If you think you're seeing things, you're not. We had a number of requests from some of our new users to provide a website customization theme that they were more familiar with. Fortunately, our website customization option is very flexible so it's possible to emulate any number of looks. This particular theme is called "Caboose" and it has a number of interesting possibilities, and Jason Rothe took the liberty of inserting his own logo, and chose our embeddable slideshow rather than using just a static image. Here's another variant from Kulay Photography:
Using one of our website themes is simple and you can have a fully-enabled e-commerce website in a matter of minutes. Some of our users are pretty technically-inclined and instead of choosing a website theme, they've gone in with their knowledge of HTML & CSS and made their site their own. Sander van der Borch from The Hague did just that.
Commercial, Weddings, News and Sports. All are familiar territory for Craig Mitchelldyer, a Portland, Oregon-based freelance photographer.
Craig started as a staff photographer at Community Newspapers, a chain of weekly newspapers serving the metro Portland area. Working at a small newspaper is the photography world equivalent of being a one-man-band, and Craig's experience was no different. He'll shoot just about anything.
His images have appeared in many places, including the New York Times, USA Today, Newsweek, Golf World, Sports Illustrated, and his own blog.
I've seen Craig's work through the years, and not only is he well-rounded, but a solid and consistent shooter. The boy works hard, and his business is doing well, so I thought I'd take a turn at sticking my nose into his business.
When Ed Mulholland saw Allen running around PhotoPlus Expo, instantly beaming images from his Nikon D3 to the web, wirelessly in 15 seconds, he saw the potential immediately.
"I totally want to use that at the next fight. What do I need to do," he said, as if what Allen was using involved some kind of special voodoo magic.
Mulholland is a freelance photographer specializing in professional sports, and is co-founder of FightWireImages.com, a wire service and high-resolution image library specifically designed to serve the photographic needs of the Boxing & Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) world.
His work is amazing, and with each and every update of his SportsShooter.com member page, I'm there looking at every frame. Shooting these fights is definitely not easy, yet he is able to pull quality images out of every fight.
Mulholland's business depends on getting his images out of the camera, and up on the Internet as fast as possible. He's been using PhotoShelter for that past few years to speed his images to market, and has seamlessly integrated all of PhotoShelter's functionality into his website.
The functionality that Allen was using at the Expo was not complete rocket science. It's actually just a really efficient delivery option attached to incoming FTP uploads. We were able to add an optional additional layer of functionality that allows a photographer to route the images to a specified gallery as they are being uploaded.
In a previous post, I encouraged you to take one of Vincent Laforet's photos. PhotoShelter has a cool tool whereby you can embed a photo into a blog, MySpace page, or webpage -- then other people can come along and put it in their pages.
Instead of spending all your time marketing your work, why not let your fans do it for you?
Vince is a progressive guy, and he also is a strong supporter of photographer education. So he took the concept and ran with it. So a few days ago, he announced the creation of a student scholarship that will be funded, in part, by print sales from his site. And one way that he's spreading the word is to put a widget of his work out there:
So as I encouraged you before, I'm doing it again. Take this gallery and spread it around. And buy a print not only because they are fantastic photos, but because it's going to help out a student in a very positive way.
One of the cool things about having so many photographers using PhotoShelter is that at any given time, you can expect many of them to be covering the same event. Of course, on November 4th, it was the elections. But more than just plain 'ole political coverage, the PhotoShelter family shoots in styles as diverse as our members.
Andrew Kaufman shot election results in Miami.
Keith Bedford shot the Obama acceptance speech in Grant Park.
Ralf-Finn Hestoft was also in Grant Park and got a very cool picture of the bullet-proof glass being installed.
Jeremy Hogan covered the festivities in Bloomington, IN.
Darren Hauck got some great crowd reaction in Chicago.
David Brabyn was in New York's Times Square as people watched on the large jumbotron.
We've had such a fantastic response from our online training, that we've decided to do another one this Friday, Nov 7 at 2pm EST. Our Manager of Client Services, Rachel, will be manning the webinar software once again to guide you through an introductory session on how to use the PhotoShelter Personal Archive. This training is FREE so take advantage of it.
The other exciting bit of information is that the webinar people actually have local numbers in a bunch of different countries, so you can avoid (some) of those long-distance charges. The countries include: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States.
November 4, 2008 is hugely important. You see, with all the calamity that is going on in our country and in our world, the next President of the United States of America will undoubtedly have an enormously profound impact on all of our futures.
I truly believe that this will be the single most important and significant election in my lifetime.
Of course, who I vote for may not be who you vote for, but that doesn't really matter as much as casting your vote in the first place. So I'm urging you to make your way to the polls and exercise the right that so many people have fought for and died for. The right to vote for who will lead this country for the next four years.
Last week was one of the worst weeks the photography industry has seen in a while. But this week is a time for recalibration, hope, and getting back on track with business. I promise a follow-up post with some of the background information regarding the DRR closure once all the dust truly settles...
First, a big welcome to all our new members. We wish that we could have met under different circumstances, but that doesn't dull our excitement to have you on board. We've already started to see new websites quickly emerge like Ed Terakopian's. Not only did he get his website up, but he also set up his e-commerce to begin selling prints immediately.
Anthony Suau has to go shoot the Presidential Elections this week, so he got his website up this weekend, and here's a gallery from the Democratic National Convention that he put on his homepage. Go ahead, put it on your blog by clicking the "up arrow" in the lower right. It's free marketing for him.
Speaking of which, let's talk marketing...
MARKETING When YouTube was created a few years ago, there were already several dozen video sharing mechanisms. But YouTube did two very smart things. First, they allowed users to upload their videos, which were processed into Flash video within minutes, not days, as was the case on Google Video. Secondly, they allowed you to take a video from their site and embed it anywhere you wanted to.
This was a brilliant move because watching a video no longer made you go to a destination site. When users embedded a video in a blog or on a webpage, the reach of YouTube was extended. YouTube has a huge reach, but still not as large as "everywhere."
So why do you expect people to go to your website to see your photos? You might already have an audience for your photos, but to generate new eyeballs, why are you trying to hard to bring people to your website? Why not allow others to do the work for you?
Your website is a "destination" but it's very likely that only a few people know about it.
Above is a Vince Laforet image that he shot atop the Chrysler building. Take it. Click the "up arrow" in the bottom right, and take the image. Put it any where you want. Spread it as much as you can.
Listen to me again. TAKE THE IMAGE.
Taking the image doesn't confer a copyright. It doesn't even give you a commercial license. But that's ok. People are going to steal the image anyway. And Vince would rather have every instance of this image click back to his website, than having someone take a screen grab, and never have a chance to turn eyeballs into money.
The "BUY" indicates that Vince has priced this image for sale. In this case, he applied a Prints pricing profile, but he could have easily applied a pricing profile to sell the image as rights-managed stock, electronic downloads, or even stick it on a coffee mug.
The whole notion of orphan works is irrelevant when every instance of your images points back to your website. PhotoShelter allows you to create embeddable images and galleries that always point back to your website.
"As part of the process of terminating the business operations of Digital Railroad, Diablo Management Group has informed PhotoShelter of their intent to shut down the DRR site as early as 11:59PM, PST, on Friday October 31. After this point, it is very likely that all the images located on the Digital Railroad servers could be permanently inaccessible. Given the strong possibility of this event, PhotoShelter, on its own initiative, is strongly suggesting that customers migrate their files from Digital Railroad immediately. Digital Railroad, at the present time, has no plans or resources to accomplish this task."
We have been trying to work along side former DRR employees to bring about a graceful closure to the impending liquidation. I've spoken to their liquidation firm and their bank, and we've tried to have a little more clarity around the situation. We've been trading e-mails and phone calls with everyone and their mother. We've fielded phone calls from photographers literally in tears -- from students to some of the biggest names in the industry. The whole thing is sickening.
There will obviously be time to deconstruct everything, but right now, we only have one concern: to notify as many affected photographers as possible. We anecdotally know that some portion of DRR users are traveling and haven't even heard that the company is liquidating and that their files might be gone forever. We do not have a full list of DRR users, and as of this posting, we've been unable to negotiate access to the user list.
PLEASE HELP US NOTIFY THEM TO REMOVE THEIR FILES IMMEDIATELY.
It doesn't matter where they move them. They just need to move them. Blog, e-mail, phone and shout to them. If you want to help the industry, then help us spread the word to our colleagues.
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