for selling stock images. I've been doing a bit of searching the net and found a few resources that can be helpful.

• Stock imaging forum
  
• The Photo Shelter Collection Flickr group
  
• numerous other stock groups on Flickr (some of which have NOTHING to do with stock photography
  

There's also some good advice on this post. While I agree with most of those sentiments, I'd like to avoid microstock altogether.

Personally I think the closing of PSC leaves a bit of a void for options. I'd love to join something like Digital Railroad but the cost of using their service wouldn't allow me to ever get out of the red. The Independent Photography Network not only has high costs, but qualifications I don't meet.

Almay seems to be the only real option for non-microstock with no subscription fees (although I'm looking for others and I suspect they are out there). Too bad, as they are not US based, which I feel can sometimes influence what will sell. It's nice to have as a compliment to a US based company, but don't think it should be my only avenue.

With a smaller collection like mine, one thing I really liked about PSC was their stock requests feed. Rather than try to put pictures into the cloud that is searched by stock buyers, it was nice to see exactly what stock buyers have for immediate needs. A service like that is specifically what I'm interested in finding now. I've found a few that were subscription based, but nothing else yet that is free.

More to come.... If you have information to share I'd love to hear it.

Depth of field help

I was listening to a 7 photography questions podcast the other day -- number 13, with Jennifer Wu. She corrected a few of the misunderstandings I had regarding landscape photography. Specifically she addressed what aperture she uses to get a great landscape shot. I always assumed your lens never had a better excuse to stop all the way down and make the dust on your sensor nice and sharp than it does when you are shooting a landscape. Jennifer states that she typically uses f8, f11, and f16 because her Canon lenses produce sharper images that way even if the depth of field isn't as wide as f22.

That brought up another related topic... how to establish your hyperfocal distance. She recommends checking out the tools at DOF Master. They have programs to help you print charts for hyperfocal distances. I will certainly be trying out her suggestions, as I have found my landscapes are not quite as sharp as I'd like even when I'm using my tripod, mirror lock-up, and the whole works.

Ring flash

I like the looks of a ring flash picture. I'd love to have one, but I think they are a bit on the spendy side for me (I don't make enough money selling pictures). I know there are tons of people talking about how you can build your own, but I would rather be taking pictures then building gear. That is why I got really excited when the Strobist blog mentioned the Orbis ring flash. I keep going back and searching for the Strobist blog posts so I can visit the site, as I can never remember the name. I thought I'd just post it hear so I can find it more easily. Tonight when I when there, they actually had some content in addition to their "coming soon" page, too. We'll see what comes of it I guess, but in the mean time I'm anxious to learn more.

Another Olympics shot

I came across this today. It takes a while to load, but if you weren't able to attend the Olympics, this will let you know how it feels to be in the arena. Oh yeah, and there's lots of Canon glass in the section too.

Whoops, I missed one

I just realized I forgot to mention Joe McNally's Blog. If you haven't ready The Moment it Clicks, you need to get a copy asap. If you don't feel like dropping any change on a new book, try your local library. Just get it. It is a quick read and contains some awesome photography.

Blogs to follow

As I've said before, I like keeping and eye on the Chase Jarvis blog, and Strobist.com. Tonight while I was trying to do some research on PhotoShelter vs. Alamy I came across Cycle 61 Photography and the links associated with it. One that looks very interesting is Stock Photo Journey. I'll be adding them to my Google Reader asap... in fact, you can now just look at the blog links included in the blog.

More Stock Photography

I've recently heard of another stock photo site called Alamy. I'll try to upload some images there too, and those images will reside here.

Olympics in pictures blog

I find this blog very interesting... a fellow Canon shooter albeit with a little more and better gear.

Chase Jarvis

As a follow-up to my previous post... if you don't know who Chase Jarvis is, you need to watch this video. It was my first exposure to his work, and I was an instant fan. Simply incredible.

Stock Photography

I've been thinking of trying out stock photography for some time now. I started an account at iStockPhoto.com (because one of the guys from the LightSource podcast is an image editor and mentions them all the time), but haven't uploaded any images yet. While checking out a new podcast series by Chase Jarvis, I came across one of his presentations, which happens to be for the PhotoShelter group. I decided to give them a try.

Check out my stuff and buy some pictures!

HDR with Photoshop

There are a ton of articles online describing High Dynamic Range pictures. I think the first article I read on the subject has one of the best HDR pictures I've found so far. I'm referring to the church at the bottom of the page.

Unfortunately PSE doesn't support making HDR images. Here are some links that include or recommend alternatives:

• PSE users forum


• Dynamic Photo HDR for $40

Humingbird photos

I don't think you could find a better collection of hummingbird photos then the pool on the flickr group.

Hawk pictures

There is a poster on DPReview whose alias is "Hawkman". I saw some of his posts that included incredible pictures. He has a great gallery of them online too.

Eagle pictures

To continue with my photo wish list theme today, I'll address eagle pictures. Some great examples are on my friend Mark's site . As you can see by checking out all his stuff, Mark has a collection of really great work.

I would be remiss if I didn't also mention his pileated woodpecker shot, that got me interested in bird photography to start with. Thanks Mark.

Night scene

Well the first item to address on my photo wish list is the night scene. I like several that Bree has posted, but this one I came across first is still a bit of a favorite of mine. I know he doesn't find it as alluring as I do, but I think that's part of photography. There's a lesson there: take pictures and let people see them. Even if you don't find them exceptional, they may strike a chord with someone else.

Click here to see Bree's night scene.

As my comment suggests, I did add the pictures to my list of favorites. You should check all of them out. In the event you hadn't guessed, they're my favorites. :-)

Photo wishlist update

First off, I left off getting some HDR shots from my wishlist in the previous post. They look great, and I'd like to play around making some of those. In fact, some of the items on my wishlist might make good HDR photos.

Now on to the reason for posting today... I thought it would be a good idea to create some inspirational pictures I know of that would both show readers why that type of photo is on my list and remind me why I should get out and take the picture. I'll proceed with a separate post for each. Stay tuned...

Photo wishlist

I was talking to my friend Bree this morning, and the subject of a list to capture came up. Here is my list as it sits today, in no particular order. I need to write it down somewhere so don't lose it. What's on your list?

• city at night
• sunset
• dragonfly
• hummingbird
• owl
• hawk
• eagle (I have some, but would like better ones)
  

Photoshop Elements 6

I've just received Photoshop Elements 6 (PSE6). I wanted to install some actions, but ran into a bit of difficulty, as almost everything Google sent my way was for prior versions. I think I found what I needed.

I also stumbled upon the PSE Flickr group in the process. That looks like it has lots for me to dig into.

Now all I need is a time machine to get a chance to read and experiment with all this.