*GothicBohemianStock

11th August 2008

Avast me hearties and shiver me timbers!

As part of dA’s eighth birthday celebrations, the resources team are holding a pirate-themed competion, nattily entitled Pieces of Eight;

[link]

As I live fairly close to Portsmouth Docks I decided to take a wander around them yesterday to see if I could take any stock photos suitable for the competition.

The results are a bit of a mixed bag!

I hadn’t reckoned on the weather, which, in typical English fashion, was a mixture of blustery showers interspersed with the odd ray of sunshine – nor had I banked on the Docks being quite so busy…..pretty silly of me really, given that it’s the height of the tourist season here.

I’d intended to wander around one of the two tall ships – HMS Warrior, and HMS Discovery - which are currently part of the exhibits there, but unfortunately the charges to do so were a bit off putting. You’re apparently also not allowed to photograph on board HMS Discovery, so I decided not to bother.

Blimey though – I never realised quite how big the ships are; nor how difficult it is to photograph them properly because of that. I’ve decided that when I win the lottery I’m really going to have to buy myself a wide angled lens.

Anyway, onto a bit of self promotion featuring a few of the photos I took yesterday below..

Oooh and just to set you all in the right frame of mind for the competition... here's another random bit of daftness to be going on with;

[link]

Swoon...

5th August 2008

PilgrimSoul, whose great stock photo of a man and child was recently featured in my journal, is running a fab sounding competition at the moment, the details of which can be found here; [link]



First prize is a years subscription courtesy of PilgrimSoul, or something from your wishlist of similar value if you're already subscribed to DA.

There's great scope to unleash your imagination with this one so if you love the poetry of Yeats or the music of Enya, it's got to be worth having a crack at!

The idea of becoming a stock provider was something I mulled over for quite a while before I eventually got around to setting up this account. As a newbie to Photoshop and continually using other people’s free stock, I really liked the idea of being able to give something back to the community and I’d find myself spending hours looking at other people's photos trying to determine what was available out there. As a result, I now find myself with something of a stock obsession – probably the largest folder I have on this account is filled with other people’s stock photos…..well, you never really know when they might come in handy!

So without further ado I thought I’d share some of the contents of this folder in my 'Features' section with you. There are literally hundreds of great quality stock photos kicking around DA but in order to make things easier for myself here and since this is my very first feature, I’ve decided to stick to photos with an historical context....