Category: Inspiration & Showcases

PhotoWorks Offers Retail Outlet for Photographers

By Elizabeth West
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PhotoWorks, which began life as Seattle Film Works, started out decades ago using movie film to make prints and slides. Today, many know them as an online photo sharing site, which offers prints and custom photo items, such as books, calendars, cards, and other gift items. I’ve often used this company. I buy prints from them, and last year, I made a book from old scanned family pictures.

Photoworks StorefrontNow this company offer Storefronts, a retail outlet for photographers, where the photographers can create and sell their own photo-related gifts. Right now, you can sell only books from this site. Soon you’ll be able to sell all sorts of products, including images and items that use images, such as coffee mugs, calendars, and so forth. In addition, PhotoWorks plans to offer widgets that will allow users to display their products on their personal websites.

You choose a user name, which gets incorporated into the URL. Choose carefully, since you cannot change this name later. PhotoWorks will take care of hosting your images, payments, and shipping. You can then have the proceeds either deposited into a Paypal account, or credited to your PhotoWorks account.

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Photos Help You Sell

By Elizabeth West
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Many photographers started using digital photography only when they needed pictures for online auctions and sales. In fact, sales pictures are still a major reason why people use digital cameras. Luckily, shooting pictures to help you sell items is not difficult, but you should keep a few things in mind.

First, your picture should clearly show the item. Although this sounds too obvious to mention, it’s not. Many people upload blurry, dark images that make viewers squint at their screens and scratch their heads. Maybe the photographer thought, “Close enough!” However, potential buyers are likely to move on to something that they can see and don’t have to imagine.

For example, if a bookshelf has drawers, open one slightly so people will realize that they are not mere decorations. If you’re shooting a porcelain sugar bowl, be sure that the shape, pattern, and lid are clearly visible. If you’re selling a cup, show the handle and shape; if your product is a book, slant it so that buyers can see both spine and cover.

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Nikon Small World: Excellence in Photography through the Microscope

By John Watson
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Fly by Charles Krebs, 1st Place 2005The Nikon Small World competition is a showcase for the best photomicrography—photographs of tiny things through a microscope—on the planet. The winners for the 2007 competition have been chosen (but have not been announced). For the first time, Nikon is allowing visitors to see the top 100 entries and rate them. The photographs are surreal, otherworldly, and strikingly beautiful. Well worth a visit if you are interested in extreme macro photography.

For more about photomicrography (in case you want to enter the 2008 competition):

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Stock Photo Superseller!

By Elizabeth West
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Those of you who are interested in stock photography might want to read more about Lise Gagne, a freelancer who recently set a new record for stock photography sales. Lise has sold more than half a million photos to iStockPhoto.com. To learn some of the secrets of her phenomenal success, read this interview with her. Although she credits much of her success to a background in Web/multimedia design, most readers will also be impressed by her strong work ethic, her analytical abilities, and her sense of fun. Perhaps it is this latter skill that makes her scenes appear so happy, natural, and relaxed, attributes mentioned by several of her clients.

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The American Experience | The Wizard of Photography

By John Watson
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As part of the film Wizard of Photography, the story of George Eastman, PBS created a timeline of the history of photography that you can view on their website. It’s covers a lot of important events in photography between 1826 and 1992.

History of Photography

The American Experience | The Wizard of Photography | Timeline

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Photographer Gary Parker

By Elizabeth West
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I admit it—I’m smitten. Photographer Gary Parker is my man of the moment. An award-winning photojournalist, portrait and commercial artist, Parker’s work delighted me instantly.

His website is correct when it describes him as a photographer who truly captures souls. It states, “No one’s quite sure how he manages, but Gary elicits from his subjects – human adult, child, animal, four-legged or two-toed – the part of themselves most of us try to hide – the spirit within.”

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Playtime!

By Elizabeth West
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Some days are rushed, but others present a perfect opportunity to play with your camera. Last week, a friend gave me a bouquet of daffodils. They looked so bright and springlike, that I decided to shoot some pictures of them.

The hour was early, and light came in only one window. First, I stood by the window to shoot the flowers, which jumped out against the darkness of the room behind. Later, though, I tried other positions, such as standing in the room and shooting toward the window. Then I wondered how the flowers would look in my upstairs room with the skylight, so I dragged the bouquet up there to shoot some more.

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The Zen of Letting the Image Find You

By Blogger
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[Please welcome Jim Crotty to Photodoto. Jim is a pro photographer with a studio in Dayton, Ohio, called Picture Ohio, LLC. He shoots using Canon EOS digital, both the 5D and 1D Mark II, as well as Canon L lenses. His personal and stock work involves nature, landscapes and wildlife. Like many photographers, he started young, developing prints in a black and white darkroom. His work can be viewed on his site at ohiophoto.org or on his Flickr account under username jimcrotty.com. — JW]

I have finally gotten around to writing my first article for photodoto.com. I’m thrilled to be part of such a talented online community of photographers.

Rather than starting-off with an article that has to do with the more technical aspects of photography, I thought I’d talk a little bit about artistic approach.

Nature and landscape photography is the type of work that I find most enjoyable and represents the foundation of my photographic career—a foundation that I still try to stay actively involved with while becoming more involved in commercial photography.

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The “Beauty Function” For a More Beautiful You

By John Watson
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Beauty FunctionYou just can’t believe anything you see these days.

Researchers from Tel Aviv University have created a computer algorithm that “beautifies” a photograph of a person’s face by making subtle adjustments to ratios that correlate with an objective definition of beauty. As a photographer, you are probably familiar with some of these mathematical formulas (The Golden Ratio) although you may not have thought of applying them to human faces.

It’s inevitable that software like this, for better or worse, will find its way first into products like Adobe Photoshop as a plugin and then eventually into digital cameras. One day, you may even ditch your old-fashioned glass bathroom mirror for a self-esteem boosting all-digital model.

Check out the before and after photos and read the full article at Israel21c.

(via Kottke.org)

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