Some abnormally pleasant days in Seattle offer splendid days for sea kayaking off West Seattle.

Kayak for two

Beached on Beach Drive in West Seattle

To see more sea kayaking photos from Seattle, British Columbia and beyond, click HERE

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It’s not snowing, yet, and this past weekend, a rare warm and sunny November weekend was enough to convince my wife and I to head south to the Oregon coast for one last surfing weekend. After getting pounded by a couple waves, I thought it better to just stick to what I do best…taking pictures of Oregon.

Below is short gallery of black & white Oregon surfing images, followed by a growing gallery of additional Oregon photos.

Enjoy.

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The photography business is very tough. Stock agencies are overloaded with certain types of images and offer photos at absurdly discounted prices. Simply selling images online is difficult, not impossible, but difficult. If you find a niche though and have the ability to market yourself, one can be very successful in the world of photography. For example, selling ebooks about Photoshop or Lightroom or landscape photography tips and offering these online can do wonders for a photography business. Teaching photography workshops or leading photography trips can be very prosperous. In my opinion though, there is one thing that will help you rise above the rest, regardless of what you are trying to sell, and that’s networking.

And there’s something else: offering your images and/or services for free. OK, so this doesn’t make you any money, but in SOME cases, for example, exchanging photos for a link on a high-traffic website, can be worth quite a bit down the road. I touched on this last week and how I was able to take pictures at the 2008 Spearhead Traverse Whistler Backcountry Ski Race in exchange for (what I hoped would be) future publicity and maybe some leads. Lo and behold I started seeing traffic to my site pick up…and that’s because my photography website was placed on the homepage of the race site at http://www.wbfj.ca/index.html. Awesome.

But sometimes things don’t always work out as you would like, which is the reason I’m writing this post. I’ve “donated” many of my photographs, many of them without even a moment of hesitation. I love what I do and if I can share my experiences with others who may not be as fortunate or may find inspiration in them, then I’m OK with that. But when someone (in this case a very large and extremely well-known co-op whose name I will not disclose except for the fact that they sell outdoor gear) wants to use a photograph in their marketing material without giving a SINGLE bit of credit to the photographer…well, too bad.

When this offer initially came to fruition I was excited, and what photographer wouldn’t be. The opportunity to have your picture in front of thousands, if not tens of thousands, of people is a dream come true. But when I was informed there would be not a single piece of credit given, I thought otherwise. All photographers work extremely hard to capture unique and inspiring images, so if a company, who has a very large marketing budget, won’t offer even the smallest form of appreciation (my name on the image) then I say screw em.

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