Geek Talk – Photoshelter

Prompted by the Photoshelter blog, this is a little article to explain how my website works and how I use Photoshelter to show my work and deliver photos to my clients.

Different types of client

My two main specialties are weddings and live music photography. I use Photoshelter for both but in different ways:

Music

After a gig, I upload all my pictures to Photoshelter, create a gallery, and send an invite to the guys from The Line Of Best Fit, where my photos will be published. Main advantages versus emails:

• I do not have to send multiple emails if there are too many pictures to fit in one
• The Line Of Best Fit guys can choose the pictures they want to download. Less clutter and noise for them.
• I can create one gallery with the high-res pictures, and allow TLOBF to download them at 500px sized for their blog, and the band at 1500px for example. (I actually just discovered this feature while writing this so this is going to save me LOADS of time now!).

Weddings

I usually do not use Photoshelter to send any files to the clients, as they would be too big for a smooth transfer, especially when I don’t know what type of connection they might have.

I use the password-protected galleries though, to allow guests to see the photos after the wedding and order prints online. I currently fulfil the prints myself but might change to an auto fulfilment if my favorite London lab (theprintspace) gets added.

General usage

Finally, I use public galleries all around my site to showcase my work. I also added FBML tabs to my Facebook fan page that act as a portfolio.

Design

My website is based on a Graph Paper Press theme, but I added some modifications here and there, the main one being the navigation bar at the top.

Conclusion

I really like Photoshelter and could not have an efficient workflow without it. One thing that could be improved is the management of the watermark, as it does not scale depending the size of the embedded galleries. Apart from that, the service is top-notch and their blog is extremely interesting and provides a lot of business ressources, so I would urge you to check it out, even if you’re not a subscriber!

If you do want to subscribe though, feel free to use the referral link below that will give both of us a discount!

This entry was posted on Friday, March 26th, 2010 at 23:59 and is filed under Photoblog, Tutorials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.