Accepted

It's official: I'm improving as a photographer.

One of my goals for my photography business is to build up a sizable percentage of our monthly income from selling stock photography. My favorite, and I believe the best, site in the industry is iStockphoto. To begin submitting your work to iStock, you must first pass an application procedure, which involves submitting three pieces of your work for them to evaluate as stock.

I bought my camera back in April of 2009, and a couple of months later (about seven months ago) I uploaded my first three images for my application.


I was rejected immediately. About three weeks later, I tried again, with what I felt were better images, and I was upset to find out I was rejected again.


At that point, I sort of wrote off iStockphoto. Or rather, just stopped thinking about trying to get in. But I kept shooting away.


Around November, I started looking into creative use of off-camera flash and got a bunch of equipment lent to me to fool around with. I had a lot of fun, and even produced a few doggie portraits and a set of promotional shots for my brother (who just landed a jazz gig and needed some shots to promote with).


After that shoot, I took a look at my growing body of work and thought, "This is a LOT better than the stuff I was doing five months ago. So, I returned to iStock, uploaded three samples and two were accepted. I threw in another that I had taken in the last couple of weeks, and bam - success.

"Congratulations! The iStockphoto administrators have determined that your files are commercially and technically ready for iStockphoto.com. Please begin uploading at your convenience. "


I'm really excited to have grown as a photographer to have passed this first hurdle. I also know that I have a LONG way to go before I am adept at consistently and efficiently creating great art and usable commercial stock, but as someone who is reinventing themselves after a life devoted to math and science education, this feels really good.

The Broheim

It's been awhile since I have done anything in-studio. So, when my brother called up looking for some promotional shots with his trumpet, I jumped at the chance to get back in.

Last time Caleb came in was with his family, and it was pretty much my first time doing anything in the studio, so things didn't go well. We shot in the "studio" space that I have, which is a very welcome but small room. Shadows abounded due to my light to subject to background distance, as well as trying to get creative with light placement, and just not knowing how.

This time, it was just Caleb, and we were able to setup in a giant room that we could kill all the lights in. I had though that a single strobe about five feet from Caleb and no background for at least thirty feet, as well as very little ambient light would allow me to get away with not setting up any sort of backdrop, but the single strobe through umbrella cast enough light that we had to bring in a stand and big black velvet curtain. (Another item that belongs to the church I shoot in and that I requisition for free.)


The key light was an SB-24 at 1/4 power, ISO 640 through an umbrella at about 45 degrees to camera right of the broheim. The reality is that I haven't played around a lot with the ISO setting on the SB-24 and control intensity almost solely by futzing with the power output. There's a lot more flexibility and control that I'm sure will come when I learn how to use that part of my strobes. Camera was set to ISO 200. Probably could have gone down to 100, but I selected 200 to be safe at the beginning and just forgot about it.

We shot a handful at about 85mm on my 55-200mm zoom and then I switched to an 18-55mm to capture some wide-angle. Caleb currently has a crease in the bell of his trumpet that he didn't think added the kind of character he wanted in the photo. So I attempted some Photoshop magic. The before and after are below.

The Interim Life

Part of the purpose of this blog is to record the logistics of the pursuit of a new career in the midst of life. My hope is that my journey may serve to encourage and inspire you in yours. To that end, I feel like it is worth explaining how I am making ends meet while my new pursuit is still in its fledgling state and not supplying any income.

In certain ways ends are not being met. If you're the type of person who prioritizes a quality credit score and financial stability, my journey may not be particularly inspiring or encouraging. You may even deplore it.

First off I'm married with three children. I lost my job about fifteen months prior to the start of this blog. We shortly afterward moved in with family.

So there's part one: no rent. That's very helpful. Also, in general, there is a lot of grace extended from those around us in the form of free babysitting and school clothes purchasing.

Part two: Bankruptcy. I won't get into the details but over the past ten years we encountered some crummy circumstances and, yes, made a few poor financial decisions and it put us in a tight place financially. After the loss of my job, and without a willingness to go back to a career in education that had become soul-crushing, we filed for bankruptcy. That has (or will when it finalizes) helped with some of the bills.

Part three: Odd jobs. I have a very welcome contract with a search engine evaluation service that allows me to work whenever I want from home that provides a small source of income. In addition, I have in the past substitute taught at schools in the area, though I try to do that as little as possible. I also have a friend with a video production company that sometimes hires me to help out. I have looked into getafreelancer.com, guru.com, and some other freelance job boards, but have found them to be inundated with people looking to hire out at a slave wage; and for the legitimate opportunities, if you don't have several jobs under your belt, you likely won't get chosen for the project.

Part four: Borrowed and gifted equipment. I'm not sure what the value of my photography equipment is, because I have purchased very little of it. I bought my camera used, and it came with some crappy lenses. My father gifted me two better-quality lenses for my birthday, my brother lets me borrow his inherited even-better lenses and three hot shoe strobes, the pastor of our church has let me borrow his light stands, muslins, umbrellas, and various clamps and whatnot from a previous photo business that he had, and the church lets me use a little room for free as a studio. I bought a white seamless paper backdrop and a couple of umbrellas. Besides that, I've invested very little. That will eventually have to change but for now, while I'm in the learning phase, I am very grateful.

The first three allow for feeding kids and having a roof over our heads (maintenance, in other words) and the last part is the main factor in being able to charge forward. If it required much in the way of expenditures to take pictures, I would be moving much more slowly as I would be doing a lot of energy-draining work to afford equipment and be left with little energy or time for the pursuit of photography. I know it's the American Way - work a job you hate because that's just what people do, and try to sneak an enjoyable life into the cracks - but I reject that as my dream. (That's the part you might deplore, by the way, and I get it.)

My hope is that I will be able to use the means my dream life affords to help those who have helped us to get a little Life back into their lives.

To New Beginnings

I have a dream to earn a living providing a valuable service that involves creativity and beauty. A dream to enjoy what I do in order to make an income and to create something that in some way speaks to people. There are a lot of ways I see that dream coming to fruition and one of them is through photography.

I've always been one to hesitate to try something if I wasn't sure that it was going to work out. I have put off pursuing dreams because of all the time it would take to build, with no certainty of success.

What a crappy attitude.

I love taking pictures. I'd love to run a photography business. So that's what I'm working on. This blog is intended to be a chronicle of the journey. I'm learning a lot as I just dive in and go for it. I haven't gone to school (aside from a semester and a half of film school) and I'm likely not going to. I have been studying images and photography for about thirteen years informally, and now I'm continuing my education in a more formal and experiential manner. Which is to say that I am being disciplined about shooting, shooting, shooting and learning all I can from the online photography community.

RKH Pictures is born out of a certain character in a certain movie. He once had dreams of being a veterinarian but is now working at a convenience store. One night he is dragged to the back alley and told that if he isn't on his way to becoming a veterinarian in six months he would be killed. People quip about being scared to death. Raymond K Hessel was scared to life. He was awakened from the slumber many succumb to under the weight of life.

Once, I desired to be an agent of awakening. I believed that honest encounters with beauty and truth would break the bars of the cages we build around ourselves for protection from the pains of life; disrupt the life that is not life that we muddle through because we have been convinced it is the only way to survive. I decided that if I owned a production company one day, I would name it RKH Pictures.

The first soul RKH Pictures has helped awaken is my own. Perhaps that will be the only one.

And if it is. That will be enough.