I decided to start a little blog on here.
I am an Illustrator/Artist and play around alittle with photography. I work from home doing my Art so that I can take care of my little girl who is 5.
My goal is to have enough illustrations online to sell to make a comfortable living.
Not an easy task to accomplish as it takes alot of work obviously and alot of time. Not only do I need to draw each day, scan the illustations in and tweak on photoshop but they also have to be accepted which as we all know is tricky. I am still learning the ropes and making tons of mistakes but that is how we learn.
I reluctantly accept my refused files with a grain of salt and strive to do better or more details or whatever is recommended.
Sometimes its very frustrating however, this is business and cannot be taken personally.
At present I have 21 files on Dreamstimes. Doesnt sound like alot however I'm happy so far. I have only recently really started working hard to get images accepted.
I finally had my first photograph accepted. It was the highlight of my life. lol
I think I have a good eye for photography and did study photography when getting my degree in Design, however I understand that I do not have the technical skills needed yet to really pull off the great photos. Usually my photos are hit and miss and pure luck. The shot might be awesome, but either the image is way too grainy or when put on 100% in photoshop, it really lacks the details needed.
I had to learn this the hard way. I had a somewhat low res. camera and thought my photographs were great. lol Nothing could have been further from the truth. And although I am very adept in Photoshop and actually taught a class in Photoshop a few years back at a Community College, It did not even dawn on me to put my image at actual pixels to see the quality. That is how little I knew about what it takes to shoot quality photographs.

Happily I was able to get a Canon rebel 18MP and it is an amazing camera, however...I still don't know everything. haha

I was beyond thrilled when they finally accepted my first photo of my daughter laughing. The shot was great, the quality excellent and the joy of her laughing pleased me greatly! I'm happy to have it on here. Of course I had many others that were not accepted however the reasons were true! Alittle blurry here or there when taken in at 100% or grainy. I never noticed such things before but now, I am much more careful!

I have read many stories online about people making thousands of dollars on sites such as this a month., they also have thousands of images so that is my goal. My big dream!
Day to day I keep pounding away at my goal. Its the only way to get something done. If you think you will never get a thousand images on this site, but arent trying every day to work on it, then you are correct. You will never get a thousand images, however I reason this way: If I try and do what I can every day, maybe just 1 a day during the week, that is going to give me around 300 in a year. If I feel like doing more or something comes easy and I get lucky, I"ll have more but it is 300 images closer than where I am at now.
I'm not really sure how blogs work on here and maybe no one will find this one of much interest but I am basicially writing it to encourage myself, to remind myself and hopefully maybe encourage one or two others.

Now I have learned today that I must upload and attach a property release form to MY own artwork. I"m not sure why however I did comply and hope that will make everyone happy. I had some images refused due to lack of property release because the image 'appeared to be from an original piece of art'. I took this as a compliment that they thought my work was so fantastic that they called it artwork instead of stock images so its all good. I have uploaded and attached and will wait for more reviews.

:o)
keep trying!