Christmas Cards

As I mentioned recently, I’ve been designing Christmas Cards with local nature images on them for sale at markets and a local tearoom. Below as the draft samples I made up before sending some of them to the printer. Below that are the finals I’ve had printed – they look much better in gloss and brightly printed.

266-365 Christmas Card Collection

272-365 The finished product - Christmas Cards

The cards are available for sale. $25.00 for a pack of 10 (2 of each design) or $3.00 per card. They come with envelopes.  There will be a charge of $2.00 for postage inside Australia and $6.00 outside of Australia. Please email me if you’d like to place an order.

Selling photos online

A recent photo of mine had a lot of interest shown in it by many people, with some asking if they could buy it.  Up till recently I hadn’t done a lot about selling photos from this site and I have spent some time exploring options. I have sold quite a few photos via a stock photo site.  And I announced a few days ago that photos can now be purchased online here at this site but I have decided to take it further and set up with a third party site.  Why? Because, when you really look into it, they have already done all the hard work and made the connections.  It means photos can be bought as digital downloads, as prints in many formats, and also on products such as calendars, mugs, tshirts, mousepads and all sorts of other things.  The additional thing is that these sites already have the traffic and while my own site is developing nicely and the traffic is growing, it still doesn’t match what is already available out there.  So, I thought I’d share my research with you.

To date I’ve looked at Smugmug, Zenfolio. Photoshelter, Photomerchant, Shutterfly, Fotomoto

Smugmug has the best Google Page and Alexa ranking, which to me means they probably get more hits and have more incoming links to the other sites. If traffic is important, then that’s a plus. Zenfolio isn’t far behind though. Pricing structure reasonable with both when you consider it’s a monthly or annual fee and includes everything. Paying for your own hosting and then getting the structure in place to provide what they provide would be difficult.

Photomerchant appears to be the most expensive (which is a shame since it appears to be Australian and, therefore, local to me and in our currency) and doesn’t have the products available that other sites have. All of the other sites have great offerings – digital downloads, prints, products including mugs, mousepads, calendars, photobooks and clothing items.

Photoshelter also appears more expensive than some of the others but does have similar offerings.

Fotomoto appears to be an add-on for your website where you can link to it to sell your own photos.  A shopping cart you can build in.  I could not find any reference to a cost but there is probably a fee per sale.   They have a decent PR as well.

Photoboxgallery is another I came across. Has a reasonable Google Page Rank (4) and quite high Alexa ranking. So it’s been around for awhile and gets a lot of traffic. It also has quite a line up of products available too, to have your photos put on and sold. This one is free to set up and they take 10% of all sales from your site. They’re based in the UK I think as their pricing examples are in pounds.

So I’ve decided to take the plunge and get a third party site to encourage sales of my images as I’ve been getting enquiries.  It has taken time to source the right services to provide what the enquirer wants, and I’m afraid I may have lost some sales because the momentum is lost.  But no more delays, the deed is done and the site is set up.  Click on the image below to have a look. I’m sure I will gradually change how the site looks and will definitely upload more images over time.  If you have seen an image you’d like to buy but can’t find it at that site, please contact me so I can organise to get it up there for you.

Blogs I read

I came across a most fascinating blog today that told about another that has moving photos – not films, but a technique called ‘cinemagraph’ in order to make a photo appear to be moving.  Hair with wind going through it, a man turning pages of a book, steam from a kettle. Absolutely amazing. Is this the direction that photography might go?  I know I’ve often wished I could capture a smell from a flower or a sound from a bird when taking photos.

Jamie Beck is a photographer from NYC who does things to make her pictures that much more amazing.  Check out below!

Worth going to have a look. Click here.

Note: this photograph and others the are property Jaime. Please add her to your bookmarks as I have done. I’m glad I found out about her.

Make it RAW month

In March I’m going to endeavour to take all of my photos in RAW, rather than JPEG format.  I’ve been reading and learning a lot.  Belonging to forums like the Australian Photography Forum is a great place to hang out as it has a mixture of experienced and newbie photographers as well as professional and amateur photographers.  There’s a core group of us who are regular there (moi being one of them) and I love sharing my photos as well as looking at those of others.

I really am enjoying photography very much and keen to learn as much as possible. I am in awe of those who get such fantastic closeups and wonder what I can do to make mine like theirs.  I have similar tools but obviously still have a lot of practice to do.  So, making it RAW for a month (or however long I can last) is my endeavour to practice new photo processing (pp) skills and enhance/improve on my photography.

If you have hints and tips you’d like to share on shooting RAW photos, or processing them, why not leave your comments here to share with us all.