Thought it was time to share a few notes on where I stand with my budget-killing hobby of photography, and since I do have a bit of news and a bit of time in which to type, here goes...

First, I'll just cut to the chase and tell you that I am now a contributor on istockphoto.com, one of the largest online stock libraries. The application process took a few tries, with one out of the necessary three photos being approved on each try. By the third try, I went as far as to create a new image simply for the application, and I'm happy to say it did the trick!

I was approved one week ago and uploaded my first images at the beginning of last week. It took a few days to get them approved, but I finally got the emails last night, and now you can see the beginning on my stock portfolio online! Today I uploaded more photos, but with a constant stream of uploads to swim through, the approval process takes at least a few days.

It's exciting, even though I may have to wait some time to see results, and even though it will take a lot of work to build a solid portfolio. I'm simply excited to have my work out there, and to be away from the art-photography arena, in which I was very unstable and, frankly, a mess. Now I can focus my photography on real commercial ideas, something I am much more comfortable with, and that alone makes it worth the time and effort.

My other piece of news is, of course, a new piece of kit. I sold my Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 which had been my main on-the-camera-all-the-time lens for almost three years, and upgraded to the Nikon 16-85mm VR. It came highly recommended for its sharpness, and I was not disappointed at all. The lens kicks ass, there is just no better way to say it.

So my kit now consists of the 16-85mm, the 70-300mm, the 10-20mm, and the 50mm f/1.8. It is as close as I can imagine to a "dream kit" at this point, and I look forward to our upcoming trip to Alaska where I will really get to use everything.

In the coming weeks, I need to do some serious work on my website, shifting away from art and shows and presenting my work in a more commercial way. When I'll have the time to do it, I don't know, but it needs to be done sooner rather than later.

Holy awesome music, batman! Being away from Scandinavia for almost 7 years now has taken its toll. When I lived in Bergen, Andreas Johnson was just coming out and his first big hit, Lene Marlin only had her first album, and Morton Abel was always on the radio. And that was almost the extent of the music I knew from that part of the world.

So here's how this whole thing came up...

I FINALLY received my rebate from Sandisk, from December! I swear, I was justified in hating that company and their shady practices, but they offered a rebate too good to pass up. I bought three 8GB Extreme III compact flash cards for just over $74, and sent in for a whopping $70 rebate. It's not free money, of course, it's just a visa gift card so I do have to spend it on something, but still, it was well worth it. At the time, they advertised a visa card for specific camera stores, and I picked Adorama, but when my card arrived, it had not specific store attached to it. I guess that was just too complicated for them. lol

But the annoying thing is how long I had to wait. I bought my cards just after Thanksgiving when I could get them at such a great price, and sent in my rebate form in early December. They received it on December 14th, and it was not "approved" until February 14th! WTF, man. That was the deadling for postmarked rebates, so I could have well waited until the last minute. My friend Jose sent his form in at least a month after mine and his was processed at the same time.

So in other words, they waited until they could process everything at one time and push off the whole giving-money-back-to-the-customer bit until the last minute. And it took another 2 weeks before they mailed the cards! And, and and... that's not even the worst part! The cards get here and they expire in June! So not only do they wait until the last minute, they give us cards that expire in 3 months! Can you say "scam"? I knew you could!

Anyway... I had to use this card now before I forgot about it. So I decided to buy a new camera bag. I had been looking at the Lowepro Flipside models, thinking about picking up one of those for Alaska, and since I've decided to slim down my kit for travel purposes, and in the hopes of not carrying a bunch of lenses and stuff I don't use, I opted for the Flipside 300, which was $75. I had almost $25 in gift certificates on my Amazon account, and there was no way for me to tell it to empty the visa card first and then use the gift certificates to fill in the rest. It only works the opposite way.

So in order to not have $20 left on the card and have to worry about where to spend it, I had to buy $19.46 in something with the gift cards in order to have just enough to cover the bag and use up the rebate card in one go. Thus, I started browsing the mp3s, and wound up finding a couple albums by Andreas Johnson that I didn't have.

Which got me thinking, what are some other artists similar to him? Amazon has nothing. They can't even guess what a similar artist might be. lol. So I turned to last.fm and typed in Andreas Johnson, and the first thing I get is Tommy Nilsson singing Öppna Din Dörr, which turned out to be beautiful song. I was so moved that I had to buy it, and of course there's no mp3, but Amazon did have a cd for a reasonable price. Other artists popped up, and one after another I found these Swedish singers I never heard of, singing in Swedish, and the music was awesome! I forgot just how polished their music industry is. Öppna Din Dörr is an old song, but check if out:

There is always and up and down pattern to my hobbies. My enthusiasm for a given topic has enough peaks and valleys to cause motion sickness. Sometimes the lows make it hard to keep going, but remembering the highs is what any frustrated artist must do to stay sane.

I bring this up because I recently purchased a lens for the second time, a Nikon 50mm f/1.8. Back in 2006 when I was shooting my new D70 with a Tamron super-zoom, the 50mm 1.8 was my first "new" lens that I picked up myself. It was cheap, fast, and turned out to be one of the most enjoyable lenses I've ever used. After I bought my D300, I put my D70 up for sale with another Tamron super-zoom. When the buyer turned out to be family, I threw in the 50mm 1.8 so they could enjoy a fast and fun lens.

At the time I did not see myself using it much. I had grown accustomed to a three-lens kit (Tamron 28-75mm, Nikon 70-300mm and Sigma 10-20mm) when traveling and the 50mm wasn't getting a lot of love. So I figured it would not be missed, and it was months before I began to think about buying a new one.

Then I hit one of those low-points in my photography, where it became necessary to look to the past and remember what I really enjoyed about photography. It's too easy to get bogged down in the computer and turn this wonderful hobby into nothing but "work", and when I thought long and hard about the kind of photography I enjoy, I remembered the highest level of enjoyment coming from the digital photography course I took with my wife in our last quarter at university.

And what lens did I use most during that course? The Nikon 50mm 1.8 of course! It is a beautiful portrait lens (on DX format) and I shot wide open more than most photographers would ever consider doable. I loved the super-shallow depth of field, and the bokeh from that lens is way too good for the price tag.

So I'm happy to have a new 50mm lens joining my kit once again. I took a few shots with it at home, just looking around our dining room, and those shots represent the most creative photos I've taken in months! It's amazing how this little lens can push me to do my best.

Tomorrow morning I take down my show. It's hard to believe the month is over already! The first couple weeks seemed to last forever, I was stopping by Mitchell's a couple times a week and getting lots of reaction to the show, but then I got sick, went out to Houston for vacation, and now the month is almost over.

I did sell two pieces, which is nice. Didn't sell any of the smaller matted prints, which is surprising, but I'm not sure January is the best time for sales anyway. The rest of the photos will be coming home with me tomorrow morning, where they will remain in storage until my next show. I won't be using the same photos (at least not in the same venue) but I can definitely reuse the frames, which will help cut down the cost.

My mother-in-law is visiting. She arrived last Saturday, and since Sunday was her birthday we planned to visit Disney, and I figured that would be a good chance to get out with the camera for the first time this year. I've been so busy with work, the new website and the show, that I haven't had any time to go out shooting.

We decided on the Magic Kingdom, and I made the rather stupid assumption that the middle of January would be pretty slow. After 10 minutes in the park, my should and legs were killing me, and I had shot only a couple dozen shots, all of which were shot just for the sake of trying to use my gear. I finally gave up and stashed the kit in a locker so I could actually enjoy the day with family.

I wound up borrowing my wife's small Canon to take a few shots now and then, and it reminded me how I really do need a pocket-size camera for certain situations. I had been debating the need for a pocket camera since December, thinking that I could carry it everywhere with me and would thus get a few shots during my daily life that I would not get otherwise. After thinking about it a lot, I had come to the conclusion that I really wouldn't shoot any more photos by simply putting a camera in my pocket on the way to work every day. One day in the Magic Kingdom, however, showed me the true need for a small camera.

For now I will probably just use the Canon whenever the need arises, but I'm sure I will want one of my own at some point. I first need to see how the images I shot Sunday look once they're on the camera, and then we begin the long but enjoyable process of picking the best camera to fit my needs.

I finally took a few minutes to try out Lightbox, the wonderful Javascript many people use to display images on a website. It really is simple and easy to setup, and I love the effect. I did something similar with my portfolios in Director back in school, but I never learned how to do something like this in a web browser.

So my portfolio is now much better than when I initially launched the site. You can click on the small images and a larger version will pop up, darkening the page behind it. I think it's a great way to focus on a single photo, so it's no surprise that even the great David Noton uses it. If you haven't had a chance to check out my new site yet, head over to fotobymatt.com and visit the portfolio to see Lightbox in action.

I still need to spend some time on it. Everything still uses the default styles, so I want to play around with it and make it look best with my design. I may adjust the 'previous' and 'next' buttons to make them more fitting in my style as well. Eventually I'll have a link for viewers to order a print of the image they're looking at, but that is still a long way off at this point.

I got a call from Michelle today letting me know somebody wants to buy one of my photos. I should be jumping up and down, but when the buyer is family, it's hard to get that excited. It's still good news, and I'll finally have something in the show with a little "SOLD" sign on it.

It feels like the open house was a long time ago, but it hasn't even been a week just yet. Selling a photo within the first week is something I should be happy about. I guess it just feels like the show is so far from my mind right now. I need to put together a cash envelope with instructions so that I can leave my browse-bin tomorrow morning. That should have been done prior to the show, but I never had the chance. Perhaps I should print up a sheet that hangs over the front of the bin, listing the prices, pointing out the size of the photos and the frames they fit in? I take it for granted, but someone just glancing at it may have no idea those prints are matted to fit 8x10 and 11x14 frames.

Since tomorrow is Friday, I should get working on this today and visit Mitchell's in the morning. Shame on me for not doing it already. I plan on heading up to Mitchell's in the morning if we have time, and I've thought about hanging out in the evening tomorrow as well. We'll see what the day brings.

Is it really 2009 already? Last year really flew by, especially the past couple months. I only found out at the end of October that I would be doing my gallery at Mitchell's in January. I spent almost no time preparing for it in November due to travel and work, so aside from picking out a few photos to use in the show, everything was done in the month of December.

I guess I should be proud of that, though I never could have done it without Jose's help. The same would probably be true regardless of how much time I had to prepare, but the tight schedule makes it even more so. We managed to get everything matted and framed in just two evenings, and I learned a lot about framing in the process. It was quite fun, honestly.

Then January hit and everything happened all at once. The week of December 29th I was busy trying to prepare for a big sales meeting at work, so my hours were even more limited than they should have been. I got out of the office early on the 31st to hang my photos at Mitchell's, which only took a couple hours, but the next day I was in the office working on the meeting again.

The 2nd was just crazy. I was up before 6, rushing to get to Mitchell's to mount my description cards before anyone got there, then rushing to get back to the office before 7:30. The meeting started at 9 and ran until almost 2 that afternoon. I was so hopped up on coffee and donuts that I hardly knew what day it was. Jamie and I took off for a late lunch, then we were back at the office again. It was after 5 before I left, and I was due at Mitchell's before 6, so no time left to go home and change, etc.

The open house started at 6. I had almost no time to really think about the show and feel any kind of anticipation, so I can't say I felt anything special about the show itself. I did enjoy seeing some old friends who I hardly ever get to see, and I have to say thanks to everyone who came out for the show.

I plan on hanging around Mitchell's this Friday as well. It's not a big deal like the first night, but there are still family members and other friends who didn't get to come to the open house. If you're reading this and didn't see me last Friday at Mitchell's, come down this Friday after 6 or so. I'll be there for a couple hours at least.

I haven't had much to blog about lately. Blame it on work or laziness, blame it on the media, whatever you prefer. I could blather for several pages about whatever comes to mind, but that wouldn't be keeping in the spirit of this blog. I could write more about my thoughts on cameras, share some success stories for selling stuff online, or rant endlessly about the state of politics in this miserable excuse for a democracy. I could do all of those things, but instead, I would like to explain my (somewhat) recent addition of a subtitle to this LJ.

"A LOT" IS TWO WORDS.

There it is, up there in the header where everyone can always see it. I like to think I'm doing my part. Thanks to Jeffery Rowland, as always, for making the internet cool again.