OK. You have made the change to digital – you sold off your film SLR, emptied out your supply of old chemicals, you tested your brand new DSLR resulting in a memory card full of NEF files (I am assuming you purchased a Nikon) – and now you need to take the next step. So what is the next step? 

Stock photography provides a number of challenges in each of technical, workflow and business areas. Digital stock photography provides an even greater number of challenges. Without wanting to sound trite, I think challenges represent opportunities. And I am going to take this opportunity (now that is a segue) of working through some of the next steps.

When you move out of the darkroom – or away from the E6/C41 processing lab – to digital imaging, you move into the computer world. At the very least you need basic computer literacy. In the next three or four articles, I will introduce you to an important aspect of digital imaging. Not composition, not lighting, not camera angles, but digital imaging workflow. You can bring your talents and expertise from the film world to the digital world; however, digital imaging workflow is something you will need to learn.

I was starting to think I should hire myself out to drought-stricken regions as some form of alien rainmaker – but – Venice was sunny! What a relief.

This was the first time I had visited Venice, so everything was new to me. Noisy vaporettos, full of tourists, threaded their way from stop to stop along the canals and across the lagoon, small workboats carted freight, and black and silver dancing gondolas, almost funereal, added to the atmosphere of this classical city. 

Why not, I hear you ask? Well, it rained with gale force winds – I think I have a weather curse.

Storm Swept Headland

Portugal is an interesting country with a mix of old and modern, with Moorish castles and glamorous golf courses, with storks in chimneys and cork trees missing half their bark – lots of material for travel stock images.

Interior brickwork ceiling of restored Moorish fort