About a year ago I was very discouraged with Dreamstime. I had uploaded tons of photos but many of them were rejected. So I decided to take a little break. I was kinda forced to do this because life was getting busier and busier as my family and I packed for our year-long mission trip to Korea. Once in Korea, things didn't slow down so I didn't end up doing much on Dreamstime. After about a year, we headed on back to Florida, where, after unpacking and settling in, I was able to find some time last week to work on micro stock. With almost two years worth of photos to upload, I've been kept busy. Thankfully (and surprisingly for me), most of the pictures I've submitted have been accepted.

So, for the story of my life these two years, spent all over the world...

The story begins in Florida ...

I'm sure many of you have heard of the recent oil spill off the coast of South Korea. I was here in Korea when it happened and I enjoyed being able to volunteer my help in cleaning up the mess that had been left.

My dad, some friends, and I set off with a group of several hundred volunteers from a church near Seoul, Korea. Although we didn't join the cleaning effort until several weeks after the actual spill, the beaches were still covered with oil. After donning some of the most ridiculous looking hazmat outfits I've ever seen, we set out for the coast.

Our group spent the entire freezing day cleaning one small peninsula that had a layer of oil over everything. Our job was very monotonous. With old rags, we had to scrub every rock by hand trying ...

One of my heroes, Francis Schaeffer, had some very good insight on the criteria of what art should be. I have tried to use these rules whenever I create a photo, and hope that others will put these guidelines into use as well. These guidelines are called the "Four Standards of Judgment" and they should be applied to every work of art.

The first "Standard of Judgment" is Excellence. This simply means that it should be well done technically. Thanks to the efforts of the Dreamstime editors, we can be pretty sure that most of the images on here are well done technically. Here is one of my images that fits this criteria. Not only is it technically well done, but the lighting was also well done in my own humble opinion (although with no help from me).

The second "Standard ...

Lately I've been wanting to try my eye at some portraits of people. I am relatively new to photography (about one year) and am only 16 so I was wanting to see how bad I would end up making the person look.

Thankfully, I have good access to models with my family. I asked my sister and she was willing to let me try. I had read a few articles on taking portraits, I had seen a gnarled tree that looked like a good background, and there was a nice, soft, cloudy afternooon so I decided to go ahead and try. I was very pleased with the results of the about 25 pictures I took that time.

After a little bit of photshop, I was ready to see what Dreamstime would think of them. I guessed they liked them because a few days later, the four I had uploaded were ...