While we update the systems, we accidentally deleted all the newer websites for city photography, rather than putting the older websites on-line, we have chosen to not put any on-line until we have redeveloped the new websites fully.

It is a bitter pill to swallow as this time of year is normally our busiest, but with the little to no calls it allows us time for uninterrupted system updates.

As we are updating the servers, Never have I came across such a loony system for emails.

The start of the issue is that the software packages don’t exist as a single point or solution. This means that:

• user handling is separate (requires 3 software packs)
• incoming mail is separate to holding email,
• transferring incoming to holding is different.
• Scanning (viruses and spam) are all different.
• holding to mail box and then mail box to the user is dealt with with 3 other software programmes.

Of course, this is something a little special as all the 13 bits of software have to be put together and work, which is a little bit of an issue.

We have had the system working, BUT — the system would send spam, so that had to be put to a stop. Then we had an issue with creating user accounts and integrating this across the system.

On the website (member sites) side of things, we have managed to get this all fixed and working as it is simple and easy to do, the email side of the services are currently holding everything up.

Until Such time as we have the Mail systems working correctly all City-photography website will be down.

When I say well, I mean that it has taken a week and been fraught with issues and teething problems, but finally the master server is up and running and in its first stages of development.

Now that we have a working example to go by, we will be sand box testing the system to ensure that it is working and there are no issues with the base system before its official launch. Testing and developing the new system will take some time and all the applications will be integrated during this time to ensure there are no problems with the systems.

Once the system has been tested, the current websites from City photography will be migrated to the new system and we will be open for business.

More details will come soon about the systems and the infrastructure which will make City Photography one of the most feature packed cost effective solutions for photographers.

Image via Wikipedia

City photography has been around for just over a year and we have seen some great results from this photography network. With over a year already invested into the Research and development of the websites and marketing all taken as market testing for the photography business, we are now taking city photography one step further.

About City Photography

City photography was set up to target local photographers to local clients, City photography is a managed network of photographer websites covering the  UK.

City photography also has great SEO and SEM all integrated into the websites and is supported by one of the biggest inclusive marketing scheme for photographers.

The aim of City photography is to become the first stop for photographers looking for websites to promote their business and spend their time doing photography and not website administration and all the work that this entails.

Backwater of City photography

City Photography was set up as part of  National Photographer to prove a point; some photographers said it couldn’t be done; and we have proved them wrong!

City photography has taken on a new life all of its own and now accounts for more than 50% of our clients, so it is now time to introduce the NEW City Photography network.

The NEW City Photography Network:

The new City Photography network is going to be different and is having a ground up redevelopment. We are taking all the knowledge that we have learnt over the time we spent in R&D  and putting this into one of the UK’s Largest Photography network and bodies for UK photographers.

We are reworking the main (home) website of City photography to be more interactive and easier to use for photographers and clients alike.

Here are some key features:

• The city photography website will feed information from all the users websites to promote their work.
• New website designs (photography website templates) All tried and tested for greatest performance and impact delivering photographers those clients.
• User updating (direct control) with Hosting services to  the websites. This removes the manual updating which was an extra service.
• Faster servers. We are building a great high performance server as only true professional know how.
• E-commerce. SSL to allow clients to pay for their booking and orders online both safe and secure.
• Managed Email: Protecting you from spam emails, all photographer will have their own email address to talk to clients.
• Faster delivery of businesses to photographers.

We have already heard the great news from photographers who use City photography and the growth in business that they have had, now its time for the revamp and photographers will soon see how City Photography can benefit them.

Delivery

At this time (now) we are developing the server and services that will offer this great new start for photographers. We hope to have the systems online within the next week or two and more new website flooding the marketplace and hitting the top of those internet search results.

Photographers should get ready with their own personalised City Photography website design and content ready now, before all the website are gone for ever and they lose out on what will be one of the biggest things to change in photography since the digital camera.

Photographers: Get ready for some great things

Clients: are you ready for a new experience?

In this guide to making Montage images that look good for Canvas printing  the issue is more complex that meets the eye as it is all about layout aspects.

You may not know there are two types of photograph layout, this means that the images are either Portrait – Camera on the side  or they are landscape – camera upright Or for those who want more simpler terms, a tall photo or a wide one respectively.

The current trend for many people is Wide aspect images,  like wide-screen TV’s or even wider than that.

 Most cameras photograph in a 4:3 aspect

As you can see in this image the 16:9 is a wide-screen aspect.

This means that the top or bottom or even both are cropped from the image to give it this wide aspect.

Don’t worry about this if you’re trying this yourself on a compact camera and you wont get the quality to be able to print images to a good standard when cropped.

Montage prints contain more than one image, just like the left image above: As you can see the image is more of a square than it is wide.

This retains the aspect of the images, as you can see on the image above right,  this is the standard aspect ratio layout. Buy selecting mixed aspect images, you can quickly see how the clean lines of the image cannot be achieved.  However, some moving around could help.

The portrait images could fit along the side of the main image, or all images could be the same size; this being that  the two portraits sit over each other as do the landscapes, again this makes a square image.
It is often easy to “wide-screen” images cropping the landscapes to the same size as the portraits – giving you the option for one portrait and one landscape on one wise aspect print.
OR you can crop the portrait (with out chopping off body parts) to make this fit, or a bit of cropping from both.

BTW cropping means cutting off part of the image.

You then get something like this:

to details this image above… The green area is the print size,  the white areas are standard aspect images. The grey (lighter) is the matching of two images to create a wide image and to keep the lines – the top and bottom images on the same levels..
The dark grey area would be the area that is cropped (removed) from the standard aspect ration image to make the final image.

What you should end up with for a large wide aspect image is something like this:

This is a mathematics quandary. The wide image when used as a main feature and cropped to give a wide aspect, much relate to the aspect ratio of the other images to give a length (width) that is equal.
If you take for example the above image. We know that the little images on the bottom are say 6 CM wide each, there are 4 so the top image must be 24CM wide. BUT we have images along the side.. we then have to select these images to make sure they are the correct height, after cropping you have to know the sizes, so if the big image is 24cm then you will know the hight of the images. this will tell you how many images you can fit in. But then you have to consider the sizes of all images in the print. (or you end up with tiny prints along one side)

What we had to do for the above image was lots of cropping.  The main image has been cropped both top and bottom.
Starting from the bottom left to the top right..
Standard landscape, cropped portrait, cropped portrait, standard aspect. cropped portrait (top and bottom) squared portrait. cropped portrait.

Without cropping, this selection of images would not fit together. As a client will not know the image sizes or where and if an image should be cropped it does make it hard for them to order images.

The KEY ADVICE – select your images, pick an order of importance and then let your photographer design the print for you!
tell your photographer what you want BEFORE the photo shoot, this allows your photographer to take the correct images for printing.

You can help your photographer, selecting an equal amount of portraits and landscape images, and offering OR images.. these would be the if that doesn’t work try this picture..

And who said photography was easy???

Image via Wikipedia

There is a rise in people turning to city photography for their photo shoots after being mislead by the company/ or sole trader offering photo shoots.

Here is one of the more recent emails from a client:

I sorry for the amount of questions as need to know first as have had a setting recently done and was mislead about prices which were far more than i could afford or same with the rest of the family.

This of course is becoming more common place. we have reported on “double take studios” already, there is also “London Studios” who the clients didn’t feel that they could leave, and now this unnamed studio.

When National Photographer reported on the trends in photography in August this year, we have seen a growth in ‘noob’  photographers, a growth rate of 35%+ has been measured. It is not surprising that professional photographers in general have fallen on hard times, and when mixed with the amateur business, which is not business like at all, it comes in with a massive problem for all concerned.

Professional photographers, we will say are experienced in photography and providing a business. However it is now clear, with our conversations with Trading standards that anyone can label themselves a professional photographer legally if they sell one image. There is no regards to if that image is of a marketable quality. Adding to the problems the SWPP and others, allow use of their logo and membership, that may mislead clients into the belief that they are really getting a pro photographer.

These effect rank up to be a condemning framework for photographer and real professional photographers.
When photographers charge a sitting fee, or booking fee at cut rates, We all know this would not cover the cost of the shoot and business costs. To the customer, this is a great deal and they bite for the purchase. HOWEVER the Sting in the tail is the print prices.

With prints costing around £1000 (for one) or on average costing £400 for a set, you can see the immediate problems; well anyone with business acumen can. Other problems come for studios and photographer who are struggling to make ends meet, they hard sell to make the money and sell the images at inflated rates in hope of recovering the loses or costs.

While the common low booking fee and extortion for prints has been practised for many years by photographers, it has to end.

The business model currently used by many photographers is doomed to failure. People have budgets, the price will only hold what the market will pay.

By not displaying prices  people cannot budget for their photography sessions and prints, Hard selling is going to deal a blow to your businesses word of mouth and make your business unpopular, it only offers a quick fix, but has a overall knock on effect.

Image via Wikipedia

If photographer took the lead from City Photography and national photographer, they could have their eggs in one basket. You can ask any photographer about pricing and they  go into panic and then some weird un computable number is reached as to how they price their shoots and their prints, there is little real world thought or common used business practise.

City photographers benefit for the pricing structure and supply of prints through our services, this makes it ideal and cost effective, not to mention that the whole network has been set up to lower photographers overheads and thus make the photography work sustainable.

Real pay – We work on real pay, this mean you get paid for your time and not token payments in the form of booking fees. This means that Print prices can be reduced and customers are more willing to buy more prints. It averages out that the whole system is much better for both the photographer and the client.

Undoing damage

With upfront pricing clients can see and budget for their photo shoots, this makes any hard sales unnecessary and people are happy to recommend city photographers simply because they know they are not getting scammed or Con’s by the photographers.

People are turning to friends with cameras, to take photos, which are lower quality than professional equipment, but are happy that they are not spending  hundreds of  pounds for a pro tog, we hope to put faith back into the market.

Linked Articles

• You Could be a Professional Photographer When… (blogs.photopreneur.com)
• Photographers Start to Give Up on Copyright Restrictions (blogs.photopreneur.com)

While this is ‘all good’ we were looking at something for our stock photography and commercial photography.. then with a crack of the lightening bolt we put something together… 

The new Stock and Social website.. Yeah a bit odd in some respects, but not really…. 

If Facebook was all about stock photography, buyers who become members would see images in their feeds and when they land on the page they would see new images from all the stock photographers. 

People could form photography groups that dealt with particular areas of stock photography and those buyers could look in those groups.. 

In the groups and forums centred around these ares of photography, buyers could also post requests for certain stock images. 

Each of the photographers had their own profile that had an album of images they are selling for stock…all neatly arranged.. 

I think I made my point here..  Modern people who buy images more than likely use Facebook socially, so how addictive is it? quite! so in the same order of stock photography can work the same way.. 

Being interactive with the customers  who buy stock images, you can see the trends and get information from the horses mouth, see what they are looking for and even get direct requests. Save you time dumping many files on line  in hope that one or two are what someone is looking for… 

SEO and SEM wise.. 

We have the main bulk of the website which is social for photographer and buyers, we also have a gallery.. buyers and bots can go through the gallery display the images in countless ways to find just what they are looking for.. 

The website has two parts to it, the social and the sock, but are closely linked. A search bot can search the images directly from the stock gallery  Users who are human can look at the displays on the stock landing page, (its the pre gallery entry page) The page shows slides of all the photographers work in little boxes on one page, if an image catches their eye, they can click on it and go directly to the image. 

The two websites work together to provide the platform for interactivity between the images and the users of the website as well as the photographers and the buyers. 

PRICE 

If I said zero, you would just think I mean that it costs nothing and that we take a commission on your photos each time they are sold.. You would be wrong.. Zero everywhere for everything.. We hope that when you benefit from the using the site that you would make donations to us to keep it running, after all it would make sense.. 

Its a work in progress too, so we know that once you  start using the website it will grow.. Its not Microstock photography either… 

Quality images not snaps; Professional not pandemonium.. Payment not pisstake. 

Take a hope over to the website, dig out your quality stock images, and get noticed and start selling! 

http://stock.nationalphotographer.co.uk/

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