One of my goals this year is to beef up my stock photography portfolio on IStockphoto. I am an Exclusive Contributor as of today but I may start shooting for Shutterstock some time in the future so I can make money from both sites. It's been an uphill battle with microstock photography. It is like Itunes for musicians, each photo you make a small dividend of the final download fee but it takes so many photos to really feel like you are making much money from it. I will change that this year! My daughter will be 1 and a half and I am hoping to start working more regularly by the end of this year so in the interim I am going through my archives and uploading photos that can be used as stock photography. I also plan to shoot specifically for my stock portfolio but I have years of archives I can go through and upload as well.

This week I am uploading a photo session I did for an egg producer a few years back. Since it is baking season until winter is over I hope these will be accepted by the IStockphoto analysts and be downloaded by anyone who needs a photo of eggs, milk or other ingredients in chocolate chip cookies. 

When you first audition to be a stock photographer for IStock you upload a few photos and then they can be accepted or rejected. Once you get accepted each image you upload goes through a process where the analysts at Istock decide if the photo is good enough and/or usable on their site. I have had many rejections in the past but have become accustomed to the scrutiny each image gets so I make sure to only upload images that have little to no retouching and look great right out of camera. Any shots with people must be accompanied by a model release and the subject's ID, this is not a point, shoot and upload site, it is very serious business! Cheers to everybody this year and best wishes to all.