Peter Bergdahl's Personal Blog

This is a dramatic and hilarious but true story that happened two days ago and my conclusion is that my wife truly loves me.

This is what happened.

I’m currently living in Vietnam and my wife is at the moment in the USA. On Thursday i got a high fever and a cough and my wife was worried that i contracted the swine flu. She insisted that i go to a doctor but i didn’t listen (as usual), just told her not to worry.

Around 7.30pm local Vietnamese time i went to bed and slept like a dead horse. My wife tried to call me at least 50 times but i left my cellphone in another room and didn’t hear it. She panicked and called her brother who lives in Vietnam and told him to immediately go to my home to make sure i was alive and he did.

The problem was that my wife’s brother and the guard at the house didn’t have a key to enter my apartment. They started banging loudly at my door and i woke up after a while.

But i though it was my neighbors making noise or some construction work going on so I tried to fall asleep again. The banging didn’t stop however and I got furious. How can they be so stupid and make this kind of noise at 11.00pm. Meanwhile both my wife and her brother was pretty much sure I was dead because I didn’t open the door (my wife was on her brothers cellphone all the time).

On direct command by cellphone from my wife in the USA, they knocked down the door and came in to the apartment but I didn’t realize it until I heard voices in my living room. I went up from bed, and was surprised to meet a Vietnamese guard and my wife’s brother when I walked in to the living room.

He looked so upset that I asked what was going on and then he told me the whole story.

So while I was first sound asleep and later furious about the noise they made, my wife and her brother was nearly sure i was dead and the noise i was furious about was them knocking down the door to rescue me.

Well, the door is fixed, my fever is nearly gone and in hindsight I can conclude that my wife truly loves me and will do anything for me

Let me know what you think about this story by making a comment.

Just moments ago i discovered by accident a simple trick with Photoshop that makes a photograph look like a glass painting.

Photo edited in Photoshop to look like a glass painting

I used the following steps when i edited this image taken in Da Nang at Furama Resorts.

1. Select background layer, right click and select “Duplicate Layer” to make a copy
2. Select the copy of background layer
3. Select blending mode “Darken”
4. Select “Filter” -> “Blur” -> “Gaussian blur”
5. Change the “Radius” until you get the wanted effect
6. That’s it

A few days ago I posted a couple of videos showing you how to identify the best markets for your stock photography. I mentioned it’s a good idea to study what sells and I’d like to complement these videos with this list of web sites where you can find hot selling images.

• Shutterstock Top 50 Ever
• Shutterstock Top 50 This Week
• BigStockPhoto Most Downloaded
• Dreamstime Popular Images
• Fotolia Top Sales From Beginning of Time
• Fotolia Top Sales Last 30 Days

In addition it’s a good idea to look at the top searches to see what’s in demand.

• Shutterstock Top 100 Image Searches

Here’s links to the videos i mentioned about.

1. Photography: Getting Started in Stock Photography – Part 1
2. Photography: Getting Started in Stock Photography – Part 2: Demo

So keep analyzing hot selling markets and images carefully. Then you select your market and first afterward you start taking photos for this market. Don’t do the mistake to first take images and then try to find a market, what if you find out there are no markets for your images.

OK, so i managed to crawl out of bed to write this post but it will be short and somewhat unusual. Yesterday i got a mild cough and today it escalated to code red (crisis). I also have a high fever, hope it’s not the swine flu.

On top of this i’m stressed like mad because i’m so busy with work i don’t really have time to be sick.

But it’s not all bad, the real reason i’m stressed is that we got a huge contract a few days ago so i guess i’m stressed for a good reason.

So I’ve chosen to be happy anyway and i will now crawl back to bed and celebrate

On the second day of our weekend trip to Da Nang we checked out early in the morning and took a taxi to Hoi An. We’ve heard from some friends that Hoi An is a charming little town and they were right. It took only about 35 minutes to get from Da Nang to Hoi An.

Hoi An is a relaxing small ancient town with many of the old buildings still intact. It also struck me that Hoi An is much more colorful than most other places in Vienam and Asia in general.

It’s was very sunny and blazing hot but we defied the sun and walked around in the old part of the city.

Street in Hoi An

Boats in Hoi An

On the way back to the taxi we stopped by to get some food at a place called Mango Rooms and it turned out to be an orgy in colors but very tasteful.

Mango Rooms in Hoi An

And finally here’s me in the streets of Hoi An.

Me in the Streets of Hoi An

In the afternoon we went back to Da Nang to catch the evening flight back to Hanoi. The flight was delayed so we didn’t arrive to Noi Bai airport in Hanoi until around 11.00pm at night and i came to my apartment at 12.00pm so i was very, very tired after a long but interesting weekend in central Vietnam.