Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

(This post is cross-posted from the Norwescon LiveJournal community.)

Greetings all!

Just a quick notice that Norwescon is expanding its presence on Flickr. First off, there is now an official Norwescon account, where photos from Norwescon’s official cadre of photographers (of which I’m quite happy to say I’m now a part of) will be uploaded, along with those photos from previous years which have been so kindly contributed by congoers past.

Additionally, we’re working on making it easier for people to contribute and share their memories of cons past (and future). For some time now, the Norwescon Group has existed as a single catchall group for photos taken at the ‘con (and thanks are due to blacklightkeys and nickewing for originally setting up the group). As nice as that’s been — and it’s certainly not going away! — as more cons go by and the group pool grows, it becomes harder to dig through to find photos from a particular year.

So, while the big, catchall group will continue to exist, we’ve now created a number of individual groups, one for each past Norwescon. If you’ve contributed shots to the Norwescon group on Flickr already, feel free to add them to the appropriate group for the year they were taken! If you have old photos from cons past, scan ‘em, digitize ‘em, upload ‘em, and add ‘em! We’re really looking forward to re-discovering old favorite photos, and (hopefully) finding new treasures as the groups start to grow!

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

I just had someone ask me through my Flickr account about my photography workflow and sales experience, and I figured I might as well put my response up here for…um…posterity? Ego-stroking?

I’ve not yet started to actually try to shoot for a living (though it’s a nice dream), as school and work take up enough time that I can’t devote myself to my hobby. Still, for what it’s worth, here’s what I can tell you….

What is your photography work flow?

These days, I shoot pretty much everything RAW. I haven’t had the money to upgrade to Apple’s Aperture or Adobe’s Lightroom yet, so I use iPhoto for organization and sorting, Adobe Photoshop for RAW conversion and touchups, and then the Flickr Export plugin for iPhoto to upload everything to Flickr.

The basic process is this:

1. Shoot (lots!) in RAW (with my camera set to the Adobe RGB color space).
2. Import into iPhoto.
3. Name and tag everything (I’m using Bullstorm’s Keyword Manager to help with tag organization and editing, as iPhoto’s built-in keyword management is one of the least useful aspects of an otherwise excellent program).
4. Do a first run through the shots, tossing what’s probably worth uploading into an album.
5. Do a second run through the shots. Most of this run is converting the RAW files and doing any touch-ups (which I keep to a minimum, generally little more than exposure and white balance tweaking, occasional cropping, sharpening, and setting the color space to sRGB), but I’ll also make some last decisions on which photos will or won’t be uploaded.
6. Upload to Flickr, assigning shots to sets or sending to one group during upload. Later set management or submitting photos to more groups is done online through Flickr when I get around to it.
7. Do a third cull through the shots, selecting the best of the bunch to be printed out.

[Where] or how do you market or promote your work?

I’ve never really actively done much promotion other than uploading things to Flickr and then telling people about it. When I can, I’ll let people involved in an event know about any event photos I’ve taken (sometimes by e-mail, other times through making posts in online communities focusing on an event or artist), or if I can identify and contact the subjects of shots, I’ll try to let them know directly. Other than that, I don’t do a whole lot.

Have you had any success with online promotion or selling your work through a website, if so which ones are you using?

Nothing major here, really. I’ve experimented with some of the services that have popped up online for helping people sell their work, but as I’ve never really taken the time to actively pursue anything, I can’t really report any great sucesses (or failures, really — I may not be selling much, but I don’t see that as failure when I’m not really trying to sell anything).

What few shots I have sold or had used elsewhere have happened more or less through blind luck — people stumbling on a shot through photo searches, deciding I had something that would work for a project, and asking permission to use it.

I have started getting a few people asking me to shoot events, but it’s not something I’ve started charging for yet (while it’s very flattering to have someone ask, I’m not entirely convinced I’m “pro” enough to ask for money…though I’m certainly not going to refuse if any is offered, either!). Right now, I pretty much just chalk it up to learning experiences, with possibilities for future benefit.

And if you can think of any other ideas for a photographer that is ready to start selling his work full time (my goal). I would greatly appreciate it.

Nothing much comes to mind, mostly because I’m not quite heading that direction yet. Good luck on your quest, though!

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

I’m exploring ImageKind, which gives Flickr members (and others) a convenient way to sell prints of their artwork. It looks interesting so far, though I’ve just spent a few minutes poking around while I’m in between classes.

I’ve set a few photos available to sell — take a look, see what you think. If there’s any particular shots of mine that you’d like to be able to buy (or that you just think should be in there), let me know and I’ll get them added.

We’ll see how this goes….

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

A bit of silliness on Flickr these days: if you add a note that says simply ‘ho ho ho hat’ to a photo, Flickr will add a Santa hat to the photo where the note is placed.

There’s a few people getting up in arms about the ‘defacement’ of their photos, but if you decide you don’t like this, you can simply delete the note. I see it as a harmless bit of holiday silliness.

And I like harmless silliness.

While I’m not around as much as I used to be or would like to be, evidence of my continued existence on this planet and in this internet can be found…

…if you know where to look.

Herewith, a brief rundown of those other places on the ‘net where I tend to pop up from time to time (even if those times are few and far between). If you have an account on any of the following services, feel free to add me as a contact, friend, or whatever the respective term is.

Update: Fixed all the links so they’re not broken. Heh. Oops. Should all work now.

• More likely to have some evidence of me poking around:

  • My primary website, eclecticism, which can be syndicated on LJ via woody_eclectic.

  • Flickr, where all my photography gets posted. Lately, this has been getting more attention than any other aspect of my online persona.

  • del.icio.us collects my daily" title="this is nifty links. This is the source for the (hopefully not too annoying) daily-ish linkdump that pops up here on LJ, and for the same (but more constantly updated) list on the sidebar of Eclecticism.

  • Library Thing is my book collection. The ‘reading’ tag is whatever I’m currently working my way through, while a quick glance at my author tag cloud will give a quick overview of my reading habits. Suggestions are always welcome.

  • Upcoming.org, where I post events around town that I might be either considering or actually dragging myself out of the house to wander down to.

• Not quite as likely to be actively poked at, but still often showing signs of my existence:

  • Amazon.com, where I occasionally shop and toss things into my wish list on the off chance that someone might feel generous and rich.

  • Last.fm tracks every single song I listen to. My current playlists are a little skewed due to a hard drive crash that lost about 90Gb (yes, gigabytes) of music, but it’s not completely off base. Yes, my musical tastes really are that varied.

  • I haven’t had as much time to keep up with Metafilter as I’d like, but they’re still one of (if not the) best linklog on the ‘net.

  • MySpace. Sadly, yes, I too have been sucked into the sucking black hell of MySpace. I don’t check in very often, but I do exist.

  • Much like MetaFilter, my Slashdot presence has dwindled down to very little. However, it’s still amusing to look back on the insanity of when I got Slashdotted. Yes — I’m that guy.

  • I used to be pretty active in the Yahoo chatrooms, but gave up on that years ago. There’s still a few friends in the Yahoo-verse, though, so I keep this somewhat up to date. Somewhat.

• Not really used at all, but I have an account and occasionally remember to check in to see if I need to pay attention to anything:

  • 30 boxes, an online calendar/time management system.

  • OK Cupid, home of stupid little ‘net quizzes.

  • Tagworld, yet another social networking system, this one jumping on the tagging bandwagon.

  • Tribe.net, one of the few of the early social networking sites to still be around.

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

My most popular photos on Flickr:

Top ten by # of views	Top ten by # of favorites	Top ten by # of comments
5516 views 864 views 821 views 622 views 614 views 601 views 554 views 535 views 467 views 454 views	9 favorites 5 favorites 3 favorites 3 favorites 2 favorites 2 favorites 2 favorites 2 favorites 1 favorite 1 favorite	9 comments 5 comments 4 comments 4 comments 4 comments 3 comments 3 comments 3 comments 3 comments 3 comments

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

I’ve finished uploading older photographs into my Flickr account for now. I’ve been concentrating on bigger “event” things to put into sets, rather than everyday stuff.

New sets since the previous update: The Jensonia Hotel fire, Kevin and Emily’s wedding, Bumbershoot ‘03, Pride Day ‘03, Bumbershoot ‘02, Bumbershoot ‘01, and Pride Day ‘01.

And right at the end of the Pride Day ‘01 set, just for Kirsten: