Posts with tag 'photo'
Print store open for business
So, after an embarrassingly long (6 month) wait, I can finally announce that I have photos available for sale online. My photography has always been a borderline neurotic (ok, just plain neurotic) labor of love, and I'm always hesitant to put things up for show unless they're perfect. There was much humming and hawing, and adjusting of curves and color casts, and checking of proofs to make sure everything was in it's right place. Before I get on to any of the details, I present:
http://photos.matttrent.com
(but, keep reading below, there's a contest)
It is my goal to replace my aging Nikon D70 this year, and I'm hoping to partly fund that with a few print sales. In order to even hope to get a start on this, I need get this a bit more exposure than my limited online presence can provide. So, I'd like to ask for everyone's help in passing the URL along to friends, or anyone else you think might be interested. I know that publicity doesn't come for free, and I'm prepared to offer a reward for people's efforts.
So, I'll offering coupons for a free 8x12 or 8x8 print for the top 10 sources of traffic to the print store. The timeframe will be from today (Monday, Feb 02) to Monday, Feb 09, inclusive. At that time, I'll announce the winners here. Blog it, Twitter it, stick it on Facebook. I appreciate any and all link love (whether online or offline) I get.
While I'm somewhat partial, I don't think folks will be disappointed. The prints are very good quality. There are a number of different options out there, and in the end I decided upon Zenfolio because it had the highest quality of prints of any of the services I evaluated. And, I mean very high quality. For anyone that has seen the 2 prints above my futon, I've tweaked the current offering to look considerably better. They look gooood.
The current selection is just a preview of things to come. I wanted to start with a set that was both representative of my tastes as well as something chosen by my friends, who are my customers, after all. I took all the input I received from the various people who took the time to vote on the photos I have available on Flickr and added a few more to the mix that I either had a soft spot for, or thought would be a good test of the printers' abilities.
It's a start and I hope a good the waters. It took me an incredible number of hours of proofing and retouching to get all the photos to the point that I'd be proud to have the hanging one someone's wall. Over the next few months, I plan to expand the selection. I also have some plans for photo tours of the Lower Mainland and Pacific Northwest in general, expanding my theme of minimalist landscapes. Aside from that, I am beginning to collect the next set of photos to fill in the partial series of photos I have up there already.
The entire thing has been a learning experience, and I'm still sorting through all the bits. If you like something on my Flickr site that you don't see here, drop me a line at site+photo@matttrent.com and let me know. Check back for more excitement.
Tags: photo, photography, printing, prints
Photo voting recap
Well, it took me a bit longer to get back to this than I planned. I've been working away trying to close up projects before I go on an extended leave. I wanted to share the results of everyone's voting on my photographs.
First and foremost, thank you all that participated.
Overall, people tagged 84 images with printmeplease for consideration to be printed. The top image received 10 votes, and will definitely be touched up and included in the set first available for print. There was a mix of photos I'd selected myself, and ones that I hadn't. It proved to be an interesting experiment showing the difference between my tastes and those of my friends. Surprisingly, the two images receiving the most votes were not images that I'd selected for inclusion.
Content-wise, there are some other interesting stats. There was an almost exactly even mix of color and black and white shots across the set of all photos that received at least one vote. However, 10 of the top 13 photos (those that received 4 or more votes) were black and white. Of those top 13, 7 were landscapes, 6 were architectural/urban, and 1 was a nature/abstract. Nothing particularly surprising there. I do generally prefer black and white, and enjoy taking landscapes / abstracts. No shock my best work comes out in those subjects.
Without further ado, here are the top voted photographs, separated by how many votes they received. Below that are links to the remaining vote tags.
Tags: photo, photography, printing, prints
Help me choose photos to print
So, a couple months back, I finally replaced my old CRT with a swank new NEC LCD2690WUXi. The condition of buying such a high-end monitor was I had to promise myself that I would use it to further my photography. Specifically, I needed to use it to retouch some of my best photos photos and make prints of them available for purchase.
As a first step towards bigger plans, I envision having an automated made-to-order printer online. This way, all the photos I make available for purchase will be available any time, any day, and no one has to wait on my procrastination, or unavailability due to excessive workload or travel. I've been doing research on various online printing / fulfillment services, and this goal seems feasible. The purchase options, customer service quality, and other such metrics can all easily be evaluated through my own investigation and reviews on forums. The bigger issue (for me) is ensuring that the quality of the prints is up to my often-obsessive standards.
Numerous test prints have been ordered from different vendors. However it's difficult for me to judge the quality of the print without knowing what the original photograph was supposed to look like. All I can do is compare the image on the paper to what I think the image should look like. Things I judge as deficiencies might simply be differences in how the photographer chose to depict the shot.
So, my first order of business is to establish a canonical set of images that will serve first as my test-cases to evaluate the quality of online printers, and later as the first photos available for purchase. I already have a number of them which represent a sampling of my work in mind, but I'm not technically the intended audience. It is you, dear reader, who matters the most, as I hope you and your ilk will consider purchasing copies of my prints. While I can only guess which ones you'd consider hanging on your wall, you know with certainty.
So here's the deal -- and where you come in -- to help vote on which photos will make it into this first set to be available as prints. So, between now and June 15th (incidentally, my birthday), head over to my Flickr Photostream and tag images that interest you. There's a thousand-odd images over there, but I don't think all of them are really appropriate for print (or at least not at first). I'm mostly focused on my landscape, architectural, and abstract photos at the moment. I'm not really considering any of my club/concert- or bike-related shots at this time, so please skip those. Your best bet is to check out the Potential Prints set I've set up to collect the ones I think are likely candidates, or my Most Interesting set.
Shamelessly stealing this idea (and next 2 paragraphs) from James Duncan Davidson, when you find a photo that you'd seriously consider hanging on your wall as a print, tag it. The tag to use is printmeplease.
If somebody else has left a tag and you really want to second (or third) the vote, then by all means do so by leaving a printmeplease1 tag (or printmeplease2 tag ... you get the idea). These additional tags are very helpful to me to indicate interest. It is abusing Flickr's tagging system a bit, but it works well enough.
If you don't have a flickr account, and don't want to sign up, you can also just email your votes at site+photo@matttrent.com and I'll enter them for you. Just, please, send me the URL of the Flickr page to make it easy for me. Don't try to describe the photo and leave me to guess exactly which one.
After that, I'll collect the top 10 to 20 of my and your favorite photographs. Each of these will be lovingly retouched, using the full capability of my new monitor to really tune the quality. These photos will then be sent to the various online printers to evaluate their quality. Printers that don't make the grade will be cut, as well as photos that don't measure up when viewed in print. Eventually it will converge to the final set of photos and the final service. Then, the fun begins, and the prints can start rolling.
I've gotta say, I've been putting this off for a bit. It's a bit nerve wracking to actually try and attach a pricetag to something you're so emotionally connected to. It's one thing if lots of people say they like your work, but a completely different level finding out if they're willing to say the same with their wallet.
So, here it goes. Please take the time to vote if you're interested. I'd really appreciate it.
Edit (2008-06-04): Seems some of the oldest photos uploaded didn't have permissions correctly set so everyone could tag them. Should be fixed now.
Edit 2 (2006-06-06): If your interested in tagging any, I set up a dummy account people can use
log into flickr as:
username: account.blank@yahoo.com
password: defaultentry