Top Ten Action Plans for 2006 (8)

Web Marketing Tips to Increase Your Visibility

Well, by now you are inspired, you have a truly remarkable set of images, new website, images for sale, some stock and a burning desire to get found. Welcome to the club. Building a site is not a guarantee that anyone anywhere will even know it exists.

Let's focus on getting the word out now. In fact, that is our mission... Get The Word Out (DAP8)

Forums are a great place to participate, learn, teach and get some notice. It's fun to participate in forums that are specific to our own interests, but what about participating in forums that are specific to our intended clients interests? Wedding shooters should be participating in forums that have to do with their intended clients. Be the best idea giver for photography on a wedding forum. Be the most creative, helpful advice giver on a site devoted to young graphic designers. There are many other niches that you can use to propel your name and your reputation into the conscience of the customers you want to reach. Google your interest forum.

Your signature file becomes a vitally important feature of your posting as that will be what the interested participants see and click on.

'Link Exchanges' and 'Link Farms' are generally not worth anything as they are a mishmash and Google has ignored them for years. However, some well researched directories can be valuable. for wedding shooters there are places like PartyPop.com and Alltimefavorites.com. These directories spend lots of money to get in front of potential buyers so you can get some very good exposure there. Commercial shooters should look into the various professional groups like ASMP, and APA. These national and local sites feature photographer look-up pages that will bring some exposure as well. Local chapters will also feature pages that will link to your site.

PPC advertising is cost efficient and can be a great benefit to most photographers. PPC stands for Pay Per Click. It's those little Google Ads that are on the right side of this page, and you will see them on millions of pages all over the net. What makes them powerful is that Google looks at this page and delivers ads that are relevant to the content. If I am talking about photography, as I predominantly have for the last 10 days or so, the ads will invariably be about photography.

Recently we discussed fine art prints... so at the time of this article these are two of the ads running there:

Bid on Originals,
Limited Editions
Over 90% Discount
-100% Guarantee

Giclee Printmaking
for Artists Fine Art
Reproduction & Editioning

See how they reflect the content of this blog? That is the power of PPC advertising. You can make your ads appear when certain and specific content is displayed. Now the trick is discovering where you want your ads to appear and what specific terms and 'keywords' you want to buy. Now, I am not going to go into the complete tutorial of Google AdWords, or the rival Overture PPC plans. That would take way too long and is more appropriate for you to learn yourself. You may have to have a webmaster or designer add some code to your pages, but in the grand scheme of things, PPC is very powerful and easy to maintain.

Budget is easy to control as with most PPC plans, you make your budget known and the ads are delivered to your needs. You wont be overbilled, and you can turn the campaign off for awhile, change it up, add more keywords and phrases and keep tweaking the ad until it starts to pull the response you want. If this seems like too much for you to do, find someone to manage your Google AdWord or Overture account and provide you measurable results.

Getting links coming from other sites, especially popular sites, will greatly increase your ranking in the search engines. In other words, the more popular sites that think you are popular, the more popular Google will think you are. Getting the links can be as simple as an email to a webmaster, a sign up form or request to clients that you are working for to be added to a link page. And it can be as difficult as performing a root canal on yourself. Keep after it, make it a priority. You don't need thousands of links in... a dozen or two popular sites will do it. (Forums, remember? And the signature file with your link in it...)

Traditional means still work as well. And they shouldn't be discarded entirely for the web. (My personal feeling about sending out 10,000 postcards to some list you bought is that it is lame and silly. Doesn't work.) However, sending cards to targeted receivers telling them that there is some new stuff to see on your web site... that works.

I have seen bumper stickers, posters, t-shirts... all kinds of little things that can be used for a guerilla approach. Some may find it silly, but it can be quite effective if done correctly and with a sense of humor.

One last way to consider. And I have said it before. Get a Blog, post on it once or twice per week. Make interesting images and tell your visitors how much fun it is shooting images for them. Make it personal. And it will give you practice writing. Then - write article for magazines, trade journals and web sites... they don't have to be long ones, just a couple of paragraphs on what you do, how you do it, why others should consider doing it your way.

These tips and ideas will get your site, and you, noticed. Try them, you'll see.

Tomorrow: Cool Web Tools to Help You Do Stuff

Previous:
Get Inspired (DAP7)
Selling Prints and Fine Art (DAP6)
Taking Stock of Your Stock (DAP5)
Web Design Options (DAP4)
Flickr… more than just a photoblog. (DAP3)
Show More Pictures (DAP2)
Be Found on the Search Engines. (DAP 1

Did I ever mention that I love my job?

Well in case I haven't... I love my job.

This was Michelle's first shoot. You can see more at my Flickr page. (See Flickr badge on right side column.)

A few more of Michelle can be seen at my "portrait and wedding" photo blog. And of course my Flickr pages as well.

Top Ten Action Plans for 2006 (7)

"Do you feel like you've run out of good things to photograph? Don't worry. It happens even to professional photographers. One of the best ways to get inspired about taking photos again is to take a look at the work of others. With any luck, looking at some other photos will spark your own creativity and get you snapping the shutter again." -- From the site Digicams.

And it is true. We all experience those times where we feel more like automatons instead of creatives. I can tell you what I am do (and am currently doing) to get the creative juices flowing again.

Get Inspired (DAP7)

I used to shoot hundreds of rolls a week back in the day. Editorial shoots, advertising, fashion... and all seemed to call for a different format. I shot 4x5 and 8x10 for still life and product, 6x7 Mamiyas for advertising clients and 35mm for most of the fashion I did. And occasionally I would shoot a Speed Graphic with Polaroid 55 for some shoots of people and location. Each camera would have its own feel and would be a catalyst in itself.

These days ... 35mm Canon 10 / 20D's. I found myself getting stale. I had tricks that I would natrually fall back to and make acceptable images. Acceptable. BFD...

I am still shooting the camera, but treating it differently on each shoot I do. I am also working with some models to try to push me back to making images that I really love, not just acceptable.

Here are some suggestions for you:

1. Visit your local art museums and see things that artists are doing in other disciplines.
2. Listen to music you don't normally listen to. ( I listen mostly to jazz and classical, but have recently tried country... Toby Kieth Rules, man!) It is a difference that may show up in my work as I move on.
3. Look at some old magazines at the Library. See what some of the masters were doing 20 - 30 years ago. Newton, Penn, Avedon, DeMarchelier... all were making remarkable work that can drive some inspiration our way. There are hundreds. Try going back even further to 1880, or 1920...
   
4. Shoot with point and shoot's. Grab a little Casio, or Olympus and carry it around for a month. Shoot something every day. Shoot at the grocery store.
5. Shoot subject matter that is outside of your comfort zone. If you are a people shooter, try a series of still lifes based on the personalities of friends. Fashion shooter? How about a series on firemen at local station houses. (You know I am just tossing these out to get you to think, not making absolute ideas.)
6. Take a road trip... Ahhhh... a road trip. I love 'em.
7. Shoot from angles that you don't normally try. High, low, ground level.
8. Take a favorite song and illustrate it with images
9. Do a story in pictures of some place near your home, or civic group or...
10. Just shoot. Pick up the camera and shoot something

Subject matter is somewhat a sticking point with a lot of photographers. It must be cause I hear it so often. "What would I shoot?" There are many sites online to help you with inspirational ideas and there are a few consultants out there that can force you from your comfortable fox holes of 'acceptable images' into the wild and wooly world of creativity.

Grab a sheet of paper. Start by writing out subjects you don't normally shoot in a column on the left. Then write a corresponding column on the right of subjects you normally shoot. Now read the top left subject with each of the right column subjects. What may happen there? You can see and hear ideas that may sound strange, even comical... but every once in a while you will say a pair of subjects and the light will go off and ... voila... inspiration.

Of course inspiration in and of itself is not enough. You must now follow through. Make a plan for developing new images for yourself, your book, your Web site, your walls, your stock collection, your print sales, your fine art gallery submissions... wow... there are lots of places to show these new pieces. That should be inspiring as well.

Tomorrow: Web Marketing Tips to Increase Your Visibility

Previous:
Selling Prints and Fine Art (DAP6)
Taking Stock of Your Stock (DAP5)
Web Design Options (DAP4)
Flickr… more than just a photoblog. (DAP3)
Show More Pictures (DAP2)
Be Found on the Search Engines. (DAP 1

Top Ten Action Plans for 2006 (6)

Selling Prints and Fine Art

“Results 1 - 10 of about 79,800,000 for sell photos online” -- Google Search Result Page

Nearly 80 million results on selling photos online. 80 million.
Most of the first 20 or thirty pages are tools and articles that are designed to help photographers sell their images. So we know that there is interest in the terms ‘sell photos online”. A lot of interest. Now lets find out how much interest there is in purchasing images.

How many searches (Overture look-up tool for November, 2005- only top 6 results of each):

7900 fine art print
892 giclee fine art print
634 fine art photographic print
428 fine art canvas print
363 fine art print and poster
353 fine art photography print

1453 art fine photo
820 art fine nude photo
238 art fine gallery photo
180 art fine nature photo
144 art fine flower photo
84 art fine male nude photo

634 fine art photographic print
221 photographic print
54 photographic print sale
25 artist photographic print
25 large photographic print

I didn’t do the math, but that looks like a lot of interest, and I didn’t dig too deep here to get these results. Point is that there is a considerable interest out there in purchasing images. Not stock, but art for the wall. Prints. Images. (Now, I know that not all of the searches were from people looking to buy prints, but considering that I am only showing 5 or 6 results from 3 search phrases, there is still a lot of interest in buying images.)

Buying images. That is what you do. Make images so people can buy them.

Sell Your Images as Prints Online: (DAP6)

Now find a way to get those images into the hands of people who want to buy them. Many online sharing sites have simple shopping cart tools to allow the photographer to sell individual prints. My-Expressions has image sales tools for instance, and Flickr has online printing as well.

And there are many other sources for selling images, including the PHOTOtool that allow for extensive galleries and sophisticated sales tools that can be very beneficial for the photographer. Having the ability to send the order directly to the lab for printing and fulfillment can help save time as well as keep the process flowing. Carts, tax tools, shipping calculations and most importantly some way to pay with Credit Card are a necessity. Putting a link with your email address and an encouraging “send me an email if you want to buy a print” won’t cut it.

One tool that makes selling images easier is PayPal. With a basic PayPal account a photographer can add a simple shopping cart and allow visitors to buy images right from the site. You will have to be able to access the html code to add the shopping interactivity, and to manage the pricing and shipping information.

Pricing should be conservative, and priced for ‘wall art’ consumption. Unless you are a photographer with a noted reputation, selling images at fine art gallery pricing may not be advisable. One photographer I worked with was disappointed that his 8x10s weren’t selling at his $900 asking price. Nope, they won’t at that price. This is the Internet and there are some price points to consider. Another photographer I know sells images from his Photoblog. 5x7’s go for about $20 and 8x10 for $35. He sells about 12 per month and is seeing a steady rise in interest and sales. Talk about viral. Selling images is a fantastic way to get your name out there.

Let’s not forget EBay. There are several categories on EBay where photographers are selling images at decent prices (considering markup). A photographer I interviewed a few months ago specializes in male nudes and did nearly 40k last year. He kept several Epson’s running day and night, but the profit was nearly 34K.

Of course you have to have images that the public wants. Not all of us have that, but most of us have some images that would be well received by people looking for art for their walls, gifts or momentos.

Think about selling your images as prints. And have fun doing it. People love photographs and keeping the tradition of images as ‘hard copy’ prints that are shared by folks by presenting or displaying them should be important to all of us.

Update: I should have mentioned some great labs that we work with regularly to produce amazing prints for our clients. These labs do work online with photogs, so geography should not be an issue. In Phoenix there is a wonderful little lab specializing in large format prints. Mighty Imaging takes the quality of its prints quite seriously. In Tennessee there is Chromatics, a fantastic lab doing wonderful work. I am sure there are more wonderful labs out there, but these guys come through for us consistantly.

Tomorrow: Finding Inspiration and Subjects

Previous:
Taking Stock of Your Stock (DAP5)
Web Design Options (DAP4)
Flickr… more than just a photoblog. (DAP3)
Show More Pictures (DAP2)
Be Found on the Search Engines. (DAP 1)

Trivia from Knoxville

KnoxNews | No Silence Here:

"Blogs top 1 BILLION!

In Google hits, that is.

And they are more popular than pizza, college football, guns, the National Football League, the mainstream media (no surprise), President Bush (ditto) and online poker combined.

For blogs, I got 1.02 billion hits. Here's the others:

President Bush: 190 million
Mainstream media: 21.5 million
College football: 60.7 million
NASCAR: 113 million
Pizza: 195 million
The National Football League: 9.23 million
Guns: 126 million
Poker: 195 million"

There is something in this article for all artists

And dealing with a self-identity that is reality based, humble and appreciative may just be one of them.

calendarlive.com: The sound and the fury: "'No, because this story's about me, and it's not about you. It's not about the listener; it's about me. It's like a book. If a book's moving too ... fast for you and it's too many words, put down the book and go pick up a book of the week from the Oprah club.

'You want to read a real book and, like, want to be involved in a real process, this is my process. I'm not going to change my story. People can come to my story when they want. But I'll ... make as many records as I want ... 'cause that's what I'm into.... I'm the best. No one else is going to work at this pace again for a long time with these results.... And everyone can get jealous in my lifetime, but later on they're just going to have to say, 'Damn, he was good, he worked hard.' '"

More likely they'll say "who?"
What a moron.

Stock Agencies Try To Predict The Future

Ties in nicely with my piece on stock below. Read the whole thing.

Stock Agencies Try To Predict The Future: "How much do you know about pharmaceutical ads? What colors do they use? In which countries do they run? What emotions do they convey? Do they show people in pain?

For stock imagery companies, big sums of money are riding on questions like these. The agencies employ teams of people and outside consultants to do 'creative research,' a process that can involve tracking sales data, customer feedback and market trends."

Top Ten Action Plans for 2006 (5)

Taking Stock of Your Stock

I can remember a meeting of photogs about 15 years ago where some “Stock” guru was telling all of us in the room that his trays of couples strolling the beaches and kids with ice cream cones would carry him through retirement. Stock was the saving grace of the commercial photographer.

Yeah. Right.

Recently I needed a stock image of a couple on the beach in wedding clothes. It was a small filler image and I got it at iStockPhoto for $2. And I actually could have gotten it free at a couple of other Free Royalty Free Stock sites. But the one I purchased was very nice, so I sprung the $2.

(So what is the point of this…? – ed.) Hold on, there is a point. Generic images of couples on the beach probably can’t bring much into the old coffers. But clever, niche category photos are in high demand. And they aren’t well represented on the free / nearly free sites.

Look through your files. Are there images there that are one-of-a-kind? Do they serve as a niche, or concept image? Could you Photoshop the ever-lovin –beejeesus out of them and create new art? Celebrities, cute kids in black and white?

Fact is there is still a robust market out there for stock images, and you should be selling your images for serious dollars. I am not pitching the big stock houses here… I am talking about your images on your own stock site. And I am not talking Royalty Free either… real traditional stock licensing where you interact with the buyer and create a customer instead of a sale.

Sell Your Stock (DAP5)
Create a set of portfolios on your site with categories and galleries. Create interesting names for the image sets and add the link to your home page. (OK… the PHOTOtool, of which I am an owner, makes this very, very easy. And the collaboration for the buyer/seller is awesome. There are other solutions, but they are not going to be discussed in specifics cause I like our tool best. Look ‘em up, they are out there.)

Tell everyone you know about your new stock. Price it accordingly (remember, you aren’t getting 40% anymore, so your prices can be competitive as hell and still provide a good fee), and then watch your stats for interest in your images. When you see a campaign that uses images similar to yours, market to them and tell them about your modest, but highly creative offering.

You aren’t going to be able to be as unattached as you would be with a traditional agency – send the images in and let them do the rest – you are going to have to involved in the marketing of the images. Come up with innovative ideas for getting your images out there. Make a few desktop backgrounds for downloading, give a couple of images away, set up an image auction, combine your stock with assignment work, offer a deep discount to non-profits, contribute a percentage to charity… GET PRESS!

I recently viewed a photographer’s work and was blown away by the sheer volume of black and white rodeo pictures he had. He even had lots of releases with them. I asked if he was selling them and he told me “no, don’t know how.” I met with him, set him up on a plan and sent him out to do his scanning and uploading. It is painful when I meet someone who tells me they are too computer illiterate to do what they need to do. I don’t accept that, it is too easy to learn. Gotta get committed to success.

A good way to drive visitors to your site would be to become involved in some of the free or nearly free sites. Go ahead and place 50 or 100 images at iStockPhoto. If they are good, they will sell like hotcakes… and the people who are looking to buy that type of work will come visit your site and maybe let go of some more money for even better images.

Look for trends and try to feed them, or even get ahead of them a bit. Lifestyle shooter? You better be shooting lots of ethnic folks in urban settings, and make sure you have lots of regular looking folks, even some overweight and older folks. That’s a trend… so is working at home, technology, mobile technology, families in crisis, teens in turmoil, kids having fun at home, home schooling… you get the idea. Research the trends in advertising and get images to fit.

Get the images out of the boxes, or off the old drives and make some money from them. One photographer told me he didn’t want to try to compete with Getty, and couldn’t handle that kind of volume. I told him he didn’t have to worry about that, as he would never even come close to that kind of traffic or sales. But selling 1 or 2 or 5 images a month would be a substantial increase in his bottom line.

I hope you agree and get your stock on line and in front of buyers.

Tomorrow: Fine Art Portfolios and Prints

Previous:
Web Design Options (DAP4)
Flickr… more than just a photoblog. (DAP3)
Show More Pictures (DAP2)
Be Found on the Search Engines. (DAP 1)

Entropy Manor is host of this weeks Carnival of Digital Cameras

Visit and take a look. I will be hosting the next one on Jan 1, 2006. Submissions to me by noon on December 31, 2006. Send submissions to: digitalphotocarnival@gmail.com with a subject of "Carnival". Looking forward to your participation.

If I was a Novel

I would be....

J.R.R. Tolkien: Lord of the Rings. You are
entertaining and imaginative, creating whole
new worlds around yourself. Well loved, you
have a whole league of imitators, none of which
is quite as profound as you are. Stories and
songs give a spark of joy in the middle of your
eternal battle with the forces of evil.

Which literature classic are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

In case you missed it

Instapundits Carnival of Digital Cameras

Instapundit.com - Digital Camera Carnival!: "Digital Camera Carnival!

WELL, HERE IT IS: There are lots of entries in the digital camera carnival. (You can read my earlier posts here and here.) Also, here's an earlier post of mine on printers, and one on slide-scanning for those with big collections they'd like to digitize. My HP wireless printer, by the way, is also a scanner and comes with a negative carrier, though it won't scan mounted slides. I haven't tried it out in that application yet, though. But lots of people around the blogosphere have experience I lack in all sorts of areas."

Photo Marketing Interview

Well, yes... that makes sense. Read the whole thing.

Photo Marketing magazine: "Blumenthal: Look at your business and ask yourself, “What are two or three things I can do that will be a little unique and drive business in a different way?” "

Top Ten Action Plans for 2006 (4)

Make Your Site Work for You (DAP4)

When building a site or redesigning your current site, keep these things in mind. It is imperative that the site be useful and easy to navigate both for your visitors and for the search engines that will eventually crawl them. The best way to make sure that search engine spiders cannot find you is to make your site with frames on the home page or make it totally in Flash. Embedded flash in an otherwise html site is fine, as long as the content is readable to spiders… html text.

When building a site or redesigning your current site, keep these things in mind. It is imperative that the site be useful and easy to navigate both for your visitors and for the search engines that will eventually crawl them. The best way to make sure that search engine spiders cannot find you is to make your site with frames on the home page or make it totally in Flash. Embedded flash in an otherwise html site is fine, as long as the content is readable to spiders… html text.

Now, decide what you want your visitors to see and discern from your home page. Are you a quiet guy, or a flamboyant gal… do you do more than take pictures (workshops, teach, design etc…) or is photography your only, totally focused passion? These questions should be discussed with your designer as soon as possible. Do you want to keep your visitors coming back to the site for more images, or do you simply plan to use it as an online adjunct to your current hard-copy marketing?

There are entire books written on these subjects and I feel that there are even more options to look at. Blog style pages are getting very popular. These two or three column sites look more like a blog than a traditional web site, and that is part of their appeal. Fast and sleek, they are becoming the rage among the cutting edge designers. Simple design with few pages and large showcase images are another style that is coming up as well.

I will show you some examples here of sites that work well for their owners and also talk a little about why the design was created that way.

Rolando Gomez (www.rolandogomez.com)



Rolando is a workshop teacher, glamour photographer and owner of the site GarageGlamour.com. He needed the site to feature his work, his sponsors and his busy workshop schedule. The site has a calendar of workshops, portfolios of image, overviews of his workshops and extensive content on glamour photography. Rolando controls all of the content on his pages with his browser and the totalcontrol backend. Notice the content on the home page and how the page presents Rolando as a photographer / teacher.

Ron Chilston (www.arizonaweddingphotographer.com)



Ron needs a site that he can do extensive search engine optimizing on. Ron is always tweaking his copy to help him get found and to keep the visitor interested. His easily navigated site features news, specials, portfolios and contact information. Ron works on his site constantly to refine and make the site more friendly and show the images that keep him booked.

Ron Garnica (www.rongarnica.com)



Ron is a photo stylist. He is very meticulous about most everything he does. His site is small, boutique-ish in presentation and has a delicate, art feel to it. Ron is constantly updating his portfolio with images from recent shoots.

David Doubilet (www.daviddoubilet.com)



World traveler and respected underwater shooter David Doubilet wanted a site that featured his images and a place to keep clients and editors up to date on the places he has shot and will be shooting. The site features stock images, prints for sale, schedules, recent articles written about David and complete contact information. The site can be easily and quickly updated by David and his staff from any browser. This keeps the site fresh and relevant to what David is doing.

John Trotto (www.johntrotto.com)



John wanted a site with very little copy. Just an about page, a contact page and his images. The home page and all other pages are the same size with no page scrolling. This delicate design style works well for Johns images and style.

Larger image displays are becoming more popular as bandwidth becomes less and less of an issue. Our new WebFolio product is proving popular with photographers who want to show images and very little else. The huge size of the images (from 750 pixels wide to 900 pixels wide) show dramatically on desktops in clients offices. These sites feature little copy (enough to work for search engines) and lots of images that are controlled by the photographer.



A photographer that is doing a little of all of this is Mark Culbertson. His site (www.markaculbertson.com) features art for sale, stock for licensing, portfolios of work, news and content plenty for search engines. The site fits comfortably in a browser window and needs little scrolling (excepting the shopping cart and stock work). The site seems almost ‘Flash’ like but is done with html and CSS.

Another shooter that has been doing a lot of business online is Jerry Jacka (www.jerryjacka.com). Jerry's award winning images and stock photos of Arizona have brought him acclaim world wide. He now uses his web site to market and sell the images to clients in every category. His home page has a lot of text, but it fits what Jerry is doing with his marketing and online strategies.



Planning a redesign is more than what the site will look like. It is also planning what the site will say about what you do, and what the site will do for your business.

Tomorrow: Take Stock of Your Stock

Previous:
Flickr… more than just a photoblog.
Show More Pictures (DAP2)
Be Found on the Search Engines. (DAP 1)

Reflections...

Yesterday was the annual Christmas Carnival and Celebration at the Giannatti household. Each year brings marked changes it seems. This year my oldest daughter is married and she and her husband are doing the newly-married-drive-all-day-between-inlaws ritual. It was wonderful to have her here for the morning. My middle daughter was not feeling 100% (actually she was at about 40%) but bravely kept her spirits high until finally retiring for a long nap around 2pm. My youngest was just in heaven with her piles of 'My Little Pony" loot. My wife and I made a huge ham dinner and forgot to make the salad... it wasn't missed. I only went on-line to post my installment of the DAP's and spent the day playing with my little one and having conversation with family and friends I have missed for too long. My parents are both gone now, and the one brother I am in contact with lives thousands of miles away. It is all about my little family, this wonderful, warm, quiet day.

My loot included an XM Sat Radio from the wife, an Indie Country music compilation from one daughter and a relica of the Important Award Lamp from the movie "A Christmas Story" which my oldest and I think is the best of the Christmas movies. My wife chooses "White Christmas", and my other daughters choose "Home Alone." If you don't know what the lamp looks like, you will find out when you see the movie (oh heck, here ya go). My wife says it must go to the office. Yep.

It was well over 80 here in Phoenix so I quickly donned my new favorite shirt from the wife ("So Many Drums, So Little Time") with 12 gorgeuos drum sets silk screened on the back. 'Tis true... still so many drums, beats and riffs left to play. We sat outside and talked till late in the afternoon and I pounded my legs black and blue with a new set of "Jack DeJohnette" 'Firths'.

Also got the new Carrie Underwood CD (wonderful vocalist, country) and an interesting acoustic album of some of Jackson Browne's hits. I can get by the stupid political remark and focus on the music, but I think I may just edit it out at some point so I am not reminded of it. It seems out of place and kind of stupid for an entertainer to 'diss' half of his listeners, but then... If you like Jackson Browne (and I definitely do) this is a wonderful set.

My two daughters helped set up the electric train set with the cool over and under figure 8, and we had a blast running the train around and around. My littlest one got out some other toys and built some cool 'mountains" and such around it. All in all, it was a great day.

I don't put a lot of personal posts on the blog for various reasons, but occasionally it may be interesting (or not) for you to get a glimpse of my reality.

file magazine : a collection of unexpected photography

... and a wonderful, unexpected find for me this quiet day after Christmas. And now I share it with you.

file magazine : a collection of unexpected photography: "FILE Magazine publishes images that treat subjects in unexpected ways. Alternate takes, unconventional observations, odd angles - the photographs collected in FILE reinterpret traditional genres."

And then they were gone...

I have one of the first models of the Zenza Bronica. Screw in lenses and a nice feel. I liked the cameras a lot. But. alas, they are gone.

Tamron News USA, Commack NY: "Due to the drastic worldwide shift to digital over the past few years, medium format business has suffered, particularly in the portrait and wedding photography segment, the core customer base for Bronica cameras. “I believe we all understand the issues at hand when it comes to the business of medium format,” stated Kenji Nakagawa, Sales Manager of Tamron headquarters’ Overseas Sales & Marketing Department in Japan. “We have been struggling to find the best possible solution for the medium format camera business under the Bronica brand, but after careful study and the comprehensive consideration of the market situation, we have concluded that there is no other choice but to end this business.”"

Top Ten Action Plans for 2006 (3)

Flickr… more than just a photoblog.

Flickr came on the scene a few years ago and steadily built a huge fan base. And while there are many thousands of amateurs and maybe millions of poorly lit cat pictures, sunsets and flowers, there are hundreds of amazing professionals, and amateurs, in all disciplines showing images there.

Flickr uses tags to help describe the images and the user can use the tags like search engine keywords. The tagging of images makes it more intuitive than keywords and finding images that you want to see can be fun to search for.

Create a Flickr account and start adding images to it. (DAP 3)

The real fun happens when you start to join ‘groups’ on Flickr. The groups are collectives of photographers who shoot the same subjects, or camera, or with a certain technique. There are groups based on concepts, trends, learning and more. Groups are interesting collections of images and a good way to have your images be seen by people searching for images for fun, inspiration and possible assignments. Whether or not you would get a plum assignment from your Flickr is open for debate, but I can attest to at least to projects that I have worked on that started with my Flickr images.

Flickr is a current favorite for lots of art directors, designers, media types and editors. Be there and be seen. Make sure your profile is as complete as you can make sure it links to your website and your photoblog. Flickr offers free accounts and Pro accounts for $25 per year (updated by Adam... thanks Adam). The pro account offers more features of course, but a free one can work for you as well,

Flickr also offers cool little RSS feeds called the ‘Flickr Badge’ and the Daily ZeitGeist tool. My Flickr badge is over on the right side of this page. When you add new images to your Flickr pages, they are fed to your Flickr badge which is viewed on your site. That’s cool. And immediate… and viral. And there are lots of third party support for Flickr including printing your images, making stamps, transferring to DVD and backing up images and slideshows. These tools make your Flickr account a very powerful marketing tool. And if that isn't enough, you can hook right up to Target to print your images and pick them up at a local store, or have them mailed to you.

Flickr also lets you set permissions for specific images and sets of images. You can make them private so only people you have given permission to can see them, and you can create multiple levels of viewers for security or promotion of images to specific clients. You can also upload very large images and make them downloadable if you wish. Flickr has various copyright protections from full protection to Creative Commons licensing.

QOOP has created an alliance with Flickr that allows you to print stunning books, calendars and posters from your Flickr images, or sets. Inexpensive and fun, they make great gifts and promotional tools. The Flickr community is wide and deep and getting more users daily. That is the way viral communities make more value for everyone involved.

Here are a few of my Flickr friends:
Catherine Jamieson
Mindfulness
Adam Nollmeyer
Deymus
Southwest Styles (My Code Warrior Partner)
Yuri Dojc

Tomorrow: Web Design Options

Previous:
Show More Pictures (DAP2)
Be Found on the Search Engines. (DAP 1)

Top Ten Action Plans for 2006 (2)

Show More Pictures (DAP2)

Never have photographers had such opportunity to show more images and pictures to so many possible buyers. And yet we see the old ways still pervading in so many photographers marketing plans. What do I mean by “old ways”? Having a portfolio that is the same as it was 6 months ago (or longer), having the same web site images that were there last month… not taking advantage of all the ways there are to show clients and prospects how much you love shooting.

Plan 2, Part A - Create a photoblog on a subject near and dear to you.

Portraits, cars, babies, veterans, old structures, random moments in your life, family, friends, work… whatever turns you on to shoot. Post to it a blog with some regularity. Maybe once a week, or twice a week… or whenever the mood strikes. Tell us a little about the image, some behind the scenes stuff that will show us what you are thinking about or how you handle challenges.

For inexperienced bloggers I recommend Blogger (www.blogger.com). You can be up and posting in 2 minutes flat and it is free. Choose a template and start uploading and writing. There is also My-Expressions (www.my-expressions.com) where for a couple of bucks a month you can have a very nice, multi-page blog. For the more adventurous and those with a basic knowledge of coding (Perl, PHP, CSS) there is Typepad, Moveable Type and SquareSpace. These templates are a bit more difficult to work with however and you may need some outside resources to make it look and work exactly as you wish. There is also Buzznet, (free) a community that is a lot of fun to belong to and make friends. (Update: forgot the impressive WordPress from the list. It's added now.)

Get your blog listed at Photoblogs.org (www.photoblogs.org) and then let everyone know about it. Get committed and get a schedule. Know you are going to update it with new images and do not get distracted or disappointed. Get involved with Photo Friday and all of the weekly / monthly shoots that can get your creative juices flowing.

Be involved with a few photoblogs by posting and making an online presence for yourself. It can payoff, by the involvement, encouragement and resources of your new online friends.

Plan 2, Part B - Update, update, update

Update the images in your portfolios as often as you create new images. That sounds easy, but we all know how busy we get and things slip. Don’t let them. Make it part of your workflow and as you create and save images, drop the ones you like best into a folder for easy retrieval and upload. I would recommend new images weekly, and revolve some images through the portfolio so there is always new and fresh stuff there.

If you have a designer that has to put your images up for you, then you are at a disadvantage. Have your web designer create portfolios with image management built in. We offer the Total Control Site, but there are other solutions that can be made to work as well. It is imperative that you have a dynamic, new, fresh looking portfolio online… one that is updated often.

Plan 2, Part C - Tell everyone about it

Tell everyone you know about the new images being made available online. Tell them on the front page when you put some new shots up from a recent job or personal shoot. Send emails out to clients and prospects alike with the information on your new posts. Ok, maybe not every post, but at least one per month. Let them know about your photoblog, how often you post there and make them want to visit it and share the site with friends, peers and colleagues. Make bumper stickers and t-shirts. Put the address on your business card and in your signature file for email.

I know this sounds like a lot of work, but it truly isn’t. It takes planning and commitment, but the actual time spent doing it is merely minutes per week. Here are a few blogs that I enjoy, and hope they get you thinking about getting involved. I visit hundreds of them per month, there are so many that I like... this is just a small sample. See the blogroll on the site for more.

Rick Lee
A Walk Through Durham Township
Brooks Ayola
Chromasia
Shutterbug

Tomorrow: Flickr: Why It Is Different and Powerful

Previous:
Be Found on the Search Engines. (DAP 1)

Video from the Front

Can't tell if she is an MSM reporter or a Vlogger. Hmmmmm... no matter. Even when the interview goes awry she stays calm and collected.

Bore Me - Iraq news -

Top Ten Action Plans for 2006

Starting today - and for the next ten days - I will make a post per day with the top ten things I think photographers / small businesses need to think about for the coming year. Think of it as Don’s Action Plan for 2006. I will make the final post on January 1, 2006, and I hope you will take a few moments to peruse the list and think of ways to make it work for you.

Originally I had thought of naming it Web 2.0 for photographers, but since I really do not like that term (too nebulous, and we are really about Web 3.0, or 3.4.5 beta-build 117… but let’s not quibble), I decided on Don’s Action Plan. DAP for short.

The first DAP item is:
Be Found on the Search Engines. (DAP 1)

I will start by saying that being found on a search engine will probably not result in an instant 25K account, nor will it be followed by instant fame. It is, however, one of the best and cheapest forms of marketing you will ever find. And it really isn’t that hard to do. It takes three things: Research, Planning and Commitment.

Research:
Find out what search engines expect by visiting sites that explain how they work, and what you can do to increase your exposure. Stay away from companies that promise “Search Engine Optimization”. For the most part, they use tricks and gimmicks and sometimes unethical tactics. You don’t like being tricked when you are marketed to, don’t think your clients would enjoy it when you do it. (NOTE: Some SEO companies are ethical and focus on rebuilding the site to make it more attractive to SE’s, and that is fine.)

Do a few searches on Keywords you think would be used by those looking to find you. See who comes up. Are they competitors? Are their sites ranked highly? (You should have a Google Tool Bar installed). Visit www.alexa.com and see where their sites place on visitor ranking. Look at their meta tags (View / Source) found at the top of the html. It is ok to look for research, but copying someone else’s meta tags is neither wise nor really ethical. Learn how to correctly apply Keywords, Content and other important Meta information to your site.

Planning
A well designed, well programmed and SE friendly site is “optimized’. Make sure you have the following:

• meta tags
• descriptive page names
• html text that can be indexed (read) by the SE’s
• content that can be changed quickly and easily
• content that changes at least once per month (news, ‘what’s new’, new projects…)
• no frames on home page or important directory pages (fine in portfolios)
• flash ‘embedded’ in html with html text is fine
• no ‘total’ flash home page
• no ‘cover page’, ‘splash page’ or other old web intro
  

In addition, you should make sure you or your web designer use CSS as much as possible. The more CSS you use, the faster the page loads and the easier it is for SE’s to index your site.

Download the Google Tool Bar for your browser (FireFox is the browser I use most) and take a look at your Page Ranking. You should aim for a 4 or better. There are many things to use the Toolbar for, and checking your ranking is one of the most important. You can also see the last time Google visited your site, what the page looked like and how many pages link to your site. Increasing links in from popular web sites should be a priority.

Commitment
If you are thinking about a redesign, or an enhancement to help with indexing and Page Rank (PR), make sure you make decisions based on the inherent qualities and functions of the web. Remember: the web is not a brochure, magazine, poster, multimedia presentation, or book. It is a medium that must be understood well by the designer. Far too many sites are designed like they were CD ROM presentations or showpieces for the designers. The web, for now, is about quickly finding, viewing and disseminating information.

Make your homepage informative and relevant with content that changes and keeps the visitor coming back for more. There is nothing more disappointing for me than visiting a site that had great stuff two months ago and visiting again to find nothing has changed. Suggested items may be News of what is happening in your studio this week/month, new jobs or projects you are working on, maybe an outtake of two of that job, new employees, models you have worked with, a ‘thank you’ or ‘shout out’ to an AD or editor you have worked with, new equipment that will help set you apart from your competition, awards won, favorite image from the week, upcoming travel… there are so many things that you can use to keep it fresh.

Make a schedule to update your dynamic content at least every two weeks. That will keep the SE spiders coming back and definitely increase your ranking. Make it a priority to find sites that will link to you. NOTE: Do not use link farms, link exchanges or any silly, untargeted link pages. Think clients, models you have worked with, agencies, organizations and resource pages. Keep to the schedule, even if it means only 20 minutes every update session.

Tomorrow:
Show More Pictures

Wired News: Americans 'Need' Their Gadgets

Well, in a word, yes

Wired News: Americans 'Need' Their Gadgets: "'Part of the reason is the hype, the commercial selling of it,' he said. 'Some people feel the products will improve the quality of their lives. But do we really need to be connected in every way, shape or form?'"

It is amazing to me. What this 'psyhcologist' is saying means he doesn't even 'get' why people are connected. Staying connected, networked and a part of many communities allows some folks to thrive. I just don't believe that people are so fragile as to let some 'fad' dictate their life structure. A few, yes, but not most. To many of us the technology has opened up new worlds of opportunity.

More Distrust? Yep.

I get so damn tired of this crap. "I am so sorry? I wish I hadn't done it." Nineteen times." Actually when people say these things they are really saying they wish they hadn't gotten caught red-handed. Rules are rules and everyone should follow them, except the ones that ignore them and then apologize later. Sheesh.

Wired News: Wikipedia Founder Edits Own Bio: "'People shouldn't do it, including me,' he said. 'I wish I hadn't done it. It's in poor taste.... People have a lot of information about themselves but staying objective is difficult. That's the trade-off in editing entries about yourself.... If you see a blatant error or misconception about yourself, you really want to set it straight.'"

In the blink of an eye, blogs became big

Well...

Philadelphia Inquirer | 12/20/2005 | Blinq | In the blink of an eye, blogs became big: "And people are spending more time reading them. A recent survey by Advertising Age found about 35 million workers in the United States visit blogs and spend an average of 40 minutes a day reading them. One out of four blog visits could be considered job-related.

Andy Sernovitz, chief executive of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, told Management Issues online magazine that blogs had become the favored diversion for 'office goof-off time.' Blinq reader (and blogger) William Young put the medium's appeal this way: 'Anyone who participates in the blogosphere knows that it's the divining rod of the nation.'"

Promotion: When is it too much?

Seth's post on promotion, blogs and the relationship between readers and bloggers / site owners and the level of promotion that is expected. It also touches on the self promotion paradox of blowing one's horn too loudly and crossing the line into the oncoming lane of hucksterism.

Man, do I get it. Daniel and I think our PHOTOtool is one of the best items around for photographers to use to increase awareness, create wider markets, sell images in a variety of ways, and stay in touch with clients. Yet we don't post about it very often. I sometimes want to post something here that I think is important, or has some relevance, but fear that it would be construed as huckstering (is that a word?). So I usually don't.

So, I wonder what to do? I really believe in our tools, and the power they can bring to photographers and small businesses, yet want the blog to remain somewhat 'untainted' by 'advertising'. Maybe that shows how jaded we have become in expecting advertising to be deceitful, or somehow vaguely dishonest. Even when we know we are talking about real truths, and take pains to explain the ways it can be used, the tools and services some of us market can seem crass if we overhype them.

I can remember finding a new blog by a rather famous "Marketing Guru". It was not a blog, but a continuous, and tediously boring ad for his "seminars" and "reports". Damn awful... I can't do that 'self-serving', all about me, crap. Cheapens the message.

And blogs aint magazines, nor are they books. They are a medium, a tool for sharing, teaching, learning, expounding, preaching, proseletyzing, evangelizing and occasionally shouting. But they fail as 'hardsell' shenanigans. And that is a good thing. Seth wonders how some seem to walk near or cross that line and mantain readers. I find it interesting as well, but cannot explain it either. I don't mind Blogads, or even banners. But I like the content clean of hype, and strong wth ideas.

I wonder where that uncrossable line is too, Seth. I sometimes feel we should all blow our horns a bit louder, takeing care what tunes we play.

Seth's Blog: Promotion, self-promotion and [insert ad here]: "In email, no one, at least no one I respect or believe, enjoys getting spam. Ads in email don't work because email is a tool, not a medium. If I subscribe to a permission-based email campaign (like those notes from Amazon or a gift certificate on my birthday from Yahoo) then I look forward to it and respond. But ads in the sense of unanticipated, impersonal and irrelevant... not on my agenda, or yours, when it comes to email, or RSS for that matter.

But the blog experience is different. Maybe.

The most popular blog in the world carries more than 25 different ads on its home page. The other most popular blog in the world carries just 1. Clearly, one blog profits more than the other, but it doesn't seem to affect readership."

A List Apart: Why Are You Here?

Wonderful read on why online use is becoming so much more fun, ubiquitous and downright necessary.

A List Apart: Articles: Why Are You Here?: "Now, however, it’s no longer geeks and early adopters who are preaching the word. People all over the world who have no interest in Web standards or SQL are flocking here, looking for something that they can no longer find in physical reality. Look at Diaryland, for example. Yes, yes, a lot of the writing in Diaryland is crap, but 99% of everything is crap. And even if the authors of Diaryland aren’t penning the Iliad, they’re writing. They’re out here. They’ve been given the opportunity to make their voices heard. They’ve peeked through the veil, and they’ve seen that there is possibility here in the online world, that there might be something that can answer the questions we’ve all had.

This is a huge shift from the tech-happy libertarian/anarchic ethos that gets all the hype. However, people don’t want the Next Big Thing; they want a space where they can get away from modern life. Instead of getting on their knees and asking someone for the answers, they’re trying to determine the answers for themselves. They want a space, a cave, a retreat, a wall they can mark on so that others can see and share."

A Little Off Topic

But a good read nonetheless. Touching words and reflective thoughts on a journey we must all make one day.

ArtsJournal: About Last Night: "As I thought back over the past couple of months and remembered some of the things I'd been posting, it hit me for the first time that I must have decided somewhere in the deepest recesses of my mind that I was dying, and that I’d been spending the preceding days and weeks trying as best I could to come to terms with the seeming arrival of what Henry James called “the distinguished thing.” Why had I been so shy about calling a doctor? What made me respond so immediately and intensely to the Broadway revival of Sweeney Todd? Why did I quit listening to music for pleasure after hours? All at once I knew."

The Photography of Jim Brandenburg

One, and only one, shot per day. Scary. This was before blogs so he was way ahead of the current shot a day crowd. These are fabuluos images from 1994 and the wonderful Jim Brandenburg. Site is in Flash, click galleries and then "chasing the light." Enjoy.

The Photography of Jim Brandenburg

Like Art? Like Science?

You will really like this site. Built for a deadtree magazine, it is insightful, fun and well designed. For you 'techie types' the whole thing was built in Movable Type Blog software. Impressive indeed.

Here is a link to the developers.

Seed: Science is Culture

Here is another good article with links you will find interesting.

And this site for Whole Studios dismisses with fluff and gets right to the portfolio. All done with blogging software.

web 2.0 experience

... at Adaptive Path. A good, if not overly simple, introduction to what is coming. And it will be here sooner than we think.

adaptive path » the web 2.0 experience continuum: "In the middle of the continuum, we’ll have rich, desktop-like applications that have migrated to the Web, thanks to Ajax, Flex, Flash, Laszlo, and whatever else comes along. These will be traditional desktop applications like word processing, spreadsheets, and email. But the more interesting will be Internet-native, those built to take advantage of the strengths of the Internet: collective actions and data (e.g. Amazon’s “People who bought this also bought…”), social communities across wide distances (Yahoo Groups), aggregation of many sources of data, near real-time access to timely data (stock quotes, news), and easy publishing of content from one to many (blogs, Flickr)."

Bloggers With Video Cameras

Interesting article in WSJ on a phenomena that is changing the landscape of entertainment, news and citizen involvement. 'Regular' people with simple, inexpensive technology, can now produce content in video and audio form as well as text and images. Katrina was far better covered by bloggers and bloggers with video cameras than by the MSM who were too busy with trying to find power for their trucks and interviewing politicians than doing some real reporting.

Recently we purchased on of these cool little Casio cameras($350 at CostCo), and have so far been thrilled with it. Images are fine, and the video/audio, while a bit contrasty, have been exceptionally good. Everything is shot on CF Cards and that makes taking it straight into the Mac or the PC easy. I also have one of these JVC Digital models ($325 at Sam's Club) which is high quality video with 2MP image capture. The zoom is outrageous and the quality is simply amazing. The still images are fine for web use... and with the stability at the unbelievable zoom reach makes taking long tele shots easy.

I have been preparing digital interviews for our PHOTOtool site, our photographicmarketing.com site (I know... we need to update that bad-bay) and some new ventures I am working on with Barry Solberg, a life-coach and consultant for men.

There will be a huge growth in this medium and there will be more applications than can be imagined. I would hope that many photographers would be jumping on this to create wonderful digital content for the web, promote themselves with clips, teach and simply share technique.

WSJ.com - Vlogger (noun): Blogger With Video Camera: "A few years ago, anyone with a new concept in video content would have faced huge hurdles obtaining mass distribution. They would have had to spend millions to develop a new network and even then might not have sold it to satellite and cable operators, whose channel lineups are getting saturated. Today, essentially all someone like Ms. Agnew needs to make a so-called video Web log, or vlog, is a digital camera that can capture moving images and high-speed Internet access.

The new medium, which is attracting thousands of aspiring video producers, is part of a broader trend of do-it-yourself content that's sweeping the television landscape. Videos produced by individuals and tiny production operations also are finding their way to on-demand services offered by cable companies and new networks, like Current, that solicit user content. While most viewers stumble across vlogs while Web surfing, others find them on Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes directory, which lists some vlogs, calling them video podcasts."

Here's some good advice...

I know.. we hear this all the time, but here it is again. Every time we read it we realize that it is true. Take a moment and read some of the posts here and think about how we are going to do things differently next year. Different and better.

Joe Polish's Marketing Nuggets:

1)Discipline means doing the right things even when you don't feel like doing them.

2)The most important thing to invest intense concentration in is…Marketing.

3)On January 1st , you and I get the same number of minutes to go out and plant. So, if you're not all that happy with your harvest, talk to the person who "

Read the whole list!

Seth's Blog: Must read

Seth's Blog: The e-consultancy interview: "2. Should every business use the internet to communicate? What are the basics of an internet communications strategy?

You should only use the internet if you want your communications to be FAST and you want to reach LARGE NUMBERS with no intermediaries. If you can't handle that, though, you shouldn't try."

Macro Shooting - with Onion Dip.... MMMMMM

Read the whole article. Talk about thinking outside the box... er, can. Great imagination and careful construction.

Photocritic.org » Blog Archive » Extreme Macro Photography on a budget: "Of course, as I’m using a Pringles can to make this lens, you also have the opportunity to pause for a snack. Now that’s the type of DIY projects I like."

Update:
"I don't know how, but late at night I got the idea that I wanted to covert my new 3D cell Mag-Lite to a handy photo-lamp. Next morning I dug out some 250 GSM paper and some adhesive foil I've been saving for a worthy project and whipped up a quick ghetto-lamp:"
From Krautwald.

Digital Camera Carnival at Instapundit

You will have a great time reading all the posts here. Grab a hot cup of coffee and settle in for a while.

Instapundit.com - Digital Camera Carnival!

Organized Individualists: Provocative

... but true....

Organized Individualists: "I say:
'Commercial photographers have neither a constitutional nor a God-given right to exist as a provider of images to businesses. They exist if they serve their clients well and are supported by those clients in one way or another.'

And if they can't adapt to the new reality of life on the web, too bad."

Citizen Photojournalists....

Cool. I think we have barely scratched the surface of the power of images and instant access.

Techdirt:Participatory Journalism In Action: "There's been plenty of talk about 'citizen journalism' and how things like cameraphones would help turn the average person on the street into a photojournalist. It appears that's happening extremely quickly (so much for those who said cameraphones would never be useful). After the London bombings this past summer, apparently the BBC received about 1,000 images from the public. After this weekend's oil depot explosion, they received well over 6,000. Obviously, there may be other factors involved -- but it is still interesting to note just how many people appear to be snapping photos and sending them in to news organizations. "

Lots of good reading...

here...

Fryer's Blog in the Mountains: "There are pratical things you can do to keep your innovation abilities sharp. No matter how hectic your schedule becomes, you need to spend some time everyday in casual reading in technology and what is going on in your markets and the world in general. Add to this monthly forays into social and professional gatherings. Listen, observe. This kind of balance will help you acheive the dual goals of innovation and execution."

Oh my goodness...

... this is like wonderland for me... I love these things.

CR221 Solo: "The true magic of this little wonder lies in its ability to produce the cleanest, most consistent sound of any radio on the market. Crosley accomplishes this with AroundSound™, a proprietary design philosophy that eliminates “hot spots” in sound reproduction. Regardless of its placement in a room, the Solo delivers a measurable difference in acoustic consistency – more than three times as its nearest competitor. To the consumer, this means a more pleasurable listening experience, creating an enveloping effect that wraps the listener in a comfortable cocoon of pleasant, warm tone."

Broken Windows. Broken Business... Broken Industry?

"Broken Window Theory" from Malcolm Gladwell... If you haven't read the book, you should.

This post on "Broken Window Theory" applied to business and taking care of business critical details (clean counter-tops in a restaurant for instance), to maintain customer loyalty makes me think about how it may apply to a whole industry. In many ways some industries are broken, or breaking, because of the cumulative 'broken windows' created by the industry group as a whole.

Deep discounting, lowering the value of the service, cut-throat tactics, incredible diversity in fee structure (Stock images that cost between $.50 and $10,000 plus for instance?)... an industry that has no meaningful parameters for value and service expectations...

Scary huh?

But I also believe that just because an industry can appear to be breaking, that doesn't mean that all of the practitioners of that industry should just throw up their hands and break their own window. I also believe that broken windows can be fixed, one pane at a time. One at a time. And with great care.

Brand Autopsy: Broken Windows. Broken Business.: "According to Levine, broken windows are telltale signs to customers that a business doesn’t care, that it is poorly managed, and or it has become too big and arrogant to adequately deal with little details.

He warns businesses that customers draw wide-ranging conclusions based upon their perceptions of the broken windows they find. These negative perceptions will undermine a business as they can turn once highly-satisfied customers into very-dissatisfied customers who choose take their business elsewhere."

Read Read

Worst analogies ever written in a high school essay: "

- He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.
Jack Bross, Chevy Chase

- The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.
Gary F. Hevel, Silver Spring

- Her date was pleasant enough, but she knew that if her life was a movie this guy would be buried in the credits as something like 'Second Tall Man.'
Russell Beland, Springfield

- Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.
Jennifer Hart, Arlington"

Are you a Zero-Sum Victim?

Many times when in discussions with clients, friends and peers I see a way of thinking that is so limiting to success that can paralyze and pulverize any initiative. It is called "Zero Sum" and I have been an evangelist for the destruction of this failed viewpoint for most of my life.

Examples? Sure. I have heard complaints of others "taking all my clients", or "getting all the jobs", and the self limiting refrain of "I can't compete with (fill in the blank... price, luxurious studio, cool equipment). Zero Sum thinking.

It starts by accepting a flawed viewpoint as a fact. There is only so much success allotted to our profession and if so and so gets his, someone else had to lose theirs. When you accept that postition, you become desperate to "get yours" or maybe fixate on those that have already achieved success as taking too much of the allotted pie. (Listen to people talk about the successful in their industry. Are they excited for those who have achieved success, or jealous/angry/resigned.)

I believe that success is never a Zero Sum game. There is no "pie" with only "x" amount of slices to capture. And when I capture an additional slice, I had to take it from someone else. Rather I believe that success can breed success, that a rising tide of success in an industry can raise all boats in that harbor. I sincerely want everyone who decides to do something to do it well, and become successful and happy.

Happiness is one of the first casualties of Zero Sum thinking. When the worldview is based upon the conflict of someone capturing all of the success, leaving so many on the wayside without theirs, the world becomes so much more frightening.

Does this mean that success should be easy and granted to everyone who simply asks? Of course not. You still have to refine and define your work, get better at it, promote it, work deep in to the night, gain as many clients as you can, lose as few as possible, market, write, shoot, blog.... On and on. Success isn't a birthright, it is an achievable point to those who earn it. And your success will be built on your work, not the failure of others, or to their diminishment.

(What about competition, dude, there's always folks trying to gain an advantage and take my market share - ed.) Yes. That's called the marketplace. It can be a rough and tumble place to be. But the marketplace is real. It is a battle of service/price/availability/marketing/reach/personality. It's challenges are real and varied. Zero Sum thinking is a head game that makes competing in the real world so much harder because it changes your view to one of "limited opportunity". With the natural battles of the marketplace, why would you tie the anchor of Zero Sum around your waist as you wade in to do fight for your own success?

Read the whole thing....

Digital Rules By Rich Karlgaard: "It is not AIDS or Avian Flu.

It is a monstrously flawed idea.

The sickest thinking and the source of human misery throughout the ages is based on a belief that:

1. The earth is running out of resources
2. People consume more than they contribute
3. Wealth is a zero sum distribution game"

But why does it cost $87 for a cup?

Well done mini site to help a "struggling little coffee shop chain". ;-) Even though it is totally flash, it is really fun and informative.

Introspective Preparedness....

Heh. (to borrow from the good professor)

Interviews From Hell

And naming the little bugger is really tough...

see previous post.

Firewheel Design | Four Concentric Circles of a Web 2.0 Name: "Okay, so there are some Web 2.0 brands out there with more sensible names, but really, we all know the good domains have been gone for at least five or six years now. So what are you to do? You've got your great new Web 2.0 idea, a little angel investment in your pocket, but you need a name. Let's take a look at the Four Concentric Circles of a Web 2.0 Brand Name."

Well that clears that up.

... maybe not. Still can't help thinking the Web 2.0 meme will be gone by Q2 next year. Too hard to define and nearly impossible to explain... anyway, I think we are really at Web3.2 ... but that's just me.

del.icio.us: what is web 2.0?: "We can report that as of October 31, 2005 there have been over 230,000 separate bookmarks and over 7,000 unique tags associated with the term “Web 2.0” by del.icio.us users. So for this exercise, we lopped off the really long tail and normalized some similar terms (e.g. combining blog, blogs, and blogging), and came up with this snapshot of what Web 2.0 REALLY is"

Wierd...

World news from The Times and the Sunday Times - Times Online: "THEY are called echizen kurage and they sound like monsters from the trashier reaches of Japanese science fiction.

They are 6ft wide and weigh 450lb (200kg), with countless poisonous tentacles, they have drifted across the void to terrorise the people of Japan. Vast armadas of the slimy horrors have cut off the country’s food supply. As soon as one is killed more appear to take its place.

Finally, the quarrelsome governments of the region are banding together to unite against the enemy."

The Consumerist is now up

Now this is a new way to critique a catalog. Models average weight. When I wnt to the site, it took forever to load and is a hybrid site (I like) with Flash and html... of course there are no meta-tags, page names are stupidy thought out and twice the flash movie didnt load. Also no copy to be picked up by search engines. So I guess this is a cool strategy. "Let's make it difficult for people to find us. We will sell more merchandise that way."

Sheesh

The Consumerist: Shoppers Bite Back: "The Models: Three-fifths, by weight, of the girls we knew next door. In Elf City. The redhead, relegated to the back of the book, is stunning."

Update: Check out the homepage URL. Strange.

from Seth's Blog

This is a succint and right to it post. Living or just breathing. Producing or just doing what is expected. Going for excellence or just enough to get by. I love the former and hate it when I sometimes end up in the latter category for whatever reason. Try to break free and stay on top. Ya know.

Seth's Blog: "The job you do, apparently, has nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not you have the mindset of a producer. I've been called by talented salespeople who are clearly producers... and by failures who were just following a script. I've worked with people who always manage to make something happen... and with those who manage to have an excuse ready when it doesn't.

Producing is not about making someting. It's about making something other people thought couldn't be done--or were too distracted to do themselves."

Preparing for EVERY contingent may not be sensible

This is a post on the scaling of "Uptime" as it regards to server accessibility and websites. It can also regard how we prepare our business, and our marketing and other things that seem to get in the way of our actually getting work done. Overpreparation is nearly as bad as underpreparation. Both can create havoc, end up being expensive and create barriers to creativity and work.

Don't scale: 99.999% uptime is for Wal-Mart - Signal vs. Noise (by 37signals): "If you’re Wal-Mart and your credit card processing pipeline stops for 30 minutes during prime time, yes, the world does end. Someone might very well be fired. The business loses millions of dollars. Wal-Mart gets in the news and loses millions more on the goodwill account.

Now what if Delicious, Feedster, or Technorati goes down for 30 minutes? How big is the inconvenience of not being able to get to your tagged bookmarks or do yet another ego-search with Feedster or Technorati for 30 minutes? Not that high. The world does not come to an end. Nobody gets fired."

Read the wiggles and squirms of this guy..

... he shoulda been a politician. "I didn't want to sell them when I sent them out to editors."

Yep... that's what most of us do... send photos to editors and when they ask to buy them we put our foot down and tell them "no way."

"These are Ms Anistons' uh, chestie-thingies... I don't know why you would think I would sell them to you just cause I sent them to you for review."

"I didn't want to sell the images before I wanted to sell them."

Sheesh. I think being on your property may be a cause for reasonable expectation of privacy, and bring in issues of property releases and such. However, it will be a very interesting situation cause this lady seems to be somewhat of a celebrity.ABC News: Photographer: Topless Aniston 'Exposed Herself': "Brandt's celebrity photos have appeared in People magazine and the New York Post, among other publications. He says he once worked for The National Enquirer, but he says he's grown to loathe paparazzi photographers.

'There is a group out there today who are extremely aggressive and I hate them, I'll say that to you,' he said. 'They have made the so-called paparazzi business as it is, the worst that it's ever been."

Just what it says

Copyscape - Website Plagiarism Search - Web Site Content Copyright Protection: "Defend your site automatically with Copysentry Protection..."

Alas... Serendipity...

...alas.

I love design, but it is true that the web has some serious limitations based on so many things that have nothing to do with the final work (bandwidth, search engines, neurotic clients etc...) I like this article's approach. Read the whole thing.

A List Apart: Articles: The Curse of Information Design: "Jackson Pollack and John Cage would run screaming from the web for one reason: there is no room for the happy accident, the odd synchronicity, the random pattern, the part of the creative process where Trickster smiles and throws something completely unexpected into the works. Everything about web design is precise. The HTML coder building a page lays out every element down to the pixel. The visual designer can only approximate messiness, blurriness, or imprecision through graphics, and in the end it won’t matter anyway because the whole damn thing will be cut into rectangles. The whole enterprise is about structure.

Even with that, there is still plenty of room for artistic growth and experimentation. But alas, art is subjective. A designer may develop a daring layout, an innovative interface, and there is always the possibility that one theoretical user might not understand it, and that crucial $20.99 CD order might go to a competitor. The client chews her fingernails, wondering if something so unorthodox is worth the gamble."

The Proximity Effect

I just got off the phone with a photographer who was wanting to make sure that his web site would not be linked to any other photographer, lab or anyone for that matter. I explained that he wasn't able to prevent someone from linking to his site. He was extremely unhappy. I pointed out to him that car dealers create 'auto malls', that books sell better in book stores, that candy is sold in stores that sell all kinds, movies are now 24 - 40 screens, grocery stores place beans on the same aisle. And to make sure he understood that it wasn't just 'commodity' type of items I pointed to art galleries, museums and other places of fine art.

Seth Godin talked about it on this post.

I am shocked at how isolated and isolationist so many talented people are. Maybe it has something to do with self-esteem, or fear, or simply a misguided arrogance. Whatever it is, it is getting in the way of a lot of work coming to talented people.

Being in the right place at the right time may also be the place where others of your kind are also gathering. Gain more than just traffic by being in a group effort for marketing or 'buzz'.

I don't think this guy is going to get it though, he said he would place a legal threat to anyone who would dare to link to him. I passed on the design job, btw... for obvious reasons.

Would this be considered a perk?

Daniel and I just design and write code... guess we must be missing something. Sheesh.

Women - a photoset on Flickr: "Photography is my hobbie, i´m a web designer and thanks to my job i has been meeting beautiful colombian models. This set is a collection of my favorite shoots"

Come on... buy this book...

You need to read this amazing book. It's now in paperback, so even the penny pinchers among us can afford it.

Dynamist.com: The Substance of Style by Virginia Postrel: "In this penetrating, keenly observed book, Virginia Postrel shows that the “look and feel” of people, places, and things are more important than we think. Aesthetic pleasure taps deep human instincts and is essential for creativity and growth. Drawing from fields as diverse as fashion, real estate, politics, design, and economics, Postrel deftly chronicles our culture’s aesthetic imperative and argues persuasively that it is a vital component of a healthy, forward-looking society."

Build Value

You can spend some good, energizing time at this site. Reading about the engines that fund the engines... great for getting the ideas flowing.

Venturepreneur Partners : Venture Capital Reborn: "No one wants to repeat the mistakes that led to the crash. Investors are taking a much more prudent approach toward funding, even for innovative startups. And the “me-too” companies are not getting funded as quickly as they did in the past.

In today’s environment, companies are not attractive to acquirers unless they are able to first build —and prove — their value. So what does it take to build value? When can it be proven? The answer is different for every company and industry."

Do Not click if Your Kids are Near

... actually, I think the little guy has a point. I have two types of stores that I shop at this CHRISTMAS season. Those with no holiday decorations... perfectly acceptable to me - and those who have holiday decorations that say Merry Christmas. No "Happy Holidays" folks get my business. If they want to enumerate the various 'holidays' they are celebrating, that's fine. I just don't like the "happy holidays" (we don't want to offend anyone, we just want your cash) wimp thing. Take a stand. Grow a pair. Happy (_____________) - just not holidays. I am not religious in the least, I just hate revisionism and PC wimpishness. Ya know.

Rant over.

NEUROTICALLY YOURS CARTOON: NO CHRISTMAS FOR YOU

Update: What's up with this. The story has absolutely no mention of:
a. Why someone would erect the goat.
b. Why anyone would burn it.
c. What significance the goat (or burning thereof) has to the town, its people or even the country.
d. What it all means... please, I must know.

Since 1966, just 10 of the 43-foot-high goats have survived beyond Christmas Day. Most were burned _ sometimes within hours of being built during the first week of December. The 1976 goat was hit by a car, while in 1997, it was damaged by fireworks.

Passion?

Yes.

acleareye.com: "I have always wondered which attribute was more important to success in business: passion or compassion? I’ve gone back and forth on this one for years. But I’m finally done flip-flopping. Here is what I discovered from the emotion-filled, twisted faces and colorful outfits of the early blues shouters through the most current teen idols: passion sells! Passion not only sells, it creates! It busts paradigms; it inspires; it attracts; it stirs; it rejuvenates."

Jeff doesn't like FireFox

...not one little bit.

The Shape of Days: "Let me say this loudly and with perfect clarity: Firefox sucks ass. Seriously. It is a terrible computer program. It’s a nightmare on wheels with extra dipping sauce on the side. It’s shit on a cracker and we all have to take a bite. It’s bad bad. Like morally wrong. Like it makes you feel like you need to see a priest. It’s bad."

Design is More Important than Ever

Kevin examines the world of digital cameras. A world that is dominated by no one. I think he hits it right on.

Organized Individualists: So advanced, it's simple.: "Although I love my Canon S50 and Nikon D70, the fact is, they're not cool. Useful, affordable and reliable, but not cool. Compared to my iPod, their interfaces are clunky, their controls are awkward, apparently placed at random and different from one camera to the next. Because of the different shape and layout of each camera, the learning curve is new for each camera you buy. Sure, the shutter release is usually by your right index finger, but after that, there's no consistency of control placement. The camera UI is also different from one brand to the next, and even between different models in the same line."