I took a quick look at TreeHugger today, one of the blogs I actually have time to read that doesn’t deal with technology (work), and found out that it was Global Tiger Day. I was, as always, saddened by the news that there are only about 3,500 tigers left in the wild right now (there are actually more in America!). Since poaching and habitat loss are two of the biggest risks to these wonderful animals, here’s hoping that people stop shooting them for their skins and for “traditional medicines”.

Related articles

• Tiger, Cubs, and Conservation Oh My! Celebrate Global Tiger Day (treehugger.com)
• Adorable Endangered Tiger Cubs Caught on Camera…In Forest Marked to be Cleared (Video) (treehugger.com)

I’ve been playing around with the Sony Nex-5 camera I just purchased. While I don’t think I’m ready to give up a regular DSLR just yet, I have been impressed with the abilities of the camera. My only gripe has to do with learning the menu via the wheel, which makes it a little more difficult to make quick changes to what you’re photographing. The camera does have some pretty nifty features, including HDR and a panoramic option.

This picture of an orchid was taken in Sukhothai, Thailand before visiting my wife’s family. While probably far from my best picture of an orchid, I do like the colors of the orchid very much. Before visiting SouthEast Asia for the first time years ago, I didn’t know that there are more than 20,000 types of orchids that are widely accepted.

You will find no shortage of orchid farms in Thailand, so I highly recommend visiting the many you will find in all of the major tourist areas. I’ve been to ones in Chiang Mai, Nong Khai & Phuket that were very cool to go to, and they are definitely great places for accomplished macrophotographers to take some pictures of these amazing flowers.

Note: Sukhothai is still one of my favorite places to take pictures in Thailand. While the temples don’t have quite the same splendor as the temples of Angkor Wat, you could spend a few quality days checking out one of the original kingdoms of Thailand during your stay.

One of the interesting things about having your pictures hosted at Flickr is that some of the pictures you may personally not like that much tend to be very popular with general viewers. I personally don’t think that this picture of a white tiger is very spectacular, but this picture is one of my most viewed items at my Flickr account.

The Singapore Zoo is the best zoo I’ve been to during my infrequent travels, so I would highly recommend it to any visitors to Southeast Asia. The animal enclosures are fantastic, the zoo is fairly large, and I feel very comfortable visiting animals that probably aren’t too thrilled to be “in a zoo”.

Related articles

• Four White Tiger Cubs = Quadruple Cuteness (Video) (treehugger.com)
• Big Caturday (blogs.discovermagazine.com)

Koh Yao Yai (and neighboring Koh Yao Noi) are islands that are reachable within about 45 minutes from the island of Phuket. The island lifestyle is probably very much like other parts of Thailand were 20 years ago, with just a bunch of relaxed villagers getting by on just a little bit of money and living off of the sea. Things have changed a little bit these days, largely due to the recent addition of some luxury resorts, but you definitely won’t find the craziness of Phuket on the island.

As you can see from this picture, it is almost possible to walk between the islands during low tide. Given that I am not the greatest swimmer, however, I decided not to chance it.

Related articles

• Khai Nok Island (Phuket) (weblogtheworld.com)

My wife and I were at Wat That Luang in Vientiane, Laos when these kids kept getting the attention of the tourists making the rounds. The kids thought it was hilarious that they could peak through the holes to get our attention.

Even though neighboring Thailand has pockets of poverty still, there is no question that Thailand is a much wealthier country than Laos. My wife, who grew up in the poor section of Northeastern Thailand, felt very fortunate that they were never *that poor* & felt bad that so many of the children were living in very poor living conditions.

Related articles

• Clearing the cluster bombs in Laos | Peter Haymond (guardian.co.uk)

While an earlier blog post of mine covered some very basic things to promote your photoblog, which may also help you find some photographers to follow, I was a little frustrated that I wasn’t able to have something like Techmeme make it easy for me to scan a ton of headlines quickly. Then I remembered a site called Alltop, a site I didn’t use before too often, simply typed in http://photography.alltop.com to see what would be returned in the site results, and was pleasantly surprised to see a ton of interesting photographers with articles of interest (some of them I’ve even interacted with sparingly on Twitter).

Since I am an amateur, with no interest in going pro, some of the material probably wouldn’t be directly relevant to me in many ways (reviews of every new camera, for example) . But I am always interested in material related to making me take better pictures, and I think I’ve found an easy solution to getting some additional tips from pros in the fields of photography I enjoy doing as a hobby (nature, cultural, landscape)

While I am not a professional photographer, nor do I try to make a living selling photography at this time, I do hope this list helps people interested in this  arena locate some of the more popular and reputable online services (the ones mentioned are the ones I’ve seen photographers mention the most in a variety of forums and social networks).

Some popular services to sell your photographs online:

DeviantArt
Etsy (more of an arts & crafts community)
Flickr (Flickr largely has partners where you can get work done; most of the photogs I’ve talked to sell their prints on one-off occassions)
Fotomoto
Imagekind
Shutterfly
SmugMug
ZenFolio

A couple of things to keep in mind:

1. While these services will help you display your images, you will largely be responsible for promoting your work
(this will take marketing on your end). I have some quick tips for promoting your photoblog, for example, but this isn’t the only thing you could do and/or should be doing.
2. Some of these services do charge you to host your photos (subscription fees).

3. Some of these services will only charge you if an order is actually placed (varies by company for costs…but you can generally expect somewhere close to 15% of the total sale price).

4. Many of these services, if not all, will handle the fulfillment process for you (shipping, printing, etc.)

5. All of these services may not offer what you need if you are an event or wedding photographer, such as password-protected galleries and the like,  so you might want to look at services like Instaproofs.

Reality check:
1. Many photographers, even serious professionals, will tell you that selling prints online is not an easy
thing to do. As mentioned above in the paragraph above, it takes a fair amount of marketing to get your name and images out there.

2. Selling photographs online should be viewed as a passive form of income for most.

3. Set reasonable prices for your work. Fields like nature and wildlife photography are very saturated with many images from pros and amateurs alike, so  you would really only want to charge a great deal if your images are very unique.

4. You may have to sell across multiple channels to sell images, inlcuding using more than one of the online services mentioned above.

Stock photography:

Since this is not even remotely close to an area of  familiarity or expertise of mine, I am not going to cover this arena at all.  This article on selling photos online with stock agencies should give you some leads.