Credit goes to my wife Jennifer as Art Director on this shoot.

Overlooking Piazza San Marco, the Campanile Tower from which this photo below was taken has one of the best views (or THE Best) of anywhere in Venice. This picture was recently licensed with worldwide rights for a textbook. The second shot below shows what the tower itself looks like.

St. Mark's Square, Venice, Italy

Campanile bell tower in Venice, Italy

Great survey from the A Photo Editor blog that photographers and artists should check out:

There are a couple large membership controlled groups of Art Buyers and Photo Editors that I have access to, so I thought I’d do a small survey to see if that might be a good way to find some answers to questions photographers have.

View the article here

The landscape image below was taken at Mount Diablo State Park in California (not far from San Francisco). It was taken several years ago, but I'm not going to say how many (too scary to think about). I thought much more of this picture then than I do now; however, just recently it was licensed as a 2-page spread for a textbook and e-book.

Mount Diablo State Park, California.

The day this was taken is certainly not one I will forget. I was in the town of Walnut Creek on a business trip and without a car. I extended my trip by a day and one morning before day-break I took a taxi all the way to the top of the mountain. Realize, I had never been to Mount Diablo before. Also realize, the visitor's center at Mount Diablo's peak is 3,849 feet in elevation. Riding in the back of the taxi it seemed like a curvy road to the top that would never end!

I'm not a very naive person, but this day... I was certainly a bit naive. I assumed that once I got to the top I would just hike down. The problem is, after you're on the top looking down, picking which direction to head down off the mountain, at least for a tourist, is not so obvious. It was after day-break at this point but very foggy everywhere below (further complicating the direction conundrum), and the visitor's center was still closed.

I spent several minutes wondering around and contemplating my situation before seemingly out of nowhere a park ranger appeared. He had been working further down the mountain. He was extremely helpful in giving me some directions and even gave me his very own worn map. He told me take this trail to here, follow this road to there, take this trail to here, etc., and pointed me to the trail to start from and off I went. 

It was a very LONG walk for the rest of the day but a very enjoyable one. It seemed like every ten feet I would find something else to photograph and then setup my tripod to shoot landscapes, nature close-ups, and even some wildlife shots before continuing the hike. I was a young photographer at the time and my pictures of that day were consistently quite horrible, but carrying a tripod and bag full of camera equipment down a mountain turned out to be good experience for what would come later, more walking!

At some point during the day I came across a ranger station and while trying to double-check my directions somehow managed to hitch a ride down the mountain road for a ways. If I recall correctly, I believe the ranger pointed out the next trail to take and off I went again. It worked out perfectly because I remember it was quickly getting dark when I finally got to the entrance gate and called for another taxi to take me back to my hotel. I was very, very tired and, would soon find out, very, very sunburned!

You can find out more about the park at the Mount Diablo State Park here.

Every tourist with a camera that steps into the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C. takes pictures of the elephant in the center of the building. While there may not be anything new about the subject matter, it is still a D.C. icon that publishers need over and over again. I had photographed the museum before and knew that a shot from the second floor (first floor to some international readers) would be best with an added benefit that I could use the marble rails and columns surrounding the atrium to brace the camera on.

National Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C.

This shot had a shutter speed of 0.8 seconds. I nearly always shoot in aperture priority mode, so my real camera setting here was f/5.6 with a 100 ISO. It situations like this, or nearly any other for that matter, it's important to listen to the camera. With a DSLR you can hear the mirror flap up, pause, and flap back down. The camera will tell you the shutter speed is slow if you just listen. Here, all I needed to do was just brace the camera. I took some shots with the bottom of the camera resetting on the rail. (I usually press down with my left hand on the hot shoe/prisim area while my right hand fires the shot.) I also pressed the left had side of the camera against a column and took some shots.

If you look closely you'll see that at 8 tenths of a second some figures are mostly sharp while others are blurred. That means you want to take a lot of shots and edit them later. You can't really tell when you're going to have blurs you don't want and ones that add to the scene until you can view them much larger on a computer later.

This shot was recently licensed to a magazine in South Korea.

All photos are ©Terry Smith. All Rights Reserved.

I was standing near the Spanish Steps in Rome when I thought this metro sign with the street lamp and pastel houses in the background looked neat. This picture was recently licensed for a textbook.

Metro sign at Piazza di Spagna which is surrounded by tall, shuttered pastel houses in Rome, Italy.

All photos are ©Terry Smith. All Rights Reserved.

This picture of the Anacostia Museum and Center for African-American History and Culture in Washington D.C. was recently licensed for a full-page spread in a retail book. From Wikipedia:

The Anacostia Community Museum is a Smithsonian Institution museum in the Anacostia neighborhood of Washington, D.C., United States, opened in 1967. Its focus is the national history and culture of African Americans, for presentation to scholars and to all visitors—domestic and international. The Museum was established originally as the Anacostia Neighborhood Museum in the old Carver movie theater on Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue in 1967. It was the brainchild of S. Dillon Ripley, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution from 1964 to 1984.

Anacostia Museum and Center for African-American History and Culture in Washington D.C.

When I revisited D.C. last year to update my stock photography archives, I made a point to get over to the Frederick Douglas house and the Anacostia Museum. I took the subway to the other side of the river and a bus to the Frederick Douglas house. From there, following some directions given to me at the information desk, I decided to walk to the Anacostia Museum. Here's a travel tip: It is a long, long, LONG walk UPHILL!. I remember finally getting to the museum, asking for the water-fountain (they couldn't believe I walked it) and then going to the restroom to wipe all the sweat off with a wet-paper-towel bath. Then I find, what a surprise, no photography is allowed inside the museum! I can only blame myself for not doing enough research on that one. The museum is very dark inside anyway. It would have been difficult to get anything decent without at least setting up a tripod, not to mention other lights. I salvaged what I could with some outside shots. The shot above is not an architectural photography masterpiece but sometimes you just have to be happy with whatever you can get.

All photos are ©Terry Smith, 2009. All Rights Reserved.

I license pictures of Memphis, Tennessee on a fairly regular basis. This shot below is one of my best-sellers from Memphis, taken on a cool Spring day with great clear, blue skies. It was licensed this month as a 2-page spread with worldwide rights for an editorial publication.

On a family note, my uncle Wayne has a brick in a nearby sidewalk with his name engraved on it.

Pyramid Arena in Memphis, Tennessee

All photos are ©Terry Smith. All Rights Reserved.

This shot of a speedboat on Greers Ferry Lake, Arkansas, where I grew up, was recently licensed with worldwide rights for a 2-page spread in a textbook.

Speedboat on Greers Ferry Lake, Arkansas

Click here for more Arkansas Stock Photography.

All photos are ©Terry Smith. All Rights Reserved.

I first blogged about joining Evostock last September. Evostock is "an online collective of highly creative professional photographers and visual artists providing clients one place to search across a large edited collection of high quality stock imagery."

Evostock has recently been featured in the spring bulletin of ASMP (American Society of Media Photographers) available here (free registration required). The article features some incredible photography by Evostock members.