mnelson

<p>I'm about to sign the "Exclusive Content" agreement with iStockphoto. What's stopping me is the contract agreement. I have a lot of questions about it and I wrote a beautiful, 12 question email, which somehow got lost. Does anyone know anything about their arrangements?<br>

My questions are about the rights I give up if they choose my photos, the rights I give up if they reject my photos, why would I "waive any right I have to a trial by jury", and exactly how much money do they withhold from me for legal deposits? There is even an allusion to them not paying unless they have a written request to do so. I think I'm understanding the gist of it and it's pretty scarey.<br>

Anyone have any experience with them?<br>

Thanks for your help,<br>

M Nelson</p>

Explorer 7. It may be lag from my page coming down and I click before it's finished? It's probaly just me. M

Thank you, everyone. I have some more shots, at f4.0 in daylight of a room. We'll see. I am quite sure there isn't anything wrong with camera. M

I am getting random jumps to their site when I click on other things. Like if I click a person's name, it goes there. Or a photo link, it goes there. I stay away from that corner and it still takes me there. M

Ditto. I have four with at least 5 ratings each, all over A/4.8 O/4.8 Sup? M

Thank you both very much for your answers. You are helping me a great deal. M

Thank you very much for your reply. My camera only goes up to f8.0, and my flash is on the camera. There is a hot shoe for another flash, but I don't have the money for it right now. I have to read this a few more times and digest it.

 

You have given me a fantastic place to start. I really appreciate you suggesting tests for me to do. It helps me not feel so frustrated. I enjoy knowing the nuts and bolts of things, and you gave me that. I am very thankful for your input. M

A friend told me that I may have outgrown my point and shoot camera. I've had a G9 for only a year, but I've used it a

lot. I don't consider myself as knowledgable enough to have exhausted the technology in that camera in only a year.

But I still have problems with blurry photos. He has agreed with me on the ones that I think are out of focus. All he

can attribute it to is camera shake, since the shots look the same as when I got the camera.

 

But I use a tripod, I make sure there is a lot of light, I check my distance from the lense to make sure I'm not too

close, I use the fastest shutter speed I can, I use the "saftey" features like auto ISO shift and safety focus, I stay

away from digital zoom, I use manual focus to make sure I got the right part in focus, when there is low light I use

shutter priority and always use a tripod, I under expose my shots to keep from blowing out hightlights (but they glow

funny-no not Leica glow), I dampen my flash and use it for fill, I try to use the best f-stop for my subject in terms of

DOF, I am holding my breath to be motionless, I take many shots to make sure I can get a good one... on and on

and on.

 

Some of my shots are perfectly in focus. They are the ones with medium light, a tripod, f-stops below 4.0, ISO 80,

and shutter speeds greater than 1/60th. I did a test where I only changed the f-stop and compared the f2.8 side by

side with the f8.0. The f8.0 shots had a wierd glow around the white letters in the test. When I sharpen, I notice the

white edges shrink visibly. My DOF grows as the aperture shrinks, just like it should. There is nothing wrong with my

camera.

 

I'm about ready to rip my hair out. What in the world am I doing wrong? Why can't I get photos that have at least

ONE part that's tack sharp without using my flash on full blast? Why do my macro shots look so soft? Why do I

have to sharpen every photo, especially one that has bright highlights in it? I thought light was good for clear shots.

 

The only thing I can think of is that I am missing a term in the photography equation when I shoot. I think I must be

omitting something in my settings when I decide to take a shot. I am getting very, very, very, very, frustrated. The

shots I post here have been worked and tweaked so much that I feel like I am slapping band-aids on everything.

Does anyone have any ideas? I've posted once on this subject and done what people suggested with negligible

improvement.

 

With all due respect, please suggest something other than a tripod. I'm way beyond that. M

Is it expected that any distortion from lenses be removed from a photo with lines in it? For example buildings, close

up horizontal items. I'll upload an example. I just wonder if that is part of being a good photographer. M<div></div>

Practical items: tissue in your camera bag, lip balm, sun-glasses or something to shade your eyes, a hood maybe to shade your eyes from the side so you can see your screen (if you don't use the view finder)

 

Must have shots: I have noticed a phenomenon that happens when branches hang in water. The ends of them get covered with ice and they look really cool. The water of a creek especially has the potential for this. It's worth checking out. Any branch that hangs in moving water could make this. I have some shots of them if you are curious about how they look.

 

Happy shooting! M

And another thing... as long as we are naming generalities of the sexes... only men can be color blind. A woman cannot be color blind because that trait is carried on the shriveled Y chromosome. Oops, was that snide? ;) M

I'm a woman, but I go by "M" because there are so many men out there. I don't want anyone to look at my photos

with the view point that they are "taken by a woman." Call me paranoid.

 

I heard a quote in the documentary "The Genius of Photography" that said, "In those days photographers were either

nerds or pornographers." I hope things have changed. Sometimes I'm not sure. I think one p.n member (in particular)

posts shots of many different nude women in the attempt to demonstrate his prowess in getting women to take their

clothes off and spread their legs for him. He disgusts me.

 

I have found one woman photographer on here who takes the most gorgeous nudes of women that I've ever seen. And

another who shoots men in all their hairy glory for us to gaze upon. I like to look at photos that push the envelope,

like the second photographer I mentioned. I would like to shoot nude males, but I have people who look at my gallery

that would see this as inappropriate.

 

For the most part, the people in my "interesting people" folder are men. But of the 29 photographers in my "favorites"

folder, 9 are women. I think this is just the way life is on this site. I am just thankful for the "All (no nudes)" option

when I am tired of looking at gratuitous crotch shots. M

How can you argue with Matt's explanation? Best laugh I've had all day. But it's early... M ;)

Pretty women can be casual. And can be casually pretty. M

I have the same problem. Here's what they told me...

 

http://www.photo.net/beginner-photography-questions-forum/00RIDO

Shall I move it? Or should I let you? I don't want to have a "double post". M

I have diligently looked for this "feedback forum" with no success. I have a functionality question about p.n.

 

A friend has requested that I remove two of my photos from my gallery. They are two of my highest rated photos, and

I don't want to. I put them in a folder called "invisible" set the visibility to invisible. No problem. However, if you look in

my list of "requested critiques" they still show up and the link takes you right to that photo. The link at the top says

it's in my folder called "invisible". Is there a way to keep them up there just for me? Sorry this is in the wrong forum.

M

Sometimes I see them in big, single colored areas, like walls or windows. I have verified that they do not occur in

RAW, so maybe I just need a bigger card so I can take more than 116 shots on an outing. (That's RAW, superfine

on a 2 gig card).

 

The other thing is that if I want to shoot in rapid succession, I can only do that in jpg because it takes too long to

write the RAW between shots.

 

I do have LR, so I can correct one and then "sync" my images (the jpgs) and fix the spots that way. I'd have to check

them individually like Lex said. No big deal. I am starting to prefer RAW anyway.

 

As for how many pixels, it is actually 3 individual ones, not 3 areas as you wondered about Chris. I think I'll just live

with it.

 

Thank you both for responding! This really helped me with an ongoing problem. Now I can sleep with it under my

pillow, not worrying that we will be separated any time soon. I'm kidding of course. It's in the camera bag next to my

bed. lol M

There are 3 pixels that fire incorrectly on my camera, but only in jpg. I took it to NatCam where I bought it and they

said it was a calculation error of the jpg compression. I contacted Canon and they said I should take out the battery

and card for at least 20 minutes. I did this, but I'm not sure I did what they wanted.

 

I checked for hard/software updates for the G9, there are none. There aren't even any for the G7. I don't want to ship

my camera and be without it for a month. Does anyone know what I could do besides this? M<div></div>

I consider myself to be relatively clueless when it comes to photography. I shoot things because I think they look neat or because I just want to. I like everything I put into my gallery, and other people's opinions or ratings cannot change what that photo means to me.

 

I get a special thrill when someone who's intials are J.L., M.V.D., F.G. or other notable photographers on this site comment on my photos. I consider "notable" to be those who impress the ones we want to impress. And those people are... I'm still working on that.

 

I see photos that EVEN I think are bad. Then there are the ho-hum shots that I am getting tired of. Then there are the spectacular ones that take my breath away. I find this "community of photographers" to be well rounded and extremely interesting. With that said, everyone has they're own way of seeing photos, which is not always the way the photographer sees it. Therefore, everyone's opinion is purely subjective and should be considered as such.

 

I see the photos on this site as a mish-mash of all our minds. For crying out loud the admin quotes the "Matrix". There's all kinds. M

I import the new ones into Lightroom. I play a slideshow and tag the blurry ones (lots of them) as rejected. Then I delete all the rejected ones and go back through tagging with 4's if I want to put it in my gallery but I need to work on it, or 5's if they are ready to crop and upload. I have an external drive and a good size internal drive with almost a terabyte of space, but I still delete from the disk when I delete. I don't erase from my G9 until I have successfully seen them all on the computer. I have a bit of OCD going on here, so take with a grain of salt. lol M

I'm a newbie, so I use it a lot. And I made a special loopy thing with a clip so it stays right on my camera bag. I NEVER take it off unless I'm using it. Or unless I'm at a museum and they confiscate it. lol I've been burned too many times with blurry shots in low light. I've been called "Low Light Lucy". But hey, I'm learning. Hopefully I won't need it so much after awhile. M

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I look at that too. It gives me a perspective on their comments and ratings. I also look at their comments on others' portfolios. I basically snoop around here all the time. lol

 

And I agree with Terry: you are one of my favorites too. All my best, M.

I'll practice my maktar stealth haze and that should help too. :)

 

Today I went to the same trees (much more color even today) and I shot in varying ISO's and f's. I up'd the ISO and went for a smaller aperture, like suggested. I have yet to upload them to see, but I'm excited. Also, the sun was shining. But as it set I ran from tree to tree like a kid on halloween trick-or-treating. So even if they don't turn out, I had a blast shooting them... which is my usual goal anyway. I think I was unrealistic yesterday. But did I have fun? Yep. I froze my butt off and had a great time. M