Road Trip Across America

[ArtEdGradStudent]

So this summer I drove with my wife and her brother all across America. Luckily we avoided all the natural disasters, and our car held up excellently. We did spend way too much money, but I did manage to take somewhere around 14,000 photos. I'm still going through my favorites, but I've posted a ton on my myspace blog.

If people would rather, when I have free time, I can try and post some here as well.

www.myspace.com/58767147

Any crit or advice would be great! Some photos are obviously just family ones, but many are me trying to make art with my lil Nikon digicam.

[morf]

well i'm gonna wait till you can post them here.. not so interested to register to myspace.com. yea, i'm borind.;)

cheers
-morf

[ArtEdGradStudent]

you don't have to register to view profiles. If you wanna see America from last summer, just click

[morf]

ah sorry my bad. i clicked the "view my pics" and it asked to log in. didn't notice that link with my fast look.:/

but good stuff you got there. maybe too much photos for one set but that's just me.;) photos from the beach were cool and some of the scenery photos.:) keep them coming! hopefully here next time ;)

cheers
-morf

[Morbid]

You would get a lot more comments if you picked out your favourites and posted here in the thread, as you say. (and as they all seem to be uploaded at photobucket you can just use that to paste img-tags here. )
I scrolled through the pics quickly and these three pics i have posted are some of the better. Tell me if you want them removed.

One thing to crit would be the low contrast, which can often be fixed with editing software, and they are often over exposed, which makes them feel washed out. This is often a result of metering agains something dark, which tricks the camera to over expose. The fist picture with the house is blurry, maybe because the focus is off or you used the digital zoom (if you did, turn it off!) In the second pic below I would have wanted to see the horizon and in the third pic the centered horizon makes it less interesting than a lower or higher horizon would have. The third pic also suffers from jpeg compression artifacts.

Hope you had a nice trip, looks like you did!

http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e144/arthursmithsfineart/DSCN2588small.jpg
http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e144/arthursmithsfineart/DSCN2849small.jpg
http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e144/arthursmithsfineart/DSCN2855photoshopped2small.jpg

[ArtEdGradStudent]

Thanks for all the comments! There are definately too many pics on there right now, but I did that on purpose so I can scroll through them on any computer and sketch from the best ones - winters in Boston make it too cold to go outside.

I'd go through and post favorites here but I'm in the middle of moving to a new apt - I actually won't be able to post back here for a couple days.

Morbid, really good crit. The first is blurry because I took the photo while in a car. I just like it because you get a sense of what Montana/Idaho looked back in the 19th century.

The second I also agree with, it needs some sky and it's overexposed. I'll try and go into it with photoshop.

The third one I actually went in with photoshop, and corrected the underexposure of the ground, adding the original sky to it. It probably looks messed up because I went overboard with the contrast. I still have the original image so I can try it again.

Note everyone that there's two travel blogs on there. The first one ranges from Boston to San Francisco.

The second which you saw ranges from San Fran to Yellowstone, but I have a whole new slew of photos that are soon ready to go up, if only I had time to do it.

[ArtEdGradStudent]

Ok, so here's a pic of Lake Michigan, up near Cheboygan. I'm proud of it, but what do you guys think? Also, does anyone know of any reputable stock photo agencies, what kind of deals they make, and whether any of these images would be sellable?

http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e144/arthursmithsfineart/DSCN5534small.jpg

[Morbid]

I like the metal like reclection in this picture.

Stock sites want clean simple stuff. It takes a while to really realise what kind of images are accepted and sell. I submit to shutterstock.com (http://submit.shutterstock.com/?ref=8438).

I think they are the best in sales but they have recently raised their standards. In particular about the noise in the pics. So using a noise reduction software like neatimage is almost essential. They don't pay much per download, only 25 cents, but it's a numbers game and you sell alot of images, and you still have the rights to your images, so you can sell them unlimited times. I have sold about 850 images there so far, one image has sold 277 times. :)
Then there is istockphoto and dreamstime. Or if you rather go for rights managed stock then theres Gettys and Crobis, but with even higher standards. Good luck!

[ArtEdGradStudent]

do you think I have a chance?

[Morbid]

A few years ago I think so, but the standards have gone up lately becuase the market is becoming saturated with pictures. I don't think the work you've shown here is that suitable for stock to be honest. But it doesn't hurt to give it a try i guess. You could check out my portfolio here and then sort it by oldest first to see the work I started out with. http://www.shutterstock.com/gallery-8438p1.html

[ArtEdGradStudent]

You've got some excellent photos. Which ones sold the best? And if stock photos aren't an option for me, can you think of any others for selling?

[Morbid]

Sort by popularity to see sales per time up. I was really surprised by the number one seller becuase its just a metal texture I made in photoshop in 20 minutes. Design elements that are useful to designers are very much wanted.

Theres fine art photography that pays very well if your well known. (takes years and years of experience) And freelancing or journalistic photography. You could work for smaller companies shooting their products and such. I don't know much about it because I have no experience making money with anything else than stock. If you mean for selling your existing work I think stock is pretty much the only choice.

[ArtEdGradStudent]

so, what do people think of this photo?

http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e144/arthursmithsfineart/DSCN5811saturatedsmall.jpg

[T.Luu]

The photo may be good (technical wise) but the object is terrible. You'll need more dramatic landscapes, something to lay an eye on, leading lines to aid the viewer to that catch point is a plus. The sky looks cold. Wait till the sun sets down to cast a beautiful red glimmer through the sky. Don't forget the clouds, you'll need clouds (unless you're plying with the colours -> see Ken Rockwell's photos for this http://www.kenrockwell.com/gallery.htm )