Stock

Steer Wrestler

I have been submitting some photographs to my stock agency and it is a bit depressing how few of the photos I shoot actually qualify (in their minds, anyway) as good stock photos. The big money in stock is in advertisements so anything that can’t be made into a glossy billboard doesn’t make the cut. In the process, a lot of soulful stuff gets left out. The image above, like a lot of the intentionally moody stuff I do, would never get submitted because I know the “auditors” would never pass it. That seems wrong, but life is not always tidy. Sharpness is the major criteria for stock, and I mean sharp. Sharp magnified at 200% sharp.

Female Ostrich

Now this ostrich is sharp, at least at the eye, which is most important. It is sharp, but it doesn’t tell a story. It doesn’t really elicit an emotion. I have to fill in that this is a female ostrich guarding a communal nest where the entire harem of females lay their eggs. She is the dominant female so her eggs get to go in the center of the nest and the other eggs get pushed to the outside, where they may get too cold or fall out of the nest. This is sharp because she will not leave the nest so there is no problem getting her to pose. The Land Rover doesn’t really seem to bother her, but when we approached this nest another female did leave, and apparently she snitched on us because as we were leaving the male came running toward the nest to defend it.

Dramatic Sky

There is a recent flurry of excitement about iPhone photos, with publication of three different books of them. I don’t think I will join that fad. The above photograph is a case in point. It was shot with my Panasonic Lumix point and shoot while walking the dog. It just breaks my heart to have these dramatic photographs that are too noisy and unsharp to use for anything but tiny photos on the internet, and that just is not good enough for me. If I thought someone might publish a book of my Lumix photographs that may be a different story…It is argued that it gets you looking for photographs all of the  time because you always have a camera with you, but I think I pretty much do that anyway. I can’t discount the fun factor of making photographs while in purgatory at the airport, so I haven’t given up on an iPhone altogether. I just don’t like the fact that a phone is involved. I have a phone phobia that may require a whole team of psychiatrists to work through some day. So forgive me if I don’t call.

Bareback Broncs