To the Balkans!

It's been many years since I took a nice vacation somewhere I have never been before, and the best part of it is that I finally get to meet a very special lady :) The flight leaves Calgary on the 4th of September and will arrive in Belgrade on the 6th.. The plan so far is to get a hotel for one or two days, and then just figure out where we want to go from there :) We have a few tentative plans but nothing concrete at this point so I will keep you updated as we go, and throw in a few pictures along the way!!

Scream

Scream
Originally uploaded by Mfitton

I thought I would post a pic again, and write some more about how this was taken...

The camera was set up on a 30 second exposure, and one of the other guys used his flashlight to 'paint' the light on the edges of the building while the shutter was left open... It was a cool trick i hadn't done before, and opens up a few ideas for me :)

Anyways, keep shooting and having fun!!
~mike

Photo Contests.... maybe not so good??

Think VERY carefully about entering magazine contests that offer you the world! It concerns me just a little bit about the many photography magazines that run photo contests with cool prizes just for uploading pictures you have taken, with a great chance of winning really cool stuff.

Professional photographers blogs that I have read recently have talked about magazines doing this and receiving images from photographers (Amateurs and Pro's alike)and then using them in an irrevocable, royalty-free, non-exclusive, worldwide perpetual license without compensation to the Photographer.

I would have given away my soul at one point to get my images in these "premium magazines", but not any longer...

It does appear that some will acknowledge you as the Photographer, but then they have the right to use YOUR images as they see fit...Forever, without any further compensation for all the hard work it may have taken to take the picture in the first place...

I don't want to name names, or mention the blogs I have read, so Google is your friend here. I only want to let people be aware of what "I" consider a real problem with contests. I am NOT a lawyer, so do your own homework first before entering ANY contests... most of them will have a "Legal" section that you must abide by...

This is a snippet of one such contest's rules:
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USE OF ENTRY: By submitting an entry, entrant grants Sponsor and its designees an irrevocable, royalty-free, non-exclusive, worldwide perpetual license to use the entry and his/her name, city and state of residence for credit purposes in Sponsor’s online galleries, without further compensation, notification or permission, unless prohibited by law. In addition, each winner grants to the Sponsor and its designees an irrevocable, royalty-free, non-exclusive, worldwide perpetual license to use and distribute the entry [(as submitted, or as cropped by Sponsor)], and his/her name, city and state of residence for credit purposes, in any and all media now or hereafter known, including without limitation in ****** magazine, for purposes of promotion of this Contest and other Sponsor contests and/or for purposes of advertising and promoting Sponsor and, except as otherwise stated herein, without further compensation, notification or permission, unless prohibited by law.
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Hibernating for the winter!

I'm using hibernation as an excuse for failing to update my blog in a timely manner...lol (sure sure)

Over the past few months I have been thinking of different ways to possibly wean myself off 'Normal' work and make a bit of money through photography. There are so many ways to do this, but I also have limited resources to do this myself. There are many people selling their photo's via Stock Agencies and I have been checking out some of them recently. There are VERY different view points to doing this. So I am at a bit of a dilemma at this point!

Some photographers are totally against this because of the fact that they have put a lot of hard work and expense into creating wonderful photographs that they can sell to companies or individuals at a premium price for the high image quality they produce.

The other camp is photographers that sell their images to 'Stock Agencies' and maybe get a few cents to a few dollars per image, but through volume, they stand to make a reasonable living from it.

I am leaning towards having a mixture of both types in my portfolio, since I'm starting to really enjoy taking wildlife photos for which I have already had a few people showing interest in some prints. As far as stock photos, I may just lean towards the simple, unusual type of images, and sell those on the stock agencies sites.

At this point I am not wanting to have a niche or category that I favour since there are so many cool things to photograph. I'll just keep on keeping on and do what I really love, taking pictures of everything I can...!