Photography, footage, vectors, music

If you need any photography, footage, music or vector art, please use the following link to buy whatever you need.  You can buy anyone’s photography, footage clips, music or vector art.  Not just mine.  Anyone’s.  Just use the following link: https://www.shutterstock.com/g/Josef+Pittner?rid=1070795&utm_medium=email&utm_source=ctrbreferral-link

Free Adobe Photoshop CC and Lightroom Classic CC

As of today, I had 372 photos and videos accepted on my Adobe Stock portfolio.  As per the Adobe site, once you reach 300 photos or videos accepted, you get either the photographer or the all in package for free for a year.  You'll receive a code within 6-8 weeks to redeem this offer.  Typically I wouldn't install any Adobe stuff on my computer or at least I wouldn't pay a subscription for software.  Now that I get it for free for a year, it's not that bad.  Once the year is up though, I will of course cancel the subscription and only use Pixelmator and Affinity Photo to edit my photography.  I'm actually using that right now and submitting it to Adobe Stock.

I miss the Rockies

I miss the mountains.  I was in Calgary, Alberta back in 2017 for work for the National Energy Board.  Came back in July 2017 and since then I've had a need to go back.  I miss the mountains.  I miss the lakes.  I miss the rivers.  I miss the forests.  I miss the mountains.

Yes, I'd miss stuff in Ottawa.  Friends and stuff.  Going to Parc Omega occasionally.  I think I've only been there a few times this year.  It's basically gotten to the point where it's unphotographable with all the fencing and the new design of the park.

I need to be out west.  Like yesterday.

More Fireworks photography with the Sony RX100 Mark VI

Living large off of Google Ad Sense

Nope.  Not really.  Can't even buy a coffee for what I earn with Google Ad Sense.  I earn maybe $0.01 to $0.10 a day depending on if I get a click on one of the ads that are featured on my site.  I wish I was running a bigger site but it's been up only a few months.  I'm just a one man band that runs the site and I blog a few times a week.  I work full time and do this part time with my photography.  I wanted to run this focusing more on photography.  I think in the future when I move to Calgary later this year, I will focus this more on photography.  I'm not a gear reviewer or a travel photographer.  I just do this for fun as an amateur photographer.  I photograph landscapes and wildlife and sell my stuff on sites like Shutterstock, Pond5 and Storyblocks.  I've shot about a half a dozen weddings in my lifetime but they are a pain in the back.  I don't have the space to do headshots so I stay away from them.

I enjoy being outside and being with animals.  They are way more relaxing than being stuck inside with a camera.  Anyways, Google Ad Words.  I'm glad I'm getting some money from it but it's not a get rich quick scheme.  Hopefully in a few months, while I work on the site and do more blog entries, my income will grow.  I don't know about doing YouTube with YouTube demonetizing people for using the "wrong" words and thoughts in their videos.

Another month. Another year.

December 2018 was my third best month of all time on Shutterstock.  A lot of video sales propelled me to having the best month of the year as well.  Although the end of the month was a real disappointment with no sales for three days, I was happy with the month over all.

I hope 2019 is a lot better for photo and footage sales.  Pond5 and Storyblocks were down in sales.  Especially Storyblocks.  I have not sold anything there in months and I've more than tripled my inventory there in 2018 by adding more footage and adding photos there.  Pond5 was OK.  Sold a few hundred dollars worth of footage.  No photo sales, but that is to be expected.

April 2019 is coming up fast which is kind of scary considering I'll be moving permanently to Calgary.  At least I hope.  I need to find a job there first.  I only have two weeks left on this contract but I'm being told I'll be extended again.  I don't know for how long.  We shall see.  I'm hoping to get a permanent job in Calgary.

Some good news. Some bad news.

So I have a friend from high school who works as the finance manager at a local Jeep dealership here in Ottawa.  Hopefully on Monday before three in the afternoon I will get a good news phone call from him telling me I got the 2018 2 door Jeep Wrangler.  The only thing that's not good news is this past year I co-signed a loan for my girlfriend for a 2015 Jeep Patriot.  Her ex really did a number on her credit and now it affects me.  Maybe I shouldn't have signed it but I thought it would be better for her to not pay 20% interest on a loan.  Instead we cut it down to 8% I think.  Now it affects me which totally sucks.

I do hope I get the Jeep Wrangler.  I totally hate the Hyundai Elantra.  It's not good for my body anymore.  I find it difficult to get in and out of the vehicle.  After driving my girlfriend' Jeep Patriot I enjoy the SUV much more.  We shall see on Monday.

I was hoping to do some photography today but it's just so cold out.  It was -14 degrees celsius this morning and now it's -7 degrees celsius.  I think I need to do more photography at Parc Omega which I can do from the warmth of my car.  I haven't been to Parc Omega in a month.  The girlfriend doesn't like doing the photography thing.  That is not good for the relationship as I love photography and shooting footage of nature, landscape and animals.

Going computerless

So I just watched an interesting video on YouTube.  It's a video by Unbox Therapy about ditching your computing hardware for an Apple iPad Pro.  Granted I don't do much on my 2015 Apple iMac or my 2013 MacBook Pro that I can't do on an iPad.  I just edit my photography and footage that I shoot for my photography business.  I can write and edit any document on an iPad with Apple Pages. I can do spreadsheets with Apple Numbers.  I use Apple Safari for my blog.  I can edit my photography with Affinity Photo.  I can edit my footage with iMovie.  I honestly don't need Final Cut Pro X on my laptop.  Right now all I shoot is 5-60 second clips and edit them for stability and shakiness and a bit of noise reduction.  

All I would really need is an SD card dongle to transfer in my footage and photos.  I would probably get the maxed out Apple iPad Pro with the 1TB storage option.  I'd get the Apple Pencil 2 and the keyboard to type and to protect the screen.  I think the Apple iPad Pro would just add to my minimalist life style that I am aiming for.  One of the failures of iOS is the lack of support for external hard drives.  I'd like to export my photos and footage to an external hard drive and use an FTP client to upload my files to Shutterstock, Pond5 and Storyblocks.  But I think with the 1TB storage hard drive, it would take me a while to fill that up.  I'd eventually clean up the hard drive by getting rid of old and unnecessary footage.  I recently lost my 6TB hard drive storing my footage.  The hard drive just failed on me.  I pay about $1.50 a month for 50GB of storage with Apple so I can store unique footage and photos there.

I think the Apple iPad Pro is 90% of a laptop right now.  If I could just attach a USB-C hard drive to it and export my footage and photos to it, it would meet all of my needs.  Also, mouse support would be fantastic.  The Apple iPad Pro does have Bluetooth support so you should be able to pair if with the Apple mouse.  The file system in iOS should also be changed to support drop and drag functionality. 

The Apple iPad Pro can run Affinity Photo for my photo editing and iMovie for my footage editing.  With the recent Apple iPad, you can run Adobe Photoshop on the Apple iPad Pro.  So the software and hardware is getting there.  It's close.  It's not there yet though.