Call us vain, but we subscribe to Google Alerts for our name "PhotoShelter" because we like to know what people are saying about our service. We were very surprised to get an alert entitled "33 Exceptional Logo Rebranding in 2008 For Your Inspiration" from Smashing Apps. Along side such brands as HP, Walmart, Dolby and Cisco was our little PhotoShelter mark so deftly created by Cinco Design out of Portland.We always knew that Kirk James and the gang at Cinco did a killer job rebranding PhotoShelter, but it was really cool to get some external props for the effort. Cinco has maintained design excellence for years with their work with Nike, Microsoft, and hundred other marquee brands. We're proud to be a part of the family.

On October 15, 2008, John Harrington broke the news that Digital Railroad was likely being liquidated. We were shocked. Since that announcement, there has been a lot of speculation about what happened and what will happen to the images located on their servers. Because we had some dealings in the matter, I thought it might be elucidating to document what happened from my understanding.

I'm not going to address what happened prior to Digital Railroad's liquidation announcement because I simply do not have any first hand information on that situation. What I'm presenting  is my understanding of what has occurred in the past few weeks because so many photographers have been left in the dark about the rapid sequence of events that have transpired. Portions of this document might be factually incorrect - I don't vouch for the complete veracity, I'm just trying to shed some light on the situation, so that photographers can gain some understanding of the situation.

Diablo Management Group was hired by the Board of Directors of Digital Railroad to liquidate the company when they realized that they were basically out of operating cash. The reasons behind this lack of cash are irrelevant to the events that followed, but suffice it to say, that the declining economy that started to rear its head in mid-September contributed to the outcome. Without cash to pay for people and resources, it's very hard to do business. Diablo's job was to try to find a buyer in a very short period of time, or liquidate the whole thing. The timeframe was necessarily short because there was no money left. The board paid Diablo a fixed fee for a fixed duration, and if a deal couldn't be consummated, they would shut down the company.

When Diablo was installed, the Board resigned, and Diablo assumed full control of the company. The Board was composed of DRR senior management and investors in the company. Once the company was going into liquidation, there was no reason to have a board, and it was a legal liability for those people to be involved. This is standard procedure.

Sometime in the past, DRR also took out a large loan from a bank called Western Tech (WTI), which Harrington reported to be about $1m. Why? Before the financial meltdown of the entire global economy, credit was relatively "cheap" - i.e. you could get a bank loan at a low interest rate. If you intend on being a successful company (like all companies do), then you assume you can pay this back. This is a "cheaper" way to finance the company than trading equity in your company to external investors.  But in taking this loan, the company agreed that the Bank would be repaid first in the case the company was sold, or went bust.

When the shit hit the fan, the DRR Board called in the liquidators. The bank was owed $1m, and they had "pref" (preference) to any proceeds from the sale. So any party that wanted to buy DRR, in whole or in part, needed the permission of the bank. In the meantime, Diablo transferred all the physical assets of the company (e.g. offices, computers, etc) to WTI to begin the liquidation proceedings.

Word got out that DRR was up for sale, and people started inspecting the assets of the company. Buyers wanted to know how much money the company makes, how much they owe others (e.g. telephone, server hosting, payroll, etc), liens against the company, how much the company is owed (i.e. Accounts Receivable), etc.

Simultaneously, Diablo knew that the company is out of cash, so they couldn't pay the employees. You can't have people work without paying them (it's a legal liability), so they let everyone go. Potential acquirers were asking questions, but there was no one at the company who had intimate knowledge of the business. Diablo tried to assemble answers, but they didn't really know the entire situation.

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.



Antonio Dickey was in Grant Park too!



Did you shoot something? Let us know!

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.

If you're interested, email us for the registration info: training@photoshelter.com

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.

Hope to see you online!

This will be a decidedly non-photographic entry.

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.