Mapping The Places I've Been: You Should Try It!

Since this is a travel blog, or at least since it started out that way, it seemed like I ought to add this map that shows all the places I've visited (well over 200!) and a few I've pegged for future travel.

Glacier National Park, Montana

Burano, a beautiful island near Venice.

I found the interactive map on tripadvisor. com. It's a fun way to spend half an hour revisiting your favorite travel destinations. The interface takes you through places all over the world, and you can pin the spots you've visited. I'm not sure how the algorithm works. It started me out with some of the world's most celebrated travel destinations such as New York City and Paris, but each list that came up also had some small towns - like Niantic, Connecticut where my family has had a cottage since 1969. I had pinned over 200 places, yet San Francisco, CA, Vienna, Austria, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, and Oahu, Hawaii- some pretty major spots-still hadn't come up, but I was able to add them manually. So far, I've found 257 places in 14 countries that I've visited.

On the way to Paris

The map includes dozens of small towns-I counted at least 10 I'd been to on Cape Cod-as well as little lesser-know towns around the world, like several quaint spots I've traveled to in France. When I hit 250,  I hit "done" and added the biggies I'd missed, but I'm sure if I'd had more time I would have hit 300.

It's fun. You should try it.
(See the link below my map). And feel free to paste your map in the comments section - it'd be interesting to see where people have been.

Here's my map along with a list of my 20 favorite spots:

1. New York City, NY, USA
2. Venice, Italy
3. Paris, France
4. San Francisco, CA, USA
5. Antigua, Antigua and Barbuda
6. Glacier National Park, MT, USA
7. Yellowstone National Park, WY, USA
8. Grand Teton National Park, WY, USA
9. Edinburgh, UK
10. Newport, RI, USA
11. Mont-St-Michel, France
12. Florence, Italy
13. Oahu, HI, USA
14. Saint-Malo, France
15. Versailles, France
16. London, UK
17. Rome, Italy
18. Saint Augustine, FL, USA
19. Caen, France

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Interviewed by the Breakfast Stock Club

Grunge heart on turquoise blue background. Available from Dreamstime through link below. Happy Valentine's Day!

See this on Dreamstime

I've been submitting stock photos for a while now but didn't really start adding to my portfolio until late last year. As I grow my stock portfolio, I've found it helpful to join a few forums, including those on the various sites I submit to such as Dreamstime, Shutterstock, and Alamy Images.  Most forums have a great community and it's been a big help to get advice from others, both those starting out and those who have been selling stock photos for many years.

Last week, I was interviewed about my stock photo sales by the Breakfast Stock Club. I've been getting their emails for a while and just joined their group on Facebook. The idea behind the article was to encourage new stock photographers. Since I'm a freelance writer as well as a photographer, I found it especially fun to be the interviewee instead of the interviewer. 

Conventional wisdom these days is that you need to license both RM and higher end RF on the macros as well as more generic RF on the micros. My images are split between microstock and macrostock, so I can experiment with backgrounds such as the one above that I made with my lensbaby and my wacom tablet, licensing a few 100 photos on the micros quickly, or licensing photos on Alamy for $100 or more a pop.

My portfolio is still very small, but  I'm encouraged to keep uploading. Here's the article - I hope you find it helpful. And here's to everyone's continued success!

 (The image above was made with my lensbaby composer and the macro filter attachment. I then drew the  heart using my wacom tablet. When I have more images to share, I plan to blog about the lensbaby. Here's one of my  favorites from my website. It's so much fun and the images I've made with it have nearly recouped my cost already).

More Time Travel - History Pin

As you know from my Time Travel post, I love old photos and I love historical fiction, so when I came across a rather old tweet from Ellen Boughn @ellenboughn "Imagine being an author of historical novels with this very cool tool," I had to check it out. People all across the globe sharing their old photos - a really cool concept.

Check it out   

and don't miss the video that explains the concept.

It looks to be mostly European photos right now but if you pan to the left you'll see there's plenty of empty real estate for we Americans to start adding those pix from Grandma's attic as well (I know the attic is the worst place to keep those old photos, but many of us do).

I also like the fact that their terms of use protect the contributor's copyrights and restrict re-publication of the photos on other sites and downloading unless you expressly give them permission, unlike so many sites that want you to upload your materials and co-opt all your rights once you do.

If you add any photos to history pin, add a comment and a link below.

This photo of Rome is from 2007, but it could easily be from 1907.  I don't have any old scans on my laptop so I opted for a photo with an old feel. You can see this and more photos from Rome here. Search Amazon.com for ellen boughn