DAM – Digital Asset Management

As I amass a larger and larger collection of photographs and illustrations, it is absolutely necessary for me to have a way to manage them, i.e. to know what image has been approved/declined at what agency, since I submit to more than 10 of them. I knew about the major DAM software that costs thousands of dollars and is made for large photo agencies or publications that use a lot of images, but as a stock artist, I need something tailored to my specific workflow.

I have just what I need with Cushy Stock. Love that name! Cushy! It’s amazing. The new 2.0+ version and the Pro (beta) intuitively lets me sort my images into “sessions” which means I can separate out different shoots, like images from our drive up to Mount Rainier, from the studio shots of Mark we did a couple weeks ago, instead of having to track approvals/rejections in a huge folder full of all the images. The new versions also track stats which is invaluable to me… as a stock artist I have this F5 disease (refresh, refresh) to see what has sold today, what has gone through the approval process, etc., and Cushy takes care of all that for me.

Here’s a screen shot of my studio session with Mark:

Most Digital Asset Management software is very expensive… whereas Cushy is very reasonable, actually quite inexpensive for what it does. The Standard version is only $49.95 and the Professional version is only $89.95 USD. I’d say Cushy is absolutely the most indispensible software behind Photoshop and Illustrator for a stock artist! THANKS ALEX for all your hard work on this, its awesome!

Love Snoqualmie Falls

I love Snoqualmie Falls. It’s a spectacular waterfall that has a higher vertical drop than Niagara Falls. It is located a few miles off of Interstate 90, about 30 miles from Seattle, Washington.



The hydroelectric plant that is owned by Puget Sound Energy was finished in 1909, they say one of the largest civil engineering projects in the world at the time.



We took the train from the Northwest Railway Museum about a mile from the Falls, on an old Pullman that has old wrought-iron and wood slat benches for passenger seats. The Pullman smelled old, it was amazing. This view of the Snoqualmie River was taken from the rail car, on a track that was nestled into the mountainside.



Thanks for looking at the little peeks into my life.

Shooting Some TFCD

We’ve been shooting some TFCD (time for CD) and have been having great luck! The first one was a mom who wanted pictures of her daughters. Those girls were adorable. The older one was a natural model, knowing just what to do. The younger one had a mind of her own but we managed to catch a couple good ones of her.

The second shoot was with a successful businessman wanting images for his lifestyle coaching business. He was also a very good model with poise and confidence, and a mixed race appearance. There’s a demand for mixed-race people images so we’re happy to oblige.

Here are a couple images from those shoots.

Anacortes Island, an Oxymoron

Lookin’ for Adventure… we drove up to Anacortes Island, a couple hours north of Seattle, to see what we could see. We knew there were some oil refineries up there but had no idea it was such a beautiful place… unspoiled territory despite all the heavy industry. Mount Baker looms up behind the refinery as we come onto the island and it is low tide. In town there is much evidence of “oil money,” beautiful homes, luxury yacht builders and marinas, and a charming, quaint town.






You should have seen the homes! There’s oil money there. People who work in refineries must make good coin. That town is very well-kept and well-funded. Some might think an oil refinery town would be nasty, dirty, black, stinking like crude, but not this place.



On the other side of the island, we drove into a county park, Washington Park, and saw the gorgeous beach, camping spots, tree-covered street, and then came upon this view of the western edge of the island:



It was almost sunset by the time we took the above, so I turned around and saw this:



We are going back whenever we can, Mark says he wants to bring his father up there, as much as Bill loves to get out and see new things. And of course we are scoping out places to retire… ultimately we’d love to have a place up here, preferably on a river, and then one down in Florida or Belize for the wintertime when the weather is not so happy here.

We are setting up our home studio and gearing up to launch our new website, Payne Images, and set out to shoot family and business events among other things. We have both been working toward this for a long time and are both really excited to get out there and do it!

Bizzy Bizzy Bizzy

I’ve been bustin’ some butt working at my JOB lately… I’m trying to be as efficient as possible so that I may quit doing it early one day and work on some illustrations or process what’s on my camera card!

Mark’s son (and my step-son) Robby came to visit us last weekend and we had a blast! I probably have 500 images to comb through (no, i’m not one of those photographers that just points and shoots everything, I hate that!). But I do shoot in RAW+JPG Fine and bracket 3 times for each image so I get 6 pictures for each shot. Seriously that has saved my butt a few times, I hate blown highlights and blocked-up dark spots.

And I updated my photography website, come and look: Changing Light Photography

Great Images of Olympus

We drove up to the Olympic National Park last weekend, and got some great stuff. It was a beautiful day! We caught the ferry from Seattle to Bainbridge Island and drove the northwest route to Port Angeles, along Puget Sound. When we got into Port Angeles, we turned south, into the park, along a road that led us to Hurricane Ridge. In 18 miles the road ascends almost a mile! We were at about 5,200 feet when we took these. We bought an annual pass to federal lands, all the national parks and BLM lands. Sweet! Can’t wait to use that as much as we can! Thanks, Mark! He’s so good to me.


This little guy is a Columbian black-tailed deer, he’s probably not even a year old, look at those little antler stubs. He wasn’t afraid, Mark got some great shots of him and his family. I was more interested in the mountains myself but I managed to get one or two good ones.


This is the lodge and ranger station for the national park. The mountain range is the Olympic Range which is distinctly different from the Cascade Range, where we live over near Mt. Rainier. There was snow behind where I was standing, too. In June. We were up at Port Angeles in April and couldn’t get access to Hurricane Ridge without chains and we don’t have any chains right now (Mark’s truck has 4-wheel drive).


This stream was amazing! It came all the way down this enormous drop, hundreds of feet, it was just looking like paradise. I wish I could have really captured it the way it looked.

I’ll put up more images later, once they’re accepted somewhere…

Я обучения Русский – I’m Learning Russian

I am learning to speak and read Russian. I have always been fascinated by Russian people, history, and culture, and especially literature. And music. Amazing how creative their artworks are. I just finished reading Anna Karenina. I hadn’t realized it was a tragedy… although yes infidelity is tragic enough. I want to read more Tolstoy and Dosdoyevsky, if the library will let me, you know it takes months to read those enormous books!

I am learning it on LiveMocha, here’s my page, Stacey’s LiveMocha Page. I never have much time to study on it, and work and draw and do whatever else it is I want to do, but I try to slip it in.

Summer’s Different in Washington

This image is selling a lot in the last few days… our daughters (the two outside) and their friend were enjoying a day at Gilchrist Blue Spring in Florida, our “backyard” spring park near our home. Gilchrist County has 66 named springs and we were out to discover every one of them for ourselves. This was taken in May of 2006, the girls are much bigger now.

I don’t reckon there are any cold springs in Washington, not that I have found… but there are a LOT of rivers and there are some hot springs out in the Olympia National Forest which we would love to go see. It’s hard to get up there, the roads are closed when there is snow, September to May. So we should make it a point to get up the high roads this summer when they are open (Mount Rainier’s road should be open by now, too). Perhaps I’ll post some pictures of all that soon.

Things are working out very nicely.

I have the chili pepper lights strung around the outside deck of my mind, there’s a nice breeze, its a really nice night. We are enjoying working together, my husband resigned from his job and is now home working, freelancing in the stock market (you should follow his posts if you Twitter, he’s really good at it, @mwp1969) and continuing to build his stock art portfolios online like I do. It’s really nice to have the freedom not to have to work a punch-a-clock job, we have earned it.

Of course my life would be perfect if I didn’t have to produce my work “for money,” but for now it beats flippin’ burgers. I’d love to be able to travel with my gorgeous husband and do whatever it is we want to do at that exact moment. But alas we’re still working for that.

Maybe Russia, I have a lifelong fascination with Russia and Russian people, maybe I was Russian in a past life. I’m also definitely decidedly Irish and have kin in Dublin so Ireland would be a real nice stop on our way. Imagine the photographs…

Getting Ready for the 4th

My sister suggested I start drawing things that would be appropriate for the July 4th holiday, so I did this. I have more in mind but my skill level in Illustrator doesn’t match what I can picture in my head! Don’t know why I drew ladybugs, they just flew into my head and had to materialize. Did you know that in Europe, people call them ‘ladybird’ ? That’s odd, Americans associate that word with Lyndon Johnson’s wife, Ladybird Johnson.

And since this isn’t specifically directed toward the American Independence Day, perhaps, for example, Russians could use it because their flag is red, white and blue as well.

I know its more than a month away but if you’re American, hope you have a great Independence Day. If you’re not, happy EVERY day.