Photography as a hobby: ketchup bottles and sea shells

My photography hobby started just before I went off to college in July of 2015. I bought a little camera with some basic functions and a whopping 16 megapixels. I took thousand of photos ranging from flowers to the side of my house. I signed up with various agencies such as Shutterstock and istock, and managed to get accepted to those as well.

I made a few bucks here and there, but I had the mentality of 'more is better'. That was certainly not the case. I had maybe a few decent shots that I was proud of.  I once photographed and painstakingly uploaded hundreds and hundreds of photos of various crayons in different orientations. I made myself a makeshift light box out of cardboard and lamps I had laying around. I was determined to get the ball rolling. I think the funniest thing is that a picture of a pizza cutter is what sold the most for me. 

I took whatever I had laying around and put it into my little magical light box and snapped away. I didn't have a  dslr or any professional grade camera. I had my will though and that seemed to do just fine. 

Photography as a hobby is something that came into my life relatively late. I remember a lot of classmates who took journalism always had their cameras, often dslr's, talking about this and that. You don't need a dslr to take good photos, just the right mindset and determination.

For my portfolio you can look here

P.S. I tried posting some of my photos here but I got this error:  (account_vshares * max_virtual_bandwidth) > (account_average_bandwidth * total_vshares): account exceeded maximum allowed bandwidth per vesting share account_vshares......

Could someone kindly point me in the right direction? Much appreciated.