Moo-lah!

[Note: While most of my blog lives under Creative Commons, the three images in this post are NOT Creative Commons. I retain full rights of ownership, and you are NOT free to do with them as you please.]

So I'm sure this isn't so exciting for you folks out there in internets-land, but I just had to share that I made my first income ever from photographs I took.

I must admit that on occasion I feel a little silly having such awesome photo gear and never using it to make any money with. Today that's no longer the case. I've put up a little sign at the reception area of the hospital downstairs with (ridiculously low) pricing, and our two employees (bless their little hearts) managed to sell me not once, but twice today. The cost is about $10 for the photo sitting, and $5 per A4 (that's damn-near letter size to you Westerners) print. Two dogs came in for grooming today, and both owners left with one photo each. Here are the two images I sold.



In place of the first image I personally prefer this following one, but I guess it's just not as marketable:


(I know it's probably not a great idea to put images I sell up on my blog, but just today I'm going to let it slide since I'm drunk and celebrating.)

Ok ok. As an art-graduate, I must admit that if any of my classmates and friends from college see these, I'm going to be rather embarrassed. Seriously. Pet photos?? But you know what? The excitement of getting paid for some silly pictures I took is doing a pretty good job of trumping my art-school pride.

I did a lot of reading on the internet in order to get the setting built that you see (or rather don't see) in these photos. This is called an "infinite-white background" and they are a royal bitch to set up. Well, that's not entirely true. If you're a photographer with bags of money and a big studio, they're not so hard. If you're just starting out, the cost-of-entry can be considerable. While there are many severe flaws in the images above, I'm downright tickled that it looks as good as it does considering I'm only using a single Canon 580 EX strobe mounted directly on my camera.

I keep toying with the thought of doing a separate post on how I set up my little studio space, but so far I haven't gotten around to it. Is anyone out there interested? Perhaps if I hear back from you, I'll get around to writing it up.