Group items tagged

"Now this is going to be fun…. We're excited to announce our first batch of Wordpress + PhotoShelter plugins that allow you to: 1. Integrate your PhotoShelter photos and galleries into your Graph Paper Press themes for Wordpress 2. Allow your visitors to search your PhotoShelter photos from your site's sidebar 3. Pull in your PhotoShelter gallery updates into your site's sidebar If you are a photographer who uses PhotoShelter, these integration plugins will enable you to manage your portfolio, blog, and PhotoShelter photos and galleries all from one site. The combination of Wordpress, PhotoShelter and our themes and plugins will push your web presence into the future, allowing you to connect with clients, promote, sell and license your work all from one place."

"Increasingly music is finding its way into online multimedia journalism, and with good reason. A well chosen soundtrack can pull your viewers deep into your story, keep them hooked and make an emotional point. Music is, and let's be honest about this, a way of manipulating how your audience feel. There are those purists who are against that, who argue the story should be strong enough not to need to tell your viewer how to feel. Whichever camp you lie in, one thing is for sure: if you use music in any piece of online video journalism or digital story it must be legal. There is no excuse for getting your client or your newsroom shouldered with an expensive bill just because that bit of Arcade Fire fitted perfectly with the film. The good news is there are plenty of resources out there for free, or cheap, music. Most, but not all, operate under the Creative Commons Licence, which lets you use music on certain conditions."

The Photographer's Right A Downloadable Flyer Explaining Your Rights When Stopped or Confronted for Photography The Photographer's Right is a downloadable guide that is loosely based on the Bust Card and the Know Your Rights pamphlet that used to be available on the ACLU website. It may be downloaded and printed out using Adobe Acrobat Reader. You may make copies and carry them your wallet, pocket, or camera bag to give you quick access to your rights and obligations concerning confrontations over photography. You may distribute the guide to others, provided that such distribution is not done for commercial gain and credit is given to the author.

Business Links Below are links that can help you in your business. By linking to these private sites, the ASMP is not endorsing its products, services, or privacy or security policies. We recommend you review the business's information collection policy or terms and conditions to fully understand what information is collected by this private business. Visit Industry Links for links to manufacturers, suppliers and other resources that could help you in your business.

Going Digital By Angela Wolff It's the question every photographer asks when making the switch from film to digital: Which camera is right for me? It should be no surprise that the answers are as varied as their subjects and work styles. For many, the decision boils down to the equipment already in use; sticking with the same manufacturer can shorten the learning curve and cut costs. For others, a close examination of business needs balanced with camera capability will help clarify the choice. But whatever you do, don't make the decision based on cost alone. "A lot of people are buying on price, and with [these things] you just can't do that," said Lon Atkinson of Atkinson! Studios in San Diego. "You need to carefully define your specific needs and pick based on what best fits your business."

When It Comes to SEO, a Picture Is NOT Worth a Thousand Words By Levi Wardelllevi-wardellcloseAuthor: Levi Wardell See Author's Posts (1) Recent Posts * When It Comes to SEO, a Picture Is NOT Worth a Thousand Words Levi Wardell is a Washington, D.C.-based marketing professional and photographer. With 10 years of experience in online marketing for companies of all sizes, Levi currently focuses on helping fellow photographers leverage the power of search engine optimization. You can follow Levi's blog at his Web site. Levi's photography has been seen in office settings, local newspapers, marketing documents, and most recently on display at the Mark Whistler Gallery in Baltimore. When traveling for work, Levi oftentimes found himself searching the Web for the best places to photograph in various cities. With no consistent luck finding such a resource, Levi created a directory for all photographers to enjoy -- The Best Places To Photograph Directory. in Business of Photography on December 8th, 2008 As a photographer, you face unique challenges in optimizing your Web site for search engines. Fundamentally, you want your site to showcase your work; unfortunately, a picture is not worth a thousand words to Google. Sure, Google takes hundreds of variables into consideration when building search engine result pages (SERPs). But while a human can look at your photographs and feel the expressed emotions, understand the story you're telling, and get a sense for what your expertise is, a search engine needs to be told with text. That's why, for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes, it's important for your site to combine text-rich content with a solid visual representation of your work.

Friday, December 05, 2008 Four Reasons to Consider Working for Free The U.S. stock market has been cut in half. And some countries have it worse than we do. Companies are shedding jobs like there is no tomorrow. And heaven help you if you work for a newspaper or a magazine. The US auto industry is on the verge of imploding. People are losing their homes to foreclosure. And, on the off chance that you had the nerve to try to buy something, credit is almost impossible to come by. It is against that backdrop that I would like to talk about working for free.

Improving a bad contract It is all too common for a publisher to ask you to sign a work agreement that cancels your rights while imposing new obligations on you. But you can protect yourself. First, learn to recognize bad contract terms. Second, be ready to propose fairer terms. Below, we present an example of an extremely bad contract - one that is actually being used by a New York publisher - along with a point-by-point explanation of what's wrong and what would make it better.

Do We Need Photojournalists? Plus Lost Art of Black & White So if you have a hoard of amateurs shooting photographs, do you need professional photojournalists? I want to use our SoCon08 event at Kennesaw State University as a little test, so you, not I, can answer that question.

"Interview with Marco Vernaschi Retracted For those of you who check in regularly, you may have noticed that I have removed two posts on the subject of child sacrifice in Uganda by the photographer Marco Vernaschi. I took my time in making this decision and I believe that the details should be revealed to the public so that it is clear how I became involved in this story and what led to my decision to retract the interview. If you have not already read Mr. Vernaschi's article on the Pulitzer Center's website, please do so now."

"Thinking Video? Make a plan [by Jay Kinghorn] If you're thinking about adding video to the services you offer clients, be sure to give the subject some deep thought before jumping in with both feet. Here are three concepts you may want to think through before you start marketing your video services."

Top 10 Tips for Twitter … and Life by Guest Poster on January 22, 2009 in Twitter for Beginners In this post Crystal N Woods (follow her at @crystalsquest) shares some great tips for those starting out in Twitter. twitter-tips.png The buzz this year is all about Twitter, the 'microblog' service. Both the web and twitter are full of pleas from people who say they don't 'get it'. In a nutshell, the point of twitter is to post very short updates - no more than 140 characters. It's a bit like a txt msg for the web, on 'what you're doing now'. These tweets can be links to cool sites you've found, conversations with other twitter users, questions you want a quick answer for, what you're having for dinner or even haiku poetry. The main difference between twitter and txt is: when you send it out it goes out to everyone who's opted to follow you. On the receiving end, you're getting these updates from everyone you've chosen to follow. This constant flow of short messages to and from is called the 'twitter stream'. It can be a bit overwhelming at first. Just like modern life. In fact, it occurred to me that the people who 'get it' and rave about it the most are the very same people who have achieved vast levels of success in this information age. So, here's my take on the top 10 success tips for twitter… and Life!

Dorothea Lange: The Photographer As Agricultural Sociologist By Linda Gordon To a startling degree, popular understanding of the Great Depression of the 1930s derives from visual images, and among them, Dorothea Lange's are the most influential. Although many do not know her name, her photographs live in the subconscious of virtually anyone in the United States who has any concept of that economic disaster. Her pictures exerted great force in their own time, helping shape 1930s and 1940s Popular Front representational and artistic sensibility, because the Farm Security Administration (FSA), her employer, distributed the photographs aggressively through the mass media. If you watch the film The Grapes of Wrath with a collection of her photographs next to you, you will see the influence.1 Lange's commitment to making her photography speak to matters of injustice was hardly unique-thousands of artists, writers, dancers, and actors were trying to connect with the vibrant grass-roots social movements of the time. They formed a cultural wing of the Popular Front, a politics of liberal-Left unity in support of the New Deal.

Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable Back in 1993, the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain began investigating piracy of Dave Barry's popular column, which was published by the Miami Herald and syndicated widely. In the course of tracking down the sources of unlicensed distribution, they found many things, including the copying of his column to alt.fan.dave_barry on usenet; a 2000-person strong mailing list also reading pirated versions; and a teenager in the Midwest who was doing some of the copying himself, because he loved Barry's work so much he wanted everybody to be able to read it. One of the people I was hanging around with online back then was Gordy Thompson, who managed internet services at the New York Times. I remember Thompson saying something to the effect of "When a 14 year old kid can blow up your business in his spare time, not because he hates you but because he loves you, then you got a problem." I think about that conversation a lot these days.

Interview with Bruce Davidson, The Kojo Nnamdi Show (WAMU/Chicago), November 2006 Q: You're on the streets of Chicago, wandering into Pentecostal churches, how did that initial roaming around, years ago, play out later in life? BD: I think that I was a born loner. My mother was a single parent, working in a torpedo factory in the Midwest, and I didn't like school. I felt very isolated. And so I could do both my reading and my writing at the same time, with a camera. Q: And that is what became the trajectory for the rest of your life. I want to go to 1961, because even as I look at the book "Time of Change", I think it was before you ever rode with the Freedom Riders that you got a job to shoot fashion models. And you got caught-up in that - it was quite glamorous. But at the time, your heart wasn't really in it, was it. BD: In 1959, I photographed a Brooklyn gang for a year. And when that was published, Alex Lieberman at Vogue asked me if I'd like to do fashion. He'd been told by Cartier-Bresson that I could do fashion because I could do gangs - it doesn't make a difference. So I began to do fashion to support other things I wanted to do. But my heart wasn't in it. The models were too tall and too sophisticated for me, and I'm a sloppy dresser.

Highlight and Share the Web! Diigo is a powerful research tool and a knowledge-sharing community Research and Collaborate * Don't just bookmark! Highlight the web! Add sticky notes too! * Access and search your findings from any PC or iphone! * Create groups to pool resources for specific projects. Connect and Discover * You are what you annotate, creating a presence for you in the community. * Connect with friends effortlessly and non-intrusively through content. * Discover quality resources on any subject or get personalized recommendations. * Learn More » Play Demo Video

Twitter Basics for Journalists & Recovering Journos On Saturday, at the annual conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists, I gave a talk to an audience of mostly journalists explaining the basics of blogs, social media, and search visibility. People had lots of questions, more than I could get to in the session. I was getting stopped in halls, at parties, and even in bathrooms, to be asked things like, "Does it really make that big a difference if I blog under my own domain?" (Answer: Yes!) OK, I don't mind answering those questions. That's really why I went to this conference - because I know that journalists (many of whom are facing potential layoffs, or who have already been laid off) are in dire need of online media awareness and skills. So I'm going to do a bunch of posts answering questions, because it's more efficient to do that via blogging. This is one of those posts. By now you've probably heard about Twitter, the social media service that allows you to publish posts of 140 characters max. What Twitter does, in a nutshell: This service allows you to receive posts ("tweets") from other Twitter users whom you choose to "follow." Likewise, other Twitter users can choose to follow you. When you follow someone on Twitter, their tweets show up in reverse chronological order in the "tweetstream" that scrolls down the Twitter home page when you're logged in. The effect is somewhat like an ongoing Headline News version of what's happening in the minds and worlds of people you know or find interesting.

Lisa's amazing story about the truth of what is happening in the Northern Territory of Australia: In her own words: "It is almost as difficult to get any information about the truth of what is happening in the Northern Territory of Australia as it is to get an idea of what is happening in Tibet, except here they are not using guns anymore- Well at least it has been 50 years since you could buy a gun license to kill an Aborigine- truly… I am sure you will go what is the fuss about when you see this work. To me they reflect the vibrancy of the people but also their isolation. The conditions are harsh but the Warlpiri people have a beauty and strength that is of the environment. Which they don't want to lose. These photos also include a self portrait in the landscape and I am not allowed to use that either. I am at a complete loss to know why but I guess its because its uncovering a part of the country of Australia that is very resource rich and heaven forbid beautiful."

Now printable! Reporter's Guide to Multimedia Proficiency Many, many people asked me to create a single PDF version of all 15 posts in my RGMP series on this blog. It's done. Reporter's Guide to Multimedia Proficiency (PDF; 536 KB) This 42-page document is fully linked and usable online in most Web browsers, or in Adobe Reader, or in Preview on the Mac OS. In other words, you don't need to print it. But if that's what you want, go right ahead.

Now printable! Reporter's Guide to Multimedia Proficiency Many, many people asked me to create a single PDF version of all 15 posts in my RGMP series on this blog. It's done. Reporter's Guide to Multimedia Proficiency (PDF; 536 KB) This 42-page document is fully linked and usable online in most Web browsers, or in Adobe Reader, or in Preview on the Mac OS. In other words, you don't need to print it. But if that's what you want, go right ahead.

Photography Websites: How to design a website that image buyers will love website-montage.jpg We're releasing something special today. If you're selling photos online, displaying your portfolio to get more commercial or editorial assignments, or even designing websites for photographers, you'll want to have a look at this. Do you ever wonder, "Is my website doing its job? Am I working hard to get people there, only to have the site itself betray me?" Don't worry, you're not alone (being betrayed by your website is a growing problem). When we launched our photography website templates last fall, we picked up on this very fact - photographers and designers generally build websites based on their artists' intuition, and leave sound business reasoning aside. That's bad, of course, when you want your website to support your primary business goal - selling more of your work.