I have had my first set of pictures vetted and it is mixed results. One picture was not suitable for stock, and another one had poor lighting. I have emailed support to see if they can give me some more pointers as to why the lighting is poor. One picture did get excepted so I am happy with that. You can see what was accepted and what wasn't here.

Update

I have had another picture accepted. It is the graffiti one. I am very happy about this as this was my favourite. If you want to see my portfolio on iStockphoto, do an advanced search, and look for my member name, bazcurtis.

The photo above was taken at one of our training evenings. I took it for my cricket club's website. Luckily for me, Andrew Emms took 5 wickets in 10 balls over the weekend. This not only meant it made the front page of the Reed Cricket Club website, but it will be printed in this weeks Royston Crow. My first published picture. I am looking forward to seeing it in print with my name underneath it.

I have just uploaded my first 5 picture to be approved for sale. You can see them in my picture gallery.

I woke up this morning to an email from iStockphoto. It was the result of my application to be a contributor.

Thank you for showing us your work and welcome to iStockphoto as a contributing member.

I have been accepted. The next job is to upload some photos and see if they will be accepted for sale. I didn't have time tonight, but hopefully tomorrow. I am very excited about this. I can't wait to see if anyone actually downloads one on my photos.

I have finally got all my pictures key-worded. It took much longer than I wanted, but I suppose that is the problem of having 150 to do I have now uploaded my 3 best. iStock tell me it will take up to 2 weeks to be reviewed. I think the odds are 70/30 in my favour, but we will see. I don't think my key-wording was very good, and I am not sure if you can be rejected for that. I think what I put was ok, it might not be enough to be found in a search.

I don't want to make a living out of this, but I would be proud if I actually sold something. I have some great cricket shots that I would like to submit, but I will need a model release. I am sure that will make some of my players happy to think they are models. You can see my cricket photos over on the Reed CC website.

I have being wondering if I am good enough to get my photos accepted for stock photography. No way do I think I can make a living out of it, but it would be nice to know that my pictures will pass the approval process that iStockphoto has. It would mean I have decent composition and can take a picture that can be used professionally.

I have read the iStock FAQs, and the rules that you have to abide by. I have passed the short exam that they give you. I just need to upload my 3 test photos. If they are accepted, I can then resubmit them for sale approval.

I just need to keyword them in Aperture and I will be ready to go. Fingers crossed.

Last Friday I did my first photo shoot. Actually, it was a walk along the Thames. I started at Westminster and walked all the way to Wapping. I tried to look out for different things that caught my eye and not the run of the mill tourist shots that are so easy to take around London.

I wanted to see if I could find some shots that I could put up on iStockphoto. I think I have pictures that will make it through the vetting process, but we will see. I have them in Aperture and I just need to do some post production on them, then they will be ready to upload.

I will blog about how I get on. You can see the pictures I thought weren't going to make it in my picture gallery section.