Eric Hegwer says he is "100% wedding photographer."

He studied Biochemistry, and became an actual real scientist. His love of photography led to shooting weddings for a few friends, and he developed a passion for it. After some time assisting other established wedding photographers, Eric went out on his own.

He's so into it that he applied some of his technical programming skills to create a social networking website for wedding photographers, called the "Social Wedding Network." (Link at the bottom of this story.)

Eric likes to try new things and push his business into new territory. One such recent adjustment to his product line was to make a shift away from selling prints, and more toward the "iTunes Model" of selling images on a per-download basis.

His business has been doing quite well, so I asked if he would be willing to answer my standard nosy questions about his business model, workflow, and the current trends going on in the wedding photo business.

Eric is a very nice guy, and happily agreed. Thanks, Eric.

Have you ever attended a party where there are a handful of photographers mixed in with "normal" (as in non-photo) people, only to see the photographers group into a cluster, talking endlessly about topics only they could understand, and ignoring all the other non-photographers in the process? I see this a lot, and what's interesting to me is how they'll keep on chatting about the same things, over and over, until the beer runs out.

They're usually talking about "the business." Workflow, marketing, philosophy, the state of the industry - all popular topics. The problem with these meetings is that nobody ever writes all that good stuff down. (Which is probably a good thing. It would look weird.)

I thought I would poke my head into the PhotoShelter blog every once in a while, just to see if I could replicate that "party cluster," online and without the beer. This post is the first in a series of interviews and feature stories where I ask other photographers to talk about their workflow, sales and marketing strategies, philosophy and outlook about the industry, and what works and doesn't work from a business perspective.

Jason O. Watson is a Charlottesville, Virginia-based photographer who specializes in sports, action, assignment and travel photography.  His images have appeared in a wide variety of publications, including Sports Illustrated, ESPN The Magazine, The Perth (Australia) Sunday Times, The (Portland) Oregonian, Boston Herald, Richmond Times-Dispatch, the Charlottesville Daily Progress, and The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Jason is successful with his business, so I thought he might be willing to share some of his secrets with the rest of us.  Lucky for us, he did.

I've been a Nikon digital SLR shooter since the D1x in 2001, so I'm personally thrilled to have Nikon as a Shoot! The Day partner. If you haven't already heard, they are providing D700s on-site for our Shoot! On Location winners, and they're also providing a D300 kit for the winner of our Shoot! The Day content.



Recently, Nikon introduced their newest RAW processing/management software, Nikon Capture NX 2.0, and I had a chance to chat it up with Michael Rubin, a senior manager at Nikon.

Hey Michael, I picked up a D3 the day it came out, and love it! How closely do the hardware engineers work with the software engineers when developing something like Nikon Capture NX 2.0?

As of recently, more closely than ever. Our firmware and software teams are basically united at this point. However there has always been a direct relationship of software and hardware. For me the most promising thing is seeing Active D-Lighting in our cameras; this idea came from our Capture 4 software (the predecessor to Capture NX, although the cameras and software use different libraries). The key people in software all came from a very strong hardware background.


What is Active-D Lighting?

I feel like there's been a much greater emphasis on producing higher quality software than there had been in the past. I assume the transition to digital was as rocky for a company like Nikon as it was for every photographer.

I think it's hard to quantify the ease or difficulty of the transition to digital since it's been an ongoing process since the early 1980's, at least for Nikon.

Just for a quick history lesson:  Nikon developed the NT-1000 transmitter in 1983 for use at the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles. This marked Nikon's formal entry into electronic imaging. This transmitter allowed images to be sent to the wire services from film.

Later Nikon developed the QV-1000 Video Still Camera. The original LS-3500 and LS-3510 film scanners marked Nikon's first heavy-duty imaging software as the 1980's drew to a close. The 1990's brought the E2~E3 Digital SLR models and the end of the decade saw the dominance of the COOLPIX compact digital cameras and the seminal release of the D1 Digital SLR.

In all of that time there was software and software development. Much of the team from the days of the E2 and film scanners are still involved in some form or another.

The biggest challenge we have always faced is making sure the final image produced by software is as color-accurate and pixel accurate as it was captured in the camera-and with the same or better image quality. We then had to balance that requirement with the photographer's requirements and needs. We developed one of the earliest RAW processing programs, Nikon Capture (version 1) and it led to a series of RAW processors that later evolved, with the release of Nikon Capture 4, into an image editing program. At this point users wanted to have selective control of their images, thus Capture NX was born.

What are the main advantages of using a product like Capture NX over products like Photoshop or Lightroom?



I think it's a misunderstanding of where Capture NX 2 and Capture NX fit in the workflow. It's not a black-and-white (no pun intended) advantage or disadvantage of one program over the other. I'm by no means a "Photoshop Expert" but I've been using the software since version 2. Photoshop does remarkable things and is an evolving piece of software as it stands now. Lightroom does some incredible image management and presentation.

We see Capture NX 2 as a very effective add-on to Lightroom or Photoshop. We even try to integrate with Adobe Bridge better with Capture NX 2.

What Capture NX does so well, and even more so, Capture NX 2 lets you edit your photographs using the best tools you have: your eyes. You can basically look at a sky and decide it needs enhancement and with just a few mouse clicks it's improved. Need to add sharpening just to the eyes? A "plus" selection control point allows you to add an Unsharp Mask or High Pass filter right to the eyes without adding sharpness to any other part of the image. Plus the color accuracy and soft proofing are tops in my opinion and the RAW processing of the NEF file is superior to all other programs.

Thank you so much for automatically exploding the "Edit List" in version 2.0. That was probably my biggest complaint with 1.0!

You're welcome. We did it just for you. I like it too to be honest.

I've heard people say that they can get better conversions from their old NEFs (e.g. from the D1x) using the newer software. How does this work?

Simple really: we constantly are learning new ways to process photographs and also the computing power is so far advanced from say the days of a D1x, that we can do much more in the computer than ever before. The chance to reprocess an image is where a RAW file comes in so handy.

Photography, like any industry, is filled with those who talk and those who do. There are those who talk about the decline of the industry and point the fingers at others, and then you have guys like Cradoc Bagshaw, who for years has been an advocate of the photographer and sought ways to educate and empower them.

It's no secret that I'm a fan of the creator of fotoQuote, the industry standard for pricing rights-managed imagery. And many of our 33,000 photographers know that fotoQuote is the engine that powers rights-managed licensing in the PhotoShelter Personal Archive and the PhotoShelter Collection. So I'm happy to announce that Cradoc has developed yet another tool that should be considered by photographers -- particularly those selling stock.

Even though photography is a visual medium, the only widespread and reliable method of finding images is through keyword searching. And yet keywording images is really difficult. I'm pretty good at getting the first 5 keywords, but after that it's like pulling teeth.

Cradoc also makes a very good point: "Keywording is a language which is defined by people looking for images, not the people supplying them." So you have to think the way buyers do.

The Keyword Harvester is a stand-alone software program that Cradoc developed to make the process of keywording easier. No, it's doesn't keyword for you. But it groups keywords logically, provides an easy method to build concepts, provides similar terms and synonyms, and allows for keyword template creation. (Disclosure: Kate, our linguist, was a beta tester for the program). You can use it as a part of your image preparation workflow with nearly any other software because it uses standard IPTC meta data.

You can try the Keyword Harvester with a 30-day money back guarantee, and he's got an introductory discount of $50 until July 14, 2008. But don't listen to me. Listen to Cradoc and watch him demonstrate the Keyword Harvester on his demo video.

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!

David Honl is a photojournalist based in Istanbul, Turkey. In January, the bird flu problem hit this part of the world - and it was all over the international media. It still is.

Shooting in "less than ideal conditions", David has been busy documenting the story since it first broke, using PhotoShelter to help him get his images to picture editors around the world, quickly and easily.

David, who maintains a blog of his own, recently described how he's using PhotoShelter, and how it has improved his workflow and efficiency.

http://davidhonl.blogspot.com/2006/02/boxfull-of-memories.html

"While I was writing this piece, I got an e-mail from a publisher," David writes. "They want to use a picture from my website for a Kurdish language booklet. Once we've agreed on a price, I'll create a 'Quick Hi-Res Download Link' for the client, and I'll have easily paid for a year of PhotoShelter service with this tiny sale."

A gallery of David's "Bird Flu / Turkey" images can be found here:

http://www.photoshelter.com/gallery-show/G000075z6dg3Rcew

David is one of several PhotoShelter users with an interesting tale to tell. In future entries to the PhotoShelter Blog, I'll be sharing more of them.

If you have an interesting story of your own, we'd like to hear from you, too.

Thanks for sharing your story, David.