40 – socialphototalk.com

When you first heard about Twitter, you probably wondered why the heck anyone would care about the answer to “What are you doing right now?” If you’ve used Twitter and developed some relationships, you probably realized that the connections go way beyond folks sharing what they’re having for lunch.

I want to hear your Twitter story in a couple sentences, of what you thought it would be like when you joined and then what you’ve found Twitter to actually be once you’ve used it for a while. I’ll select a couple commenters at random; one will win a Luma Loop camera strap (size medium – $60 value) and the other will get one year of Flickr Pro ($25 value). Winners will be announced next Monday (June 7th), so leave a comment soon!

Please share… what’s been your Twitter experience when compared with your expectations?

Photo by kl-Ga, used under Creative Commons licensing

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Tagged as:
contests,
flickr,
flickr pro,
luma loop,
Twitter

If you share photos online at Flickr, SmugMug, or Facebook and you’re using Adobe Lightroom for your post-processing and image management, there’s a good chance that you’re using Jeffrey Friedl’s export plugins to get your photos from your computer to the online services.

One of the features that many folks seem to overlook is the ability to send a tweet announcing your new uploads. The Twitter section is in the lower part of the export options panel:

If it’s your first time, you’ll need to click the “Authenticate at Twitter” button to sign into Twitter. Once authenticated, you can choose what message to send once your export is complete. Click the “Help on special codes” link to find out more about how to automatically insert the URL to your destination photo, photoset, or your base URL on the service.

Other than tweeting links, how do you drive traffic to your photo sharing sites?

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Tagged as:
jeffrey friedl,
lightroom,
Twitter

Flickr isn’t the only service which makes it easy to share photos from your galleries via Twitter. I use SmugMug for my fine art print sales as well as client proofing. I’ve started to put a few other photos there as well, and they make it very simple for a photographer to share via Twitter, Facebook, and some other social media tools.

From a photo on SmugMug, click on the Share button and choose Be Social. From there, choose the Twitter tab (or whichever service you want to use) and go through the authentication process. Enter the message to accompany your tweet, and you’re set! The UI even includes a character count so you’ll know if you’re within the 140 character limit. SmugMug will tweet a link to your photo (with a shortened URL).

I’m a big fan of the professional galleries on SmugMug and it’s great that they have professional-level social media features as well (including some, like Facebook integration, that are missing from Flickr).

Tagged as:
facebook,
smugmug,
Twitter

As I explore Flickr and look at others’ photos, here are some tips I’ve learned about effective photo tagging (as well as one pet peeve to avoid):

This one is almost too obvious, but always tag. Add some keywords so that folks will find your photos.
Add some “concept” tags. Think of the emotions, feelings, activities, or general concepts that might apply to a photo. Does the photo depict happiness, reading, or the idea of busy? Add those as tags.
Be consistent with plurality: Choose car or cars. Choose airplane or airplanes. Choose flower or flowers. Pick one method and stick with it, rather than some of each. Or better yet: use both.
Understand spaces: You have two choices to deal with spaces in tags. Either surround the tag with quotes like this: “new york” or simply remove the space and use newyork. If you simply type new york into a Flickr tag box, you’ll end up with two separate tags: new, and york.
Avoid this pet peeve: If you’re uploading a group of photos, take the extra couple of minutes to correctly tag the individual photos. If your batch of 10 photos contains 2 that have rainbows in them, don’t tag all 10 photos with rainbows — folks will get frustrated as they wonder why photos without rainbows are showing up under your rainbows tag.

By following some consistent guidelines, you’ll result in more exposure for your photos on Flickr. Feel free to comment with any other tagging tips.

Photo by sheldonschwartz, used under Creative Commons licensing

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Thomas Hawk is one of Flickr’s most prolific photographers, posting a couple dozen photos per day (or more). He posts some really great work (for example, see his set of photos with more than 25 “favorites”). His blog has occasionally featured the stories of photographers who have had their work (or even their entire Flickr account) deleted from Flickr, often without clear explanation. View all of his Flickr content removal posts (which he tags as “censorship”) on his blog.

Thomas is also affiliated with Zooomr, a Flickr competitor.

Today, Thomas Hawk was banned from the Flickr help forum in direct response to his posting links to material critical of Flickr. One wonders if his affiliation with a competitor might be involved, but the official explanation is that they’re silencing him because they don’t like the material he’s posting.

I’ve mostly stood by and watched the Flickr issues without action, but their latest action to shut down dissenting voices leaves me pondering my future with Flickr.

Photo by Thomas Hawk, used under Creative Commons licensing

Tagged as:
flickr,
thomas hawk

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Episode 5 of the Social Photo Podcast is here. Hosts Aaron Hockley and Lyza Danger Gardner talk about copyright and property releases for publicly-viewable art and architecture, comparing the stock photography and journalism industries, and the results of a poll on workflow. This episode is around 17 minutes.

Links to Things We Talk About

Cloud Gate (aka The Bean)
Discussion of the similarities in the industries of traditional stock photography and traditional journalism
Poll on uploading to photo sharing sites
The Social Photo Talk monthly e-newsletter

Distribution and Feed

We’re now on iTunes – if you use iTunes, you can subscribe using this link: Subscribe on iTunes

You can also find the podcast as an attachment to the main Social Photo Talk RSS Feed. You should see a player at the bottom of this post if you want to listen directly, or you can grab the Episode 5 mp3 file directly.

Feedback

We’d love to have your feedback – technical, content, or otherwise. Leave a comment here or send mail to [email protected] – thanks!

Photo by papalars, used under Creative Commons licensing

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Tagged as:
copyright,
journalism,
podcasts,
property releases,
social ph,
social photo podcast,
stock photography,
stock photos,
Workflow

If you’re new here, you can keep up with my latest photography information at Picture Pundit – subscribe to my newsletter for a FREE Report: A Guide to Twitter for Photographers.

Today we release the third episode of the Social Photo Podcast. Hosts Aaron Hockley and Lyza Danger Gardner talk about a @dailyshoot update, Flickr’s short URL service, integration between Flickr and Twitter. This episode is just under 9 minutes.

Links to Things We Talk About

The @dailyshoot project – the @dailyshoot Twitter account, Flickr Pool, and website
Where to setup the link between Flickr and Twitter (add it as a blog on Flickr)
urlkr.com – Manually create flic.kr short URLs
Using Flickr instead of Twitpic for phone-to-Twitter photos

Distribution and Feed

We’re now on iTunes – if you use iTunes, you can subscribe using this link: Subscribe on iTunes

You can also find the podcast as an attachment to the main Social Photo Talk RSS Feed. You should see a player at the bottom of this post if you want to listen directly, or you can grab the Episode 3 mp3 file directly.

Feedback

We’d love to have your feedback – technical, content, or otherwise. Leave a comment here or send mail to [email protected] – thanks!

Photo by striatic, used under Creative Commons licensing

Podcast: Play in new window
| Download

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dailyshoot,
flickr,
podcasts,
social photo podcast,
twitpic,
Twitter

Here’s the second episode of the Social Photo Podcast. Hosts Aaron Hockley and Lyza Danger Gardner talk about the @dailyshoot project as well as a variety of issues surrounding sharing work online. This episode is just over 10 minutes.

Links to Things We Talk About

Distribution and Feed

We’re now on iTunes – if you use iTunes, you can subscribe using this link: Subscribe on iTunes

You can also find the podcast as an attachment to the main Social Photo Talk RSS Feed. You should see a player at the bottom of this post if you want to listen directly, or you can grab the Episode 2 mp3 file directly.

Feedback

We’d love to have your feedback as we figure out the podcast (for example, this week I learned that apparently my mic wasn’t muted that time when I coughed. Either leave a comment here or send mail to [email protected] – thanks!

Photo by ArunaR, used under Creative Commons licensing

Podcast: Play in new window
| Download

Tagged as:
dailyphoto,
Photo Sharing,
podcasts,
social photo podcast,
Twitter,
watermarking

If you’re new here, you can keep up with my latest photography information at Picture Pundit – subscribe to my newsletter for a FREE Report: A Guide to Twitter for Photographers.

One of the great things about Flickr is that unless photographers have stripped it away, the EXIF data for a photo is accessible. In this screenshot, you’ll see that for a photo with EXIF information, most of the goodies are hidden behind a “More Properties” link:

Hit that link and you’ll see all of the info about the photo:

Viewing the EXIF data is a great way to find out more about how a photo was created (from a technical standpoint). Some photographers choose to strip away the EXIF data, preferring to keep the technical information a secret. Why? The usual reason I hear is a fear that someone might see the EXIF information and then go copy the photo. Trade secrets? Not exactly.

Share your EXIF info. It’s a great way for photographers to learn more about the technical aspects of photography. It’s a great starting point for a conversation. We all realize that having an expensive camera doesn’t make one a good photographer, and by the same measure knowing that a photo was taken at f/2.8 isn’t going to be of a lot of benefit if one doesn’t understand what that means. Don’t hide your EXIF data; share and help others learn.

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exif,
flickr,
technique

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Eye-Fi. All opinions are 100% mine.

Our poll last week indicated that 95% of the readers of Social Photo Talk use photo sharing sites such as Flickr or even Facebook. It’s a bunch of fun to share photos with friends, family, and clients, but like many things in photography there’s a few moving parts that are often involved. Many times I simply want to get the photos online quickly without having to get back to my desk, take the memory card out of the camera, put it into the card reader, and then manually upload to Flickr. In the past that has been my routine but you might have heard about the Eye-Fi card which changes that process.

The Eye-Fi is slick: it’s a SD memory card (hence, wireless) with built-in WiFi. It stores up to 4GB of images and works in any camera with a SDHC card slot. Once you’ve taken some photos, Eye-Fi can copy those files to your computer (storing them in date-based folders) and also upload photos (or videos) directly to photo sharing sites. Check out this video which explains more:

I don’t have an Eye-Fi card (yet) but I’m seriously considering it now that my Canon S90 uses SDHC and is the perfect candidate for wanting to be able to get photos online quickly. Lately I’ve been slacking a bit about pushing photos to Flickr and I might pick up an Eye-Fi card after Christmas.

What do you think? Have you used an Eye-Fi card? I think it has the potential to make photo sharing a LOT easier amongst the casual crowd that might not want to go through a bunch of manual processes to get a few snapshots up to Flickr…

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eye-fi,
facebook,
flickr,
Photo Sharing,
sdhc,
wifi

Social Media Marketing for Photographers // Photography + Community

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