Changing Direction

Stock photography was what I started with..... no matter where I went, I had a camera in my bag, just in case there was something interesting enough for stock.  However, not being a professional photographer had it's downside.... lots of photo processing.  Almost every night, I would scrutinise my photos, looking for "noise" or purple streaks.  More time would be spent on correcting the lighting or colour or cropping out an object from the messy background.  I started to feel that this was not going to work. Thus, a change in direction.

I moved on to creating my own graphics and cartoons.  Discovering Inkscape was the best thing for me -- it was an open source vector drawing software, totally FREE!  Step by step, day by day, I slowly learnt the ropes..... of drawing, of Inkscape..... I was hooked.  From cringe-worthy products like this:

to my only piece created from a photo below. 6 solid hours over 3 nights with my fingers curled over the mouse and eyes glued to the monitor.  It was well worth the effort I think =) What do you think?



How it all started.....

About 5 years ago, there was a period in my life that was dead boring and depressing..... boring to the point that I could feel my brain cells dying from lack of use.  Before this period, I was one to fill my life with activity, be it learning a new instrument (and forcing my brother to escape to his office while I screeched my violin), or trying to learn and memorise new piano pieces, or cycling for hours on end alone..... giving me lots of time to think, reflect, plan....

Thus it was during this boring period, one boring day, at a boring internet surfing session that I found this -- stock photography.  This was something I never heard of before, a place where normal folk (and not professional photographers) could sell their photos and there would be people interested in buying them. 

iStockPhoto was the 1st site that I joined. I spent night after night, reading all about stock photography, how to submit photos, what the approval process was about, how much commission do I get, how can the money in hard cash that I can actually use......

This was one of my first uploaded photograph:

I started off with photos that I had accumulated on travels to different parts of the world.  Submit..... wait..... and wait..... and wait...... until finally "Your photograph has been approved" came and I was jumping for joy!!!  Silly as it sounds, just having my photos accepted made me very happy =)  Of course, after much more waiting, my first sale really made my day.  All I earned from that sale was US$0.20, but it felt so good that someone was willing to pay for something of mine!