Introduction to Microstock Photography – Some Last Examples
This is the last post of the Introduction to Microstock Photography series. I hope that this series has been helpful. In this post, I will go through the final set of examples.
This is a panorama of the Jerusalem city walls at night. The taking of the shot has an interesting story itself. I took this with my Sigma 80-400 4-5.6 OS at 400mm and 5.6. When I first submitted the shot, it was rejected due to softness. I was quite surprised at this because I used a tripod, mirror lock, and a remote shutter release. The tripod itself was on sturdy concrete. How could it be soft?
To my surprise, when I examined the shot at 100%, it was soft. The simple fact was, the Sigma was too soft at 400mm and 5.6. As a result of further investigation, I sold this lens because I could no longer depend on it. Eventually I will buy a new telephoto, but right now I rarely need one and I’m waiting for Canon to improve on their 100-400mm lens.
The next step I did was shrinking the size of the picture down. This often works when the shot is a bit out of focus. Shutterstock accepted the picture and it is a good seller. IStockPhoto rejected the shot – and it is an interesting point why.