Tag: photographers

Is Pinterest of Value to Photographers?

Posted on March 26, 2013 by dougchinnery - Photography Business, Photography comment, Photography Tips, Social Networking

I have a confession to make. When I first heard of Pinterest I dismissed it quickly as irrelevant. It seemed to me to be a hangout for young women with boards entitled “My Perfect Wedding”, “Cute Kittens” and such things. Boards full of images of people too perfect to exist having weddings that would never happen and then live in houses just to perfect for real people. I left within minutes of logging in.

Let the nightmare begin. There are a LOT of cute kittens (and puppies) on Pinterest, but you don't have to look at them if you don't want to

That was a couple of years ago. Then, a week or so ago, I can’t remember why, I had occasion to visit the site again. This time I stayed.

Why the change?

This time I thought it through and explored a bit deeper. Certainly, the site is populated primarily by women. 80% of ‘pinners’ are women. Nothing wrong in that, obviously. It’s just that for me, as a man, the kind of things the majority of the ladies were devoting boards to were of no interest to me. As much as I love cute puppies and recipes for homemade eye makeup remover, I wasn’t really looking for that kind of thing. It is this ‘noise’ that had put me off so,quickly on my first visit.

This time, however, I took a deep breath and typed in a search for, imaginatively, “landscape photography”. The results were interesting. Yes, lots of over saturated cliched images, but also I soon found boards created by discerning pinners full of stunning work.

But there is also a lot of really good photography to suit any taste and from all genres withn Pinterest. Of course, you can also introduce images from all over the Internet which appeal to you onto your own boards too, to elevate and inform other users 🙂

Spurred on, I searched for creative black and white images. The same resuLt. What really impressed me was that much of what I was finding was from older photographers. By older, I mean photographers working a hundred, fifty or twenty five years ago. The great names like Adams, Sudek, Stieglitz, Rowel, Weston, Maier and so on. You don’t find these on Flickr.

Also there are photographers whose work I have not found through any other channels. I was soon hooked, created my own account and was feverishly creating my own collections.

So how does Pinterest work? The idea is simple. Imagine a pin board on your studio wall on which you pin snippets of information and pictures to inspire you or to help you with a project. In Pinterest you can create as many such virtual boards as you wish. These boards can be public or secret.

This is a partial screenshot of one of my Pinterest Boards - this one for images of colour landscape photographs

You can then search within the Pinterest site on the public boards of others and re-pin things which you find interesting or inspiring onto your boards. The origin of these images or items originally is pages on the Internet. The item always retains its link back to the original source page, no matter how many times it is re-pinned. You can go to the source page by double clicking the item. This is really useful, as when you find an image by a new photographer or artist you like you can then leave Pinterest and go and explore their own website.

My home page of pin boards. Each board is for images on a different subject, so i can keep my images organised.

You can also introduce new items into the Pinterest site onto your boards by pinning them yourself when you find something on a website you wish to pin to one of your boards. In fact, this is something that more pinners need to do. Around 80% of pinning is ‘re-pinning’ of images from the boards of others, so you do begin to see the same images appearing in searches. More members need to search out new material from the web and pin it to their boards for others to discover. This keeps the site fresh and, if you are prepared to do this, you will quickly find lots of pinners will start to follow your boards as they offer something fresh and new. I have only been active for a few days and already have close to fifty people following my boards.

A close up image of some of my pin board icons

An interesting side note that I have noticed is that Pinterest has started to drive low volumes of new traffic to my website since I started actively using it. I am guessing this is coming from people who are seeing my images on boards and following them back to their source on my website. It may also come from people checking out my profile on the site and clicking my website link. Don’t get me wrong, the volumes are small at the moment, but noticeable, and growing. I am not recommending using Pinterest as you would other forms of social media to drive traffic to your website or blog. That wouldn’t be an efficient use of your time if it was your sole purpose in doing it. However, I am pleasantly surprised by the effect already and see it as a knock on benefit.

There are also some serious concerns about copyright, which as artists and photographers should concern us. It is up to each user to decide on this issue and if you want to read an article on it you will find one here.

You can follow individual boards of others if you like what they pin and this allows you to see when they add new things to that board in case you wish to pin it to one of your boards (likewise people can follow your boards if they like them). Or you can follow an individual and see everything they pin to all of their boards.

You can also create boards of your own images or pin your own images into your boards and they may get re-pinned by others who like them.

Here is an example of pinning an image from an external website, in this case my own, using the widget you can get from the Pinterest site for your browser. When you are on a web page with an image you wish to pin, just click the "Pin It" button and this dialogue opens (it also allows you to choose which image if several images are on the page), you can add notes and select which of your boards you wish to add it to and then just pin it when done.

I use the site extensively now to collate inspiration for my work. Not only in photography, but I have also found myself researching art as well and learning valuable lessons from it.

I have also found interesting Photoshop tips and have a board to collate ideas for remodelling my photographic office and studio here a home. My wife has fallen in love with Pinterest and is collecting ideas about make up, cleaning solutions, decorating tips, craft making ideas, gardening – the scope is endless. Where I thought it would be a location just for organising my inspirational images, it is fast becoming a location to collate visual information for all sorts of projects and ideas. Some boards are public, others are private. Many designers use boards for design ideas, graphic designers use them to collate new fonts collections or colour themes, gardeners use them for plant and garden layout ideas – the uses are endless. If you search for ideas on the site you will soon find some very, very clever people who have ingenious solutions to problems, people who have ways of recycling items for amazing uses and who seem able to come up with things I would never dream of.

In the screen shot below I typed in “Recycle Pallets” – thousands of ideas came up, these are just a tiny, tiny fraction – just try it – click here

Some pallet recycling ideas

I would encourage you to have a look. Why not take a browse at some of my boards and see what you think. I would be interested in hearing your views. You can find my boards here – http://pinterest.com/dougchinnery/ Why not sign up and make a start by following me 🙂

A Tip for Using the Photographers Ephemeris

Posted on December 13, 2011 by dougchinnery - Photography Tips, Software Tips

There can be few landscape photographers who don’t use Stephen Trainors brilliant piece of software, The Photographers Ephemeris. You can download it for free from http://photoephemeris.com/ There are also versions for the iPad and iPhone available from the Apple app store (for a small and very reasonable fee). It is also available in the Android Marketplace.

The software basically uses Google Earth mapping to show us the exact point and time of sun and moon rise and set for every day at any point on the surface of the Earth. The concept is simple and it delivers it perfectly.

I have used it since it was first released and it has become an essential part of my location planning. However, I learnt a new feature this past weekend which I thought was really useful from Antony Spencer.

When you click on the map to identify your location in relation to the sunrise and sunset points you see four lines radiating from the pin. These represent the direction of the moon rise and set and the sun rise and set on the day of your choice. I have always viewed the map at quite a close zoom and so these radiating lines disappear out of the edges of the screen. However, Tony explained that if you zoom out on the map, eventually you see the lines terminate. This point is some 160 to 170 miles from the location where you dropped the pin.

Far from being a random point to terminate the line, where the line finishes is the point on the Earths surface where the sun appears at the time of sunrise relative to your chosen location. This is actually quite a useful bit of information for us. If we combine this knowledge with a cloud forecast we can anticipate the type of sunrise we will get.

For example, for Antony & I leading a workshop on Dorsets Jurassic Coast last weekend we could see the sun would be breaking past the curve of the Earth close to Paris in relation to our sunrise locations of Lyme Regis & Durdle Door. Looking at the cloud radar on those mornings we could see the cloud between Paris and our stretch of the coast was well broken which therefore hinted at the dramatic sunrise we experienced on Saturday.

It is just a small piece of intelligence but it adds to the thoroughness of our location planning and may well help us to plan which trips may be worthwhile and which might be best missed.

Should photographers use Twitter?

Posted on August 26, 2011 by dougchinnery - Social Networking

Twitter is certainly a phenomenon. It has appeared as if from nowhere and people seem to love it or scorn it. 140 characters per message only. Is it a gimmick that will fade as quickly as it emerged? Or has it filled a niche and become an indispensable feature of our online lives? In particular, for us as photographers, is it a useful tool? Or a waste of time? If we are running a business does it provide tangible benefits or is it a distraction that consumes time we could spend making our living more effectively elsewhere?

I was a sceptic but am now committed to Twitter. It has its drawbacks but I believe it has quickly become a vital tool in my social networking system.

For those of you who haven’t been on Twitter and wonder what it is all about, here is a brief description. You create a free account and sign in. You are presented with a text input box in which you can type anything you want – the question beside it asks ‘Whats Happening?’. So you type something, within the constraint of 140 characters (and spaces count as a character – you soon learn to be very concise). Press’Tweet’ and your message is launched.

But who is going to read it? At this stage, no one. You have no friends, no ‘followers’. I guess some brave souls tweet away and hope someone will stumble on their tweets and decide to follow them. However, the best way to get followers is to follow others. Twitter will analyse what you tweet and suggest like minded people who you may wish to follow. You can read what they tweet and decide if it is of benefit for you to follow them. From the people you follow, Twitter will suggest more people you may be interested in. You can also see who people you follow are following and some of these you may decide it is beneficial for you to follow.

What happens when you follow someone. Simply put, their tweets will appear on your home page in chronological order. The most recent will always be at the top. Your list of tweets will be a unique combination of all the tweets of everyone you follow. It is unlikely anyone else on the planet will have an identical list to you – they would have to be following exactly the same people as you.

If one of your contacts says something you feel your contacts would be interested in you can ’retweet’ it with a click of the mouse and their tweet will be sent to all of your contacts. In the same way you can reply to a tweet if you feel you have something to say in response to it.

Tweets can contain links to useful or interesting web pages or images. Or, they can be just text. Its up to you. Long URL’s you want to tweet can be shortened by websites which convert them into ‘tiny URL’s’ to save characters.

You do have to be aware that every tweet you make is visible to the World and all of your contacts will see it and be able to read it. The exception is if you send a private message to one of your contacts.

Your followers can send you private messages and you are informed of these in your email inbox. You also get an email each time a new person follows you, giving you the chance to check what they are saying on Twitter to see if you wish to follow them back. Here I add a note of caution. You will soon get bizarre people following you… who obviously have no intention of ever reading what you write because they are following thousands of people. They couldn’t possibly be interested in what you are saying. What they want is for you to follow them and read what THEY are saying. Most are online marketeers or people promoting their own businesses and products. I do not follow anyone who has an unmanageable amount of contacts. I believe Twitter should be a two way thing. The only exceptions I make are one or two ‘celebrities’ who do say interesting or funny things and will obviously have thousands of followers but what they say is of value to me in one way or another, so I make an exception. I follow about a quarter of the people who follow me. If you want me to follow you, then you have to be saying things that are interesting, useful, humorous and so on (and I don’t follow anyone who uses foul language or tells off-colour jokes).

Now we come to its benefits for us as photographers. As with many forms of Social Networking, Twitter has given us the ability to be put in direct contact with many like minded people. Ordinary photographers, many of whom have a vast knowledge of equipment, techniques and contacts. I have tweeted brief questions and within seconds got back the answer from contacts. I also try and respond to the questions of others (I get mad with people in Social Networking who are only on the take – it should be a two way thing – photographers I follow who only post stuff about what they are doing and images they are uploading and so on soon get deleted from my list of contacts. I don’t want to hear just what a great guy you are – -I want to interact with you.)

I do get business from my contacts. I may post about a space on a workshop and get a booking as a result which is a real benefit to my business, but it also means my customers can contact me for advice or just to tell me what they have been doing since we met and because of the 140 character limit it has to be brief and to the point. It is often so much quicker than email.

I have linked my Facebook account to my Twitter feed so when I upload something on Facebook a tweet with a link to it appears in Twitter. Now Twitter is becoming a dynamic part of my social networking system. If a follower clicks that link they go to my Facebook stream and now they don’t see other peoples tweets, they are focused on my stream alone and this may lead them to clicking a link to my website and now they are purely focused on my work and from here they may link to my blog and start reading stuff I have put up. Twitter, in this way, has become an essential tool in social networking.

As with all social networking it can become a time waster. If you have too many contacts you can spend hours every day following everyones tweets, checking all the Facebook friends streams, commenting on all your contacts Flickr uploads, processing emails, reading and writing blogs, recording podcasts and listening to those of others and so on. It can become all consuming and thats before you have searched for bargains on EBay! Very soon you will get no work done. YOu have to be disciplined and apportion a sensible amount of time to social networking – enough to give real benefit to your customers and friends and enough to derive benefit yourself, but not so much that your business or life suffers. It is just a matter of self control.

I quickly came to see Twitter as indispensable. I love how quick it is and how it puts you in direct contact with great photographers who soon form a part of your network. Most of the guys and girl photographers on Twitter are genuinely friendly and keen to help. It enables us to interact with people we would never have had chance to contact 15 years ago. Imagine being a budding landscape photographer in the 1960’s, 70’s or 80’s. We would have had no chance to talk to Charlie Waite, Joe Cornish or other greats. Their equivalents today are on Twitter, Flickr and Facebook and we can. We can ask them questions, get their feedback and perhaps even help them (they are human too). This has enormous and real value.

So, I don’t think Twitter is a waste of time (but it could be – thats down to you) and I do see real benefit to my business in Twitter. I also have learned a huge amount from the help of my contacts on Twitter and hopefully have been able to help others too. I recommend you check it out and make up your own mind.