Making money with a Canon 40D

I've been wanting to get at digital SLR for about 8 years now but have never been impress with the quality of what I could afford. Until I say Canon's Rebel XTi. It had all of the features that I was looking for except construction. I liked the way that the Canon 30D felt and was built but I liked the features of the Canon XTi and knew that there would be a Canon 40D which would have the features that I was looking for, such as large mega pixel, fast fps, dust reduction system, high iso setting, and such. I also liked the 28-135 lense kit option. So when CompUSA went out of business in town I was able to find myself a deal. The problems is, that it is still an expensive camera which lead me to microstocks and other creative ways to make money with my camera. This is the first of hopefully many posts of my dealings with microstocks and other ways to make money with my photography habit. My goal is to make enough money to earn back the money I spent on the camera and then purchase some better lenses.

I'm starting out with two different websites ShutterStock and fotolia to see what happens. So far I've been able to get one image accepted at fotolia (Check out my current portfolio). Fotolia seems to be a little easier to get into compared to ShutterStock where you have to get 7 of 10 initial photos accepted before you can start posting 1 at a time, but from what I've seen people have made more money with them. This says something about quality versus quantity. I guess it will just take time to build up my portfolio and start earning money through referrals.

Another website that you can use to help bring in a few pennies is Zazzle. I've been using Zazzle since spring of 2007 and at this point I've made about $9. Which isn't much but hopefully more will come in over time. Zazzle is an on-demand retail company that makes posters, mugs, calendars, shirts, and much more. The nice thing about this website is that you only have to make $25 in a month or $5 in a year before they send you the money.

Other ways to make money with photos is to use a website such as fotki where you can post as many of your photos as you want and sell them directly to your clients. I've tried selling posters using this method but haven't had much success so far. With fotki you can create your own branded site but it costs you. This would be a better site to use if your are providing local services like senior portraits which I hope to do soon.

Links:
Microstock @ Wikipedia.org
fotolia
ShutterStock
Zazzle

Chips & Cholesterol

My wife and I just finished participating in a CHIP (Coronary Heart Improvement Project) program in our area. We initially decided to look at this program because my father just had a heart attack and it seems to run in both sides of my family. I figured why not take a look at my cholesterol and see how much changing my diet would change. I wasn't sure that it would change that much since I am mostly a lacto-oval vegetarian, that is if someone offers me cheese or dairy I will eat it but we don't use it in our house. I also figured that since I'm in my 30's it would be a great time to educate myself and start experimenting to see what things I can do to reduce the likelihood of having a heart attack.

I really enjoyed the program because the information was presented from a scientific point of view, without the guilt trip, and the program looks at your whole life style not just diet.

Here are my lab results so you can see for yourself the improvements:

	Before	After
Glucose Fasting	77	83
Cholesterol	162	133
Triglyceride	71	59
HDL	32	26
LDL	116	95
VLDL	14	12
Cholesterol/HDL ratio	5.1	5.1

I would suggest that the reduction in oil, which was moderate before, processed foods, and increase in fiber was the reason for the change in the numbers. We did exercise during the program but it was usually only 20 minutes a day which I don't think was enough. Over the next couple of months we are going to try and get some more exercise to see how that changes the LDL.

Winter on the Lake Greeting Card

Are you looking for a way to send out your holiday greetings? This card can be customized to your message and you can even get matching postage.

Winter at the Lake
by Aaron Woehler

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Bear Grass

More options are now available for this Bear Grass photo. You can purchase it from either zazzle or fotki. Zazzle ads the option to get it framed has more print style options.

Get this custom print at Zazzle or Fotki