Begin at the beginning ...

Someone once said to me, "Photography's easy. It's just pushing a button."

It isn't. If you want to get really worthwhile photographs you have to work at it.

But sometimes you do have a stroke of luck.

Here's an image I took in Murano, the Ventian island famous for its glass-making. I was walking beside one of the canals, looked down an alley, and spotted the brightly-coloured domestic scene ...

It's an image that sells steadily for me through a range of agencies.

But that was pure luck. Most times you have to work at at getting the right image, and work pretty hard at it, too.

As well as taking photographs, and writing about taking photographs, I inspect images for one of the agencies. And you wouldn't believe the junk that some people submit in the hope of making a sale.

It's obvious that they belong to the '... it's just pushing a button' school of photography.

More than once my jaw has dropped open in amazement and my howl has brought the dog to my side with a whine of worry.

I don't like worrying dogs, or causing pain to anyone, including image inspectors. So this blog is going to be about the trials and tribulations of getting a decent, sellable image. Very often I don't get it right ... probably more often than not. When that happens I avert my eyes and quietly delete the disasters.

But when it does work, when I get a great image and people start buying it ... yes, paying me money for it ... that's a wonderful feeling.