Use Google Alerts to gain insights into the stock photography marketplace — I supplement my income by selling photos on stock photography sites, including Shutterstock, Adobe Stock, and Getty Images. These sites report various details about photo sales, such as the date of each sale and the earned commission. But none of them provide clues about who purchased the photos and why. …

February Six Word Photo Story Challenge: “Love & Hearts” — Grandparents are made out of love. Following church service on most Sundays during my childhood, my mom, dad, four brothers, and I would cram into the car. Dad would drive us twenty miles south from our home in Austin, Minnesota, to my paternal grandmother’s house in St. Ansgar, Iowa. Grandma was always excited and happy to…

Memories and music of Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and the Big Bopper live on — I have lived between 60 and 100 miles from the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa, for most of my life. The place has achieved fame worldwide as the last venue where Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson, Jr., played music for their fans. It stands…

Avocets are a joy to watch. They are photogenic and make good drawing subjects, too — I never tire of watching birds and wildlife near home in Minnesota. But exploring new places offers benefits, including meeting new people, hiking new terrain, and watching unfamiliar birds and other animals. A few years ago, I brought my camera and super-telephoto lens to a conference in Burlingame, California, near…

These natives of North America also inhabit Europe, Asia, and South America — After squirrels and rabbits, muskrats are the most common wild mammals I see in the Upper Midwest region of the United States. On recent visits to Quarry Hill Nature Center near home, two or three of these semiaquatic rodents stood on the ice of the center’s pond. You may have…

In my case, an Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max could only partially replace the functionality and convenience of an Apple MacBook Pro laptop PC and a Windows desktop PC. But maybe it would work for you — In some ways, modern smartphones outperform the room-filling mainframe computers my dad, brother, and I programmed at various times between 1965 and 2015. Through electronic miniaturization, manufacturers pack processing power, high-fidelity audio, photography, video, navigation, location tracking, and more into these diminutive gems.

On the journey to becoming a cat lover — Last Thursday, my wife Kazumi and I received the call we had hoped for. A person from Paws and Claws Humane Society, a local animal shelter, told us we were first in line for a chance to adopt a kitten named Lizzie. Three years earlier, our beloved tuxedo cat, Lucas…

Local opossums munch on oranges and scrounge for scraps below a bird feeder — “Humankind must learn to understand that the life of an animal is in no way less precious than our own.” ― Paul Oxton My wife and I enjoy watching birds, squirrels, and rabbits in our backyard. Sometimes, bald eagles and hawks soar overhead. We occasionally even spot coyotes or red…

January Six Word Photo Story Challenge: “Hometown Pride” — Do cornfields surround the Mayo Clinic? I grew up in Austin. If you’re an American outside the Upper Midwest, it’s not the Austin you thought of. I grew up in Austin, Minnesota. In Austin, my dad worked for forty years for Hormel Foods, the maker of Spam, Black Label Bacon, Cure 81 Ham, and more. The…