PhotoShelter

I always have problems coming up with gifts, so this year, I thought I'd help you out with some of my favorite tools of the trade. Now, now. no need to get them for me because I already have them. This is not some sort of shill list for our partners -- these are things I purchased and use (well, with the exception of the last item on the list...feel free to gift that to me).

Under $30
Giotto Rocket Blower - $9.99
The latest generation of cameras have anti-dust vibrating sensors. Sounds cool, but at the end of the day, sometimes you need a blast of air to really get the dust off (and out of the chamber). Not sure why the Giotto is any better than any other blower, but it is.

Lumiquest Pocket Bouncer - $21.95
There are lots of different contraptions to attach to your flash unit from spheres to domes to mini softboxes. But I seem to get pretty darned good results from this plasticized piece of cardboard. Fortunately for me, the price is right, because I tend to lose them more frequently than I care to admit.



Gaffer Tape - $26.95
Tape? Who wants tape for Christmas??? I do. Perhaps you remember a humble guy named MacGyver. Need I say more? The difference between tape and gaffer tape is that gaffer's doesn't leave that sticky residue. It's sort of like blue painter's tape, but better.

Under $100
X-Rite Digital Color Passport - $99
Color seemed to be so much easier with film. You'd shoot your roll, drop it off a the store, and get back a version of your images that some technician (or computer) deemed color appropriate. But with digital, we can tweak everything, but sometimes it's just hard to tell what's right. X-Rite's Color Passport is a mini color chart/gray card that you can stick in your camera bag for a reference image, and comes with plug-in software for your image editing programs like Adobe Lightroom.



SanDisk Extreme 8GB CF Card - $99.95
In truth, it doesn't really matter how big or what brand -- the point is, you can never have too many compact flash cards. I personally use a 32GB and 12GB card in my Nikon D3, which makes me feel like I'm never going to run out of frames when I'm away for a weekend wedding.

Under $500
Photo Mechanic - $150
There are a few programs that I use daily, and Photo Mechanic is one of them. If you're not a photojournalist, you might not even heard of it. But if you need the fastest tool available to plow through hundreds or thousands of images, pick your selects, add meta data, and finally transfer them to a destination like PhotoShelter, Photo Mechanic is the cat's meow.

Fotoquote 6 - $149
If I had a penny for every time someone asked me how much they should charge for a photo, I'd not only be rich, I'd probably have created fotoQuote myself. Fortunately, industry-advocate and veteran photographer Cradoc Bagshaw has done it for us. PhotoShelter uses fotoQuote as our rights-managed pricing engine, but you can only get the valuable negotiation tips and coaching with the desktop software. Make sure to take advantage of the special discounts to PhotoShelter users.

ThinkTank Airport Security v2 - $369
One of the cool thing about all the products in the Under $500 category is that they are created by small businesses who care deeply about photography. Doug and Mike wanted to create a better bag for serious photographers and thus ThinkTank Photo was founded. Back in the day, photographers prided themselves on carrying as much stuff on their back as possible, but common sense took over. Now we have rollers like the Airport Security. It's lightweight, well-designed, and fits in an airplane overhead compartment. Neat.

The Sky is the Limit
Canon 5d Mark II - $2699
Nikon D3s - $5199

Video has been at the fingertips of photographers for years, but it's only in the past few years, that full frame, HD video has made its way into the D-SLR camera. The significance is less that photographers can be videographers, as much as it allows low-light, shallow depth-of-field videography that simply wasn't possible before.  Combine that with the cottage industry of software and hardware to fuel D-SLR filmmaking and you get stuff like this:




Apple iMac 27" - $1999


I grew up watching the A-Team on a 19" television. I could have never imagined what my computing experience would be like with a 27" monitor, but with my 7 year old dual G5 computer on its last legs, I decided to take the plunge and get a new iMac. Sure, the first two computers that Apple sent me had cracked screens, but hey, who's counting. The third time was the charm, and even though I've only used it for three days, I shudder to think at how many hours of lost productivity I've had because of the newfound speed.

Oh yeah, it looks good too.

Leica M9 - $6995
I admit there is a cult of Leica. There are some really great photographers who have used Leicas. But there are also a lot of hacks who take crappy pictures with Leicas, but think they're Cartier-Bresson because they dropped $10k for a body and lens. But let's put all that petty stuff aside and marvel at the M9, which judging by early reviews and inventories, is a grand slam. I shot with a rangerfinder. Once. And yet, I find myself lusting over manual focus and spending oodles and oodles of money so that I can stand on top of my camera like my friend Justin Stailey (2:09).

by Rod Mar

Football is easily my favorite sport to photograph. Combining peak action, great emotion and a sense of ritual and ceremony, football is not only a visual feast for the eyes, but also your camera. There's a reason why up to 100,000 fans pack stadiums every weekend, planning days, weekends and even annual vacations around games.

The basics of all sports photography- great action, good light and clean backgrounds all apply - both Brad Mangin and Darren Carroll mention these "must-haves" in their articles about baseball and golf, respectively.

Let's talk about shooting football in college terms.

Football 101: Two Faces and a Ball.
The essence of all sports photography can be captured in an old adage, often repeated by crusty old wire service editors to young wannabes:

    "Two faces and a ball, kid. Two faces and a ball".

You get two good faces and the football in your frame, and you very likely have a usable photo. However, that's harder to achieve than you'd think.

Why? Because players wear helmets. They duck their heads. Often, a player is getting tackled and his head is twisted away from your camera. Anyway, however you slice it, two faces and a ball is a good place to start.

Remember - the eyes have it. If you can see their eyes, your photo is better.


Photo by Rod Mar

Football 201:   Field Position Matters.

Now that you know what to look for, it's important to know WHERE to look for it.

Let's go ahead and close out 2009 with another set of PhotoShelter featured photographers - our last of the year! So while your thoughts are turning to the holidays and year-end vacations, why not let some of these exceptional photos take you away? Where? You can follow Thomas Lee to the Philippines as he explores the over-fishing of the tuna. Or go hiking in Redwood National Park in California with Justin Bailie. Or if you're into the tropical thing, how about some intense kiteboarding in French Polynesia with Jody MacDonald? All possible with December's PhotoShelter Featured Photographers. Their images will sit on the PhotoShelter homepage all month, and their websites will be showcased on the Featured tab of our product tour.

In addition to destinations near and far, you'll enjoy images like:

• Aryan Imagery's striking wildlife photography
• Robert Van Waarden's compelling climate change and travel photography
• Larry Angier and Carolyn Fox's unique eye for the nooks and crannies of rural America
• David Ettinger's art of art - art gallery photography



Many of these photographers sell their work through PhotoShelter as prints, products, stock photography and/or personal use licenses. Their websites are great examples of how you can customize PhotoShelter using our templates or your own designs.

Like what you see? Embed our December featured slideshow in your own website or blog by clicking the up arrow in the lower right of the slideshow.

Want to submit your images for consideration for the January slideshow? Here's how. Images must be submitted by the 20th of the month, and winners are posted on the first Tuesday of the following month.

Thanks to the hundreds of people who attended my webinar on Search Engine Optimization yesterday at the PDN Virtual Tradeshow. There were many more questions than we had time to answer, so I figured I'd post a bunch of them here for everyone to see.

Remember: The best time to get started on your SEO strategy is today! Don't sweat the minutae -- get your page titles and captions in place, then started building your links. Download our free SEO Cookbook for more step-by-step instructions.

If my website is flash, can I still go in and put different meta data for each page? (Thia)

Flash, in and of itself, doesn't support HTML meta data. You'd have to write some custom code to do this. The more common way is to build a mirror site in HTML, which is only displayed when a user doesn't have Flash and to search engines.

We are a new business and just registered our name into google two days ago. how long does it take google to process all those entires (we can't find our site even when we type in our exact name). (katarina)

If you're talking about a Google Local Business entry -- it can vary from a few days to a few weeks depending on the verification method. I would suggest also creating a Google Webmaster account and registering your website with them.

Are direct links to every photo important? Some photo sites dynamically generate links (e.g. http://terryspictures.com/) (Chuck)

Most experts recommend having text links to every image -- i.e. don't just rely on a clickable image without also having a text link.

My photos used to come up as large thumbnails, 400x600 in google image search. They're now coming up as thumbnail size thumbnails 180x200. They look tiny, what happened? (Ellen)

A few things good be happening. 1) Google tests new things all the time, and this might be a part of a new test or presentation, 2) Google isn't indexing your larger images, and apparently deciding that the thumbnails are deep enough in your website.

I would make sure you have text links to the larger images -- preferably with good anchor text (e.g. "waikiki-beach.jpg" instead of "DSC_0123.jpg" or "picture"). And I would build links into a specific gallery of content.

Social Media is an undeniable force on the Internet, and our belief in it led to the development of our embeddable slideshows and the  "Post to facebook" functionality. Within the past month, we've seen a dramatic increase in traffic to PhotoShelter websites from Facebook, so your posts are having the intended effect.

But when visitors visit your website and view your photos, we thought that we could do more to allow them to market for you! So we're happy to announce that PhotoShelter websites now have an option to posting a link to your content on a myriad of social networks with the new "Share" button.

To enable the feature within your PhotoShelter website, go to your Gallery Display page template, and make sure the "Post to Social Networks" option is selected.



Once the feature is enabled, your website visitors will see the following when they move their mouse over the new "Share" button:




We've selected 6 major services plus e-mail to which a user can post a link to your content. Additionally, there are 199 other services to other social networking sites that users can pick. It's a great way to extend your reach by using viral marketing tools. Many media websites use the same types of tools to allow their readers to push content for them, and we think photography websites should be no different.

Within the photographer area, we've also made it easier for you to "tweet" a gallery or image on Twitter. If you have a public gallery or image, you'll see the "Tweet This" button. Click it, and we'll automatically take you to Twitter with a shortened URL (using bit.ly) to your content.

We're happy to announce the availability of two new website themes to PhotoShelter Standard and Pro users, both named after two of our favorite New York neighborhoods.

Nolita is an angular and very clean design with thin Century Gothic lettering. Peter Pham (an Asia travel stock photographer) uses the default style, and Markel Redondo (a freelance editorial photographer in Bilbao) is using the "White Shadow" style.

By Paul Painter

Photography competitions are everywhere. A quick Google search will reveal hundreds of them across the world in any given month. Fabulous, you might think. I'll enter a few and hopefully get some recognition, win a prize, be able to call myself an award-winning photographer... So I'm preparing to send off some of my very best images when the terms and conditions catch my eye. Hold on a minute, what does, "you grant a perpetual and irrevocable right to use your images worldwide and in all media without further recompense to you" actually mean?

And herein lies the problem. Why is this company, organisation or individual really holding a competition? Is it because they're passionate about visual imagery and wish to seek out and reward the best photography they can find? Or do they want to get their sticky mitts on your best images and then use them anywhere in the world, for any purpose they like, FOREVER AND FOR FREE? And you thought you were entering to win a shiny new gizmo or world recognition!  In fact in some cases you are being conned and in the worst cases completely and utterly ripped off whether you are a long in the tooth pro, a weekend warrior, a keen amateur or happy snapper.

Why is this so important?
Well I'll let the World Intellectual Property Organization explain the purpose of copyright and related rights:

"The purpose of copyright and related rights is twofold: firstly to encourage a dynamic creative culture, while returning value to creators so that they can lead a dignified economic existence, and secondly to provide widespread, affordable access to content for the public".

Please note that at no point is a distinction made as to whether you are an amateur or professional because it doesn't matter.

Rights grabbing, the term given to such terms and conditions, seeks to take advantage of a dynamic creative culture without returning value to creators.

Not all contests do this, but those that do are in effect exploiting entrants, seeking to remove legal rights from them that are automatically granted by the law of all countries to their citizens in order that creative people can make a living from their creativity. Creativity is a very valuable commodity and the majority of the business world and publicly funded bodies have an endless need for it. Unfortunately some prefer to obtain it for nothing through devices such as photo competitions with 'rights grabbing' terms and conditions; this is an unethical practice that is indefensible.

Now to answer the question, why is this so important?
Because when people who create stuff aren't being paid for what they created they can't pay themselves or their employees, their suppliers, the bills, the rent and all the other people too numerous to mention and then they stop doing what they do and the creativity stops.  Now I'm not talking about mega stars or wealthy beyond your wildest dream pop stars here, it's the person with a mortgage and a family to support, you know, the type of person who is your next door neighbour, and they are being ripped off because nobody wants to pay anymore.  

And because less money goes into the creative world, fewer people get trained, meaning fewer jobs, meaning less money to go round, meaning if you dreamt of assisting a pro, or growing your business, you can't.  Not because there isn't a need for the service, there's a massive need, but very clever people with a very different agenda don't want to pay for what they need and they are doing it by pulling the wool over your eyes and that's the big problem.

What are these rights grab organisations doing with all these images and how are they getting value from them?  

Here are just a few options:

It could be as simple as their lawyers were just being fastidious and they have no intention of using your images for anything other than promoting their competition and drawing attention to themselves. If this is the case the terms of the competition should reflect the intent. In this situation a change in the terms alters nothing as far as the organisers are concerned and in fact can increase the number of entries and the exposure that the competition and the sponsors get.  

Use your images for a worldwide marketing campaign with no recognition or recompense and saving themselves thousands of pounds/dollars in the process and nothing going to the people who created the stuff.

You assign them your copyright (oh yes did I not mention that earlier, some really do take your copyright just by entering) and then do whatever they want with the image you took including reselling your images as stock and there is no law against it.  And if you now continue to display that image or use it personally or commercially, you are now breaking the law.

Oh and by the way you won't be able to resell your award winning or even your award entered photograph to anyone else, ever!

So what can be done about the situation?
Well there are several things, firstly don't enter competitions with bad T&Cs and furthermore, maybe email them the reason why you won't be entering.  Secondly, tell as many people as you can about this, preferably people you know. People you don't know will stare at you funny. Write about it in your blog and in forums.

What else can be done?
There's one global organisation fighting this trend of poor terms and conditions for competitions and that's Pro Imaging - the international web-based group of independent professional photographers. I'm a member, and I'm keen to promote them to fellow creatives as they campaign for the rights of photographers and also explain in simple terms the issues around copyright and licensing.

Check out their website http://www.pro-imaging.org

They have a list of good and bad competitions and loads of info on the Bill Of Rights, which is a framework of fair terms for both photographers and competition organisers.

Additionally they are now summoning the support of suppliers of photographic equipment to competitions to sign up to the Bill Of Rights and therefore not supply competitions with prizes that don't comply.  So if you see a sponsor supplying a kit to a rights grab competition, please tell them that you're not impressed, point them in our direction and hopefully and gradually we can change this abominable situation for all photographers and creatives, whether pro or amateur.

If you're a full time pro please sign up to Pro Imaging directly and give us a hand, there are thousands of competitions worldwide and only a few of us.

Also whether you are pro or amateur, please sign up to our fan page on facebook and show your support.  It can be found here:  

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Pro-Imaging-Competition-Campaign/202732473108?ref=mf

And watch your back if you're entering any competitions!

Paul Painter is a commercial photographer specialising in Architecture, Interiors and Lifestyle work.  His studio is based in Birmingham UK and he travels throughout Europe on commission.  Paul is one of a small group of competition administrators for Pro Imaging who manage the campaign for fairer terms and conditions for all photographic competitions.

New York-based freelancer and PhotoShelter user, Robert Caplin, likes to experiment. Earlier this year, he picked up a Canon 5D Mark II and started to play with the video options. But instead of recording something banal like taxis outside his window, he decided to make a music video of his sister.

That experience got him hooked on the moving pictures. He helped create a short film entitled Betrayed, and then started playing around with time-lapse photography with a static mount as well as a moving mount that is typically used with telescopes to track the movement of stars.

A few weeks ago, he stopped by our offices to show us some of his tests, which were just a pre-cursor of his time lapse photography of the 2009 World Series.

World Series Time-Lapse by Robert Caplin from Robert Caplin on Vimeo.

Not only is it well-composed and interesting to watch, but it seems like great stock footage material...

And yes, he also shot some stills of the game.

Congratulations to our November Featured Photographers! You'll enjoy this month's broad selection of outstanding creative and editorial images by PhotoShelter photographers.  Our diverse spotlight for November includes bodybuilders, travel lifestyle, nature and live music.      
We encourage you to check out our featured photographers' work in the "Images" tab of the PhotoShelter homepage slideshow, as well as their PhotoShelter websites in our product tour.

Highlights include:

• Neil Bookman's unique animal and still life photography.
• Paul Gallaher's editorial photography from Temecula, California  - a great example of PhotoShelter integration with his Graph Paper Press Wordpress theme.
• Nigel Hillier's dramatic UK landscape photography. 
• Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert's is a Tokyo editorial photographer.

Check out the full selection of November featured images here:

Last week, we introduced a Facebook export feature that allows PhotoShelter users to either send their images to a Facebook album, or post a link on their wall. We received a great reception, but photographers immediately starting asking us for the ability to post to their "Pages."

In case you're unfamiliar with the lingo, Facebook users can set up "Pages" which are separate from their personal profiles. This can be pretty handy for their businesses, hobbies, etc. For example, I know Doug Murdoch, but I'm a fan of his company "Think Tank Photo" which has a page on Facebook.

Here's what the new interface looks like with the "Post on Fan Page" button: