A Brief Interlude

I was notified yesterday that I will be one of 20 featured photographers on the PhotoShelter homepage this month. Which is pretty cool. I’ve been with the company a little over six months now, and I’ll be interested to see if this development drives more traffic to any of my sites. I have nothing but good things to say about PhotoShelter, but I’m still learning how best to market it on my end, and how to drive traffic to my archives there. Right now it feels pretty hit and miss; I see significantly more views on a regular basis on both this blog and my website.

That being said, I recently made a number of changes to said archives, HERE. These changes mostly consisted of better keywording and other boring SEO tasks, as well as changing the format of some of the galleries, adding collections and beginning with the beginnings of a Virtual Agency (though that’s a whole nother can of worms). I also took the time to set up three extended portfolios for my commercial, editorial and portraiture work. So I’m excited to see if these changes improve things, or if hits and traffic stay at the same slow steady hum. Time will tell.

Plus, A Cautionary Tale From Julian Abram Wainwright

I also want to take a moment to direct people over to a post on photographer Julian Abram Wainwright’s blog, HERE. Seems he is was having some trouble with a local magazine regarding payment for some of his work that they had published. I’m not sure what my ethical stance is on the issue now, but since he has removed the name of the magazine from his site, I will refrain from naming it here as well, as much as I would like to. I’ll just refer to it as a certain English-language luxury lifestyle publication based out of Hanoi, Vietnam. I’ve known a number of photographers and writers who have had problems with this publication in the past, and it seems that they have not changed their ways one bit since I last worked with them. So if you are a writer or photographer or other creative in the area, please think twice before agreeing to contribute your ideas or time to this magazine.

Funnily enough, this tale does have a happy ending. After Julian posted a complaint to his blog and Facebook page, the magazine agreed to honor the original terms of their agreement with him. I’m glad that he will get what he is owed, but for me it doesn’t change the fact that they thought they could cheat him out of his money until they were threatened with online humiliation/loss of face. Very low class.