Stock
Photo News no. 15
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STOCK
PHOTO NEWS from A-Z FOTOS
The first
Modern eZine combining Stock Photography and
Marketing
September
2002
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CONTENT
* From
the Editor
* Conceptual
pictures # 6
* Review:
2002 Photobuyer Survey Report of Digital
Photography and the Use of Digital Images in Editorial
Stock
* Take
better travel pictures, Tip # 9:
Caring for equipment
* Guest
Review: The new Webposition Gold 2
By Robin Nobles
* Press
release: Getty Images news and sport
* More
subscribers to your newsletter?
* Learn
from free marketing courses
Archive
of earlier issues of Stock Photo News at
www.StockPhotoNews.com
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FROM
THE EDITOR
Welcome
to all new subscribers, and thanks for still being with
us to all our many loyal readers. In times with
stagnation we have to be sure to use our resources to the
optimum. This includes our time. 'Don't work harder - work
smarter! is the slogan we like, but it isn't always easy to
implement.
This issue of Stock Photo News brings you up to date
about the situation for the use of digital stock
pictures at the moment. In hard times it is needed to know
how the market and competitors are behaving.
You will also learn from a top professional in search
engine marketing how to make the best use of the highly
revised version of Webposition Gold, so welcome to search
engine specialist Robin Nobles as a guest author.
Please remember to update your email address in our subscriber
list when you change. Personally I also submit my back up email
(a free Yahoo webmail) to the most important newsletters
I subscribe to, not to loose the contact.
Enjoy
your reading of Stock Photo News!
Soren
Breiting, Editor
----------------
A-Z FOTOS
"Find
Stock Photos from most of the World"
www.azFotos.com
----------------
Comments,
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TIPS
FOR CONCEPTUAL PICTURES # 6
This new
list can hopefully further your own ideas.
Conceptual pictures function as symbols, metaphors, icons
or analogies in advertisements, for book covers, articles
and features etc.
Elegant:
... Ballet dancer
... Elegant man or woman dressed up
... Arctic tern in flight
... Silky tern in flight
Old-timer:
... Classic car
... Dressed as in the 20s
Ancient:
... Coloseum
... Pyramids/ Farao mask
... Maya symbols
... Stone age symbols
If you
need more info about symbols, take a look at
www.symbols.com . They have info about 2500 western symbols
for free.
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REVIEW:
2002 PHOTOBUYER
SURVEY REPORT of Digital Photography and
the Use of Digital Images in Editorial Stock
From Photo Source International
Responses
from more than 500 photo buyers representing all
facets of the editorial publishing industry are the basis
for this report with its long title. The taget group is
stock photo agencies and individual stock photographers,
but for photo buyers this report gives a change to follow
your competitors practice at the moment, too.
According to the survey 94% of photo buyers stated that they
accept digital previews. The report spices the statistics with
citations from the participants in the survey. From these
it is clear that digital previews have a number of
advantages for the photo buyer. But complains are raised
about the dominating watermarks some photo agencies put in
the centre of their preview files. A similar complain
regards the loss of time, when agencies are sending previews
not fitting to the request concerning content or format.
It is not surprising that the percentage that will accept
digital submissions of the final pictures for publication
is lower than the percentage who accept previews. But it is
quite thought provoking that the number of photo buyers who
accept digital for submissions is expected to decline
instead of rise over the next few years.
The report covers a number of topics directly and indirectly,
and includes summaries of interviews with representatives from
the sides of photo buyers and stock photographers.
The 20 pages reports is easy reading and gives a good idea of
the curent situation for digital delivery of editorial stock
photography. To download it go to
www.photosource.com/101/survey2.html .
It is well worth its $14.95, by electronic delivery.
Soren
Breiting
........................................................
Take
Better Travel Photos # 9
CARING
FOR YOUR EQUIPMENT
Are you
just before your once in a lifetime travel
experience you MUST plan to be sure that you photographic
equipment will function well. All drivers know that it is
stupid to leave home for longer drives without a spare tire
and needed equipment. And all pro photographers know that
any kind of equipment can go wrong - and typical do so - at
the most unwanted situation. You cannot prevent all break
downs but a few things will anyway give you much more
security for you equipment.
1. Be
sure that your camera and lenses are working well
before departure: Take a film and use all your equipment
in different ways and modes. Use both automatic settings
and manual if that apply to your camera.
Use your flash indoor and outdoor. Keep some notes
about what you are doing. Take your time to check the
results. If something is not in function have your
equipment repaired or use something different. At least bring
notes, if you know something is not in function to avoid
using it on the trip, if you can still make use of your
camera.
2. If
you are not used to your camera bring the
instruction booklet.
3. If
you are travelling with others be sure you are not
the only one with a camera. In case bring a spare one.
Even a one time use camera can be better as a back up,
than no camera.
4. Bring
proper cases with you to protect your equipment.
5. Bring
a few good plastic bags of suitable size. They
can protect your camera in case of rain, high humidity or
heavy dust.
6. Bring
lens cleaner liquid, lens paper and a lens brush.
I also include a common ear washer of rubber, which is super
to push away dust on lens surfaces without scratching the
delicate surface. (Can be bought in pharmacies).
7. Change
the batteries before leaving (be sure to use
fresh batteries) and bring at least 2 spare sets.
8. Only,
bring fresh film.
9. On
travel have a system regarding where you store and
keep ready your equipment. Equipment and films don't like
high temperatures, direct sunlight, humidity and shock. If
you bring a sleeping bag this is a good place to store your
store of films. At the bottom of a tent with some isolation
over is also a rather low temperature place even in sunny
days.
10. If
possible ask to have your films hand sorted to
avoid the x-ray machine in the airport. Fast films are more
vulnerable than the normal range of ASA (let's say up to
400 ASA). Repeated x-ray controls will add up the effect.
Never leave your films in the checked luggage, as this
might receive much higher doses. With digital 'film' this
is not a problem.
11. On
tight schedules take 5 mins. every evening to take
a look at you lenses, and clean them when necessarily.
12. Be
sure not to mix up exposed and unexposed films.
Have continued
good luck with your travel photography.
Soren
Breiting
........................................................
REVIEW:
THE NEW WEBPOSITION GOLD
The NEW
Edition of WebPosition Gold is Finally Here . . .
And its new features make it better than ever!
by Robin
Nobles
Typical
of the professionalism of FirstPlace Software,
they've waited to release WebPosition Gold 2 until all
possible bugs could be found and corrected, so it seems
like forever that we've been waiting for this release.
However, for those of us 'die hard' Gold fans, the wait has
been well worth it. Let's take a quick walk through of the
program and discuss my favorite features as well as changes
made in each area.
Reporter
By far my favorite feature of Gold, Reporter will now
report your rankings across an impressive 85 world-wide
search engines and directories.
Some other
new and exciting features include:
You can now easily mail copies of the report to your clients,
even going so far as to ZIP the file.
You can automatically upload reports to your Web site.
You can conserve disk space by checking an option to delete
the actual downloaded page after the reports are generated.
You can even filter out non-ranking keywords from the report,
so that the report you send to your clients will be even more
impressive!
'Visibility Statistics' are now included at the top of the
Concise Summary Report that will let you know how many top
ranking pages you have as well as othervaluable statistics.
Under Options, you're given the choice of being courteous to
each engine by waiting a certain period of time between searches.
Page Generator
While reviewing this program, I created a few pages using
Page Generator, which is a feature of Gold 2 that helps
you build pages. This portion of Gold has
gotten criticism in the past because the engines don't want
to see 'machine-generated' pages. However, Gold 2's Page
Generator doesn't produce anything remotely 'machine
generated.' You have to create the content, design the
page, and choose the keywords. You simply create the page
from within a form, rather than on a blank HTML page.
After creating one of the pages, I ran it through Page
Critic, then submitted it through Inktomi's pay inclusion
program. Within a couple of days, I was already seeing top
10 results across many of the engines.
Is the page a 'doorway page'? Any page on your entire site
is virtually a doorway into your site. Does the page provide
value to the Internet, and would it be interesting and
valuable to Net users?
Yes. Page Generator just made it easier for me to create
the page.
Page Critic
Page Critic is designed to look at your pages and offer
suggestions in a variety of areas, such as word
count, keyword prominence, keyword frequency, and keyword
weight. Critic then offers specific suggestions that will
help you create a page that is close to the statistical
averages of other top ranking pages for that particular
search engine.
Under
General Suggestions, you'll find a running list
of news, tips, and suggestions related to the engine.
Here's a neat new feature: Page Critic will now
check your link popularity for whichever engine you're
working with. Under Settings, check the box that says
'Check Link Popularity'. You'll then see a section above
the General Suggestions that gives your link popularity for
your site, and where you can also check the link popularity
on competing sites, all from within the program.
Upload
Manager
Upload Manager tracks any pages generated by Gold and
uploads them, or other pages that may have changed since
your last upload. Upload Manager will upload
the pages for you, or you can use your own FTP program.
Submitter
To me, Submitter is a great program to use for the
international engines or lesser important engines that
don't have pay inclusion programs. You can pick and choose
which engines to submit to, and if you try to submit too
many pages on any one day, the program will quickly remind
you to keep you out of trouble. A neat new feature of this
program is its built-in spider for quickly gathering URLs.
The new Import option will spider a Web site and create a
list of all the URLs, even if the files do not exist on
your hard drive. This feature certainly makes submitting an
entire Web site quite easy. Submitter also allows you to
add custom engines that aren't included in Gold 2, so you
can keep track of your submissions all in one location.
Traffic
Analyzer
HitsLink powers Gold 2's Traffic Analyzer, and it will
track statistics such as visitors, search engines, and the
keywords being used to find your site.
The feature is easy to use: you simply register, and
HitsLink generates the code for you to put on any page that
you want to track. Stats are provided instantly and in real
time.
Scheduler
Program Scheduler to run your reports or submit pages at
a time that's convenient for you, like at night
during non-working hours.
Did you
know there's a brand new book out on how to use
WebPosition Gold 2? Search Engine Optimization with
WebPosition Gold 2, written by Brad Konia, is an
excellent step-by-step guide in how to use
WebPosition Gold 2. The book is now available through
Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
I had the opportunity to review the book and found it to
provide superb information on how the use the program as
well as SEO strategies in general.
Brad has also developed a new video tutorial for
using Gold 2, which is available as both a download or on
CD-ROM. The video is available on Brad's Web site:
http://marketmysite.com/.
In Conclusion
I really like what FirstPlace has done with this new
version of Gold. As in the past, WebPosition Gold
will remain one of my favorite and most used programs in my
arsenal of search engine marketing software.
For a listing of the new features of WebPosition Gold 2,
visit WebPosition
Gold 2:
-------
Robin
Nobles is the Director of Training for the Academy of
Web Specialists, where she has taught several thousand
students in her online search engine marketing courses
during the past several years. She is also the content
provider for GRSeo (Search Engine Optimizer) software. Her
latest books, Web Site Analysis and Reporting and
Streetwise Maximize Web Site Traffic, can be ordered
through Amazon. For onsite training by Robin Nobles and
John Alexander, visit Search Engine Workshops.
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PRESS
RELEASE: GETTY IMAGES NEWS AND SPORT
Getty
Images Officially Introduces Getty Images News and
Sport
Getty Images launches a new Web site to provide
up-to-the-minute photography coverage
SEATTLE, Tuesday, August 27, 2002 -
Getty Images, the world's leading imagery company,
today announced the official launch of its online
news and sport photo service - Getty Images News and Sport.
As a result of the company's consolidation of its news
photography with its Allsport collection, the new service
will provide 24-hour news, sports and entertainment
coverage and will operate as a completely digital business.
The company transitioned to shooting all its news and
sports coverage on digital cameras last year and has
enjoyed outstanding results. The new Web site is now
available at www.gettyimages.com, which features a host of
updated capabilities, such as increased customization, wire
speed uploads, improved search and enhanced viewing and
sharing options. "Getty Images News and Sport captures the
defining moments of our time," said Jonathan Klein,
co-founder and chief executive officer of Getty Images.
"Our photographers bring an eye for artistry, composition
and quality to their photographic reporting. We combine
their sensibility for powerful, indelible pictures with the
immediacy of a wire service to provide our customers with
the most unique news and sport photography available."
Site users of Getty Images News and Sport will benefit from the
robust functionality and features including a daily desktop
feed of images tailored to photographic needs, style and
budget. Getty Images' news and sport photographers have
won nearly every major press photography award in existence
and will cover more than 10,000 events in 2002 alone.
Getty Images' market-leading sports agency serves as the official
photographer or photographic partner to more than 40 sports
governing bodies worldwide, including the International
Olympic Committee and the United States Olympic Committee,
and for many sports organizations, including the National
Basketball Association, Major League Baseball Players'
Association, National Hockey League, Championship Auto
Racing Teams (CART) and the PGA European Tour.
About
Getty Images Inc. Getty Images is the world's leading
imagery company, creating and providing the largest and
most relevant collection of still and moving images to
communication professionals around the globe. From sports
and news photography to archival and contemporary imagery,
Getty Images' products are found each day in newspapers,
magazines, advertising, films, television, books and Web
sites. Getty Images' Web site, www.gettyimages.com, is the
first place customers turn to search, purchase and download
powerful imagery. Seattle-based Getty Images is a global
company, and has customers in more than 50 countries.
.......................................................
AFRICANA
APERTURE
Bringing
together photographers who focus on Africa.
Take a look at http://www.africanaperture.com
........................................................
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See you in the next Stock Photo Newsletter!
Soren
Breiting
........................................................
Copyright
2002 by Soren Breiting, A-Z FOTOS.
www.azFotos.com "Find
Stock Photos from most of
the World"
Email
me at: sb@ azfotos.com & sorenbreiting@ yahoo.dk
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Stock
Photo News is 'in principle' a monthly newsletter
edited by Soren Breiting. Due to many travels abroad it is
impossible for me to keep the schedule of the issues
strictly fitting to each month. My intention is to bring
quality information that is not outdated a month or two
later.
To
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Stock
Photo News from A-Z FOTOS www.azFotos.com "Find
Stock Photos from most of the World"
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