Roadblocks

Recently, I got accepted to iStockPhoto, a photo stock company to sell my work. I figured that this would be a great way for me to, both, have my freedom to shoot anything that I wanted and still get paid for it.
Well, yesterday I tried to shoot my very first set of photos for my iStock file and found that it proved to be much harder than I thought.
For one thing, I hadn't counted on the weather- I know, a truly stupid statement considering the planet we live on, the massive climate anomalies that we've had to suffer through since last winter, and the shear fact that the weathermen hardly ever gets it right! All this should have been common knowledge to me! It should not have been news to me to find what had started out as a normally sunny day had grossly devolved into a hideous, thunderous, nightmare, which completely absconded with my light in the process!
But... there I was... surprised. Even more embarrassingly, I actually wondered what went wrong? Even saying to myself 'but.., the weatherman said..."
Shameful.
The other thing I hadn't counted on was having trouble finding my focus in the, now, low lighting of my living room. Despite using a tripod, the inside of a notebook as a reflector, long shutter speeds, (as well as forgetting that my floor shakes, ever so slightly.. ) a great many of my images were a tad on the blurry side.. (Normally, I would say 'selective focus' but this time there is no hiding...)

After some tweaking, this example is one of the better ones that I could find at the bottom of my pile. I worry that it may be too much of a close up, though. Maybe I should pull back a little more next time...
Clearly, this stock photography thing is going to take a lot more work on my part. I realize now that I may have to rent equipment, like lights, lenses, cameras, I may even have to rent a model here or there...
I think I'm starting to see the up side to this...