We had lunch in Campbell on Saturday before Kaori left for a business trip. Campbell has a few good dog-friendly restaurants and the weather was perfect for sitting outside watching the world go by. Sakura loves it when we go out to eat and she usually sneaks a little something for herself!
I went for a hike early this morning. The valley was filled in with fog, but above the cloud it was lovely and sunny. At first light I came across some wild turkeys strutting around the woodland meadows.
Because the light was weak, I had to quickly set up my tripod and wrestle the settings on my camera to get photos with enough depth of field and no motion blur.
Turkeys are not the prettiest of birds, but they are big and when they fan their tails and make thumping sounds they can be a little intimidating.
So, just for giggles, I submitted 10 of my photos to Shutterstock, which supplies stock photos to people who need them for magazines, brochures, advertising, blogs, and so on. There’s a fairly high bar, and my set was rejected the first time because a couple of photos had identifying logos and one of my model releases was oriented the wrong way. I learned more about what they look for, changed a few photos, and re-submitted last week. I was accepted and within two days someone bought one of my photos. So, I’m officially a professional photographer!
This is very funny. I have no intention of making money from photography, but if I take photos that end up looking like good stock photos, I’ll probably upload them just for the fun of seeing what happens.
This photo was my first sale.
Last week after work, I hiked up Mission Peak in the dark. It’s about eight miles there and back, with 2,000 feet of elevation gain. That makes it a nice little mid-week workout. There are good views from the top at night, and Venus was thrown in for free.
