Like any photographer with an online presence, I wanted to be able to sell prints of my images online. I have a number of images that I think are worthy of hanging on the walls of homes and businesses (corporate art I guess), and I also have portraits that I have done of various people (mainly my daughter’s senior pictures and the Lakewood High School Cheerleaders). In either case, it is the ultimate convenience for my customers to be able to review their images online, tell me if they want any of them retouched, then be able to order the final versions in whatever dimensions or on whatever material (canvas wrap, coffee mug, etc) they want.

I took these things into consideration when I started looking for an online gallery source. I could have done it myself, using Gallery2 or similar software, but I honestly didn’t want to handle the back-end pieces of fulfillment. A one stop shop was a good idea. So I researched the different sites out there. Smugmug is widely regarded as the market leader. The there is Zenfolio and a bunch of others.

I have friends on Smugmug, and I never really liked how the sites looked. I know customization is possible, but I was hoping to avoid that. Zenfolio, however, had a nice, clean interface. The ordering process was straightforward. They let me do coupons and all that sort of stuff. The only thing they were lacking was digital downloads. This is a pretty big deal in this day and age. A number of other sites offer this. As recently as July, they indicated this was a priority and they were working on it. As recently as 10/28 though, they made it crystal clear that we won’t see it in the immediate future.

Instead, Zenfolio is putting their development focus on allowing comments on photos. I have a couple issues with this.
1. Zenfolio is not Flickr. It is a commerce site. Comments are secondary in nature to the sales process.
2. Digital downloads offer immediate $$ returns. As a photographer looking to make money from my images, this is a priority to me.

I have already lost at least one sale that I know of because I didn’t have an immediate download option available. And that was someone who took the time to let me know. How many opportunities have their been that I was not aware of?

It’s my own fault really. I have this need to be different, and give “new guys” a chance even when it might not make the most sense. I have learned my lesson though. I am signing up for my Smugmug free trial today and will start using their tools to migrate my stuff away from Zenfolio. The good news is that the “Print of the Week” entries will now be available as digital downloads, so you can use them as a desktop, print them for yourself at home, or however you want to use it. Commercial licensing will also be available if you want to use one of my images for an ad campaign or something similar. I’ll let you know as soon as this is available.

By the way – if you have found this post and are a dissatisfied Zenfolio / Flickr / Picassa / Phanfare / Yahoo / Photosite customer, go to smugglr.smugmug.com and see how you can migrate your stuff to Smugmug, and save significantly on your first year with them.

On a recent trip to the grocery store, I decided to pick up a magazine. I do this once in a while, most typically when I am travelling. I know I need to learn more about photography though, and magazines are a more conducive format for reading at home. Much better than breaking out the laptop or anything like that. So I looked at the selection. As I recall, there were probably 5 or 6 titles on the shelf. For some reason, Shutterbug stood out. Well, not just “some reason”. The cover was intriguing, and the big focus of the month was on lighting, which I have been wanting to know more about. And this is where they kind of lost me.

I am well aware that I know next to nothing about photography. I am more than willing to admit it to anyone. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to learn. I appreciate the problem that the magazine faces – they need to be applicable to the widest possible audience. But there are subtle things they could have done in their lighting articles that would have really helped a noob like me, and that experienced readers could have glanced over pretty quickly. A sidebar, or even a one page article, on how to make a lighting system work with your camera, would have been huge. When it comes to lighting, I am still as lost as I was before I bought this issue.

That isn’t to say that the whole thing was a waste. The story about the MyStudio 20 Internet Photo Studio (a very useful mini studio for small product photos) was very valuable, and told me all I need to know to use the product (and yes, it convinced me I need to own one). There was a good article on posing your subjects for portraits, as well as one on “Helping Clients Hire You.” One especially helpful article (entitled “Location Shoot: Studio Results”), talked about the different commercial products for diffusing light – including the Gary Fong Lightsphere, Hughes Soft Light Reflector, the LumiQuest Soft Screen Diffuser for on-camera flashes, Photoflex Litediscs, and my personal favorite (which I will be buying soon) – the LumiQuest ProMax System.

As I sit here going back through it right now though, a strange trend just popped up. Most of the pages I have flagged are ads. Even though I happily peruse B&H Photo’s website all the time, products aren’t displayed in quite the same way. You pretty well have to know what you are looking for which, as a newbie, I do not. These ads are hugely valuable to help with that.

Other companies that I flagged include ShutterbugStoreFront.com (for selling images), dotphoto.com (also for selling images), BayPhoto.com (I want to try them for Greeting Card production), Meridian Professional Imaging (for print fulfillment), DigiLabs (for coffee table books), PhotoArtsUSA.com (for stock commissions), Photographers Edge (for greeting cards), Golden Color (free 16×20 with order), and more (I am tired of typing links).

So even though the lighting articles didn’t help me as much as they could, I think the magazine still holds value. In fact, I am likely going to subscribe. Most of these businesses I mention above are not ones I would have seen in a Google search, nor would I have seen their banner ads if they even had them. But the print advertising worked, and for that I am happy. Now if I can sell some more images so I can afford all the stuff I want to buy now. Wait, today is my birthday – maybe I’ll treat myself to a present…