Florida revisited

Well, okay, no – I’m still in North Carolina (and it’s freaking snowing as I type this). But this is a long overdue followup to my followup.

I had originally said that the last trip was a little disappointing in that I didn’t have any photos that knocked me down. And while I still feel this way, things have changed my perspective slightly. You see, the day before leaving on the trip, I was contacted through my website by someone that wanted to buy rights to some photos from Florida, which was great. I begged off until I got back, and as a result, didn’t inquire as to what they were after. So while there, I shot my typical pursuits in my typical way.

When I got back and asked what they were after, I found out they were looking for basically a panoramic or banner format, which I don’t shoot for in most cases, and that I found to be kind of restrictive. But it also ruled out virtually anything I shot on the recent trip (some of their choices were specific, too, which narrowed things down on their own.)

So. I started looking through my stock for photos that would work and sent them some examples, as well as a starting price. We traded correspondence for a bit, then things died out. This was in May. I figured I’d lost the contract, which happens (and in my cynical outlook, par for the course.)

Since then, I had to reload the blog under different software, and the search for banner-cropped images for the client had spurred my interest. It led to the blog banner you see above, and I started liking the approach more. I realized many more photos than I initially thought would work in that format, and that cropping out portions of the subjects did not always work against them. So there’s over 20 images in that random banner at top now, and I keep adding more.

Then, not that long ago, the potential client got back in touch and said they were ready to get it moving again – they’d simply hit their busy season in the interim. Well, okay then! We talked some more about their goals, and in the end, two shots from the most recent trip ended up among the eight they selected. Those (and the others) can be seen through March 15, 2010 on the site www.gunster.com.

sanibelshells-bHere’s the funny part. One of the images was one I shot vertically, and liked for the depth it produced. On a whim, I had rotated the shot over at a significant angle and cropped it into their format, then sent it along as one of the last round of examples. It’s kind of a lesson in perspective – not the photo’s, but my own, because I would never have thought that it work this way, and did indeed reject it (several times over) when looking for images to send them. However, they weren’t influenced by seeing the original image, nor did they have any kind of attachment to it like I did. I’ve known for a long time that I tend to be very critical of my work, but I don’t discourage this in myself too much because it also makes me work harder for better images. Here, however, it affected the different ways I could see the image – and I used to think I was creative in cropping options!

That’s the original there (with a larger version, and a small addition, in my photo galleries here) and you can see the version they bought at their site (at least until 3/15/10.) The other one from the trip that they liked is the manatee.

So, yeah, I feel a little bit differently about the shots I got on that trip, now ;-)

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