Camera Dissection, Alamy Submissions, and XDR-TB

Ok, three things I wanted to share today — all totally unrelated aside from the common ground of photography.

JAMES NACHTWEY UNVEILS HIS PROJECT

First and foremost, this is something worth mentioning, watching, reading, and sharing. I mentioned a few days ago that James Nachtwey would be revealing a project he's been working on with the help of TED. Today is the day that we all find out what it is, and it's certainly something amazing.

He's set out to tell the story of Extremely Drug Resistant Tuberculosis (XDR-TB). This is a new and deadly mutation of TB, and it has the potential to kill millions more people. Apparently, 1/3 of the world's population are infected with dormant TB and can become active due to a reduced immunity caused by other things. XDR-TB results from the mistreatment of TB .

TB kills 4,660 people each day — that's one every 20 seconds. And it costs $20 to treat TB if done properly the first time.

Please spread the word. Visit XDRTB.org for more information.

I AM A MIRACLE WORKER

I'm not exactly saving the world with this one, but I did save a camera.

Repairs Underway

I was just doing a little camera repair on my rangefinder (Minolta AL). When I bought this camera, the rangefinder mechanism wasn't working (which the seller didn't tell me because he didn't know). So I finally worked up the guts to tear it apart and see if I could fix it (after seeing what my buddy Joe is up to with his camera).

You can read more about this little adventure on the Flickr page by clicking the photo above.

I COULD USE SOME ADVICE

I'm planning on submitting some photos to Alamy over the next couple of days, and I could use some pointers from the stock savvy photographers out there. Take a look through the slideshow below (probably not visible on a feed reader) or visit my Flickr set containing the photos I'm considering submitting to Alamy.

I'm not huge on stock photography, but the prospect of selling through Alamy doesn't totally turn me off (as long as they accept my work). So for that first submission of 10 images I want to make sure I'm not throwing in any duds.

The reason I'm looking to get into this is two-fold: possibly make some extra cash to support my photography habit, and make some use out of the photos in my archive that don't make it through as “art”. At lot of time, stock photos have very different qualities than fine-art photos, and I'm curious to explore that.

Some questions I have for you stock photographers… Is b/w a bad thing? As I search through the stock sites, I rarely (if ever) see a b/w photo. Is it best to just submit the color version of the same photo? Or both versions? And what's the deal with film? Is it really dead to stock photography sites like Alamy? I'm gaining quite a collection of 120 film scans that turn out to be ~50MP without upsizing. Will I just be laughed at if I submit film scans? Or is there actually a slice of the market for this?

After I go through the submission process (and hopefully get in the club), I'll write up my experience with Alamy for those who might be interested in doing the same.