Assignment 1 - Uploading To BigStockPhoto

The final step for this assignment was to upload my images to BigStockPhoto.com

To do this I had to first Create an account providing simple details and answer a simple questionnaire that the website requires you to complete to make sure that you know the rules of uploading images and make sure you know about model releases etc...

When this was done, I picked my final image that I was going to upload which was the Macro Shot of The Golf Ball this was because I think that it will be better as a stock photo and be more useful to people rather that the macro of the flower,

To upload the image was a very simple process as there was a link in the sidebar which said 'Upload images' which then brought up the below form:


From here you pick the Browse button which allows you to choose which image(s) you want to upload, and then once chosen it will allow you upload it and give it a:

• Title
• Description
• Tags (Keywords)

Which all help when making sure people find your images when on the website and therefore attracting more sales from the photos,

This then goes into a queue awaiting for approval, if the image gets in then it will be sold on the website and if not changes will need to be made and it will need to be reuploaded.

As of yet the image I uploaded has not been approved or rejected and I will update this once I have found out it has got in.

Assignment 1 - Image 2: Macro Flower

The second image was another Macro image, I was experimenting with different shots whilst walking around my local area and when I got home to check on them to see what I got I saw this image of a flower I had taken and the way it was taken shows a depth of field effect making the flower stand out from the background, the original image is below:

Technical Details:

• 8MP - 3264 x 2448 (Pixels)
• ISO - 64
• Flash - Natural Light Only
• Time Taken - Afternoon, Dull Sky (Some Sun)

As can be seen there is quite alot of wasted space around the image so the first thing I did was to crop the image to make the image focus on the flower more.

After I cropped the image it reduced the image size down to: 2132 x 1932 (Pixels) which is still plenty big enough for BigStockPhoto submission,

Alteration 2 - Color Balance

This alteration made the colours in the image more vibrant and made the yellow in the flower stand out quite alot from the background:



After:


Alteration 3 - Curves

The curves allow you to alter the brightness of the colours and makes the light colours more vibrant and vice versa,



After this has been applied this gives us the final image as shown below:


After I had finished altering the Image in Photoshop I saved it as two seperate files:

• PSD - This is the file format for Photoshop this makes sure that the layers used are not flattened and can be returned to and changed if they are needed to.
• PNG - I used this file format for the final image because it is not classed as a 'lossy' file type, whereas JPEG compresses the image size down therefore losing quality and pixel ratio, PNG keeps the quality of the image which then gives a better end result.

Assignment 1 - Image 1: Macro Golf Ball

The first image I decided to use in the final choice was a macro shot of a Golf Ball this was because there was a number of images on BigStockPhoto which were selling well and located in the 'Popular' section of the website and these were of golf balls and golf related images,

With this in mind I looked at some of the examples:

• Example 1
• Example 2

and from this thought I would do a similar sort of image, but to show a different shot of the golf ball, so I set up a scene for my image and turned on the Macro mode on my camera and took some test shots,

From this I picked out the best of them so that I could edit it in Photoshop, the best image I took was the one shown below:

Technical Details:

• 8MP - 3264 x 2448 (Pixels)
• ISO - 64
• Flash - Natural Light Only
• Time Taken - Afternoon, Dull Sky (Some Sun)
  

This image was quite dull and the colour was quite low due to the time of day the image was taken and the quality of the grass with which it was taken on, to enhance these I opened the image up in Photoshop so I could alter certain parts of the image,

Alteration 1 - Levels

I added a very slight altertation to the Levels of the image to make it slightly lighter than the original image




Alteration 2 - Touchups

I added a few touchups to the image, these got rid of things such as specs of dirt on the camera lens or on the golf ball, below is a before and after image of a spec of dirt on the golf ball after using the Clone tool in Photoshop to get rid of it:



After:



Alteration 3 - Color Balance

This alteration was the one that made the most difference, it really made the colour in the grass stand out making it a more vibrant green instead of a dull green the process images are shown below:



Final Image:


After I had finished altering the Image in Photoshop I saved it as two seperate files:

• PSD - This is the file format for Photoshop this makes sure that the layers used are not flattened and can be returned to and changed if they are needed to.
• PNG - I used this file format for the final image because it is not classed as a 'lossy' file type, whereas JPEG compresses the image size down therefore losing quality and pixel ratio, PNG keeps the quality of the image which then gives a better end result.
  

Assignment 1 - BigStockPhoto.com

What is required from this assignment is to look at BigStockPhoto.com and get an idea of what images are selling well, and to then go out and take some images using good photography skills e.g. rule of thirds etc... and then edit them and enhance them using Photoshop to create an image that would sell well on the said website,

After looking on the website for quite a while I found that the most popular images were things such as landscapes and macro shots of golf balls were selling well as these make good stock images that other people can use.

After finding this out I went out with my camera and took some images of the landscapes near and around my house, and then also looked at the idea of macro shots of golf balls and flowers, an example of some of these images are shown below:




As can be seen these images came out quite well, and after experimenting with different surroundings and layouts/positions I had 2 images which I went on to edit in Photoshop

Assignment 1 - The Camera

Fujifilm S5800:

Image and Specification from Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FinePix_S5800_S800

• Type 'Bridge' Camera
• Maximum resolution 8.1 Megapixels
• Lens type Fixed (10x optical zoom)
• Shutter speed range 1/1000 sec to 4 sec
• Exposure modes Auto, Picture Stabilization, Natural Light, Natural Light & Flash, Scene Positions 1 & 2,[1] Program AE, Aperture Priority AE, Shutter Priority AE, Manual & Movie.
• Viewfinder Electronic
• ASA/ISO range 64-1600 ISO
• Flash Built-in, pop-up (electronic)
• Flash bracketing Yes
• Focus bracketing Yes
• Rear LCD monitor 2.5 inches, 230,000 pixels, 97% coverage.
• Storage SD or xD card
• Battery 4x AA batteries