Stuck

I received an email yesterday through my store asking me to be participate in a charity event for Cardon Children’s Medical Center in Mesa. I'm really excited that someone contacted me and asked me to participate, however I don't have any photos printed, $30 for the vendor license, or $100 for the booth. This could be really good exposure for me. I'll have to see if there is any way to get cash quickly to get some stuff printed and pay all the expenses.

First Blog Feature!!!

I just found out that I was featured in a blog!! This is the first one that I know of. I'm very excited about it. :)

Photographers of Etsy

I don't feel like using a song title this time

I have a ton of photos that I'm trying to get through and it seems to be taking forever. I was very anxious to get to the California Condor and Turkey Vulture photos, so I skipped ahead and worked on those. I finished them off yesterday and posted them on flickr.com and my facebook fan page. Some of them came out really well.

This is one of my favorites:









facebook
flickr

Stardrowned

It's been a while since I posted something. I've been meaning to do so for the past couple of weeks, but then I get distracted. I seem to be distracted easily quite a bit lately. As a matter of fact, right now I'm in the middle of processing some pics and realized I wanted to update my blog...

Anyway, it's been pretty hot around Phoenix, so my girlfriend and I have been taking trips on the weekend up north; places like Prescott, Flagstaff, and the Grand Canyon. I absolutely love living so close to such beautiful places. We haven't gone to Sedona recently, other than when we drove home from Flagstaff and took a detour through there. There are so many places to photograph.

Granite Mountain, just east of Prescott, is a very beautiful place. I saw my first raven while we were eating lunch before our hike. I also took lots of butterfly pics. Oh, and the agave flowers were gorgeous.

Red Mountain, between Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon, is now one of my favorite hikes. The trail is only about 1.5 miles and it goes right into a volcanic cinder cone. The mountains scattered about Flagstaff are pretty much all former volcanoes and this one particular one has a huge chunk removed from it's side. You hike right into it!! I was going to surprise Mary and take her to the Grand Canyon because it was only another 40 miles north, but on the way I saw that it's $25 to get in and I didn't have enough money. We decided to go the following weekend. On the way home though, we detoured through Oak Creek Canyon. You take a windy road down into the canyon and then follow it out to the red rocks of Sedona. Very beautiful. We stopped and took some pictures. We also made it to a rest stop along I-17 called Sunset Point just before sunset. It was perfect. The sunset was beautiful and we took lots of pics.

We didn't end up going to the Grand Canyon the following weekend, but we did go last weekend. Mary has never been before, so she was quite excited. I stopped and bought a better camera for her for her birthday, which is this coming weekend. Other than getting rained on a little, it was very nice. I took some cool pictures of California Condors. Very cool. On the way home, I spotted some turkey vultures sitting in a dead tree along the highway that goes to Flagstaff. I stopped to take some pictures and then spotted another dead tree with several more turkey vultures. I've never seen so many in one place. I'm assuming it's because it was close to sunset. But then, I saw a whole bunch more in another tree that wasn't dead. There was probably close to 20 all together. That is just insane. I got some nice shots.

So now I have to go and process them all... ;-)

Skull Forest

Today I received a message through my etsy store and was notified that two of my photos are featured in a treasury. Here is the link, but I think they only last for a couple of days. http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list.php?room_id=62124

I know that no one will read this because I have no followers, but it's here for my own records. Hopefully I'll make a sale soon!!!

The Frontlines

So my store has been open for more than a week now. Still no sales. :( They'll come.

I've heard that it takes about 5 months for an esty.com shop to actually pick up and start making sales. So for now I have to just keep advertising. I read some good advice in the veganetsy blog about renewing items every few days. It costs $.20 to renew, but by renewing one item, it automatically puts that item near the top when people do searches. It can then lead to other items in my store being viewed. If I renew every three days, it will only cost $2.00 a month. Which isn't all that bad. And I've already seen results from renewing one item today. I have a new heart on one of photos and the item I renewed has more views on it.

I'm also think about posting my watermarked images on various other websites like flikr and such where I can spread the visibility of my work. We'll see how that goes.

This Is No Rehearsal

So I've decided to start titleling my posts the way I used to pick a subject for emails to a friend of mine. I will choose something from whichever album I happen to be listening to like a song title, the album title, band name, lyric, etc... This title comes from Porcupine Tree's Stupid Dream.

And now for the important information. For the past few weeks, I have been working hard on preparations to open my own online store for my photography. I posted my first item on 5/19/09 and I am now open for business!!! I haven't had any sales yet, but I've had quite a few people taking a look at it thanks to my girlfriend who had her own craft store on the same site.

My store is located here: tharnphotography.etsy.com

I've put my favorite photos up there. I need to go through my older stuff now that I know how to use the editing software a little better and pick out some others to sell. One of my favorites is a black and white photo of an ironwood tree in the winter. All the leaves are missing and it has a very bleak and desolate look.

I found a place that prints photos with a metallic finish and it really enhances the photo. It sort of brings out the contrast in the shadows and highlights.

I'm also exploring etsy and joining some of the groups. I now belong to Vegan Etsy and have inquired on how to join Photographers of Etsy (POE - what a sweet acronym!!). Hopefully all this networking will generate some sales. Mary has been posting links to my photos in her tweets on twitter. She uses a website called tiny URL that takes any URL and changes it to something shorter and it hides where it leads to until you get there.

Well, that's all I have for now.

Join the Dark Side

More pics being converted right now. Time to blog again.

I've taken most of my pictures while out hiking and I haven't done any traveling, so all of my pics so far are in the desert. I've taken quite a few pics at South Mountain park in Phoenix because I live so close, but I've also taken pictures at Thunderbird Conservation area, Piestawa Peak area, Spur Cross Conservation area, and Cave Creek Trail. As the temperatures get warmer I'll be making some trips away from the Phoenix area and explore the many wonders of Arizona. Hopefully by the fall I'll be able to afford a trip back to RI so I can get some nice fall foliage.

I've been learning the different features of the camera by using a Dummies guide written specifically for the model I have. I had a basic background before I bought the camera due to an after school class that I took when I was in high school. I forgot what most of the terms meant, but I picked it back up pretty quickly and I think my progress is going well. I'm using the advanced modes on the camera and the pics are coming out pretty decent. I still need to practice more though. That's one great thing about digital photography, you can take as many pictures as can fit on your memory card, and then you can delete them and take more.

Episode 4 - A New Blog

While I've got some photos converting over from RAW files, I thought I should begin my first entry here. I decided to start this blog to sort of track the progress of my photography. This past December I bought myself a Canon Digital Rebel XSi. I'd been really enjoying taking nature photographs, but all I had was a 3.1 megapix point and shoot camera. The pics I took looked nice, but they would have been so much better on a good camera and could be blown up. I also had many people comment on how good my pictures were. So I thought that I would treat myself to a nice camera and perhaps start selling some "fine photography" online. I've been spending the past few months learning the camera and much more about nature photography. I think I have a few shots worthy enough to try to sell them, but we'll see.