I remember when I first got into the Internet Industry in 1995 as a founding employee of HotJobs.com. Back in the day, there were very few online services and e-commerce sites, and revenue models didn't really exist for conducting business on the web.

So companies ended up giving stuff away for free. The prime example is probably news content. I visit Cnn.com and the NYTimes websites daily. Both services have had aborted attempts to feature paid content. CNN tried it with video, and the Times tried it with archived articles. Both models have been refined in the past year, notably with CNN interspersing advertisements into the video content. The Times is also a large ad-revenue machine with a "circulation" that far exceeds its print edition.

When new online services emerge, they are often free. MySpace and the Facebook, two of the most popular social networking sites are completely free and rely solely on advertising content to pay for their operating costs. Because of the ubiquity of these specific services, people begin to believe that they are entitled to free services. People question why they should pay for anything.

But very few sites have large enough audiences to exist solely on advertising revenue alone. And I can't think of a site that offers a truly professional level service that is free. Nor should they be. A professional application shouldn't be subject to fluctuations in the advertising market because what professionals want most is consistency.

You don't want your ability to store photos to be arbitrarily cut off because you exceeded a file size limit or bandwidth constraint of a free account. Therefore, you spend money to ensure that the availability is high. It is the same reason as photographers, we spend $3500 on a digital camera with a magnesium body and weather seals. We can't have the damn thing fail when we need it the most. We also seek features that are specific to our niche. Professionals don't use consumer point and shoots because they have more specific needs. They pay more for a camera because they understand the cost to develop a camera that shoots 8 fps with a 48 frame buffer is great than a point and shoot with a 0.5s shutter lag.

I bring this up for the simple reason that professional photographers understand the cost of doing business, while amateur photographers do not. Amateurs are content to take their disposable income, shoot pics, and offer them for pennies. They are unconcerned with the cost of doing business because photography is not their business. Professional photographers, on the other hand, won't question paying $6-$500/month for PhotoShelter because they understand the value of the service vis a vis other "free" services out there.

If your "business" is getting as many friends linked to your homepage to leave glowing comments about the latest snapshot you took of your cat, then PhotoShelter isn't for you. But if archiving, distribution and sales of photography is truly your business, then welcome. You're exactly who we're looking for.

We love the automation of printing through EZPrints. High-quality prints that are printed then mailed without any manual intervention. It's a perfect way to sell prints through PhotoShelter unattended.

However, people said, "Hey Allen, I want to sell an autographed print on duratrans mounted on a lightbox measuring 4' x 8'. How can I do that?" We pondered the question for many days and nights because we recognize that many photographers want more control over the output of their prints, and want to offer special options that require manual intervention at a higher cost.

Self-Fulfillment is not only a new age philosophy, it is our new module for handling non-automated printing. You can set up shipping zones (e.g. North America), shipping methods (e.g. USPS, FedEx, etc), taxation (e.g. VAT in europe, or a local tax in the US), and a product (e.g. an 8x10 mounted on a piece of drift wood). Price the new product in your Print Profile, and when the orders start flying in, they will appear in your "Pending Sales" list under the new "Image Sales" tab. Once you print and ship the product yourself, enter in the optional package tracking information, and we'll send another e-mail to your customer. It's really cool stuff!

And we also have beefed up some existing functionality by offering sFTP and scp in our FTP export module, as well, as the ability to resend gallery invitations with a simple click.

And with that, enjoy your Memorial Day and remember the troops!

Our next door neighbors, Caboodle Toys is nearing production of their first toy line, and the other night, I helped them to reshoot images for their box covers and website. I cannot reveal what the product(s) is, for it is a heavily guarded secret, but it gave me a newfound appreciation for product photographers.

We did a simple setup: seamless, single softbox, nikon 105mm f/2.8 macro, and lots of little toys. I initially had the camera mounted on a tripod, but found that because we were rapidly repositioning the toys, it was easier to move in and out without the tripod. The toys were mounted on a standard height table, and i was hunched over like a carilloner at Notre Dame, and after 5 hours of shooting, I was in pretty severe pain. Clearly, having the appropriate tools (like an adjustable height table) would make this job easier.

I did tether the camera to a laptop so that we could see the images on a larger screen as they were produced. This helped enormously because what I thought I was seeing through the viewfinder was not what as being recorded. The combination of being hunched and shooting at 1:1 with the macro really threw me off. Even at f/32 the depth of field was still relatively shallow.

And of course, the detail of the lens is incredible, so every little piece of dust or nick shows up. I can understand the importance of stylists even more when working at this scale.

So my chapeau goes off to the product photographers of the world who day in and out can rock inanimate objects.

We were very pleased to play to a full-house at the Apple Store Soho the other week with our incredible photographers from Contact Press Images. David Burnett and Kristen Ashburn showed work from their respective catalogs, and even showed images that have never been published before.

We have a number of upcoming dates around the country for Apple Store presentations. Make sure to check us out!

Apple Store Los Angeles
May 29th
Featuring Darrell Miho and Mark Beck

Apple Store Chicago
July 10th

Apple Store San Francisco
July 25th

It's easy to be tempted by the latest and greatest equipment. More megapixels, more frames per second, more user definable modes. A bigger, faster piece of glass. A flash card that writes a billion bits of code every second.

Then there's this:
http://www.linatree.com/default.html?lang=en-us&target=d70.html

Download the PDF, print and build your own pinhole camera. I have not tried this because I don't own any opaque paper, but it sure seems neat, and even cheaper than a Holga.

Just a head's up that Award Winning photographers David Burnett and Kristen Ashburn of Contact Press Images will be speaking at the Apple Store in Soho with PhotoShelter. This is our first ever Apple Store event!

Monday, May 15, 2006
6:30pm
Apple Store Soho
103 Prince Street
New York, NY 10012

David and Kristen will be showcasing a number of iconic images that they have created along with brief Q&As, and then yours truly will be showing off PhotoShelter and explaining how and why Contact Press Images chose our Multi-User product for their organization.

Please come out for this fabulous event!

We've had a lot of interest and questions about the PhotoShelter Seamless Customization option, so I decided to write one of potentially many entries on what it is and how to use it.

The main issue that the Customization tries to solve is how to give a website the features and functionality of PhotoShelter without sacrificing site design and branding. Other online services offer "customization," but all of those amount to changing font colors and in some cases inserting a logo into the corner of the page.

The PhotoShelter Seamless Customization option was designed to allow you to retain your current page design/geometry and add image search, self-publish and e-commerce by setting up a few basic templates using HTML and CSS.

Here is a simple example:
http://www.fistick.com/

Jock Fistick is a Belgium-based photojournalist. He hadn't updated his website in many years, and when he found that we had the customization option he jumped on it. He opted to create a very simple design to allow the photos to speak for themselves.

When you go to his homepage, it is being served by his hosting provider, s2f.com. When you click on his "portfolio," those images are being served from his PhotoShelter account. He can add/subtract images and galleries through the easy-to-use web interface. There's never been an easier way to self-publish.

You'll also notice that clicking on the "portfolio" still keeps you in the fistick.com domain. This is because he mapped the subdomain "archive.fistick.com" to the PhotoShelter site.

His search and e-commerce pages (whether print or electronic download) are available with the customization option, which costs $20/month. We also have consulting options available if you do not want to set up the templates yourself.

The seamless customization uses a combination of HTML and CSS plus a few PhotoShelter code "widgets" to generate the pages you see.

For example, if you want to insert a "next page" link, you'd use the "page_next" widget like this:

[[page_next]]

Of course, you can style and position it however you want. Let's put it in a table with an image below it.

<table>
<tr>
<td>[[page_next]]</>
</tr><tr>
<td>[[image]]</>
</tr>
</table>

Pretty easy, right? We even have customizations with sites that are built in Flash by companies like NeonSky and LiveBooks. You can find a list of more customization examples in our tour.