[olavf]

You’re right in that it’s probably too complicated or hairy. But it would be cool and another way to get people interested in playing and in our art if we did have it.

I’m not saying it’s a terrible idea, but it’s fraught with issues. Would it be limited to winnars? Top tens? Anyone?

And Drew would need his cut too, FWIW. It’s his moniker.

My other fear is that it would somehow alter the game. Farktography is not necessarily *good photography*. It’s…different. Look at the cuts for the book – there’s a lot or really awesome shots, and a lot that are…well, they’re funny as shiat and awesome in their own right, but nothing anyone would want on their wall.

Also, I wonder if it wouldn’t take some of the fun out of it. We’re not doing this to make a buck. Most of us that want to have, or are considering, other venues for that. I’m afraid it might take the ‘Fark’ out of ‘Farktography’. :/

[olavf]

Brain fart – misread.

I’ll stand by the ‘what do you want to photograph’ comment, but back that up with orionid‘s notes about a good 50mm prime. They’re universally handy to have.

Kat has a Sigma that only goes to f/2,8 but it’s also a pretty darn good macro. She gets a lot of use out of it. I’m still partial to my 50mm/1.4 but I don’t do tons of macro shots (and when I do, I can ‘borrow’ hers)

[olavf]

I’m looking at upgrading to one of these: http://www.amazon.com/Caselogic-SLRC-206-Camera-15-4-Inch-Backpack/dp/B002DW99H8/ref=pd_cp_p_1

But there was a Canon camera bag thread a little while ago that had some other suggestions.

Personally, I prefer a backpack over a shoulder sling, but that’s partially because I walk funny, and having weight off-balance hurts. Kat prefers a shoulder bag, so YMMV.

As far as the other stuff goes, I’d recommend picking the bits and pieces that you want and saving up. There are compromises between SUPER AWESOME and what you can afford, but generally you’ll regret buying on the cheap.

Think about what kind of photography you think you want to do, and start there though.

[olavf]

I’ve found that most of the blog-type solutions don’t give you many options there, sadly :/

[olavf]

Kestrana, I’m not so sure that’s a good idea. I can foresee a bajillion problems from what prints get put up there, to who gets a cut, to the nightmare of getting the printing permissions from each person for each photo every week.

orionid I just got my website off the ground at the end of last year, so me either. But I haven’t been pushing them – not even on the FB side. Since most of the followers are my friends, I’m very careful of that line between sharing pics and creating awareness, and shoving things in front of people and screaming BUYYYYY THIIIIISSSSSSS – if you watch other people that are trying to make a buck from their art, it’s pretty apparent when it crosses the line into annoying…

[olavf]

SilverStag that pops nicely. Can you organize it at all? It seems to be date-sequential?

[olavf]

Look at the file sizes of the pics you’re uploading. The windows interface and the web interface have a 2MB limit IIRC. I don’t know about FTP – my servers are right here, so I often use the Windows uploader if I’m doing one or two, or the GalleryRemote java program (lets me title and add descriptions for a bunch of pics before upload, so when they’re up they’re live and all I have to do is add keywords and do any re-ordering)

For the sort order, you need to pick something other than the default order in the edit album tab (say, creation date) and then you get the option to presort albums first. I couldn’t see how the main gallery was set up, but the user1 gallery is set as default. You can change this in the root gallery and have it propagate to all the sub-albums.

As far as aesthetics go, there are a bunch of basic themes you can run with. Once you get an overall feel, they can be tweaked by editing the .css and whatnot. Just make sure you edit a copy in a subdirectory called ‘local’ so they don’t get overwritten when there are updates.

[olavf]

Yeah…I link *everything* on my artists page, with the exception of notes and any write-ups for the links themselves. But I also generally only post sizes that don’t need to scale in the average web browser, and anything larger than that gets watermarked. (it’s the balance I’ve found between watermarks interfering with the image, and trying to protect my work). You’ll notice I do the same thing for Farktography.

I’m more lax on my personal page, but most of those things are cell phone pix and/or just general mucking about.

[olavf]

Awwww!

Congrats!

[olavf]

I’ve got the server space and the bandwidth here at the house, so I’ve opted to set up my own website. That way my costs are minimal ($35/yr for the domain name + I have someone else handle the DNS since my ISP does something funny & I couldn’t get it to work reliably on my servers) and I don’t feel like I *have* to sell pics to pay for my hubris. Plus, I’ve got complete control over pricing, and more importantly my work. The other upside is that (I feel) it looks more professional (as in, I’m serious about it), but on the flip side, I’m wholly responsible for getting search engine indexing, marketing, etc. Facebook helps there either way, if you create an artist/business page and start getting your friends (that are so inclined) to follow you, then their friends will also see your work. Just don’t upload any of your work to that page – Facebook can use your art for marketing purposes under their TOS. Plus, they filter what people see on their wall to reduce information overload and one of the major factors that they use to determine whose posts get seen is how many external links they post. Plus, external (hot)links are a good way to invite traffic back to your own site.

Whatever you do, do NOT put anything up on art.com. If you look in the fine print, once you put something up there you can never, ever take it down. deviantart and some of the other places are better about that, but definitely read all the details of the TOS before you put up a single piece.

I’d also recommend ordering something through whatever outlet you’re considering before you commit, too. For example, there’s a HUGE difference in quality between shutterfly and mpix – from the quality of the paper down to the color correction of their printers. The key thing you want to look for in a print house is ‘archive quality’ – meaning under normal conditions the art should last 70+ years.

[olavf]

I’ve got two installs of gallery2 and haven’t really seen those issues, but I may have some time this weekend if you want to chat.

Also, have you looked at gallery3? It’s lighter and I’m not sure how extensible it is (what plugins are available)

As far as porting the userbase… that should be do-able, but I’m not an SQL guy. You may have to massage the tables so that they’re in the same format before you import, but I’ve restored/moved databases between machines without too much pain. You might also see if you BB has some extensibility where the two can talk together. There are plugins for Joomla that do this (one user base is the master and feeds the slave DB users)

(and I’m not a huge fan of Flash galleries, because it pretty much rules out anyone using an iProduct from seeing your stuff. Same with older versions of WebOS. There may be some gallery tools out there that do similar things in Java, but I haven’t looked.)

edit – you’re just looking for something like this when you’re done?
http://gallery.squareheadphotography.com/main.php

[olavf]

I’m inclined to vote -1 on panos too.

[olavf]

I like the one of your sister better, so I’d go with the other one 😛

[olavf]

Pretty much what everyone said.

[olavf]

I got this one for Kat a year ago. It works pretty well, especially for $45.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003QR9XI4 (Note: I believe this is the same one from a different seller): http://www.amazon.com/Macro-Flash-LED-Light-lenses/dp/B0031AQ302/ref=dp_cp_ob_p_title_0)

(FWIW it made the ‘O’ in Kat’s eye in last week’s contest)

[Author]

Posts