Glen Goffin Photography

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

67 Yes, I'm Smugging

No, not "smuggling". Unless you consider it smuggling when I hide my ignorance, carry it across international borders and peddle it off as expertise. Hmmm ... good thing there are no dogs that can sniff that one out.

Wow, I have so much nonsense to share. Where do I start?

Let's start with Smugmug. As you all know, I'm no big fan of Flickr. It's great for some folks. It's just not for me. Mutual adoration fests and popularity contests are ... well ... just NOT my gig. I've posted on that before.

Soooo ... where to post my galleries?

I figure even babies are smart enough to crawl before they walk (though they don't do so well when chewing gum). And I can outrun a baby anyday. So my first step was to use Blogger for this twisted carnage I call a blog. It's easy, powerful and ... ummm ... free. Now, my second step is to use a turn-key gallery hosting service. One day (insert fantasy sequence and harp music here), I'll actually author everything myself and have a first-class site like Kathleen's (check it out for yourselves). Hopefully by then I'll also have a handful of decent pictures to show, too.

The two gallery hosting sites I see most often are PBase and Smugmug and, after rigorous investigation ... ok, I never even tried PBase ... I signed up for a year of SM mostly just based on how cool it looked.

A few of my initial reactions -

1. The commercial aspects (online selling) are important to me. Unfortunately, it seems pretty constrained so far at least at the "Power" level. I'm not sure but I think the way it works is that they sell prints and I get a small cut of the profits. At 19 cents a print ... hmmm ... I think I'll break even sometime next ... well ... never. Honestly, I think they capitalize on the fact that those who buy the most prints of a photograph are the photographer, his family and his friends. Smart ... but cheesy.

2. It's not immediately obvious but they fully support CSS customization. I'm looking forward to using that.

3. They (Smug) seem to be very sensitive to the copyrights of the creators. That is really important to me. A general respect for the work and talent of the photographers. There are mechanisms to disable various ways that internet thieves steal images. This, for me, is one if the key reasons for using a turn-key gallery hosting service since I'm still naive to all the different ways that works can be stolen ... but I know there are a lot of them.

These two images are from Old San Juan. There are sculptures sprinkled all throughout the old city. They are all whimsical and fun and have such a distinctive vibe. They've become iconic symbols of the city. This one is particularly fun. The glasses that someone placed on the bird are perfect!

Peace and joy,
Glen

2 comments:

Ove said...

Hmm, interesting, I have been looking at smugmug too, wondering why people have their galleries hosted by them. Must be something good with it, considering you pay a little for it. Okay, I actually do that at flickr as well, the free accounts are too basic regarding means of organisation. Anyway, I thought the pro accounts on smugmug let you decide the price, and that they get a predetermined cut out of that.

Glen Goffin said...

Ove - yes, I believe you are right about the Pro level. I mispoke ... I'm currently at the "Power" level. I don't believe I get the same ability to set prices and such at this level. I'm waiting to see whether I like the service overall before stepping up to the next level ;D Peace, Glen