In Easter i make a trip to Madrid. And i think to my self, "great i can relax and i can visit a new country and make some pictures for stock!"

Maybe because i was on vacations i feel more relax and don´t pay attention to the details, the preparation. Travel all around the city, wall many miles on foot and of course take a lot of pictures. When the vacations end i come to my country and go strait to my mac to see all the pictures.

The sad part of the story is that in the first night at Madrid i take some pictures from some buildings and set the ISO to 800. The next day the ISO was still in the 800 and i don´t remember that. And of courser i don´t check the setup again and you now the rest of the story. I end up with lot of pictures taken in another country with lots ...

Freedom! Is what every body wants! Don´t meter if is to read a book, go fishing take pictures or draw.

As a graphic design I´m not free! I made design for another person that come to me and ask something. I give what I think is best, but most times the person don´t go that direction and asked for something that I now is not the best, but is her/she that is the boss, and the owner of the work.

Why did I tell all of this? Because the stock market!

When I do stock I realize that is the only time that i´m free.

Like Russell Crowe said in Gladiator "now I´m free!"

I do what I think is best, the best I can and if people like they will buy.

My only regret is that I can live with stock. I´m in conditional release from time to time.

Maybe on day I will be totally free....

Last year i travel to Tunisia in my vacations. At that time i don´t now what stock photos was and don´t have a very good camera to do stock (fuji finepix 5500).

Don´t think in brands, noise, artifact, etc. Was almost point-and-shoot.

The country is great to take nice pictures, lot of warm colors, different people, beautiful landscape.

In my on country i do a lot of canyoning and i see big waterfalls and water.

In Tunisia i remember waking up at 3 in the morning, travel by jeep for miles to see what they call as the "Big waterfall".

At the beginning i have the hope of see a huge waterfall, big that the ones i have in my home country (waterfalls with 100, 130, 160 feet). To my surprise the big waterfall only have 40 feet´s.

But i understand ...

On Saturday I go with some friends to a Canyon to make some canyoning. Of course that my machine (fujifilm 9600) come along, I was a little afraid because electronics and water don´t mix.

That was a great chance to make great pictures. Beautiful landscape, and people doing a strange sport.

Afraid with all that water i put my machine inside a plastic bag, put the program on the machine to auto (don´t want to take the risk of get the machine out of the plastic bag to adjust exposer and so on).

In the end of the day i have 232 images.

When a get home, the first thing that i made, was to take a look to the pictures :(

Result, 226 bad photos, white balance wrong, out of focus, noise, artifacts, and only 6 good pictures.

The only good thin was the ...

Yes is true! Not every day is a good day to stock image.

On sunday i make a visit to a small lost village in the heart off Portugal, the oldest in the country with more that 600 years. You can see some pictures in this site here. At the beginning i was very happy with this trip, was a chance to take great pictures, maybe some of them can be stock pictures. But like i find out, some days are not pictures days.

I don´t know what was wrong with me, every picture that i take in that day i look at and think "my god this is really crap!".

In the end of the day and after i made 500Km i realized that is not the equipment that matters, but the person behind!

Remember, don´t make long trips to take pictures if you don´t feel good inside!

I was thinking one of this days in image archive.

I have a huge number of files, in one trip with my camera, i know that i will have at least more 50 to 100 files to archive. The way i do is, create a new folder with the name of the place or event and put all my files in there.

Then i will choose that photos that i think are good for stock and i work them in photoshop. When they are ok, i save them in one place i have that only had my stock work. In that file I create a new file with the date of that day. Don´t know if is the best way, is my way of work.

And you? How did you archive you portfolio?

One of the most useful tool for isolated objects and almost no one pay attention is the Color Range in Photoshop.

After you open your document, you can find this tool in the upper menu, in select/color-range.

This powerful tool gives you the ability to isolate that background that is almost white but not totally. By selecting with the eyedropper tool what you want to delete this powerful tool will create a mask of what is necessary and then you can easily erase the background.

Give it a try and see how easy that is!

How to draw a flower vector.

First i start by doing a sketch in a paper, basically doing some arcs and curves, from where i want my draw stars and ends.

Try not to break the curves. The draw must be smooth.

After scan the sketch to illustrator, draw on top of the image with the pen tool, adding some simple leafs and flowers.

Must pay attention to the balance of the all image. Don´t make more leafs or objects in one side of the image causing the final result out of balance and nasty.

After the motive is drawn make a nice background or fit with the whole composition.

For me the most difficult is the concept and not the design. What to draw is what people who talk to me always say.

In this example the first I do is the idea. I start to think in what was the concept of good and wrong and I realized that they are opposite one to the other. With that idea I start imagine a cartoon devil and one angel turn back one to the other.

Make some sketch on a paper sheet, and when a get the idea I scan that to illustrator.

In my opinion, in this type of illustration, the most important is the black color. Must had bold lines to give this cartoon looks. And more important is the movement, the cartoon must have movement, be graceful, like they are alive.

All of this was made with the pen tool. After the black is time to give some ...

For some time that Isee people that don´t now what is vector!

They talk in pictures and pixels. They say that are creating vector art in photoshop and when they enlarge the image, they see large pixels. That is not vector! That one image with pixels like a photo.

Vector is draw with programs like corel or illustrator, were the lines are mathematical formulas. Were you say to the computer (I want one anchor point here and another here) and the computer draw a line or a gradient. You don´t paint like in photoshop.

Vector don´t have pixel.

Vector can by scale to any size without lost any quality.

What a vector file looks like.