Happy Thanksgiving

To all my friends and readers in the United States, have a Happy and Safe Thanksgiving.  Enjoy a day off from the craziness .

Portfolio Update

Today’s portfolio update is to introduce my new massage series, including couple’s massage images.  This series was done with two real massage therapists to lend it authenticity.  I’ll tell you, the models never had to work so hard!   Another note, I tried to keep it light and bright, with accents of turquoise and brown, the hot colors this season.

You can see more of the series by clicking here for a search in my portfolio.

Thanks and have a good weekend!

Lightbox Contact Sheet and Download

My goal, with this blog, is to help out the iStockphoto.com buyer, something I mentioned way back in my first post here.  A happy customer returns to buy, and that makes me happy .

So, when I saw the chance to dust off my rusty php skills to help a designer, I jumped at it.  A little light programming is a nice break from touching up photos.

In this post on the iStock forum, the request was:

When working on a large project, I may scout several dozen images that I may use, adding them to a lightbox. I’d like to be able to quickly download comps to create a contact sheet for my clients to review, or even print them directly off iStock in a nice layout.

So, I’ve create the lightboxDisplayer, which can be found at http://digitalplanetdesign.com/index.php?page=lightbox (please note, that as of 10/20/2009, the page is now here: http://digitalplanetdesign.com/index.php?page=istocktools).

All you have to do, is enter a lightbox number from the iStockphoto.com lightbox area, or your private lightbox number.  Then, choose what sort you want the contents returned in, the number of horizontal cels, the size of the image, and if the image number below should be linked to the iStockphoto.com image page.  Then, “Get Printable Page” feeds you this:

Which gives you a page for easy printing, or saving, or whatever you want.

Clicking on the “Get Downloadable Zip” will serve up a Windows compatible .zip file.  The images in the .zip file are simply labeled.  “iStock_4783833.jpg”, for example.  I’ve heard it doesn’t work on Macs, but my library functionality at my server host is somewhat limited.  I’ll try to see if I can find a compatible .zip library.

Let me know if you have any suggestions, or if this helps to serve your needs a bit better.

Searching for Numbers

Just a quick tip that may catch you up occasionally.

On iStockphoto.com, if you enter the following into the search box:

2009

you will get a return of the image, numbered 2009.  If what you actually wanted was the year 2009 as a keyword, you need to put it in quotes:

“2009″ (my portfolio)

This does not apply to a multiple phrase search:

2009 render (my portfolio)

Same goes for any other number you may have cause to search on.  You could also use this tip as a reminder that you can just type an image number in the search box, and away you go.

The Creative Network

One of the things that was revolutionary about iStockphoto.com when it started was that it was community driven.  It was a network of designers and photographers that shared imagery for projects, for trade (essentially) and then for royalties.  Around it, especially in the forums, grew a community where people swapped tips and stories.  Eventually, some of the people met each other, and while, still a business, friendships, or even just friendly business relationships arose.

Take that as an introduction to the iStockphoto “Creative Network”.  The Creative Network is essentially a list of other iStockphoto members that allows you to easily keep in touch, or track of, them.  From the civics companion:

The Creative Network is a way for you to keep your friends and colleagues on iStockphoto handy and make communication among members easier.

One thing to note, this is an invitation and approval system.  You can’t just add people to your network anonymously – they must approve of your request (see down below).

Click on that little button at the top of your iStock page, and you will go to your Creative Network headquarters.

As you can see, you have the following tabs:

• Network: A listing of the members in your network that links to their profile, and a mail link to sitemail them easily
• New Uploads: This gives you a random sampling of the newest images per member in your network.  Refresh the page to get another selection of images
• Subscribed Blogs: Get the latest on a member’s iStock blog by clicking the subscribe link at the top of their blog
• Subscribed Threads: Keep on to date on forum discussions by clicking the link in a forum post

Over on the right, you’ll see your “tool” options.

• Add Blog Post: Allows you to easily add a post to your blog
• Add Member: Allows you to sitemail another member to join your network, with a short message
• Manage Network: Gives you another view of your network listing with easy links to mail and remove members as well as another “Add Member” link
• Extended Network: Sort of a “social network” listing, where you can see people linked to your people
• Hide Online Status: You may have noticed that online users are noted as such in the network listings.  You can turn that off
• Allow Network Requests:  You can disallow new network invitations.  I found that I was getting tons of requests from new contributors who seemed to just be automatically adding everyone they saw on the site, so I turned off requests to keep my network a bit tighter – people I was actually interested in and who had made an effort to interact with me a bit.
• Ignore List: I’m not actually sure what this list accomplishes, because I’ve never used it.  Let me know if you do!
• Mail Creative Network: The most dangerous link, because it creates a sitemail to everyone on your network, and people tend to “reply all” again and again.  Be judicious in your use of this function

So, how do people use the network?  Some just use it to keep track of their friend’s new content.  Some use it as a resource group, mailing out questions or critique requests to their network.  It’s really up to you what you do with it.  It is what it is – a mutually agreed upon member list, and you get out of it what you put into it.

2009 Birthday Cake

A quick portfolio update to go along with today’s article .

I’ve got up a new series of one of my more popular models with a birthday cake celebrating the upcoming new year.  It was shot on purple, with some added flair to stand out a bit from the crowd.

I even did a few with a regular birthday cake, which provided some nice concept pieces with copy space, or easily added copy space.

In addition to my photo work, I’m trying to add some new 3d work into my portfolio.  With my history as a computer modeler at Disney, I had done a lot early in my iStock days, but not lately.  So, currently, I’m adding a cartoony energy concept series:

Over on Getty Images, I’ve added a new series of high resolution images (7 in all) of a football spotlit on black.  Great for the autumn/winter sports season:

As always, thanks for browsing my work!

The Designer Spotlight

Everyone like free credits right?  And how about free publicity?  How about both?

Well, you can pick up some of each at iStockphoto.com when you submit to the Designer Spotlight .  The Designer Spotlight is a place for designers to submit examples of their work that they have used iStockphoto content in.  Viewers are then free to browse submissions and get details on the work used, the design itself, and anything else provided in the description.

It also lists a “Design of the Week”, which can give extra exposure to your business.  You can browse submitted designs by type, so it is also a place where you can get some inspiration, and maybe some examples of how iStock content has been used successfully.

What’s nice, at least for contributors, is that your submission actually links to the content used in the piece.  The contributor will receive an email when the submission is accepted, notifying them of the design.  Contributors love to see works in action, so this pleases a lot of contributors.

Other members, as you can see, are able to rate and comment on your design which is a great way to receive feedback.

Submitting a design is easy enough.  Just go to this form page and fill out the information.  There is a link at the bottom to enter the iStock content information.  You will need an screenshot of your design: 800 x 600 minimum; 1600 x 1200 maximum.  iStock will make a thumbnail for the spotlight page.  There is a checkbox for “not my design”, so it would seem you can submit work you have found in action, although I have heard in actuality they may reject these.  So, for now, I would stick with your own work.

The reward for your dedication to submitting to the spotlight, is currently five free credits added to your account.  So you can see that might add up significantly if you have a few iStock inspired designs laying around.

Have a great week!

Vote

If you’re an American, stop reading this and get out there and vote today!

That is all.  Wishing you a short line …

Use More Than One Word!

iStockphoto.com has over 3.5 million images.  That’s a lot of content to search through when you’re looking for the right something.

Unfortunately, the search engine is not psychic.  It does a simple word match and sorted return.  See this article for more details.  The main point being that when you type in “apple”, you may be thinking:

“What I want is an apple on a plate on a white background, and that seems like the obvious thing the ‘best match’ sort should return at the top…”

What the search and sort thinks when you search on apple is:

“Find anything keyworded ‘apple’ and return them all in the sort of their choice”.

The “best match” sorting engine does not incorporate any relevancy factor, or keyword weighting system.  It just knows that somewhere in that image, there’s an apple, as keyworded by the contributor.

All is not lost, however.  iStockphoto allows the contributor up to 50 keywords.  As noted by Ethan Myerson, a keywording admin, there are three types of keywords:

• Literal: the actual nouns, adjectives and verbs of the image. Examples include “Truck”, “Walking”, “Blue”, “Heron”
• Conceptual: the emotive and conceptual aspects of the image. Examples include “Ominous”, “Hopeful”, “Business”
• Compositional: the terms that describe the composition or creation of the image. Examples include “Isolated On White”, “Horizontal”, “Studio Shot”, “Aerial View”

So, you should use combinations of these to find what you want.  There is no limit, as far as I know, to the number of keywords you can use to search.  So, for that isolated apple:

“isolated on white” apple nobody

If you want to get really fancy, here’s a search I made for someone who was just looking for an isolated pineapple.  I kept refining the search until I had just pineapples:

isolated pineapple fruit not juice not woman not salad not female not male not drink not raisins not grapes not orange

So, my point is that trying to find content with a one word search, while it might be good for brainstorming, isn’t really very useful for finding what you want when you know what you want.  Use multiple keywords!  It will save time.  If you need help working up a search, contact me, or post in the Request Forum.