New Site - YAY Images

Based on some advice and searching on the site reviews posted by Microstock Man, I decided to submit a few photos to YAY Images.

The image requirements here are for at least 1000 pixels on each side, so some images I'd submitted to Bigstock won't work here, but I was able to include the original image - the purple flower with the deer fly. I'll post the results once I hear something.

These are the new photos I submitted:

Purple wildfowers and insects

The deerfly image is the one considered "sellworthy" by a trusted friend and thus the image that launched this experiment. 

Apparently the quality on these is better - they were a Bigstock rejection because there are too many purple flowers. I'll take that as encouragement and submit these to other sites.

I went through the Bigstock purple flower inventory, and they do have a lot of them, though I couldn't find another one with a deerfly on the petals.

Snapshot Images

Both of these were considered by Bigstock as snapshots that cannot be used as stock photos. To be honest, the above was an impulse photo, but I'm not sure what's wrong with the deerfly and wildflower. Too much forest floor?  I'd crop it, but then it would be too small to submit.

Bigstock rejection

I started out with Bigstock simply because they would accept the size of photo my camera creates. Many sites require 5mp (five mega pixels) and I can only go up to just under 4mp.
These photos were taken a few years ago with an Olympus Stylus 300.

Above are two rejections due to Artifact Problems. I edited these using Microsoft Picture It! by increased sharpness and saturation levels. I'm new enough to this to not know if they needed editing or not, but one site advised that all photos need work before being submitted. All I've got is PictureIt, so, I messed around with them. It was fun, and I figure if I keep submitting photos, I'll eventually learn.

I think I see the "noise" they are talking about, and I note that the photo properties indicate a flash was used. One of the annoying things about the point-and-shoot is the auto flash. Every time I forget to turn that off before taking photos. I think that may be the problem here. 

Below are the same two photos prior to editing:

How my attempt at Microstock started

I first started my companion blog of photos taken in parks to provide a sort of mini-break for cube dwellers in corporate land and perhaps make a few cents off of adsense ads.

I got some comments about one in particular being "sellworthy" and got a smile from it. Though I'd heard about selling stock photos I figured there had to be some catch to it and didn't pursue anything. My camera had issues, and the blog went dormant.

Enter a new 4 mega pixel camera, an Olympus Stylus 410 that I purchased used off of Craigslist, (for me this was a big step up) and I got started taking photos again. On a whim did a search for how to sell microstock photos. It really is fun to wander through the woods taking photos, and making money from that would be incredible. In spite of the internet marketers claiming it was easy and therefore setting off my alarm systems, I started checking it out. 

Enter a site called MicrostockMan. His site is a guide to how to enter the world of microstock and is my blueprint for how to approach this. Be careful visiting though - he has some awesome images if you go to his portfolios. I set a timer.