1/26/2009

Canceled Crestock

I canceled my Crestock account and had them delete my images. I site their severly inconsistent reviewers, and lack of return on images sold.

While they maintain that they "only accept images of the highest quality" I have found that they reject images that were accepted by dreamstime, and accepted images that were rejected by dreamstime (they did not know I have images on dreamstime). They accepted some of my (really bad) first attempts at Stock Photography. Then there is the paultry return on a sold image. Most images I sold returned only $0.25 and on very rare occasions I would get $1.00.

I am not the only one who has had the same problems. Their forums are full of similar complaints. With some "professional Photographers" having had whole batches of submissions rejected (200 to 400 images) because one or two pictures in the batch did not meet their standards.

Maybe some day I will try using them again, but not until they get their act together.

They did not remit my $7.50 for the images they sold.

1/12/2009

Bacon Tasting Part VIII

Today I tried Nueske's Applewood Smoked Bacon.

I wasn't sure I would get to try this bacon as it is very pricey, between $19.00 and $22.00 per pound in some cases. I happened to be at AJ's fine foods and stumbled on it. It is $8.95 for a 12 oz. package, that's $11.94 a pound.

Here is the review from an MSNBC article:

"Despite the company’s claims of using particularly lean hogs, our tasters found this bacon “very fatty” with “hardly any meat,” and many complained of its “overwhelming smoke flavor,” which was akin to eating a “wood-burning stove,” or “ashtray.”"

When I opened the package I thought I would be disappointed. Usually bacon's with a smokey reputation smell like smoke as soon as you open them. This bacon did not. I cooked up 3 slices and within a few seconds of hitting the pan the bacon began giving up it's smokey goodness. This bacon is not as smokey as Newsom's. The tasters at MSNBC must have gotten a different batch, or are not used to heavily smoked meats. I would say this batch was a medium smokey bacon. Just the right amount of smoke for someone who may not be used to it. The bacon had a perfect amount of salt, just the right amount of sweetness, no overwhelming ham taste, and in my case almost a 50/50 meat to fat ratio. This bacon barely curled, but did have a little more water in it than I would like. The smokey after taste lingered for a good 30 minutes after eating it.

This is a gentleman's bacon.

1/04/2009

Photography Road Trip II

Generally I would write up a long post about something we did, but since Chris & Mike did such a good job, I don't have much to write about. Check out their blogs by Clicking on their names. Here are some of the pics I took:
Chris & Mike having a snowball fight.

A Bigfoot Sighting!

Three Bro's

Some HDR Pics:

Are you a Photographer?

The most ridiculous collection of Bike's, motorcycles, snow mobiles, lawnmowers, and other crap you will ever see at "All Bikes" in Rye, Arizona.
On another note, someone forgot to load up my heavy coats so I was stuck wearing 2 light jackets. Here is my home surveillance video of the culprit loading the van. Note in the upper right hand corner of the screen that he puts my coats in the back of my truck, loads some of the stuff into the van then walks right by them.

Later I called Kathi and here she is taking them out from the back of my truck.