Professional Photography : website

Necessity is the Mother of Creativity

Eileen Fritsch — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 00:50:00 GMT

While this may sound very New Agey, sometimes it is the negative experiences that we learn the most from. This is as true in photography and business as it is in other aspects of life.

At one level or another, most of us resist change. For example, unless there is a damn good reason, we keep taking the same types of photos or printing on the same paper and at the same size. Or, we keep operating our business the way we always have.

Two weeks ago, my main website was hacked into and vandalized. I spotted it very quickly and then spent three frustrating days trying to restore the site and close up the holes. During this time I kept finding more that the hackers had done. So after three days I decided I had no choice but to pull the site down.

Then the question was what to do? I had been considering moving the site to a new, underlying server technology but I hadn’t done so because of the issues involved in porting the site. Thus, I began to see the hacking event in a more positive light. The incident had motivated me to not only completely revamp the security aspects of my site, but also to move it to new technology that enabled me to add features that I had been wanting to add for quite some time. So now my site is back and better than ever.

Likewise, I have discovered that my photography improves if I set conditions that require me to use new tools. When I received a new lens, the Lensbaby Composer, I wanted to give it an extensive workout. So I decided to make it the only lens I would use during the next month of shooting. That decision really pushed me to be more creative.

Because the Lensbaby Composer has a single focal length, I had to overcome my comfort with my zoom lenses. My photography was enhanced as I discovered how to work with the tilting mechanism on the Lensbaby Composer. And, having the choice of a heavily distorting plastic lens, a less distorting single-element glass lens, a sharp double-element glass lens and a combined pinhole/zone plate ‘lens’ caused me to really explore how I felt about sharpness in my images.

In an ideal world, we would find ways to constantly stimulate the creative response without the need to be pushed by unpleasant situations such as the website hacking.

For example, going to a new location can be like a breath of fresh air to our creativity. Because it is a different place, we are forced to look at everything anew, and so we usually take a huge burst of images.One way to stimulate your creativity is to actually schedule time to do something different. Given the nature of contemporary life and current economic concerns, work and mundane life tasks will often grow to fill all available time.

So you may have to block out some time in your weekly schedule for a creative project, and actually do it come hell or high water. One way to make sure you follow through with creative pursuits is to make plans with other photographers to try new things or shoot somewhere new. Then, you won’t want to let them down if other mundane life tasks crop up. During the time blocked out for creativity, push yourself in various ways. Try a new technique, shoot a different subject, or go to a different location. Or, go to a highly familiar location but try to shoot from a different perspective, such as how a tourist might see it.

Forcing yourself to make the most of a negative situation, a new piece of equipment, or unfamiliar location can unlock the creative juices that may have become stagnant due to familiarity and repetition.

Choosing A Web-Hosting Service

Eileen Fritsch — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 10:01:00 GMT

By Jon Canfield

Back in June, fellow blogger Wayne Cosshall had a great post on Getting Your Web Presence Right. I thought I’d expand on that a bit and focus on what to look for in a web-hosting service.

There are any number of hosting services available, with prices ranging from free to hundreds of dollars a month. Of course the prices are all based on the features you receive and the amount of support you get. As is often the way with the world, you tend to get what you pay for. Basing any business on a “free” service is usually a very expensive proposition in the long run, whether it’s an issue with reliability, bandwidth, having to deal with banner ads, or a number of possible issues. Nothing turns away customers faster than a bad first impression, so I strongly recommend shopping around and choosing a service that will guarantee you the type of support your business needs.

This doesn’t mean you need to spend a fortune though. For example, I’ve used (and have heard from others who use), bluehost.com. Depending on your needs, you can get started for as little as $7.00 a month, and a number of different features will let you grow your online presence as you need to, with features such as shopping carts, discussion forums, etc.

One area photographers must pay special attention to is the limit on data transfer and storage. This can often involve a hidden expense and it’s easy to hit the lower limits when photo collections are involved. You’ll also want to be sure that photo galleries are possible, whether you create your own in Aperture or Lightroom, or you prefer to use something like Gallery or Coppermine.The other alternative, and a very good one if you don’t want to do the design work or you need an immediate web presence, is one of the photography-oriented hosting services such as Live Books. These services will give you a professional site with a minimum amount of decision making on your part, but you’ll pay for the privilege ($800 and up for setup, $90 per year for hosting). But with our schedules that’s often much less expensive than the time it would take away from our photography to set up a website from scratch.

It’s almost impossible for a business to survive in today’s world without a website. By doing just a bit of research ahead of time, you can make sure that whatever path you take can grow with you and give you the professional look you need

Getting Your Web Presence Right

Eileen Fritsch — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 14:27:00 GMT

By Wayne Cosshall

A website is a key part of any business and most hobbies these days, and especially so in photography. But getting it right is key. Even though the Internet has become an obvious and essential part of what photographers do, there are still many mistakes people inadvertently make.

Mistake number one is trying to do business using a Yahoo, MSN, or other free email address. These just stink of being either a spammer or an amateur. Because using these sites suggests a lack of stability (and thus unreliability), you can really limit your marketing opportunities.

Mistake number two is relying on the free or low-cost photo-hosting sites to present your professional portfolio. Yes, some people do this, hard as it might seem to believe. Again, it immediately conveys either that you’re an amateur or someone who has no idea of business.

Mistake number three is developing a totally unsuitable custom website. This might be unsuitable in many ways, as we’ll discuss later, but such a site can actually turn some potential customers away. So, how do you do it right?

Step 1: Register a domain name with a reliable and major domain registrar (so you will have no dramas later). The domain name is not critical but ideally needs to be something you can tell people over the phone without a strong likelihood of them getting it wrong. This can be your business name or something else, so long as it makes sense.

Step 2: Set up a website hosting service with a reliable company. This should not be your ISP, the service you use to connect to the Internet. Look for Linux hosting rather than Microsoft servers. This will give you more free options and is often cheaper. A good hosting account will allow you to easily create multiple email addresses and monitor traffic to your site (statistics). It will also make it easy to control other features, such as installing open source gallery software.

Step 3: Set up a number of email addresses for yourself. For example, you might want to have one you can publish on public forums and another address that you use for direct business contact. Multiple email addresses also allow you to create the impression that you have a larger organization than you actually have.Step 4: Do some research. Clarify why you want to have a web presence, who the most typical and most important users of your site will be, and what equipment they are likely to use to view your site. Keep in mind what information matters most to them, not you. Look closely at a wide range of other photographers’ websites, and not just the ones you personally like.

Step 5: Develop a website to suit your customers, based on the research you did in Step 4. When I look at photographers’ websites, I usually see a lot of over- engineered, fancy, and time-wasting sites that don’t work for the site visitors. Sadly, many photographers won’t listen to recommendations for improvement, because they think they know it all visually. But if you are a small-town wedding/portrait photographer, for example, your clients are likely to be local people with slow Internet connections, old computers, and small screens. The site must be designed accordingly, or you might lose business. Conversely, if you are a big-city fashion photographer, your clients are ad agencies and magazines, with fast Internet connections, larger screens and a sense of style (plus attitude). This requires a very different type of site than that required by the small-town wedding photographer.

Do you get the idea? It’s not you and your aesthetics that matter with a website, it is your clients. If you have diverse clients perhaps you need two websites that you market to appropriate audiences.This client orientation will help you determine elements such as: what screen size the site should be designed for, whether Flash (an overused technology on photographer sites) should even be considered, and whether you can stray too far from normal navigation conventions.

Unless you really know what you are doing, pay someone to design your website for you. Don’t skimp on this. During the design process, look for alternative ways of doing things. For example, many of the sites I develop now use a content-management system so that photographers themselves can upload new images or change text. This way they aren’t reliant on me to make changes to the site except to update the look. It costs them a little more up front, but reduces costs long term.

Finally, plan to revamp your site on a yearly basis. This doesn’t have to be a major overhaul every year, but a bit of a touchup keeps the site looking fresh and in line with current trends. If your site is well designed by your web developer, a yearly update shouldn’t be a costly exercise.

Step 6: Market your website. The website itself won’t bring you much work on its own. It actually just forms part of your marketing effort; it is not the complete answer. If you have followed these steps, your email address should help promote the site. The site URL (www.cosshall.com, for example) should be on your business cards, car, all ads, etc. Keep fresh content on your website and never put a visible visitor counter on your site.Done well, a website is a great asset. Done poorly it is a liability. Which is yours?

You can read more on this topic on my online magazine The Digital Imagemaker.

Color Management in Web Browsers

BlogArchive — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 13:07:00 GMT

By Marc Aguilera

Understanding color management in web browsers is important if you want to directly sell more of your photos and artwork online. You need to know what is and isn't currently possible when it comes to ensuring that your images will consistently look as you intended when you display them in your online gallery.

First of all, know this: All devices produce color differently (we color freaks call it `device dependent color'). Even two of the same devices from the same manufacturer sitting next to each other will look slightly different. This can be hell—especially if you're trying to manage the color of your photographs on the web.

Second, applications can treat color differently. Have you ever wondered why images look a certain way in Photoshop and another way in your email program or the web? It's the same file and on the same computer but it looks different in various applications.

Mac OS X applications built using Aqua (i.e Mail, Preview, Safari, and iPhoto) all use the default display profile and recognize embedded profiles. This means images look the same in the applications

Microsoft applications such Picture Viewer and Outlook don't recognize embedded profiles, so when comparing images in Photoshop and Picture Viewer you will see a difference.

Adobe applications all have a common color architecture and if you synchronize working spaces the color will all look the same—but only in Adobe applications.

Internet Explorer 7 has can recognize embedded profiles in images, but the user has to enable it in preferences.

The current release of Firefox doesn't include support for embedded profiles in images but will do so in future versions.

So no matter what, if you plan to implement a color-managed workflow, your images will look similar in ICC-aware applications but different in everything else.

Secondly, if your display is not calibrated and profiled you will have even more trouble. Color measuring your display is crucial if you want a consistent appearance. (If you don't calibrate your display, you'll simply be experimenting with color rather than managing it.)

Here's how we manage color in at our creative-services agency, encompus:

All of the displays in our studio (5 Macs and 2 Windows) are all calibrated with a spectrophotometer to the same settings - D65 (6500° Kelvin), Gamma 2.2, and 130 cd/m2 Luminance. When we share files and view the displays under similar lighting conditions, these displays all appear similar. Then, the question then becomes one of application implementation.
We run Mac OS 10.4 for design work and Windows XP for web production work.
We all share the same color settings file (.CSF) in our Adobe Applications. sRGB is the working space for our web work and Adobe RGB is working space for our print work.
When a designer prepares an image for the web, we "save for web" via Adobe ImageReady. We embed the ICC profile when we really need to match colors and don't embed the profile when it's not as crucial.
We brief our clients on real-world expectations based on the fact that their customers will be viewing our design work on different browsers and on uncalibrated displays.
When we embed sRGB, it is really only useful for Safari since Safari has color management enabled by default and can recognize an image with an embedded profile. It does not help us with Firefox, unless you're running Firefox 3 Alpha 7 which has an option to use embedded profiles.

The concepts of the ICC (International Color Consortium) are still relatively young. ICC standards were written to be open in terms of implementation, meaning that OS, Applications, and Devices could use ICC profiles differently or not at all.

This concept makes it a nightmare for everyone because although the profile is a standard file type, the uses of a profile all differ depending on application and operating system. At least Apple has taken a huge step forward with Colorsync and Aqua, and Windows Vista has a new color management system called WCS (Windows Color System).

Still, I would prefer that all photographers, designers, and prepress professionals all follow the imperfect ICC color standards than try to invent new ones at this stage.

It really comes down to setting expectations within your devices and with the client. If you're considering selling photos or prints online, you may want to adopt a policy similar to that of the online
art gallery that gives customers seven days to return any artwork they bought that doesn't look like they had expected it to.

Let’s recap :

Calibrate your display to a standard (i.e. D65, G 2.2, Luminance 120 cd/m2). Recalibrate at least once a quarter.
Use sRGB as a working space for your web images. Make sure all your applications do the same (although this can be challenge for some applications).
When you save your images for the web, embed sRGB profiles. For now, they may not look right in Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox, but there will come a time (sooner, rather than later) when all the major browsers will have color management turned on as the default, like Safari.

If you want to learn more about this subject, read Real World Color Management published by Peachpit Press. Better yet, take the X-Rite-sponsored Color Control Freak 08 seminar that I will be teaching at 24 cities throughout the US this spring. We will discuss many of these issues and more. Check out X-rite’s website or contact me directly at encompus.

The Wonderful World of Flickr

BlogArchive — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 13:53:00 GMT

By Marc Aguilera

Flickr is a great place for the new amateur, the accelerated semi-pro photographer, and working professional photographer. The flickr community is vast and amazing and I never get bored of looking at images from my contacts in the community.

I have had a flickr account since July 14, 2004. The first shot I posted was from my Samsung cameraphone of two wonderfully charming young girls named Branwen and Rhianon who are the children of my good friend Alan. I now have over 1200 images (which is not that many compared to other flickr users) and over 250 contacts. I belong to a few hundred groups and administer five, including a color management group and a group devoted to digital printing. Images are put into sets and collections of sets to make it easier to organize. I currently have 40 sets. I also have a Pro Account which gives me unlimited storage, uploads, bandwidth, and sets, as well as permanent archiving, and ad-free browsing and sharing. Amazingly, it only costs $24.95/year.

I often just love to explore and see if I can find an image of something abstract or seemingly rare. For instance, the other day I entered “Babirusa” and found dozens of images of the wonderful pig-like animal native to Sulawesi. I also looked for images of Latvia (a country I have always wanted to visit and came across some amazing landscapes by marika_te).

Because my wife and I own a 1965 classic 122s model Volvo, I recently looked to see if there were any images of that particular model on the site. Amazingly, I found over 100 images and several groups devoted to vintage Volvos.

One of the most popular groups is the Shooting to Learn Group, which is devoted to learning and exploring the photographic craft. The group is moderated by Dawn Perry and hosts assignments ranging from specific techniques to monthly photo contests. It’s an excellent resource for developing your photographic skills.

I also really enjoy looking at my favorite images from other flickr members. Images range from the very simple to the extraordinarily complex and are a constant source of inspiration. It’s amazing what we all photograph.

If you are worried about copyright, the default setting for all uploads is All Rights Reserved. If you wish you can attribute a Creative Commons license to protect and authorize the usage of your images.

I continue to be amazed by flickr, and I have only begun to scratch the surface. There is always something new and interesting being developed. The latest feature is called Places where you can browse images which have been Geotagged for a particular city. I searched for Riga, the capital of Latvia and found some amazing images from architecture to urban landscapes.

In my opinion, Flickr represents the future of the digital imaging community. It is a wonderful world for photographers, and if you haven’t yet visited, I would encourage you to do so.

Digital Solutions to the Limitations of Traditional Portfolios

BlogArchive — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 11:26:00 GMT

By Wayne Cosshall

Painstakingly crafted traditional portfolios were fine for a slower world when you had the time to physically take them around to prospective customers or agencies, or courier them over. A stunningly presented portfolio can make an immediate and lasting impression.

But with 24/7 working hours, shorter deadlines, and new business opportunities from unexpected sources, the digital world offers two attractive alternatives: the web portfolio and the photo book. Both can be useful options for those of us who don’t usually carry a portfolio with us everywhere we go.

Web Portfolios: I don’t know about you, but I find that work often comes from some unexpected sources. A casual contact at some event, party or dinner sometimes leads to a great opportunity later. This is where a web portfolio comes in handy.

A web portfolio lets you give potential clients an immediate look at your work. Then you can identify which clients are worth time pursuing by saying: “Have a look at myportfolio.com and if you are interested I’ll arrange to bring over my portfolio book.”

You will want to follow up with printed versions of your work. Let’s be honest, in many ways, a web portfolio doesn’t compare favorably to a physical one. The images are low resolution. You have absolutely no real control over how the images will look on someone else’s computer and screen. There is no physical sensation of the paper you handle. And sometimes Internet speeds can get in the way. Plus, we have all seen online portfolios where the site design either interferes with or overpowers the images being shown.

Getting the design right for a web portfolio is not easy (just as with a physical portfolio). The site must load quickly, show your images in a good light, and have a presentation that is consistent with your style and image. (For more details on setting up an online portfolio, read the article The Essentials of Web Sites for Photographers, Artists and Designers on my Digital Imagemaker site.

Photo Books: Digital printing technologies can produce very short runs of books that can be great alternatives to a traditional portfolio. Bound books give a different impression than an elaborate portfolio. Many companies can produce these for you, offering web interfaces for design, image upload, and ordering. Other companies will provide you with the covers and binding technology you need to produce your photo books in house. You can choose from dozens of combinations of cover shapes, materials, and sizes as well as numerous paper types, including some lovely double-sided papers that you can use on either a desktop or large-format inkjet printer.

Low-cost digital photo books of your work open up all sorts of new possibilities. For instance, you can afford to have a few copies stashed in your car and in your partner’s car, so you are covered at all times. You can also afford to send books out to several prospective clients simultaneously. Or, you can use photo books as special promotional items or give them away to your best clients and prospects.

Photo books can be used by all types of photographers and digital artists. Indeed, in the fine-art market, short-run books can become art objects themselves, giving you an alternative product to sell online, in your studio, or at exhibitions. Some people may love your images but simply can’t envision them on the walls of their homes or businesses. But they just might buy a book of your images, either for themselves or as a gift.One practice that separates the most successful photographers from less successful ones is the willingness to make full use of all of the potential provided by the available technologies. When it comes to creating portfolios of your images, digital technologies offer some exciting new possibilities. Make use of them.