New camera/ thoughts about stock photography

Well, I found out in a hurry that my submitted photos were not what stock companies were looking for. Even my best, most artistic work was rejected. I then went back and looked through several site's "best photos" to see what mine were missing. What I found was that they are not looking for photos you could hang up in your living room. They are using photos of objects with white backgrounds that can be utilized as illustrations in books, magazines, and websites. They also are sometimes interested in extremely color saturated photos of surreal scenes with people. If I am going to be successful I am going to have to devote at least part of my creative energy to making stupid shots of objects on a white background that can be cut out and used. For that reason I just made a light box for photographing small objects with no shadows on a white background. A little Photoshop work will clean up any remaining problems and leave me with a sterile looking photo. Oh well, if I want to sell then I will have to give them what they want.

I also realized that my little camera was not going to have the quality and low noise necessary for this type of work so I invested in a Nikon D5000 as shown above. It is a nice 12 mp camera with all sorts of bells and whistles and a reputation for great photos. I could not afford a $5000 high end Nikon so I went hunting for one in the $800-1000 range that would be the best buy and give the sharpest, cleanest photos. It was close but the D5000 won in the reviews I went through. I have been playing with it this week and still have a lot to learn. Here is a closeup test I took of a grub on a tree stump in my yard. It is not anything the stock companies would be interested in but I was impressed by the sharpness of the image. It is somewhat degraded in this compressed jpeg photo but is still a nice shot of the little monster taken at an approximate distance of 4 inches.