I'm very happy that finally reached 1000 sales, after a bit more than 2 years exclusive on Dreamstime, thanks to a nice extra large kangaroo fight credit sale! Nice milestone to remember :-)

I wish I had more time to take photos and upload, but ultimately I think it's better to focus on quality rather than quantity. Well, some people seem to achieve both quantity and quality but I don't so I try to keep a critical eye on my photos and only submit the best ones, even if it hurts sometimes not to be able to (self) select one enough shot out of a whole series...

My approval rate is quite regular, 64% overall and around 75% most months these days. If I stick to my favourite subjects, I can even reach 85 or 90% approval ratio, but I like to take a bit of risk in order to learn.




Submitting for the assignments is a sure way to bring my ratio down but it's all part of the fun too, and hopefully if a photo is rejected in the assignment submission, it can still be accepted as a normal RF file, like this one.



Flowers are a difficult subject too. Because they are beautiful, it's very tempting to photograph them but the competition is high, therefore the selection criteria are high too. I keep on taking photos of flowers, but only rarely submit them. When I do, they are more often than not rejected... but this recent upload here brought me a nice TIFF sale with only 3 views and after being online for a week only, so it proves it's always worth to keep on trying something you like but are not very successful at.



I'm proud of some series when they get accepted, and yet they don't always become the big hit I was hoping for... And then, for some reason, after being online for a while, they sometimes suddenly start selling.

I've learnt a lot in the last couple of years, and I've also gained confidence. This has allowed me this year to do my daughter's school calendar. A voluntary activity that I can be proud of and that looks professional enough! I obviously can't publish the photos on DT, but that's fine as some of them might not be quite sharp enough at 100% but work really well on a smaller resolution. That has certainly been a lot of fun as it's been a proper assignment, with a brief to follow whilst allowing creativity.



Have a wonderful Christmas and a great photographic year 2012!