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Stock
Photo News no. 2
February 2000
Content
* Strong or soft colors in stock photography and publications.
* Search engines and website positioning.
* The real Millennium Bug.
* The golden era of long domain names.
* Website promotion.
* A best-selling list of stock-photos.
* The newest in press release from the stock photo industry.
*** Please note: We will not sell or rent the email addresses
belonging to our subscribers - we respect their privacy. ***
Strong or soft colors in
stock photography and publications
Will we go for more strong colors in photos or for a counter
mechanism towards less striking and soft colors in publications?
Let's take a short look at the background. For quite some years
ago the introduction of the film Velvia changed the preferred
film material for stock photography. Velvia is produced by
Japanese Fuji and gives strongly saturated and enhanced colors.
Earlier the Kodachrome was the standard in 35 mm films, because
of its very fine grain, its nearly true to nature color scale,
and not least because of its stability for storage in achieves.
But with the introduction of Velvia this film soon took over
the position of Kodachrome as the standard for stock photography.
The bright and saturated colors were an advantage on the light
table when the picture researcher went through a sample of
photos. The effect has been obvious. Since then we have all
seen thousands of Velvia photos published in magazines, folders,
advertisements, sales letters and newsletters. Of cause other
films have been in use, but in the overall picture this shift
has been remarkable.
The great success for Velvia has inspired the competition
to Fuji from several other manufactorers. Of these the Ectachromes
from big Kodak have proliferated into a number of products
with specific qualities related to color retention and saturation.
The clear competitors to Velvia is the Echtachrome VS (Vivid
saturation) and Ectachrome SW (saturated warm) for warm vivid
colors. These films and mainly the VS version are now fighting
with Velvia in the shops, - and on the light tables in the
stock photo agencies. The Ectachromes have some technical advantages
over Velvia and have been well received by the stock photographers.
I am sure we will see Velvia and these Ectachromes side by
side in many publications in the years to come. But the real
interesting question is, will we see a tendency of development
in the opposite direction - towards soft and less aggressive
colors? Now I am not thinking of the art photo movements, here
we always have a mixture of styles. No, I am focusing on products
for the commercial market.
A good
example is the series of books by Tricia Guild (and Elspeth
Thompson)
presenting a new color palette for indoor
decoration and signalling lifestyles. From the front jacket
it is described, that "Tricia Guild is renowned for her
brilliant use of color in decoration; her response to color
has always been intensely personal and emotional, an evolving
process which changes is renewed. Recently, after many years
of using bright, saturated color, she has moved towards a calmer,
cooler palette, a more harmonious use of color in tune with
a contemporary way of life." From "White hot. Cool
colors for modern living" published 1999 by Quadrille
Publishing Ltd, with the excellent photography of James Merrill.
Such tendencies are well worth a look for the creative professional.
Search engines and website
positioning
Since last newsletter we have experienced a lot of problems
with the different search engines. Search engines are mandatory
to be listed in whatever product or service you are providing
on the web. Concerning the performance of AltaVista, one of
the most important for traffic to international websites, the
search display has improved remarkable - a great benefit for
the users. And according to our experience at A-Z Fotos the
acceptance and listening of new web pages are re-established,
with only minor irregularities.
You can
check how well your site is indexed in AltaVista by searching
in AltaVista,
writing "url:" before your
url (e.g. url:www.azfotos.com) in the search box. Use a time
of the day with little traffic to have shown the full number
of indexed pages. You can read more here: http://doc.AltaVista.com/adv_search/ast_haw_pageindex.shtml
The Real Millennium Bug
The fear for the Millennium Bug was exaggerated, or the precautions
worked well. You can visit what became the Real Millennium
Bug at http://www.csiro.au/page.asp?type=mediaRelease&id=Millenniumbug.
This small water strider deserves attention - and a good story
in relevant media.
The golden era of long
domain names
Just now
the gold rush around registering and selling domain names
is back
again. Until late last year it was not possible
to register domain names longer than 22 characters. Now it
is possible to register domains up to 63 characters, that will
be up to 59 characters plus the ".com" extension.
You now have the possibility to register the full name of your
business as a top domain, if it was earlier restricted by the
short domains. Or/and you can register a couple of domains
with your main key words to be found on the search engines.
Do like this:
1. Find out which key words are most important for the search
of your potential visitors to have targeted traffic to your
website.
2. Check some statistics of which wording people actually
use - find out at http://www.goto.com/d/about/advertisers/other tools.jhtml
3. Find the best combination of keywords, e.g. ------------www.magazines-travel-guides-nature-wildlife-tourism-books.com
if these keywords fit to your publications (or whatever you
sell). The use of hyphens is friendly for the search engines
to separate the keywords. But long domain names with hyphens
are not so popular with people. A combination of different
domain names is the way to handle that dilemma. All in all
to register a few domain names and set them up as lead pages
is a small investment in advertisement with a huge effect.
At A-Z Fotos we have registered quite a number of domains around
offering stock photos, and also a number of other domains in
the hope of later reselling for a substantial profit.
4. You find one of the best registrars of long
domain names here
If you need more ideas and good advice, go to this
resource.
Some
domain names have been sold (after the original registration)
for incredible sums - several for 1 million dollars! Most
are sold for less dramatic prices, but it seems to be worth
while to register names when you have good ideas for income
generating names, besides the proposed domain names as leads
to your website. Take a look on the sales
of real-estate in cyberspace.
Website promotion
I have
just come across an amazing resource for shaping websites
towards efficiency, targeted traffic and most important closing
orders. I expect to benefit a lot from that in the future
at A-Z Fotos. Take
a look - With lots of free stuff.
All websites need maintenance. You can have your own website
checked for free at www.netmechanic.com.
Photo District newswire
Photo District News is
a useful website and they publish a newsletter with detailed
updates for professional photographers.
A best-selling list of
stock photos
The US stock photo agency West Stock displays a best-selling
list of pictures for 1999 here.
It is interesting with the dominance of "white collar" types
of pictures sold.
West Stock also explains that the use of low resolution digital
pictures are welcomed by the creative professionals, but picture
sizes lower than 450 x 300 pixels are not acceptable.
The newest in press release
in the stock photo industry
You will
find a list of the latest press
releases related to stock photo libraries and the whole
stock photo industry here.
PS
If you
are eager to increase the traffic to your web site in a dramatic
way, take a look HERE.
Have you
seen the previous issue of Stock Photo News.
?
If you have any comments, good ideas or critical remarks,
please post them on our message
board.
See you in next Stock Photo Newsletter! Soren
Breiting. A-Z FOTOS.
Copyright 2000 by Soren Breiting, A-Z FOTOS.
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