[REVIEW:] Zenfolio — An Online Photographer's Paradise – Dennis Hays

Photographers and writers are invisible performance artists and are known only by their work, not by their physical presence. While singers, actors and dancers perform in front of an audience, a photographer's audience usually never sees the actual performance, but only the results. It is the results, however, that the photographer wants the audience to see.

It's a rare photographer that keeps their work under wraps and away from the public and away from view. Normally, images are to document an event, publication or to be exhibited. I would feel safe in saying a large majority of photographers are amateurs and never put their work in front of the public. Of this demographic, there is a healthy number dabbling in fine art and semi-professional work (getting paid for their images, but not gainfully employed, full time as a professional photographer).

Zenfolio provides a service to photographers wanting to exhibit their images, possibly sell them, but don't want or can't technically maintain a proprietary Web site. Whether you are a novice, hobbyist, semi-pro or professional, Zenfolio has features to accommodate you.

Using Zenfolio's services is much like having your own web site, except for the costs of programming, on-going maintenance, and installation of a shopping cart for selling pictures, which can be both expensive and difficult to set up.

I created a trial account on Zenfolio to examine what they offered and also to experience the uploading and settings available. Zenfolio's trial account allows you to have two weeks to evaluate whether Zenfolio has what you need and, to be fair, I didn't find it lacking any essentials. In fact, I'm hard pressed to determine what, if anything, is missing.

After the two-week trial, Zenfolio offers three tiers of service: Basic, for $25.00 per year, has no bandwidth limit (you can feel free to have every one of your relatives, friends, clients and the general public view your pictures without any additional costs), but initially, has a two-gigabyte limit for image storage. If you stay at the Basic level, you get an additional gigabyte of storage for every additional year you maintain your subscription. The maximum file size per image is 12 megabytes, which should be plenty; the Unlimited tier, for $50.00 per year, offers the same per-image size, but the Premium level ($100 per year) has a per image limit of 24 megabytes.

Between the different levels, Basic, Unlimited and Professional, there are a few differences, with most of the difference between the two lower tiers and the Premium level.

The Premium level is intended for image sales and, as such, has a myriad of services intended to make the process of selling quick and easy. Zenfolio lists a comparative chart of their services and features.

 
Figure 1: Zenfolio Wizard

When I got started with Zenfolio, the site presented a wizard to facilitate getting set up. There were two choices of uploaders to get your images from your computer onto Zenfolio's site. The Zenfolio Uploader can upload a batch of images at one time. All you need do is drag and drop them into the uploader, press the upload button and get some coffee. The HTML uploader requires you to add photos, one-by-one. You can also use third-party tools.

After opening a trial account with Zenfolio (no credit card required), I used the wizard to upload three of my images and then went to look at how they were displayed. I thought it looked good...so good, I wanted to put up a few more to see the slide-show at work and that's when I ran into the first problem. Where is the upload tool?

After going to my account page, I looked for a login link and finally found it at the bottom right-hand corner. I logged in and looked for the uploader and, not finding it, searched the lower right corner, but it's not there.

Glancing around the screen, I saw the Zenfolio logo on the top left and a few items at the top right: WELCOME DENNISHAYS, MY ZENFOLIO (drop down) and LOGOUT. Thinking, for just a minute it's in the MY ZENFOLIO drop down. I check. There is a Back to Edit View link there (also goes to edit view when you click the WELCOME link). It's not obvious, but, I guess if you look hard enough...

Figure 2: Zenfolio Edit Page

Back at the edit view, where you can start one of the uploaders, the original wizard popped open, even though I had checked "Do not show this page when I log in." After the first time I used it and checked "Do not show..." I don't really expect to see it every time I go into Edit mode. This happens with both Firefox and IE7.

That is small potatoes overall. Zenfolio is a comprehensive online tool allowing you customize it almost any way you want: layout templates, background color, adding music and, as I said previously, a back-end shopping cart to help you sell your images.

Figure 3: Zenfolio Price Calculation

If you elect to sell your images through Zenfolio, you can create and manage price lists, building various lists for how you market your images. For instance, you can create a price lists for general sales and another for selling limited run pictures. When you upload images, they go into galleries you create (there is no limit to the number of galleries). Once created, you can assign your price lists to the galleries.

Figure 4: Zenfolio Price Formula Edit

Initially, I wanted to see the Zenfolio prices, but couldn't find a link. However, when you create your price lists, the base cost displays showing you Base Price, Profit, Service Fee, Selling Price and a tick box to tell Zenfolio to use a formula for price calculations. You can turn this off and change the profit and/or Selling Price to whatever you want. Also, you can change the formula used by Zenfolio in the price calculations.

Selling Price = Base Price + Fixed Markup + % Over Base

Zenfolio is a remarkable online platform for photographers. In an afternoon, you can create a presence which is both professional and comprehensive, allowing a myriad of customization to make your gallery unique.

Is it worth the price? Zenfolio's fees are, in my opinion, quite reasonable, at $25.00, $50.00 and $100.00 per year. The real question, however, is what is your alternative? What's the cost in time and energy to create your own Web site from scratch or how much will you pay to have someone do it for you. Let's face it. We're photographers and our time should be spent taking and editing pictures and marketing our services, not pushing code.

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[REVIEW:] Software Review: Athentech Perfectly Clear - The Joy of Image Editing – Dennis Hays

I have been using Adobe Photoshop ever since Adobe released version 2.51 on November 1992 and, for the most part, I have kept current. Photoshop is a daunting program with hundreds of commands, some buried so deep you'll need an archeologist to unearth them.

If you are a professional or fine art photographer, you may need to have all of this power at your disposal; but what if you could find some way to edit your images visually and with few commands?

Over the years many individuals and companies have made a business out of supplying plug-ins to extend Photoshop's abilities, but most all of them require you to know exactly what you want to do with your image prior to using them.

Athentech's Perfectly Clear promises automatic photo correction with instant Real Color perfection. Available for Microsoft Windows, Perfectly Clear could not be easier to use. Open the plug-in after loading your image and Perfectly Clear immediately corrects your photo. Athentech says their product will provide one-click adjustments to images that nine out of ten times exceed either the camera's own rendition or normal manual adjustments.

Figure 1: Perfectly Clear Before and After

The before and after picture above clearly shows what Perfectly Clear did without any manual adjustments. Note specifically the color of the water and the clarity of the subjects.

What about the times Perfectly Clear doesn't get it just right the first time? Look at the second picture where you can see, on the right side, controls for you to manually adjust the settings for your image. There are but a few and clearly labeled: Exposure, Contrast, Sharpening, Skin Tone as so forth.

Figure 2: Athentech Perfectly Clear Interface

All of them can be enabled or disabled with the check box to the left and you can save your manual adjustments as a "preset." This allows you to re-use your settings at any time by selecting them in the drop-down box at the upper right. As an example, I took many pictures at this beach while on vacation and, instead of moving the controls to duplicate my setting on each image, I saved my settings for the first image and then picked it from the drop-down for each image thereafter.

Many corporations and image laboratories have been using Athentech's Perfectly Clear technology for some time (in over 55,000 kiosks in 30-plus countries, thousands of mini-labs, countless online solutions, labs, and over 13 million software copies), but now it's packaged as a Photoshop plug-in for the general public. You can download a 30-day, fully functional trial with zero limitations of Perfectly Clear at Athentech's web site.

Requirements:

• Microsoft Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7
• Apple iPhone, Macintosh OS currently in development.
• Windows Version - $199.00
• iPhone Version - $2.99

 

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[REVIEW:] Photographing Nature by Ralph A. Clevenger – Review by Dennis Hays

Photographing Nature: A photo workshop from Brooks Institute's top nature photography instructor Review by Dennis Hays When I was a boy, I watched Marlon Perkins' Wild Kingdom on television and was fascinated by the images of live animals on the screen. I knew a photographer had to be in the background to capture the action. Someday, I told myself, I'd like to do that. While I'm grown up now, the wonder of nature still enthralls me and so do the photographers who put themselves "out there" to get the images. A few years ago, I had a conversation with Andy Rouse, one of the preeminent nature photographers in the world. While we talked about his photographic work-flow, we did have a side conversation about the field work. Being a nature photographer is not just walking out into the brush with your camera; there is quite a bit to learn to do it right. Reading Ralph Clevenger's book, Photographing Nature , was an eye opener for me as to what's needed to be proficient. He covers quite a bit, gives away some secrets and provides a first-rate course in this subject. Photographing Nature is a photo workshop from the famed Brooks Institute, where Clevenger is an instructor. Clevenger takes you step by step and leads you through a process to learn what you need in the way of equipment, lighting, wet-belly photography (it is what it sounds like!), and even ethics. There is no way a book, even one as comprehensive as Ralph A. Clevenger's Photographing Nature is going to make a weekend shooter into a professional nature photographer; not without hours and hours of practice and thousands of images. However, if you have any thought of heading to the great outdoors to try your hand at some simple subjects, Photographing Nature will make your initial steps easier and give you some methods with which to evaluate your product. Most of us will not be nature photographers, but will, from time to time, go camping or hiking and, while away, have opportunities to photograph plants and animals. The techniques Clevenger presents can assist you in making sure the images are framed correctly, have effective lighting and know what makes an appealing and possibly a salable picture. As for me... I still have a wee part of my curiosity that wants to explore some of Clevenger's methods, but not so much that I want to give up a comfortable bed for a sleeping bag.

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