Given the money and time, we’d have stayed for a week, but the 12 hours we have would have to suffice for now. We were ushered into the desert on camels at sunset, which was spectacular, then a well needed chicken dinner, and a camel ride back out of the Sahara at dawn.

If this sounds a little chaotic and rushed, its because it was. The desert is spectacular, and vast, and deserves more than a fleeting photo call. we vow to return one day.

Our guide for the three day trip was Abraham, who drove us in a Land Rover Defender (110). It made me wish I was still in my treasured M

On our way out of the desert, whilst speeding by in our Land Rover, I managed to get this wonderful shot of the dunes, reflected in the standing water from the recent rains. Not bad for a shot from a moving vehicle!

In total we spent around two and a half weeks in Marrakesh, which is (trust me) a very long time to be a tourist in this city  By the end of it most of the touts and hustlers knew us and we weren’t hassled as much.

There’s plenty to do in Marrakesh, the main square: Djemaa el-Fna “assembly place of the nobodies” is the heart of the city. Locals and tourists mingle amongst the food vendors, orange juice stands and snake charmers.

Only tourists buy fruit from these stands… They’re about twice the price of the sellers a little further into the market.

The juice from these stands is great… And it costs only about 50 us cents a glass…

On one of our nights wandering around the city we spotted a crowd of people and a film crew… It turns out the British ‘Naked Chef’ Jamie Oliver is in town tasting some of the markets famous delicacies…

I took a lot of HDR images whilst I was there, I was playing around with the technology. Some of the photos I liked, others, looking back on them look a little too cartoonish!

This pharmacy, built in 1879 was set to be demolished, a thoughtful resident of Tombstone saved it from the bulldozers and restored it as part of an attraction. Sadly on the day we were visiting, they were packing up for good, their business had failed in the recession, and they were forced to leave.

This statue of Wyatt Earp stands outside the modest home he built in Tombstone (pictured behind him)

Wild west cowboys, dressed for a fight!

I caught this stagecoach at the perfect time outside the famous OK Corral. I think the guy at the reins was asleep.

Lots of Tombstone is protected and well maintained in its original condition… This house on the outskirts of town caught my eye, and obviously doesn’t benefit from the protection much of the rest of the town receives!

After Tombstone, we headed on to Bisbee, famous for being one of Arizona’s ghost towns. After the major mining operations ended here the town was all but abandoned. Now its full of artists and hippies, getting away from comparatively furious pace of life in Tucson!

I didn’t have to wait at all to get a shot of no-cars on Main stree!

My consistent rejections for ‘poor lighting’ or more commonly ‘not stock material’ were frustrating, and the lengthening delays before being able to re-submit to the sites for approval (yes, they tell you to wait longer and longer before re-submitting) were becoming ridiculous. At some point, the penny dropped, and I realized I needed to learn about how to create my own light.

Many of the sites are noise Nazi’s, and will often reject images shot at over 200 ISO. You’ll need to learn all about using your camera with off camera strobes.

Fortunately, using off camera lights is extremely cheap – well, cheap relative to the rest of your equipment! For a few hundred dollars you can get setup with two decent manual strobes and a wireless trigger device. I use Cactus V2’s, which I bought from China, they’re cheap (around $40), and fairly reliable. Not as reliable as Pocket Wizards or some of the other brands out there, but good enough if you’re mostly doing product and portrait photography. I wouldn’t recommend them for weddings and event photography, but home studio stuff is fine.

Most of my stock images were shot with a Sunpack 611 and Vivitar 285HV, both of which I found on ebay, for around $30-$40 each. Recently I purchased a used studio lighting kit, again very cheaply on e-bay, which consists of a 400ws powerpack and four strobe heads.

My plan now, is to invest in Alien Bees or White Lightning 1600ws mono-heads. 2 of them. With those bad boys at my disposal I’ll be able to light almost anything I choose!

Before considering making money from photography I was just an average photographer… I prided myself on doing the best with the tools I had available. My Africa blog was shot entirely with a Casio Exilim 7.2 megapixel point and shoot compact camera, which was great for movies, but not so great for photos. Within a few days I’d understood most of its weakness’s however and had come up with various workarounds to allow some manual control of exposure. I had many comments and compliments on the images, so I guess I did OK, but they were far from professional shots.

Understanding what a ‘professional’ image is all about was a big learning curve. What it all really boils down to is understanding light.

The first thing you need to do to get into Microstock photography, and to begin to earn a passive income is open an account with the big 5 microstock agencies.

By far my best performing stock agencies are:

1) IstockPhoto.com

2) Shutterstock.com

3) Fotolia.com

4) Dreamstime.com

5) Bigstockphoto.com

By far the easiest site to upload to is one of the newbie sites:

6) Mostphoto.com

1) Being Tucson folk, we haven’t yet seen any snow, let alone winter

2) We’re a little daft

We knew it would be cold, but we thought with enough blankets and Lian’s families trusty North Face down sleeping bags (one’s actually Chris size!!!) we could camp. We were crazy.

We arrived on reservation land in the dark.. As we climbed, we could tell there was snow around, but we couldn’t see much. By this point, we’d both stuck our hands out of the car window for the briefest of seconds and agreed we should stop at a motel if we see one.

I did stop at a motel, but not on the nice salted ice-free asphalt entrance, for some strange reason I opted for the snow clad, snowdrift entrance…. Which in my defense I didn’t notice much difference between the two initially. The front wheels sank immediately into what was now obviously a snowdrift, sloping down to the carpark. Fully committed in our front wheel drive car, I went as far as I could, and pushed Lian out the rest of the way. Which was about three foot. Before a nice young Native American lad came to our rescue.

We slept in the motel that night with the heater on permanently… When we woke at dawn to go to Monument Valley, within a few moments of being out of the car my fingers were numb and painful, Lian was a little more than uncomfortable (she was wearing the worlds thinnest socks and tiny shoes)… We would have died had we camped the previous night.

Joining us on the hill overlooking Monument Valley were a gaggle of foreign (perhaps Japanese) tourists. With an enviable array of camera equipment.

The wind chill took 20-30 degrees off the temperature, and my guess is it’s around 0 (Fahrenheit).

Never the less! The place is WONDERFUL, and the sun, hiding behind a few clouds, makes a tantalizingly slow appearance!

After nearly freezing to death, we drive north.

There’s only one path tourists are allowed to take unguided… Which is a great idea for the Native American inhabitants…. White people trampling all over this sacred place unchecked would be yet another disservice to these proud people. Its amazing they let non-Native American’s on the land at all. I’m not sure I’d be as forgiving after our sordid history.

The hike that takes us down to the canyon floor takes us to arguably the most famous of the ruins: The White House.

It’s a short 2 mile round trip, with a 500 feet decent to boot. Each turn as we descend gives a wonderful new view of the red rocks. We see mountain goats beneath us pretending over and over again that they’re stuck, before each time taking the plunge and leaping to yet another tentative location.

It doesn’t take us long to get to the ruins, especially as I’m in quite a hurry… The light was perfect when we left the carpark, but ominous clouds were gathering. We see skittish horses on the canyon floor, a few of which canter past as we threaten to cut them off from the rest of the herd.

After attempting (and failing) to feed the horses some apples we continue on across a small bridge to the White House Ruins.

Camping was free in one of the campsites just north of Furnace Creek. We slept fairly well and headed off at dawn to the sand dunes in the valley.

The dunes were pretty well trampled, but this being America, you only have to walk a few hundred yards into the dunes to find pristine dunes…. People never venture far from their cars in this valley.

Underneath the dunes, there’s a wonderful mosaic of salty hardened mud. It crunches underfoot as I walk.

Next on our journey was the lowest point in the western hemisphere: Badwater – Death Valley, USA

Even in January it’s hot here – you can see the heat haze on the lake bed, but we set off on a 2.5 mile hike, towards the flattest part of the salt flats.

Some of the images will make it into my microstock photography portfolio!

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