Friday Happy Hour: Weathering The Storm & More

Friday Happy Hour: Weathering The Storm & More

As both New Yorkers and PhotoShelter team members, we’ve been very touched by all the well-wishers and kindness from our members and the photography community as a whole in the wake of Hurricane (Superstorm?) Sandy. So we bring a few storm related posts, as well as some other news to remind us that things will return to normal eventually.

Photographers volunteer to take pictures for those who lost family photos

Photographer Meg Bitton has set up a website where photographers can volunteer their services to families who lost their photos due to Hurrican Sandy. If you’re in the New York, New Jersey, or surrounding areas, sign up at SoulsRebuilt.com. You’ll be matched with a family who you can help rebuild a new set of memories.

If you’re not in the affected areas, please help spread the word – write a blog post, post to social media, or whatever else to help spread the word about this brilliant cause. (via PhotoBizCoach)

Why TIME magazine used Instagram to document Sandy

TIME magazine’s decision to document the hurricane via Instagram this week was based on speed and reliability, photography director Kira Pollack told FolioMag. The magazine commissioned five professional photographers, Michael Christopher BrownBenjamin LowyEd KashiAndrew Quilty, and Stephen Wilkes to go out in their respective communities and post on the magazine’s Instagram feed.

The resulting Lightbox of images is one of the most popular galleries the magazine has ever posted. Plus, the immediate gratification of likes and comments on Instagram. One of Ben Lowy’s images even made the cover this week.

(via PetaPixel)

Number of female photographers, wedding photographers has grown in 2012

Rangefinder writer Dave Good reported earlier this month on some interesting trends and statistics from the photography industry in 2012. At a glance, the number of female photographers has grown – the industry is now a 2/3-to-1/3 split of males to females, a pickup from last year.

Also, 52.9% of professional photographers included wedding photography as one of their services in 2012. In the wedding industry specifically, photographers are dealing with what’s being called “the album-less bride”, pointing to photographers who give the bride a full disc of all the images – and she can do with them what she pleases. On top of that, DIY weddings are becoming more of the norm and people using less experienced photographers to capture the event.

Read more trends on age, social media, and sales in the full report here.

Google search results: add your author info to PhotoShelter galleries

If you follow SEO news, then you know that AuthorRank has been in the works for some time now. In short, AuthorRank is Google’s latest algorithmic change to rank individual authors (think content creators of any sort – bloggers, journalists, and yes, photographers) high in search results. The purpose is to further individualize our searches on Google – and help promote Google+.

So now PhotoShelter member and certified consultant David Brabyn has posted on how fellow members can add Google Author information to their PhotoShelter galleries. It’s just a few simple steps, so especially if you already have a Google+ then head over to David’s post and learn how add your Author info.

Pete Muller joins Prime Collective

Nairobi, Kenya-based photographer Pete Muller is the latest to join Prime Collective. Pete grew up around photojournalism – his mother was a news photographer and she often enlisted him as her “assistant”. He spent three years covering South Sudan as it moved into independence, as well as the fight against mass rape in Eastern Congo.

Photo by Pete Muller

“Sexuality, gender and relationship issues have long been of interest to me and I intend to more actively explore these issues in Kenya and elsewhere,” says Pete in an interview on Prime’s blog. Check it out to learn more about the latest member.

Using Photoshop to increase a campaign rally’s size

After former Photoshop project manager Kevin Connor’s talk on whether trust in photography is declining, we can’t get enough of photo manipulation in the news. Buzzfeed posted an interesting one on about a Mitt Romney rally that they found on his Instagram account.

The photo shows a massive venue and crowd, but someone detected a few areas that had likely been manipulated. What do you think?

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  1. Buddy Grant at 11:03 am

    the “photoshopped” pic of the mitt romney rally was not actually photoshopped, but rather a poorly done photomerge. someone wanted to take a picture of the size but did not have the ability to back up far enough to get the whole thing, so instead they took six to eight pictures and then later, at home, tried to combine the pictures together to make one big picture, probably using photoshop elements. their photo merge tool is not the best and basically takes its best guess at where the two pictures overlap and fuzzes them together in a diagonal line. this also explains why some spots look similar but aren’t quite exact matches (people moving about). if it had been done well, the picture would have only been 400 pixels wide.

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