Stock Photograph - Self Portrait on Holiday by the lake

I’ve recently submitted a series of self-portraits on Istock, a long overdue action, really. I don’t really like shooting self-portraits: they make everything much more difficult to achieve, especially on location. I must have attempted this one twenty times before I got something interesting. I had been in the country relaxing for a week or so with very little grooming and thought that my look would be a striking comment on getting off the working train and going back to nature, and just taking it easy. Well, someone read it as much more extreme than that, possibly checking out of life altogether: the photo is now used on the front page of Parlons Suicide (let’s talk about suicide), a site about suicide prevention. Personally, I would have kept the hair in the montage, but that’s besides the point. I’m quite touched by this, especially if it helps even saving a life. I’ve had a lot of ups and downs in my life, and although I’m very much a moving forward, pick yourself up, figure it out, make the changes you need and have faith that something exactly suitable is just around the corner kind of person, I have, on occasions, thought of ending it all and even wrote a song about it back in the days. It’s quite the ultimate ego trip, suicide, when you think about it. Taking yourself out of the equation (at least from our sense of reality) with no regards to the impact on the rest of world, no regards to the love and the experience that lays ahead, and the sharing of which can impact the future of many people in several unknown butterfly effects. Thinking that one’s point of view at a difficult time is the only accurate, worthy reading of reality and that it demands final action. Yes, it is very much the opposite of humility and openness. Quite the ego gone wild. This of course is one point of view, mine, today, as I more and more learn to appreciate the many blessings that make up my every day and try to believe that I’m worthy of receiving and then giving away positive energies. It’s a long process, and in my case, with many failures along the way every time I meet certain people in my family, but now I see these encounters as opportunities of growth and stepping stones towards a better sense of empathy and forgiveness. Oh well, it is not in my habit to get all philosophical about things on this blog, so I’ll head back to real life. Some of my goals today: making the best chocolate cake ever, getting rid of an old table that sits in the garage, and trying to figure out and retouch something that apparently causes a copyright or privacy infringement in a New-York City skyline. And I bet you I’ll have fun doing all three

Stock Photograph - Young Adult Worker with summer shirt, arms crossed

Exciting times! In my quest to find a more istock-ish style (I noticed in the past few months that a lot of my work which was popular at Shutterstock is failing to make an impact at Istock), I’ve been dabbling with a bunch of new tricks over the week and I’ve done some fantastic work, if I may say so. It will appear online in the next few weeks, since I ran out of Vetta slots this month and I will definitely wait to submit them to that collection. So stay tuned!

Today’s featured shot is from my shoot with Jonathan last December and is one of a handful that is showing promise in regards to sales. Now that I have a better idea of buyer’s interest in regards to that shoot, I will return soon with more shots in that vein. Jon is acting in Three Sisters at Dawson college over this week-end and the next, so if you’re in Montreal, go encourage the next generation of actors. You can view all of my available shots with this model at his Istock lightbox or in his gallery on photoshelter.

Stock Photograph - Happy dog in Golden Field

Boy, is it ever hard to get a shot through into Vetta these days! Which is why it is always worth a small celebration when one gets accepted into that collection. This one made it yesterday night, after a long process: it was initially rejected for overuse of noise reduction – after which I added a tiny bit of noise all over, and voilà, everyone is happy! Pirate certainly is. The puppy seen here is in his very first discovery of a wild field in June. He was 4 months old at the time. I remember attempting shooting this many times that evening. Autofocus on moving subjects is NOT my Camera’s forte. But it finally worked, and right at the best place with such lovely back lighting from the sunset. For those interested, I’m still going through my back ups to see if I’ve missed some great shots (such as this one) during my initial rounds of post production, and thus many new shots from old shoots will appear in my portfolio during the next few weeks.

stock photograph - Sunset over the corn field

This was a magical evening in June when I visited my dad at his farm. I tried to capture the magic of that moment, the sweet, peaceful laziness that comes at those special early Summer moments where nature is full of great, positive energy. I kept this one hidden until I felt I could do it justice, and felt that now was the right time for it, so here it is.

Stock Photograph - Rectangular Medieval Window

Well yes, it’s a … window. No big bells and whistles on that one. Except it’s one of the hardest shots I made in a while. But I like difficult shots: it usually means there are not a gazillion similar ones going against them. The light was tricky, and thus required several exposures and I couldn’t go the HDR route because of many issues such as chromatic aberrations which made the HDR image a god awful mess. So all the window details were tweaked by hand, painstakingly and exactly, to achieve the look I had in mind when I shot this in Tretower, Wales.

Stock Photograph - Cayo Santa Maria

I don’t know how it is where you live, but here, in Montreal, there was heavy snow yesterday and today is about -25 Celsius. So I’m having fun these days going through my films shot at the beach. This one is Cayo Santa Maria, Cuba, and it not only is a great background, but at the same time, by itself, is also really nice minimalistic shot that brings a wonderful sense of peace and warmth. It’s the kind of shot in which my overactive brain loves to get lost.

There are more beach photos in this Istock lightbox, or for larger view in this photoshelter gallery (links to purchase are below each photos, thank you).

Stock Photograph - Down the well looking up

One thing that crossed my mind when I visited so many castle ruins last fall in the UK was to shoot this photo. So on and on we went from castle to castle looking for the perfect tower and none of them seem to make an interesting photograph – they were too smooth or too run down, or had stairs, roof or modern scaffolding along the sides, or you just plain couldn’t walk in… until we stopped at Tretower in the Powys county in Wales. The keep is really small but it had the exact tower I was looking for, with the added benefits of small ledges and growing vegetation which really adds something to the shot. So here it is… and no it isn’t HDR, although there are 3 exposures mixed in the final shot.

Stock photograph - Hairy man shaving half of his body

Second half of January already! Time does fly fast. Anyhow, I’ve decided for the next 2 weeks to feature new shots that have shown promise in attracting attention and becoming good sellers if they can keep their momentum. Therefore, if you see something that might be useful to you, don’t hesitate to get it now: their appearance here means they’re in their pocket to get a huge boost from any immediate sale.

First off, a new shot from my recent shoot with Jonathan which got an initial rating at its release in December and a few early sales since. I had gotten a series of props for him to play with in the shots, but he was so good at making faces that I ended up spending more time on expressions than I did with interactions. Time will tell if that was wise. Still this one came towards the end when we were experimenting with shaving cream and a razor. His positioning is just great and so is the expression, just intense enough for someone who’s about to make such a big change in his life.

And no, he didn’t do it. Hairy chests are due for a comeback.. aren’t they?

You can view the initial batch of photographs with this model in this istockphoto lightbox. More will come in the next few weeks.

Stock Photograph: Security Camera

Ok I admit that I’m under the charm of the Nik Software plugins. They’re addictive. It’s my new toy. They can make ordinary into extraordinary. I’ve been dabbling with them for a week now, mostly on beach photos I’ve shot years ago (you know, doing backups and coming across photos I’d ignored previously) and I’m very impressed. Once you’ve put together a sensible workflow you can get rid of almost any problem (I still wish there was something in there against chromatic aberrations) and give the shots that extra push into wowness. The above shot is quite eye-catching now, but was initially a gray mess and a noise fest (underexposed 2000 ISO) and look at it now… It even passed inspection. So I had fun all week adding colors and effects galore, all the time thinking I would get a ton of rejections for overfiltering – I’ve always been so careful to make the photos look as natural as possible – but out of 20 submits, I only got 2 rejections for artifacts and they were oversights from my part. So I’m gonna buy them today. Or maybe tomorrow. Maybe they’ll send me a rebate by email now that my trial is over…

He also has his gallery on my photoshelter archival site.