For twenty-one years, some of the world's top photojournalists have passed through the walls of a modest barn in upstate New York. The Eddie Adams Workshop is almost a rite of passage for students and young professionals, and it continues today under the auspices of Eddie's widow, Alyssa.

Ready to make us all look good?  Want a little more exposure through PhotoShelter?  Ever wonder how the slideshow images get selected for the PhotoShelter homepage? Now you can be chosen as one of 20 PhotoShelter Featured Photographers every month, and your work will appear on our homepage and throughout our website.  

The goods:

• If you are selected, one outstanding photo from your live galleries will be included in the "Images" tab on our new homepage slideshow. 
  
• A screenshot of your PhotoShelter website/gallery, brief info about you, and a link to your website will be included on the "Examples" tab in our new product tour.
• You and your image will be included in a blog post announcing the month's 20 Featured Photographers.

This new exposure opportunity will provide a little extra boost in marketing your photography, and will help us share more great examples of photographers succeeding with PhotoShelter - whether you're selling photos with our tools, displaying your work with our websites, or simply backing up your archive.

We're looking for striking individual imagery that represents our talented and diverse photographer base. Featured Photographers must have a PhotoShelter Basic, Standard, or Pro account to qualify.  Simple submission details

March's Featured Photographers
Congrats to our first group of Featured Photographers. They're all great examples of strong photographers of varying specialties and experience levels, each making PhotoShelter an important part of their digital photography success story. You can see their work in the below slideshow or read up on them in our new "Examples" section.

Hey folks, its Grover. Here's an opportunity TOMORROW (Feb 26th) for anyone in the NYC area who wants to meet some big time editors - if you can act fast...

Editors from National Geographic Adventure, GEO, and PDN Magazine will be judges of the SportsShooter Student Photographer of the Year -- which is tomorrow, Feb 26th, in NYC...

Of course, I'll also be there!

For the first time ever, the SportsShooter.com Student Photographer of the Year contest judging will be open to the public, thanks to Adorama - who has offered to host the event in their theater in NYC.

The date is Thursday, Feb 26th, starting at 6:00pm and ending around 9pm.

If you are interested in attending, send me an email:

grover@photoshelter.com

I will add your name to the list. The room only holds 60 people, so act fast.

I'll send detailed instructions via email to everyone who makes it onto the list.

Thursday, Feb 26th @ 6pm

Hope to see you there!

Aaron Kupferman started a company called Motorsport Lens, and is one of the many people who have made great use of the 'Personal Use' download option within PhotoShelter. He spends many of his weekends shooting images during "amateur track day" events, where normal people get to take their cars for a spin on a real racetrack .

His day job? Creating digital visual effects for feature films and commercials. Before that he worked at A&I Color in Hollywood as a Technical Supervisor and Custom Printer.

I noticed that he was selling a lot of Personal Use downloads, so I fired off an email with a bunch of questions in it. He replied with a bunch of answers, and now I get to share them with you.

We're releasing something special today. If you're selling photos online, displaying your portfolio to get more commercial or editorial assignments, or even designing websites for photographers, you'll want to have a look at this.       

Do you ever wonder, "Is my website doing its job?  Am I working hard to get people there, only to have the site itself betray me?"  Don't worry, you're not alone (being betrayed by your website is a growing problem).  When we launched our photography website templates last fall, we picked up on this very fact - photographers and designers generally build websites based on their artists' intuition, and leave sound business reasoning aside.  That's bad, of course, when you want your website to support your primary business goal - selling more of your work.              

If you were selling lemonade, whose taste buds would you want to satisfy, yours or your potential customers'?  The answer is easy.  You'd probably also ask your customers where to put your lemonade stand so it's convenient to buy from you.  What size cup do they prefer?  How much time will they wait in line before giving up?  What frustrates them about the way other guys are selling lemonade?  OK, you get the point.  You'd gather as much intelligence as possible about customer preferences to help you structure your business, both the product itself and delivery of it.

So why not apply the same rationale to designing photography websites?  That's exactly what we did.  

Brad Mangin has more than 25,000 images (and growing) in his archive. As an editorial sports photographer, he spends a lot of time actually shooting. His specialty? Baseball, where he shoots over 100 games in a season, producing a huge amount of images.

Brad has two main clients, Sports Illustrated and Major League Baseball. His shooting approach may be the same for both, but when it comes to workflow, they are very different.

Sports Illustrated is no different than any other magazine, in that deadlines are always a consideration. In the really old days, Brad would just drop rolls of film into an envelope, drop it off at the airport (seriously!) and the people at SI would develop his film, edit his take, and meet their deadlines.

Today, however, it's much different. After he shoots a game, he will return home and download his cards to his Macintosh Pro (tower) computer. (I am totally jealous of his massive 30 inch monitor.) He has his camera set to shoot raw + JPEG, and after the upload all of the images are all sitting on an external hard drive in a folder for that entire game.

Photo Mechanic is the next step, where he will make an initial edit, and add a generic batch caption to all the images.

Then he sends all of the JPEG images to Sports Illustrated directly via FTP. (They like to see everything.) The JPEG images are much smaller and are enough to get them started editing and planning for the next issue. He will send the raw files next - they are much larger and take longer, but since they already have the JPEG versions, there isn't too much of a rush.

Brad will then go back and edit the shoot, removing images that may be bad, or too similar to others. Of those 100 or so images, he will add specific information to the image, identifying the players in each images, adding them to the generic caption already in place.

Once this is complete, he uploads the raw images to PhotoShelter so they can become part of his massive online archive.

Brad has regular clients, and regular editors, that he works with all the time. He makes use of PhotoShelter's "Trusted Client" feature, where he can identify certain people who have complete access to his entire archive. They can search everything he has, and download high resolution images, any time, day or night - and even when he is busy shooting. This is a beloved feature with his editors, making Brad's archive easily accessible - which means his images are easier to access, which means his images are used more often, which means he makes more money.

His other main client, Major League Baseball, operates differently. MLB actually has a PhotoShelter Multi User account, and Brad will transfer his fully captioned and keyworded JPEG images directly into their archive using the PhotoShelter Uploader application.

MLB is able to access the images in their archive any time, even during the weekends by editors from home, if necessary.

Because Brad is so dedicated to keeping his archive current, his archive is a wealth of baseball history, just waiting for editorial buyers. Brad's main reason for using PhotoShelter was to take advantage of the bulletproof storage capabilities of the platform. But in the process, for no extra work on his part, he has a fully searchable archive just ready and waiting for stock image sales -- directly from his own website.

His website is powered by liveBooks, into which his PhotoShelter archive has been seamlessly integrated. His branding, look-and-feel, and even site navigation are all the same, and his clients never know the difference.

Jock Fistick is a freelance photographer based in Brussels, Belgium, and PhotoShelter is at the very heart of his operation. His complete archive is safely stored within his PhotoShelter account -- but he also makes use of the PhotoShelter website templates and runs his entire website through it.

Getting images to clients is also no problem because he's using his website for that, too. He is primarily an editorial photographer, always looking for the next assignment. His website is a very big part of his marketing efforts to attract new clients and new assignments, so it must be search-engine savvy.

He is also a photographer who knows that his archive has value as a stock library (specializing in the European Union), and has even sold prints all throughout his website, powered by -- you guessed it -- PhotoShelter.

So how does a one-man operation do so much? His workflow is killing three birds with one stone.

Jock's workflow begins with Photo Mechanic running on a Macbook Pro. He shoots all raw images (using his Nikon D3) and will convert them to JPG using Photoshop PS3. He uses the built-in uploader in Photo Mechanic to upload to his PhotoShelter archive.

If he's on an assignment for one of his agencies, once images are uploaded to his archive, he will make use of the PhotoShelter FTP export tool to get his images delivered to them quickly. There's really no sense in uploading to a client's FTP server from his home connection, and then duplicating that upload to make an off-site backup.

One upload to PhotoShelter and he's able to use OUR bandwidth (not his) to get his images delivered - and his archiving work is already done.

If he is on assignment for one of his corporate clients, he will create a password-protected gallery with high-resolution download access where his client can come, edit the entire take, and download the images they want -- all without bothering him whatsoever. (And he gets a complete record of all the download activity.) The useful thing about the password-protected galleries -- clients don't need to register, or have a login, or anything like that. They simply need to know a simple word - which Jock assigns to the gallery, and emails the client as part of the invitation. Simple for his client means simple for him.

Since his website is so intimately tied into his workflow, he is able to update his website easily and often. This is great for stock image and print sales - both of which are handled simultaneously.

Jock has three different revenue streams coming out of his single archive. For a freelance photographer who travels through Europe, it means he won't miss any opportunity simply because he's on the road, doing what he does best -- shooting.

Take a look at Jock's website. It's 100% PhotoShelter!

We shine our next workflow spotlight on the wedding photographer.

Jensen Larson is a company made up of two photographers, Eric Larson and Jen Sens. Located in Central Florida, they specialize in weddings and commercial and editorial assignment work.
Their PhotoShelter Personal Archive wears many hats and does a lot of the busywork for them.

They start off by uploading everything into an Apple RAID first, and once all of the raw images are stored there, they'll use Photo Mechanic to access and organize them. From there, they will run the images through Aperture and make JPG conversions, which are then uploaded to PhotoShelter using either the Web uploader, or the stand-alone PhotoShelter Uploader application.

They have also sent entire hard drives directly to our office so we could dump all of those images into their account, which eliminates a lengthy upload process.

They have two main clients, brides and editors. Both are treated similarly, in that they are given access to a password-protected gallery, which has been customized to match the look and feel of their own website.

A client will access the gallery, choose which images they want, and download the high-resolution file directly, completing the assignment process. After a period of time, the "editorial embargo" is lifted, and the images are made publicly searchable, and made available for stock sales.

Brides, on the other hand, make use of the Lightbox feature, which allows them to communicate on an image-level basis with Eric/Jen, share selects with family members, and more. Once the bride (or relative of the bride) makes a decision, they can order a print directly on the site.

They have done a really amazing job with the customization of their site. Their customers can hardly tell when they make the jump over to the PhotoShelter servers. Pretty cool!

A photographer's workflow is an art, and each handles the journey of an image from capture to delivery in his or her own way. Here at PhotoShelter we get tons of questions from photographers about workflow - whether it's what we recommend, what our system can handle, or even what we do personally.

To shed some light on different types of real-life workflows, I sat down with a number of our subscribers over the last few weeks and got the dish on what's working for them.

I present the first subject in our "Photography Workflow" series:  iPhotoLive, a division of the full-service photo agency iPhoto Inc.

I was calling it the "File Blaster Workflow" for a while, and I thought it sounded goofy, so I stopped using it. But now that I think about it, I like it again.

iPhotoLive.com needs to deliver images from entertainment events, and meeting the deadlines of their many clients is their main workflow objective. Their clients are the entertainment media -- magazines (such as People, US Weekly, OK, In Style, Stylewatch, Bauer Group, etc.), entertainment websites, entertainment TV-shows, and newspapers with entertainment sections.

In order to get their images out to their clients, they use PhotoShelter's FTP Export feature to simultaneously distribute (or "blast") these files directly into  their clients' image archives. (Warning: Do not try this from your home cable or DSL connection. :-) )

According to iPhotoLive's Alex Urosevic, their workflow starts with Photo Mechanic for editing, which includes entering IPTC data for the best images in each shoot. After this, the will open the images in Photoshop, tweak and crop them if needed and then uploaded to PhotoShelter via FTP.

Once inside the PhotoShelter Archive Browser, iPhotoLive editors will do a quality control check on the images to ensure that they look good, and contain the right IPTC data.  Once they pass this step, a PhotoShelter gallery is created and made publicly searchable, making the images available right from the PhotoShelter-powered iPhotoLive.com website.

But they don't wait for clients to come to the website. They will push all of the files from each shoot, via FTP export, directly to each of their regular clients -- and there are a LOT of them. To manage this easier, all of the FTP destinations are pre-set in PhotoShelter, so the process is much quicker.

Once the images are transferred, clients get a follow-up phone call or email to alert them that new images are waiting for them in their systems.

In addition to screening all the magazines, they will get usage reports from clients showing how each image was used, and from this they create monthly invoices using a program they had custom made.

See what I mean? "File Blaster" is the right name for this, don't you think?

Go see all the images on the iPhotoLive website.

Of all the myriad forms of photography, covering Fashion Week has to be one of the least interesting to me. Yeah, I saw The Devil Wears Prada. I understand that what happens on the catwalk affects the socks I purchase at Banana Republic (and what fine socks they are on sale at $3.99/pair). But the thought of shooting 50 models walking on the catwalk wearing a dress that looks like a garbage bag and costs $5,000 makes me a little nauseous.

As in past Fashion Weeks, the New York Times hired Eric Ray Davidson to provide some coverage in a daily blog. And when I saw this photo of Sarah Jessica Parker, I raised my nose in disdain because what is this? A cellphone pic? Can we try a little harder? Or perhaps can we try not to try so hard to be cool with the hipster crappy quality image?

The life of a celebrity photographer has to be pretty boring, dontcha think? Same old person-of-the-moment struttin' down the red carpet, and you amongst a swarm of other photographers trying to capture something vaguely different from the guy two inches away from you. Where is the artistic fulfillment.

We first met Mat Szwajkos as a PhotoShelter Collection contributor. He's regular shooter on the celebrity red carpet scene, and rather than "phone it in" every day, he decided to do something a little different.  With his access to  celebrity-laden events for the past few years, he's been creating  a series of close-up portraits. Vaguely reminds me of Sarah Stolfa's images from the New York Times Magazine photo contest a few years ago.

In November 2008, photojournalist-extraodinaire (and PhotoShelter user) David Burnett was refused entry to a White House cabinet meeting for wearing jeans. How could such an esteemed photojournalist take such a lax attitude towards decorum? Maybe because in 1976, he hung out with Bob Marley on the Exodus tour and learned not to worry because everything is gonna be alright.

We're happy to report that David's images of the godfather of reggae are now available in a cool new tome entitled "Soul Rebel."

Check out this sweet slit camera image. I feel something inside when I view it. Is it love?

GET TRAINED! Looking to optimize your photography workflow? Need a easily manageable and flexible photo gallery to sell photography? Maybe you need an online digital asset management tool. Join us for our free PhotoShelter webinars to learn more about the product and how our users are maximizing their exposure, photography SEO and sales.



PhotoShelter 101: Intro to PhotoShelter
Fri, Feb 13 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm EST
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Monetizing Your Archive with PhotoShelter
Mon, Feb 16 10:00 am - 11:00 am EST
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PhotoShelter 101: Intro to PhotoShelter
Fri, Feb 20 10:00 am - 11:00 am EST
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Killer Photography Websites: How Do You Measure Up?
Wed, Feb 25 10:00am - 11:00 am EST
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Get Seen: PhotoShelter's Guide to SEO
Wed, Feb 25 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm EST
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Killer Photography Websites: How Do You Measure Up?
Tues, Mar 3 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm EST
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PhotoShelter 101: Intro to PhotoShelter
Wed, Mar 4 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm EST
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Killer Photography Websites: How Do You Measure Up?
Tues, Mar 10 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm EDT
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Monetizing Your Archive with PhotoShelter
Fri, Mar 13 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm EDT
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PhotoShelter 101: Intro to PhotoShelter
Wed, Mar 18 10:00 am - 11:00 am EDT
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There's something really kooky with art photography, and I mean that in the most loving way. Because truth be told, I couldn't come up with a lot of stuff that art photographers come up with. And I'm not talking about "piss in a jar" type art, I'm talking real visual goodness.

I bought a David Hillard triptych ("Rosemary's Dock" if you're keeping track) from the Yancey Richardson Gallery in New York a few years ago, and that put me on their mailing list for eternity. Most of the time I just toss the mail that I get from them, but today, I decided to open it up, and there was some art photography in there.

Alex Prager's The Big Valley is weird 60s retro goodness, but of course, it's all taken in the 21st century. Alex uses a Contax 640 and has a penchant for wigs. I'm cool with that. This is the type of art that makes you say "what the heck is going on in this photo?"

Take for example, this women in a buttoned up polo shirt (ok, maybe it's a dress) and bouffant hairdo. Oh yeah, she's cowering in the ocean looking at something too. Perhaps she realized that she is fully clothed on a nude beach.

A long time ago, I was a music major, and because I never pursued music professionally, I like to live vicariously through my friends who have. So when my dear friend violinist Anne Akiko Meyers asked me to shoot photos for her recently released album, Smile, I jumped at the opportunity.

In September '08, we got together on a temperate New York day with my assistant Josh Gerritsen (who is a fantastic photographer) and a make-up artist, and wandered around various locations throughout TriBeCa. I had a number of shots that I wanted to capture, but in truth, I didn't have a single idea for an album cover, figuring that I would leave that up to the graphic designer.

Armed with her Stradivarius, Anne was playing in the streets when someone yelled down "EXCUSE ME. THIS IS A RESIDENCE. CAN YOU STOP PLAYING???"

So she stopped playing, and instead, I just had her walk along the street as I followed her.

I'm not a magazine pack rat. Caroline, our product manager, keeps all of her magazines. Stacks and stacks. Reads every single word. But not me. Magazines are heavy, and once I've flipped through a few times, I throw them in the recycling bin.

But there is one issue of one magazine that I keep every year, and that is the Great Performers issue of the New York Times Magazine as we approach Oscar time. As you migth recall, I love movies.

The team of Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadi shot the portfolio for a few years, and ragged copies of these issues lie in my room waiting to be viewed over and over again. So in 2007, I was a little bummed that they switched it up by going with a slew of photographers, one of whom was Magnum Photo's Paolo Pellegrin. He shot this one of Maggie Cheung:

The New York Times reported on the Metropolitan Museum's new ad campaign which features user generated content of museum goers in areas where photography is permitted.

Here are the details:

• The image must be uploaded to flickr
• The image must have a creative commons attribution
• The winning photographer must obtain a model release
• The winner receives $250 in cash and a $60 membership

Here is a layout using Laura P. Russell's image of her parents.

PDN's David Walker did a phone interview with Shawn Rocco, a staff photographer from the North Carolina News and Observer, to discuss his cellphone photography. Cellphones  outnumber standalone cameras by a huge margin, and we've already seen numerous examples of cellphone as the tool of choice for citizen journalism. But cellphone as the camera of choice for a professional hasn't quite emerged as the paradigm of the day.

I didn't get it at first. Why use a cellphone when could use a point-and-shoot with infinitely higher quality like a Canon G10 or a Nikon P6000? But Rocco contends that it basically takes technology out of the equation.

The fact that he goes back in and photoshops the image would seem to be antithetical to his position, since he's trying to squeeze out quality that doesn't really exist. But on the other hand, we all do it. So why shouldn't a cellphone image be photoshopped?

The biggest point that his photography reinforces for me is that a camera of any type in the hands of a good photographer produces good images. He has learned to see through the cellphone and he has learned how to get around its technical limitations and quirks. And more recently on his blog, Cellular Obsucra, he's started publishing larger images, and they look fantastic.

The New York Times employs a photographer whose sole job, as far as I can tell, is to walk around the streets of Manhattan (usually Fifth Ave) and document what people are wearing. By his own admission, he's not a particularly good photographer, and when you listen to him speak, he sounds a bit excitable (the word "spazz" comes to mind frequently).

I suppose I first became aware of Bill Cunningham while riding the subway in the mid-90s while seeing photos of the sartorially right and wrong walking the streets of New York on other people's newspapers. More recently, I've been enjoyinig his audio slideshows on the NYT website.

When you think about it, Cunningham's photography is the purest of street photography. It's clearly not "fashion photography," but instead, without pretense, it is observational. He's not looking for despair. He's not looking for stories that do not exist. By contrast, he is the most practical of observers who seems hemlines rise and fall, colors come and go.

The reason I bring all of this up, is that a week or two ago, we had a terrible snow in New York that turned to slush rather quickly. As I navigated my way to the subway, and from subway to office, I confronted a number of puddles of unspecified depth, and I wondered how I was supposed to figure out whether to step into, or go around.

One facebook friend suggested dipping my elbow in first, while another thought it was a great job for an intern. (And these are my "friends).

Bill Cunningham had a great time documenting the tourists and businessmen trying to navigate the obstacle course of ice.

Ever since the Canon 5D Mark II came out, the world has been abuzz with photographers-turned-videographers. There are a lot of video devices on the market, but the Mark II has a few things going for it:

• Vincent Laforet's "Reverie" was probably the most successful, individually-produced piece for a video ever. (If you haven't been keeping up with Vince, he's turned into a filmmaker, and has been blogging about it)
  
• The ability to use 35mm lenses give low light and restricted depth-of-field capabilities that are available to still photographers with their existing equipment
• The release coincides with the growing popularity of websites and internet-based video distribution systems (e.g. everything from vimeo/youtube/hulu to netflix on-demand to hardware devices like Boxee)

PhotoShelter user and New York Times freelancer Robert Caplin decided to produce a video of his 15 year old musican sister, Etana Caplin. It was his first foray into video, and he has a pretty thoughtful write-up of how his initial concept required re-shooting to get to the final product on SportsShooter.


A music video at 15?? When I was 15, they hadn't even invented guitars yet. We played on flutes formed from bone, and we liked it.

I'm fairly certain the notion of a video portrait isn't a new concept, but Clayton Cubitt has resurrected the idea with his 5D in what he's calling the "long portrait."



It reminds me a bit of NFL games when they show you the offensive line and instead of using a still photo, they use a 10 sec video roll. I'm incapable of holding an expression for more than 1 second before my face starts to twitch, so I suppose that's why Cubitt has his subjects giving the old blank expression.