Sometimes I forget things that might seem a bit mad .. like forgetting to take pills when you have health conditions or pain. This probably does not make sense? Hell, it doesn't make sense to me!
Yesterday I forgot something. An event. A kinda major event and not the first either.
I have been making a push to try and start selling my photographs but it has been a bit tough and frustrating on both several hardware levels, hosting levels and .. health problem levels. I often say to my daughter that neither of us can actually catch a win or get a single break.
So after a couple of discussions I moved a piece of hardware and the Wifi connection has improved a lot though there will still be times when it goes down fully and there is nothing I can do about that ..
Virgin Media has always been utter shit from my own previous connection to those of half a dozen or more others I know that had one.
But I also had a problem with working with my photographs and using two different but old and slow computers. I post process on my desktop but do not really like spending too much time on it.
I do prefer to do any uploading or writing on my laptop.
I am also running out of space as the photos, especially in RAW file, take up a lot of space. So I decided to get an external hard drive and bought a Seagate of 3 Terabytes.
A friend of mine keeps insisting that my health conditions are down to my state of mind, and not a physical thing, and he also insists it is easy to get a Doctor and suggested he take me to his who was crying out for patients? Fed up with trying to tell him I agreed for him to take me to his. At least this way when they refuse he can see for himself?! That was supposed to be two days ago and I am still waiting.
I am also awaiting an email from someone else that I hope will offer to help me and who I will go and see?
I have items in storage to that need to be sorted out before I lose everything.
It feels like a million things going through my fragile mind and most of the time it feels like my mind is being physically torn in two.
While trying to go out and get this hard drive that is how it was. Anxiety hitting me and heart playing up and wondering how I am going to do this, even get to Argos, which was a waste of time anyway,
The hard drive I could save processed files to and create two folders, I now have three folders in all on my new external drive. Put everything on it when I am on the desktop and then switch it to the laptop for uploading and typing in tags and such.
So with a push off I went down the road.
I crossed a road and just before I reached the other side I looked to my left and a silver car was whizzing towards me and I had to jump backwards.
He was going pretty fast and I very nearly hit by the car. I was not shaken .. just surprised that I had done this and that it had happened again. Yup .. I said 'again'.
As I stepped back onto the pavement I then was hit by something else. This was the exact location where, back in the 1980's, I WAS struck by a car!
I was on a bike on a road called the Crossway and I was turning right. I was hit on my left, blacked out, rolled across a bonnet, up the windscreen and onto the roof of a Peugeot 504 Estate in metallic blue. Then I rolled off the side and onto the tarmac in the middle of a junction.
It was around this point that I woke up .. lying on the tarmac and I actually thought I was waking up in bed and was wondering why my pillow felt so bloody hard. As I came to I realised where I was, what had just happened, struggle to my feet and walked to the kerb. I then felt a piercing pain in my right thigh and collapsed unconscious for a second time. I woke up a second time to a ring of faces looking down at me and could hear my name being said by someone. Turned out to be a girl I went to primary school with called Nejila, a Turkish girl.
I had torn my thigh muscle and I could not move my leg and it was stuck in an angled position. So I could not walk and that lasted a week or two. Of course I was taken to hospital.
I had long put that incident down to the reason I ended up with so many health symptoms which was eventually self-diagnosed as Fibromyalgia twenty thirty years plus on from this incident. Then confirmed at Guy's Hospital a year or two after I diagnosed it.
So you can imagine it was somewhat odd to suddenly realise I had almost but knocked down again in exactly the same spot?!
I then had a pain in my right leg, tried too many shops and Argos did not have the hard drive I decided to buy. One with a hub. So I have to keep unplugging and plugging in this one that I have now. Bummer.
I then forgot all about this close shave with a car.
So I started placing photos onto my drive and I ended up with three folders ..
- Alamy
- Photofolio
- Adobe Stock
These are sites to sell your photographs only .. it is a right pain in the fecking arse!
I was rejected several times by Alamy, which oddly enough is always first on most 'sites' lists of place to sell photos. I do not know how as ..
- Insist on 3 photos for initial submission
- Quality Control is absolutely BRUTAL
- Quality Control also makes some seriously unprofessional rejections
- Like blur outside focused subject?! I mean fecking REALLY
- They also randomly check your photos and if one fails they fail them all
- Even if you are using FTP to upload 100 photos
- Which are only checked at random anyway
- Photos have to be over 17MB?!
I asked about this and they sent me a portion of a sky in a monochrome photo that was black via post-processing. On a 42 megapixel image that had been zoomed in a great deal as it was grainy as hell.
There were two red circles they had drawn and I was squinting my eyes while wondering what in the hell I was looking at while also wondering why in the hell they were pixel-peeping like this? Eventually I could just make out there were these .. darker blobs. I very much doubt you could see these marks and they put it down to dirt on the lens which was funny as it never affected any other photos I uploaded that were taken the same day.
I said that this was a bit silly and asked why they had done this and they stated that they might be selling photos to use on billboards?! Fecking .. really?!
First off this would be quite rare and secondly .. I have a fecking 42 megapixel camera and very few models have more that that without spending a whole heap more money.
Sooo your going to blow the chance to sell photos to 95% of your buying customers because one might want to put it on a billboard? Sounds very stupid .. a bit like rejecting another photographer because he had blur. or 'bokeh', in his image outside the test subject.
When I pointed out my model camera, as another was rejected for softness, I got a patronising reply abut how the camera does not take good photographs?! Totally missing the point that they were zooming on on a very, very high resolution image and seeing imperfections that were barely noticeable.
Also bearing in mind with a 66% success rate for photos and a 24 to 48 hour wait for quality control and a whole batch rejected because of one photo? Yeah .. now imagine trying to get 500 to 1,000 photos uploaded to a decent sized portfolio? Which I and others believe needs to be around 2,000, how long will this take you?! Lol.
I then thought what the fucking hell .. they have got the God-complex Google effect?!
- Put all financial issues onto photographers
- Put onus onto photographers, and not buyers, onto pictures being absolutely perfect
- Ensure that millions of photos are top quality
- Get half or more of the money simply for hosting them
I am clearly in the wrong business here?!
Bearing in mind the lengthy processes involved and then you have to tag or label everything and that you have no idea or guarantee that any of these photo sales sites are any good or not. Only crap that these paid reviewers say on their sites.
Money for nothing? Check!
So that is how I ended up looking at Photofolio. I thought 'fuck this' there must be an easier way? So I found them and sent a few test shots there way.
- Oh .. takes longer to be assessed
- Photos have to be smaller than 20MB?! (Over 17MB with Alamy)
Well this is .. consistent.
In fact I bet the only thing that will be consistent is the God-Complex and sitting on your arse earning millions for hosting?!
Next!
Had a look at Adobe Stock and pretty much knew I would have had an account with them from years ago? Yup! New password and I sent them some too to see what happens?
Yeah this is fun, with with anxiety problems (I have self harmed), heart problems, memory problems, having difficulties getting out to take pictures, pains and a million things going through my mind in any one waking moment this is .. nice! Lol.
I actually started to think about selling my camera gear after all that!
*SIGH* what with everything with my daughter as well going through my mind, the corruption, the terrible murders going on by the British government of disabled people everywhere. Well not just disabled people either.
Often my daughter and I say how we hate living in this country. Well it is odd to say that as it feels more like an open prison because you cannot escape anywhere. No respite at all.
Will we ever get a break?
Oh and I heard from Take A Break Magazine which only took two weeks and they completely got my email wrong ..
'Sorry but your story is not right for our magazine'?!
Yeah .. I was emailing them about my daughter who they had already covered in their magazine and so when I told my daughter about the email, who could not believe what they said ..
- They are idiots and did not realise what I was saying
- Someone scared them off the two of us
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