"In the Wild"

March 07, 2015  •  Leave a Comment

Anyone that has made or "created" anything understands the feeling you get when you see your work "in the wild".  What I mean is that it's one thing to find something interesting, take a picture of it, clean it up in "post production" and put it out there for public consumption.  It's a completely different thing to SEE it being used somewhere, to sell a photo...for someone else to see the beauty or value in the work you have done...enough to actually pay money for it and use it in THEIR work.

mecenium - Old Salemmecenium - Old SalemI believe that this is the first image of mine that I ever found "out in the wild". I can't remember when it was, but I do remember being very excited about it.

The photo is from the side of one of the buildings at Old Salem Museum and Gardens in Winston-Salem. It's really cool, because the color of the wall is coral and the green shutters make it pop. Since I took this shot I have seen quite a few wedding shots against this wall.

 

That's a feeling that I hope I never get used to.

 

As far as I can remember, this is the first shot I ever found "in the wild".  When I saw it I couldn't hardly believe what I was seeing...someone bought and used one of my photos!  The photo is The Boy's School at Old Salem Museum and Gardens in Winston-Salem, NC.  I still love it, the colors are amazing, the coral wall, forest green shutters and the blue sky reflected in the window make this shot pop.

This photo was taken just weeks after I got my first DSLR and it boosted my confidence in a big way...

I sell quite a few pictures on stock sites and that's great (I'll explain in a later post why I use stock sites so much...there's a good reason), but one of the problems with selling photos this way is that most of the time I have no idea how they are being used.  I've learned a few tricks to find the one's that make it online, but the one's I find are a fraction of those I actually sell.

 

Huffington Post Old MissHuffington Post Old MissThis is a perfect example of why I take my camera everywhere and why I am always looking for something to shoot!

We were in Mississippi in 2013 for our family reunion...every 2 years the Melton Family (my grandmother's maiden name) meets at a nearby state park. Sharon and I went into the nearby town of Oxford because that was the closest Starbucks (in the Ole Miss library). I spent maybe an hour and a half walking around the campus taking pictures (while Sharon drank coffee and used the WiFi) even though it was about 11am in June (the sun was very bright and high in the sky).
I had to work this shot pretty hard in post-production to make it useful, dealing with some strong extremes in light and shade...I never imagined it would be purchased.
Boy, was I wrong.
It's amazing to find all the different ways others use my work and even better when it hits a bigger audience.  By far, the biggest I have found...so far...is this one from the Huffington Post (see the article here).  It's a shot I took while we were in Mississippi for our family reunion.  

It's way out in the middle of nowhere at a state park...the nearest Starbucks was about 40 minutes away in Oxford at the Ole Miss library.  We were there a day early so the first morning, Sharon and I took a little trip to get her some coffee.  I took advantage of about an hour and a half to walk around campus and take pictures...to this day I wish I had taken more.  I was so concerned that the light was to harsh that I took less pictures...now I know that I can work with that kind of light.

I recently added a new section to my site where I share some of the "in the wild" findings and the stories behind them here, you can also check them out live from my Pinterest page here.

If you think that you see something of mine "in the wild", be sure to let me know!

Later...


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