How can you know what type of license it will be downloaded for? I sent a mail asking but did not get a response.

I am thinking I am just going to upload it and see what happens. If nothing else, maybe the buyer will appreciate the fact that I did it and come back another time for more photos.

I had an email today saying that a buyer requested a RAW format version of one of my photos. The mail said to either upload the RAW file or just do nothing if I was not interested or did not have it.

I will not upload the RAW format for a $0.50 or $1.00 sale. I am not sure if I would for an EL sale. I am interested to hear from others that had the RAW file requested as to how you handled it. Or even from people that have not had this requested but have ideas on what they would do.

Thanks for any suggestions.
Steve

I have been using the istock model release "as is" and all the other sites have been accepting it.

I printed the release, wrote my photographer information in, and then made photocopies.

Oh yes. The trip was great. We saw a lot of beautiful sites with The Cliffs of Moher topping the list. Galway City is very nice (we stayed in Spiddal not far away) but I could not keep my wife out of the shops.

I did have some trouble driving. I was driving a Ford Transit rental which is a very large van and was not used to something this big or the very narrow streets in some locations. But driving on the left side of the road was not much of an problem.

I loved the fact that it stays light out so long. One day when the sun was out I had from about 5pm to 10:30pm with great light. I spent the time photographing Gallway Bay with the Burren in the background.

Well, I am back. The suggestion to bring a P&S was a good one. Late on the second to last day before I left, I was out on a Jetty made of rocks on Galway Bay and I stepped on a mossy, wet rock and fell. My Canon XT and my Sigma 24-70 lens were shattered. My hip was almost shattered too.

Many of my photos have really bad skies due to the gray overcast conditions. So I will be learning how to replace skies in photoshop. I have just tried with one photo but have so far been unsuccessful.

I will need to get a new camera. It will be between the Rebel XTi and the 30D. Any suggestions on which to go for?

I will also need to replace my "normal" range zoom. Instead of the Sigma I broke I will get the Canon 24-70 or the 24-105 F/4 L. Any suggestions here?

Thanks for the feedback everyone. I do have raingear and cleaning fluid packed. Good walking shoes too. Zip bags and a notebook will be added.

Great idea about making notes in a notebook. Thanks.

I am leaving New Jersey in the USA on Friday for a week in Ireland. I am bringing:

Camera (Canon XT)
External flash and batteries
Three 2 gig flashcards
A Wolverine 100gig storage unit
tripod
70-300 lens
24-70 lens
10-22 lens
travel converter so I plug stuff in over there
3 camera batteries and charger

I am leaving my 100mm macro and my 50mm f/1.8 at home to save space in my bag.

Am I missing anything? I do not want to get there and find I should have bought/brought additional equipment.

Here is a great site with lots of do-it-yourself equipment ideas complete with instructions.

http://www.diyphotography.net/

Is anyone still getting photos approved here? I uploaded my first five this past Monday to try it out and they are still Pending.

Thanks everyone. Very good helpful comments.

I am using a Canon SLR and Canon 430EX flash. I was at first going to get the Canon infrared master controller and it is a cheaper option than the pocket wizards, but from reading reviews and comments I heard that the radio controlled Pocket Wizards are more reliable and have a longer working distance than the Canon infrared.

But in any case, I am going to look at the Alien Bees products. Thanks for the info.

Thank you leaf. Yes, you are correct, this was with on camera flash bounced off the ceiling. But I plan on buying some pocket wizards with my next stock payouts.

The black background is black velvet hanging in the background so it was not isolated using photoshop.

I am trying to learn to shoot people for stock. I am currently not very good at people shots but I am practicing. Below is a link to a photo I recently submitted to several sites. It was accepted on most sites but rejected by one. I would like to learn from this and see how I could improve this shot.

If you do not mind, please take a look at the photo and tell me what you think? How could it be improved? Would it be better with a different background? How do you think it is for a STOCK photo? Will it sell?

I do not want to put the rejection reason in here now because it would probably influence people. But it was not a rejection that you would need a 100% crop for.

Also, I am not posting this complaining about a rejection. I want to learn how to shoot people for stock so I can hopefully increase by stock revenue.

Thanks for any feedback.

http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-3439389-a-young-teenage-boy-playing-a-game-of-backgammon-the-boy-and-board-are-isolated-over-a-black.html

Thanks everyone! I am excited now to go back and practice these shots some more.

I did spend a good amount of time at a half pipe last time. I was able to climb to the top of the half pipe and shoot down to try to get only pipe and skateboarder. I'll try shooting up next time from laying on the ground.

I totally screwed up the rail shots. Lots of chopped off hands.

This is an outside park. Another thing that gave me trouble was the sun. If I was shooting from the side of the half pipe, the sun was always at a 90 angle to me. The  skaters skate east and west the way the pipe is situated.

Thanks again for the good advice.

I recently read about this type of technique in Versace's book "Welcome to Oz".  I plan on trying it myself. Is the lighting on the main leaf structure that you made standout all from one of the 3 exposures or did you use a lighting effect in PS?

If this were mine, I think I would darken the very lower right corner leaf structure a bit. On my monitor, it appears about as bright as the one that is the COI.

I should have said what was wrong in the original post. About 60% were trashed due to being out of focus.  Some of these were really focus problems and some were because the SS went a little too low. Of the others, about 1/2 were poorly composed. This was due to trying to follow the action and press the shutter button at the right time. I ended up with hands sometimes chopped off or the front of the skateboard and feet chopped off.

In general, I am curious how others go about shooting in these types of environments. What type of focusing do you use? Is AI Servo best? If you plan on submitting these for stock, What ISO do you use? Do you use Aperture priority or Shutter priority? Do you open the lens as wide as possible and use ISO 100 or shoot at a higher ISO and get a little more DOF with a smaller aperture?

I spent some time photographing my son and two friends at a skateboard park yesterday. I am not happy with the results. Besides images specifically for stock, I mostly enjoy nature photography and I am not experienced with sports/action photography. I am going to describe what I did yesterday. Can anyone offer advice as to what I should do differently?

I was using a Rebel XT and a Sigma 24-70 f2.8 lens. In Aperture Priority I set to f/5. I used ISO 100. I used AI Servo focus mode. I then followed the skater until he was at the spot or pose I wanted and took the shot. This gave me a SS of about 1/1000. Occasionally it would drop to 1/800 which was not fast enough. I then went up to ISO 200 and this was fine for the needed SS. I also tried opening up the lens more for some shots and left it on ISO 100. Also tried single shot focus mode, pre focused and a particular spot, and waited for the skater to skate into the frame. This did not work well for me because the skater was not always in the best position or best skating trick at that exact spot.

Maybe I would have been better off in Shutter Priority mode with a set SS of around 1/1200 or so? How do others approach this type of shooting? I would appreciate any help or advice.

3 hour left here on the right coast but I just compiled my stats. Changes for me this month included a strong month for StockXpert and a weak month for DT. IS was a bit stronger than usual too. The rest were pretty typical.

I am curious to see if others really had StockXpert take off for them this month too.

SS - 29.9%
IS - 22.1%
StockXpert - 16.4%
DT - 9.9%
BS - 7.0%
FT - 5.3%
123 - 2.6%
LO - 2.6%
CS - 2.5%
FP - 1.6%

I can reccomend a book. Photoshop Masking & Compositing by Katrin Eismann is terrific. There are easy methods and advanced methods all explained.

My only 2 EL's came from sites not yet mentioned in this thread: BigStock and LuckyOliver.

How can I get an invitation to join microstockpix? I tried to register but it says that it is by invitation only.

Without going back to the book, the main points I remember are listed below. These are in my own words, not directly quoted from the book.

1) Humans perceive color in different ways depending upon the surrounding colors and the background. A machine will always perceive the same colors as the same no matter what color the background is.

2) The most "Important viewers" are clients if you are selling your work. The only judgement on color that really matters is that of the client.

3) Most people viewing your prints did not see the image online. What matters is how this print looks, not how it looks relative to what you saw on the monitor. Therefore, a pretty close match is good enough.

The bottom line was that your eyes can do a better job than a machine. This is in large part to #1 above.

SS - 31.5%
DT - 20.4%
IS - 16.6%
BS - 11.0%
XP - 9.6%
FT - 3.8%
123 - 2.4%
CS - 2%
FP - 1.8%
LO - .8%

On the color management topic, I use ICC profiles for printing. I do not use a calibration device on my monitor. I almost bought one even though my prints acceptably match what I see on my monitor, but reading the latest edition of Professional Photoshop talked me out of it. Dan Margulis has a few chapters devoted to color management and is really against using electronic devices for callibrating monitors. He sure got me to buy in to his arguments.

Yes, my intent with the original post was simply whether or not highly saturated photos sell better. It seems to me that the answer is yes. I plan on saturating my stock photos more than I have been doing in the past but maybe not quite as much as with this peacock.