Excited. Thrilled. Eager. These are some of the emotions that I felt when I first found out about stock photography. Receiving money for taking photos of random objects? How great was that?

Well, that was back in October. A massive upload of photographs later - a big slap in the face.

A true wake up call. Shortly thereafter, these emotions set in: dejected, disappointed, embarrassed, confused.

Ex-rookie photographers will recall how emotionally traumatizing it was when it seemed like no matter what we did, the photos being submitted would always get rejected. For one reason or another - with comments like, "Poor optical performance...", "Poor lighting..." or "Distorted pixels...". So traumatizing to the point where I wanted to pull out all my hair. (metaphorically speaking ...

My 2007 was one my best years yet. Exciting events had taken place that I never envisioned possible. For one, I finally got to travel to the Rockies in the west coast of Canada. In preparation for my trip to the Rockies, I went out and bought myself a Sony DSC-H5. A rather siginficant upgrade from what I had owned before - a 3 MP Kodak Easyshare. Although the trip itself was more than a humbling experience, my photos turned out disappointing - the quality of my shots of the Rockies and various wildlife did not come out the way I had wanted. What appeared to be magical when I was there did not transverse into my photographs. Of course, I was still shooting in auto mode.

The disappointing photos from my Rockies trip lit a fire within me and ...