Found out yesterday after the minimal amount of research , that you can create your own buy it now with drop down menus over at Paypal
Okay a wee bit clunky but a quick way of getting a selling option onto your web pages by just copying a bit of html code in... I'll be giving that a go later today. You may have noticed that some of the pages have a password lock on them...that's because I'm working on them and will get them all polished up in time for January. if you are my eagle eyed viewer you may have also noticed that there are a lot more galleries appearing on here...Architecture Tags and Graffiti are just 2 and I'll be adding more as the day rolls on, although I'll be having a wee bit of fun with my latest Grandson...mwaaarh..xxxx during the day. So this old web site should be stuffed to the gunnels by the time 2013 turns up, providing of course today isn't the day we all end up under a Mayan apocalypse...this video may help you get through the day..I'll see you on the other side.
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..so now is the time to get cracking and start making all the samples up and getting prints sorted. It's all going to be in-house...so that'll be me being busy then. For the regular blog reader amongst you you may have picked up that I'm moving more towards retail and gallery stuff with my images which will be online, to galleries, at shows and through local advertising. So I've spent a bit of time getting work into coherent galleries, now all the right gear has turned up...the only thing I'm lacking is space. The equipment I've now got is on the chuffing BIG size and I reckon at some point I'm going to have to look at a workshop/studio to accommodate things...but that's the future and this new venture will have to generate it's own income to justify that....I'm already using part of the cellars but I'd have to get an industrial heater if i was to work down there on a permanent basis.
Eagle eyed ones out there will have noticed that I have a new blank gallery called 'The Picture Shop' which will start to house all the retail stuff, although of course any image on here or here is available as a print...just pop me an email maxblackphotos@gmail.com and I'll get back to you toot suite... Sun's out..good day for ICM shots, still got a load in the can from Monday in Manchester to have a look through but may nip out again for some snapping... Not had one of these for a while but as I live on the web (for the moment, things change in 2013) but time for a heads up on who is watching, where they are from and WTF it means if anything....
So I have all this data that piles up in graphs and charts from all my sites and I'll tell you about this place first, well most of the traffic actually comes from online searching, there's me thinking that sticking links to back on here would drive a bit of traffic, hey, wrong again!!! Second in the table is Youtube, yes youtube where I seem to get new followers all the time and some wander across to see what that old fella has been wittering on about and linger for a while. Next up is Google in all it's national incarnations from .de to .ve the data is there and if I could speaka da lingo I'd thank them all individually....bumping along is twitter and propping up the pile is flickr....does anyone still think flickr is a viable and vibrant place for images???? It seems to be yawning it's way to oblivion, for gods sakes Getty do the decent thing and make a land grab now, ah flickr how bright shiny and vibrant you were back in the day...... so about 180 hardy souls bob in here on a daily basis which is okay and I'm hoping to eclipse that next year once the 'local' advertising hit's the streets.... Youtube how I love all that statistical data, charts, graphs demographics you've got the lot and it's time to big up the newest country to pop in for a nosy so as you might expect America is my biggest visitor with 68% blokeys and the dear ladies in at 32% with the majority coming from the 45 to 65 years old age demographic.....yes I'm getting bored with this as well. So who is the smallest country with the least visitors I hear you say through a stifled yawn, well that would be the Azores with one male in his 30's.....so exciting Last is my Library site where I hardly get a peep from any UK visitors but loads from Japan, Russia, the Americas and Europe...totally different group than those that drop in here....so what does it mean...for me stop looking at the data and get those snaps processed, between 500 to 700 'unique' visitors call through in any 24 hour period across my sites and if I could I'd shake you all by the hand and say 'Thanks for calling by...' which is what I'm now saying to you dear viewer....... taking Mr's Max to get on the red eye to London this morning my mind went off wandering about image making and I had another of those light bulb moments as some more 'creative use of camera' image making techniques lodged itself in my frontal lobe...Doctor...I need help...If you can just get me to stop thinking about new ways of creating imagery and just get me to stick with one thing then I would be grateful...what...there is no easy cure...I have to carry on until I'm completely devoid of any new way of using a camera??? meh...que sera....
I know great dollops of some of the stuff I do (attempt) are of an acquired viewing taste , heck some of the things I try I'm not even a big fan of, but I'll try, sometimes some of the stuff I do inspires folk to go and have a go at some waccy baccy stuff, which is good, so until the grey matter starts it's inevitable decline it looks like I'll be stuck in creative mode.... I'm not going to go on about my efforts to re-equip my mount cutting studio suffice to say that I have a reverse impression of a keyboard on my fore head from the barriers I am crunching up against..it's all very frustrating There will be a mount cutting, board, finishing, print section on here in the next few weeks, it should be now...grrrrr... but if the gear isn't here you can't use it Right Chickens chipped off their perches, a few snaps of a Salmon pink sunrise and now to crack on with some work. I have some well cared for Nikon Gear for sale. A rather nice Nikon 105VR Micro f2.8 lens, boxed, nikon caps, pouch and manual for £450. A Nikon 80-200 f2,8, Nikon caps, metal hood, leather case and Cullman shoulder carrying bag over here on ebay for £295. And also , if you cut mounts or want to cut mounts a Logan 650 40" mount cutter as new, boxed with a box of Logan blades to get you started again it's on ebay. Quite welcome to come on down and have a try first, unless of course they have been snapped up.
Just clearing the decks as new gear is on the way for next years projects and I've already cleared off my SB800 kit so really need to lighten the load and get these items out to someone who may find a good use for them.... Had a minor panic yesterday as I lost loads of images...well if you put them on a portable HDD and then store them away and then forget that you put them on there to keep them safe.....don't get old, it's bloody annoying at times..anyway found and as I have a different PP process I'll be giving those a mighty slap and tickle today. I look at stuff I 'over' processed from 3 years ago and shake my head, lot of strong images hidden in a smear of outre Photoshop , that was then and this is now as '80's pop Diva's ABC once sang to us...I've also taken a bit of a fancy to square format images again...I can hear my old Bronica weeping gently in my 'Man' cupboard upstairs. Today must have been the darkest bleakest yackiest start to a day for a long time, even the chickens couldn't be arsed to get pecking this morning, who can blame them, mind you I have a request for some 'Wet Umbrella' shots so should be good for a trip into Manchester later. well I must say I've had a lot of fun and also some jaw dropping moments working my way through Lightroom 4.2. Yes, I know, I'm late to the party, loved my workflow from LR 3.6 into Photoshop and back again but now things have changed...... I've embraced DNG...no loss of quality and a smaller size, there's only one winner there...saving from Photoshop and back into Lightroom for noise and cropping in a totally non destructive way..very nice especially as I have set up some Export templates... But the greatest thing and I really mean this is it's Camera Process 2012 version...there are files that were in the 'Grr too hard to get something out of pile' that now spring to life in LR4, I'm impressed big time. I'm posting some bite sized Lightroom tips and i may even set up a Lightroom page...yes I'm that impressed especially when you consider what a dyed in the wool Photoshop diehard I am...here's a bit of bite size ...okay Youtube has just gone tit's up so you'll have to wait but just check out my Youtube tutorials...any problems ask and I'll do a quick video.....here's a LR4 processed image that was about 4 stops under and flat as a pancake Okay Youtube is back online....... I was trying to get things down to a minute but 2 minutes is short enough for todays generation of flitters and flighters....
'...biggest job I had to do Sir, did I do well...' Okay the Robert Donat version is not one for the purists but it's a film I'd gladly sit through over and over again. Tenuous connection but I think I've just taken on the biggest job and I hope I do well. Across various hard drives I reckon that I have 20,000 usable images..ones that are not personal faves but recognisable, viewable, not too hard to digestable!!!... and the trick I am about to perform is get them out to a wider market, I've already started. Templates and rough designs are already made, databases are being developed (yep very slowly though) business plans are being run up the flagpole and markets are being targeted. In fact all I'm doing is what I did 30 years ago but this time with the aid of all things digital, lets hope it involves less legwork this time but it will be taking up most of my time, clocks about to change, light becoming less; time to look through the last 6 months stuff and get tickling and faffing. Now I've relied on the internet to do the selling for me...more people are doing it and as I've mentioned before the pre crash 'Golden' days of spending really havn't returned even though 'The Recession ' is coming to an end...hmmm take a look at history first...few more years to go I think ...so less time to do other things. So time to stop spending time on non core sites, move away from social sites,unless they give me access to customers and more time on here and my library site
Nose to the grindstone, shoulder to the wheel, pedal to the metal...it's time to put my Worzel Gummidge selling head on...I hope it looks good on me Getting ready for all the new stuff that will be coming online over the next few weeks. It will be a move away from some of the more 'social' photographic areas like tweeting and facebooking and into the retailing side of things with the emphasis being on promoting away from my photographic circles. No I'm not going away just redrawing the boundaries a bit. It also means a move away from image library work. Even I can see where it is going, more images going on line every single day, prices constantly dropping, payment times increasing..... So I will be shooting less which should work out okay as fitting in the 'plonk and shoot' library stuff was beginning to wear anyway, I'm glad I was there when it was vibrant and buzzing which is only 5 years ago..the crash did a lot of damage...more people trying to make a living out of their cameras and the deluge of pretty decent DSLR equipment onto the market , image libraries and news agencies now take Phone images, so times change and if you don't evolve chances are you'll be left behind. So for me with my stock of over 10,000 usable images it's time for me to make some retail use out of them and that's certainly what I intend to do now.
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What's all this then????An unyeilding torrent of Photo babbel full of unconfirmed facts and manufactured photo drivel.. take from it what you like, it won't change the world but may leave you feeling nauseous... Categories
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