Stacey Lynn Payne

Fat & Happy Christmas Card Photo Card from Zazzle.com

seattlespayne — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 19:39:55 +0000

Fat & Happy Christmas Card Photo Card from Zazzle.com.

I’ve been Zazzling. Fun site.

You Know How It Is…

seattlespayne — Tue, 04 May 2010 01:45:05 +0000

… when your life overtakes your intentions and you don’t get around to doing things that you plan…

Just about a year ago some dude hit us from behind as we were exiting the freeway, he was going about 40 miles an hour when we were just about stopped. That seriously jacked my back and through a comedy of errors, I haven’t really been able to get much help for it since. Recently, however, I was able to get a cortisone shot in my herniated disk and it has helped *some* but not one-hundred percent.

The pain I’ve been swimming around in has slowed down my photography and such, you know how it is…

My wonderful husband Mark and I have, however, managed to get out some, and get some good shots. I’m going to post some of them up right here in just a little bit…

DAM – Digital Asset Management

seattlespayne — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:24:50 +0000

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

seattlespayne — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 19:26:11 +0000

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

seattlespayne — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 03:52:28 +0000

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

seattlespayne — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 23:52:38 +0000

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

seattlespayne — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 02:35:38 +0000

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

seattlespayne — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 05:09:20 +0000

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

seattlespayne — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 23:58:37 +0000

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

seattlespayne — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 15:54:23 +0000

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.