I’ve been a hobby photographer for a long time. From my (abysmal) high school portfolio to rally car photography to various trips in college I love to snap pictures of my world. A certain blend of talent for technology combined with an eye for composition has gotten me by as a hobbyist for a long time.

Well that’s all changed now.

I’ve taken it upon myself to take on new challenges as a photographer. As prices dropped and quality improved I finally broke down and bought a Canon digital Rebel. This opened a new world to me as I can now instantly grab 8 megapixel pictures everywhere I go. It’s even got all the features of my Elan IIe and more. I was getting by with my digital-film solution but now I had great quality and no delay.

Of course the internet has been buzzing with news about microstock sites lately and I thought I would take the challenge and offer up my amateur work to the aproval gods of the stock sites. I’m not sure I had quite prepared myself to have my entire application offering at Shutterstock shot down!

In spite of myself I stayed determined to get photos admitted somewhere so I joined up at various other sites including Fotolia, BigStockPhoto, and iStockPhoto which tend to be big earners for other people. There are tons of great forums offered at these sites for photographers and with a little direction I was able to get my first stock photo approved online!

I’m looking forward to keeping everyone posted on my further experiences with these new challenges!