Photo page gets better!

Yes, the page that showcases your beautiful photos, that’s the one.

First, we’ve completely taken the page apart, analyzed each section under the microscope. Then, using advanced user experience optimization techniques and voodoo dolls, we pieced the page back together. Over the years (8.5 years to be exact) the photo page has evolved into a complete state of cohesion, where each piece of functionality is strongly related to one another. Euphoria.

Now the actual breakdown:

1. Image Zoom – no flash player needed (read: works on iPads!), works within the page (no more popups!), faster load times, easy on/off switch.
2. Purchasing options – stands out more, redesigned and cleaned-up “Help Me Choose” behavior (no popup, loads directly on page).
   
3. Share tools – they show up in a non-intrusive expandable panel, Google+ added. Share away!
4. Previous and Next links added to the top of the image to navigate within current album.
5. My Photo dashboard – new layout for the contributor info related to the image. Why is it yellow? So that you can tell it apart from the content that other people will see about your photo.
6. Similar images recommendations added, which is like a reality check to make sure no one else is shooting and posting rare coin collection photos.
7. Faster page loading speed with primary content available ahead of the rest of the page being fully ready. There’s really no visual way to explain this, except voooosh!

Enjoy!
ShutterPoint Team

More Eyes on Your Photos

We want your wonderful photos to get noticed and that is why we bring you…:

ShutterPoint-Facebook integration!

So, a couple of things.

1. Each photo on ShutterPoint now features a “Like” button. You can “Like” any of the photos, yes including your own, and it will appear on your Facebook wall.
2. ShutterPoint is now wired to share your photo activity on Facebook without you lifting a finger!There is a number of benefits gained from this new functionality:
   
   ○ Get additional exposure for your photos through Facebook.
   ○ Update your friends of your ShutterPoint activity.
   ○ Help spread the word about your images and images of other members.
   

   Here’s how this actually works:

   For example, when you upload a new photo to SP, an update will be posted on your FB wall and your friends will automatically find out.

   

   When you add a favorite album, favorite photo, or favorite member to your ShuttePoint profile, this too can be posted on your wall and your FB friends will automatically find out.

   

   Finally, when you comment on a photo on ShutterPoint, your Facebook friends will find out.

   
   Wait, there’s more! If you decide to change your own profile pic or e-mail address or even gender status on Facebook, those updates will automatically be reflected on your ShutterPoint profile page. Anyone planning a gender change?

   You can enable all this wonderful functionality through the Account Sharing Page.

   Through this page, you can pick and choose which type of ShutterPoint activity will be shared with your friends on Facebook.

Now that you are empowered with the new Facebook features, be aware that sharing your photos with friends is addictive, so remain sensible!

PS: Don’t worry about posting to many updates at once, Facebook has a nice feature of condensing wall posts into a nice little pragraph with a link to see the rest.

Activity Tape: Stay In The Loop

Seems like everything is going “social” these days and we at ShutterPoint are following suit!

Why? Because everyone wants to know everything at the very moment it happens and we gladly support this concept.

The new Activity Tape feature alerts users of updates from their fan base.

Lets say you are a member photographer and you happen to like Murdock’s SP photo gallery, and so some time ago, you clicked to ‘become a fan of’ Murdock. Now that the activity tape feature is in place, ShutterPoint.com will display updates when Murdock –

– becomes a fan of someone else
– uploads a new photo
– posts something in ShuttePoint Forums
– comments on someone else’s photo

We think it’s pretty cool! Keep in mind that if you are using a previously customized version of the home page, you will need to click ‘Customize this page’ from your home page and make sure ‘Activity Tape’ section is enabled for viewing.

Enjoy and Happy Holidays!

ShutterPoint on Facebook!

ShutterPoint now has a Facebook page! Become a fan and stay in touch with the news and updates from ShutterPoint.com.

ShutterPoint’s Facebook Page

Don’t forget to click on “Like” button and you will start getting SP updates on your Facebook wall.

Marketable Photography Guide 2009!

It’s finally ready!

Yes, this year it comes a bit later than usual… but this is in part due to all the hard work put into the new SP Guide!

If you’ve never seen the SP Guide before, in short, it is an e-book in PDF format that consists of three parts.

1. A comprehensive how-to guide that explains everything you need to know about selling photos. Starting from choosing subject and taking the photo, to image post-production, and to uploading the image to ShutterPoint.com.
2. A collection of 800+ popular images that sold on ShutterPoint.com at least once within the previous year.
3. Insightful interviews with some of the top-selling photographers, who offer practical tips on selling photos online.

The 2009 Edition of the SP Guide is longer and better. This year look for:

• 116 pages of quality content that gives you an inside scoop of how to sell your photos.
• Updated walk-through every step on the way to offering your images for sale.
• Improved categorization of images in the Showcase section. This year the images were broken up into four main categories: People, Animals, Objects, and Places.
• Added “Tip Boxes” within the Showcase of images.
• Photographer interviews followed by a sample of images from the featured photographer.

The Marketable Photography Guide 2009 is completely free to ShutterPoint members! Ready to read? Remember, the table of contents is interactive, which makes it extremely easy to navigate.

If you are not yet a member, take a look at the 5-page Preview of the SP Guide.

Enjoy!

Colorful Charts Woo-Hoo!

I am so excited to present to you these cool-looking colorful charts!

These charts certainly bring out the kid in me with all their primary colors. OK now I will have to calm down and explain what all of this means. Here’s the breakdown.

ShutterPoint allows image contributors to submit either commercial or editorial types of images. The above chart shows that 90% of submitted images are classified as commercial – this is because these images either do not contain any recognizable people OR contain people but a valid model release has been submitted for each person in the image. The remaining 10% is classified as editorial.

As you should be aware, ShutterPoint’s pricing model consists of Standard License and Full License pricing. The Standard License prices are pre-determined based on the image size being purchased. Although the Standard License is very affordable, it has image usage limitations. The Full License price is determined by the image contributor and allows virtually unlimited usage of the image. Now lets look at this next chart.

ShutterPoint’s contributors have the option to either offer Full Licensing only for their images or offer both Standard and Full Licensing. The chart above shows that 60%, the majority of our photographers choose to offer both Standard and Full Image Licensing. These contributors understand that image usage limitations are dictated by the Standard License and they agree to offer it to designers on a budjet.

Here comes the fun part! Now lets look at charts representing actual image sales on ShutterPoint.

The chart represents image sales where the Full License was purchased.

This pie is split almost equally! Out of all images sold with Full License, 53% of images are offered with Full Licensing only. The other 47% of images sold with Full License could also be purchased with a Standard License for much less, but the buyers chose to pay the premium price for unlimited usage and got the Full License. This means that for many serious image buyers the Full License price – the price photographers set – is still affordable.

The next chart will further prove this point. Lets look at how much ShutterPoint image buyers pay for Full License images.

The chart above reflects price ranges of Full Licenses sold on ShutterPoint.com. As you can see, most of the images are sold in the range of $20-30.

Now lets see how much image buyers are paying across all License types available.

The chart above represents image sales on ShutterPoint.com by price.

Notice that one out of three images sold on ShutterPoint is purchased with a Full License – at the price photographers set. This means that image buyers do not mind paying the premium price because – a) it is still affordable and, b) they want to feel confident that they have full rights to the image and can use in whatever way they need.

Another third of images gets sold with a Standard Web License. This license costs $0.99 and the image file being sold is pretty small – about 1000 px on the long side at 72dpi. Such size dictates web-only use because print quality would be poor at this size.

So there you have it – now you know how photographers price their images and how much designers are paying for them. Now is a good time to go over your own pricing strategy and make appropriate adjustments if needed.

Obtaining Ideas for Your Next Shoot

A little planning goes a long way when your objective is to shoot stock photography.

Many of us are not full-time photographers. We shoot because we love it and do not consider it a job. Due to our casual shooting habits, we do not like to plan. We simply carry the camera around and shoot whenever something or someone interesting shows up. Often, some stock photos come out from the random photo shoots.

If you would like to increase the number of your stock-worthy images, read on for some handy pointers on how to come up with ideas for your next photo shoot. No, it doesn’t mean that your favorite hobby will become tedious work. It will still be fun, I promise!

1. The news

   Its a good idea to stay current with the news, especially now that so many major issues exist. Presedential elections, economy struggles, war in Iraq, global warming, etc. – all of these topics have a direct effect on everyday life. Obviously these are not so easy to portray in stock photography. Start paying attention to imagery that often accompanies the news and ideas will start coming to you naturally.

   

2. Existing advertising

   This is the easiest way to obtain shoot ideas. Flip through magazines, look at posters taped to store fronts, billboards, online banner ads and website design elements. If you go this route, you might be duplicating what’s been already done, but it does not have to be frame for frame. You can come up with your own take on the same subject matter.Remember if the image has been already published and appears in advertising, then its a proven concept that is in demand by designers.

   

3. Human relations

   If you love to photograph people, like me, this will be super easy to incorporate into any casual photo taking. Basically the idea is to capture how people interact with one another or simply catch the emotions of your subject. If you think about imagery often used in advertising, you will realize that people are depicted more often than objects. People respond to advertisement containing people a lot better because they can relate to the person shown. Therefore, your task is to capture a wide array of emotions so that the general pupulation can relate to your subject.

   Keep in mind that your models should appear neat, wearing simple clothing and neutral make-up. Ideally, they should not be overly fashionable and good-looking, but sort of common nice-looking people. Of course, there are exceptions to this rule.

   The emotions that speak well in the photo are generally those that are exaggerated. It is in your best interest to explain to the model that the emotion you are trying to capture should be emphasized by exaggerating facial features or adding other gestures.

   

In summary, a good place to search for ideas for your next shoot is your every day life. Pay attention to what is happening around you throughout the day and come up with ways to portray it conceptually in your images.

The 4th of July Theme Contest

July 4th – The American Independence Day. This is a very patriotic holiday in the United States. Flags are everywhere, parades, barbecue parties, and of course fireworks. One woman told me recently that she loves this holiday so much that her anticipation and preparation efforts are comparable to what many people do for the Christmas holidays. Many people enjoy all the festivities and of course the imagery that can be associated with this holiday.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this contest! The five winners will be awarded with 500MB of additional storage space and a one year storage extension (extension will be added to the current expiration date) on ShutterPoint.com.

The winners of the ShutterPoint July 4th Contest are:

Mike & Connie Mosteller for “Historic Signing”

Gianna Stadelmyer for “A United Nation”

Bruce Becker for “American Flag and Eagle”

Paul Cavill for “November 5”

Jennifer Ralston for “For the Fallen”

Congratulations to winners!

PS: Gianna, another win for you and people might think you work for ShutterPoint! Dear members, Gianna does not work for us – she is just an awesome photographer!

The ShutterPoint College of Photography

No, there is no such institution! However, SP offers so many ways for photographers to sharpen their skill.

1. Read Articles
   Article collection in the Learning section lists lots of articles written by various subject experts. Topics include image manipulation, photo equipment, technique, and much more. Each article was manually reviewed and approved by SP. Did I mention that you can submit your own articles there? Yep, we’ll give you a free link to your article for being so generous as to offer your expert advice to our curious members.
2. Talk to photographers
   Forums is a great place to ask lots of questions about photography. In addition to general discussions, there is a “How can I improve this photo” section where you can ask other photographers for advice on a specific image. This is how to use this feature:
   • Login to your account
   • Open the image you would like to be reviewed in forums
   • Below your image, you will see a section that looks like this
   • Click on the link to “Post this image” and sit and wait for photographers to praise your work.
3. Learn from Experts
   SP Guide to Marketable Photography: your secret weapon to staying ahead in the stock photography market. We developed this 95-page no-nonsense e-book in PDF format so that photographers better understand what makes a marketable image. The e-book contains a comprehensive guide, a showcase of over 600 images sold on ShutterPoint, and interviews with some of the finest SP photographers.
   
4. Read Some More
   Selling Photos section offers even more information on selling on ShutterPoint.com. Some of it might be redundant with the Marketable Photography Guide, but still there is plenty of great reads, including Self Promotion and Basic Marketing, Assigning Keywords, Titles, Descriptions, and Setting Prices.

We need those creative one-of-a-kind images! Keep them coming please!

Welcome to SP Blog!

This is the grand opening of the official ShutterPoint blog! Through this blog, the SP team is going to give you the inside scoop on the current happenings at SP, let you know of any relevant photography events, discuss photography-related news, share various Top X lists, and much more! We welcome all feedback, so please comment on our blog posts and feel free to take any discussions to the SP Forums!

We will refer to some of the images on ShutterPoint.com (with credits to the photographer and a link to the image, of course). If you do not want your images to be used in this blog, you may opt out (opting out means loosing a potential link to your image). To opt out, login to ShutterPoint.com, go to My Account, click on Settings and deselect the check box under Marketing Settings.