I know, but I'm not trying to sell the perfect picture to anyone, nor am I trying to prove to anyone that I can take the perfect picture.

My purpose is to create a business, Photographic Art by Russel Ray Photos, that will provide for me in my old age, which, since I'm 62, is rapidly approaching. I don't expect
my health insurance to survive under Twitler, and I have pre-existing conditions that caused me to have to go without insurance from January 1, 2004, to June 30, 2014. Summary rejection by insurance companies until Obama and the ACA came long. Thus I anticipate needing lots of money for my old age health and living in dealing with Twitler's policies.

Photographic Art by Russel Ray Photos doesn't require sharpness. Similar to a painting; does one really expect sharpness in a painting?

I'm currently doing a little over $10,000 a month selling my Photographic Art. That's not a mistake. A one followed by four zeros. I have a very well-defined target market and I've been in marketing for 51 years, so I know how to market to people. In fact, I even explained my marketing to everyone here at UHH a few years ago. Here it is if you care to read it: http://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-327835-1.html

The Photographic Art below was created from "throwaway" photos which never ever get thrown away. They simply go into a folder titled "needs serious help." The pedicab was a grossly underexposed picture. I work only with RAW files (CR2/DNG) so I was able to bring up the lighting and shadows, but that introduced noise. Using Topaz DeNoise or Photoshop's own denoise filters and actions created a picture that wasn't sharp, so it's give or take. However, in denoising, I noticed excessively denoising created a beautiful work of Photographic Art.

For the hibiscus flower, it was a grossly overexposed photo, which then created one of my Top 10 best selling Photographic Art works.

I actually have found that the less my Photographic Art looks like a picture, the more sales I get. I'm in the process of removing the poor sellers from my portfolio, all of which look too much like, well, pictures. If someone wants a picture, they can take it with their iPhone or buy something from one of those guys who has a Canon EF 1200mm f/5.6 ($120,000) on a Canon 1DX Mark II ($5,999.00). At the age of 62, my retirement portfolio can't handle those. In fact, if I get catastrophically sick or see that I'm otherwise going to be a burden on society, I'm choosing the suicide route.

If I were going for realistic real pictures, I'd probably still go with Tamron. I did not notice a $1,000 difference in sharpness at 600mm for the Sport like it, and some of my friends, claimed. Maybe if I were always using a tripod I could see the difference.

Good to know that Adorama now accepts PayPal. They didn't the last time I used them, but that was six years ago.

CPS only offered an extra item for liking them on Facebook. As to Buydig, I think 447,963 sales says quite a lot, and Buydig had the worst rating at 99%. Everyone else was 99.2, 99.5, 99.6, and even 100%. Invariably, though, I almost always choose higher sales volume over low. I would choose 447,963 sales at 95% satisfaction rating over 1,894 sales with 100% satisfaction rating.