The New Website

So the new website is launched. I looked around at all the prepackaged photographer-type sites, and while I was impressed with many of them, I just couldn't get them to do what I want. The main thing with most of them was a maximum image size that is too small.

The new site features the enhanced version of Simpleviewer, which means I can configure pretty much everything on it. It will scale with the window size, and do a full-screen mode with images up to 1500 pixels. It preloads images, and works with the on-screen buttons, the mousewheel, or the keyboard.

I added a bio and contact section, revamped the organization of the images, implemented a rotating bio pic feature, and made the gradient background scale with the window size. I know, big whoop.

The blog has slowly evolved from an ugly Blogger site, to a really clean Wordpress design that's fully integrated into the rest of the site. For any factor other than initial setup, Wordpress is a far superior product to Blogger.

For those who are interested, here are some of the better- and less-known solutions I looked into:

• Carbonmade. I liked this well enough, it's very cute and clever, and the back-end's nice, but the template is pretty rigid, and I couldn't come up with a look I cared for.
• Indexhibit. This is quite powerful and versatile, although not super easy to use. It all ends up looking very CSS3-hipster-huge-font-2009 web, which I like well enough, but it clashes with my photo style.
• Cargo Collective. Same story as Indexhibit, plus some social networking features.
• INDXR. This one is pretty powerful, but in the end, again, too hipster for me.
• Bludomain. Just to show you how I was all over the map. But seriously, although most of their templates seem to be for wedding photographers, I liked the Harvey design a lot. It's too Harvey though.
• A Photo Folio. Has some real nice designs, but beyond this year's budget.
• Livebooks. The 800 pound gorilla turned me off because...because it's the 800 pound gorilla. I mean I love gorillas, but I don't want one introducing me to people.
• TAXI. I was using this for awhile, but it'll never be my primary website. It's really global in it's focus, so I'll get back to this one when I'm in a better position to begin my global domination plan.
• Dripbook. I looked into Dripbook because you can generate a stand-alone website from your Dripbook account. That didn't work out for me, but the site's really great, and I've ended up using it on it's own, plus I'm using it as the mobile version of robprideaux.com.

Thanks to all those who helped out with technical advice (looking at you, Scott), and everybody who tested (thanks Facebook buddies and Steve).

Matchbox Promo

Late last year, when it came time to let people know about the APA SF Something Personal Exhibition, I wanted to do something different.

I acquired white matches in white matchboxes from the internet.

Printed my flame image...

and information on a sleeve, and glued the sleeve over each matchbox.

I ordered custom stamps with an additional flames image of mine, and put all of them together in a white bubble wrap mailer.

Each of the 35 matchboxes included a link to my website, where the recipient can download an invitation, view the series, read all my blog entries on the project, and more.

Everybody at the show who had received one, mentioned they loved the matchbox, and in followup calls to those who couldn't make it, they often had the matchbox on their desk or in a pocket.

Addicted to DIY Promos

Over the last six months I've made three promos at the office, and I think I'm addicted now. It started with a suggestion by Chris Milliman. He said he'd been sending out small collections of prints to select buyers for some time, and always got really good feedback.

Frankly, sending out 2034872304563056 emails or postcards is really not that appealing to me anyway, so I thought I'd give his method a try. I have found that it takes a lot longer to create a promo in this way, but it's not only more satisfying, but puts a certain wind under my wings when it's time to do the follow-up calls.

Last time it was the Make Shoes Move promo>. This time, Helpful Ideas for Busy Dads.

Design phase. If I ever wanted to call myself a designer, I have a long way to go.

Production phase. See the difference?

The genius part of this promo is including the Free Sample Media Player Caddy. Everybody loves a free gift.

I do like the glassine envelopes.

I did the window so I could show a photo, but not give the entire photo away. I toyed with the idea of making up a whole fake company that might produce things like this, but decided it would best to stay with one brand, mine.

After you look at the pictures, there's the Media Player Caddy, in all it's glory, followed up the Ol' Call to Action.

The question I come up against is about Handmade vs Machine Made vs Handmade that Looks Machine Made. I'm not sure where I am on that scale, or where I even want to be. Handmade is charming and personal. Machine Made is fast and inexpensive. And Handmade that Looks Machine Made might be the worst of both worlds, since if people think it's mass produced, all the charm disappears.

We'll see. Meanwhile, I end up putting in a lot of work and ended up with something I'm proud of.

Well Oiled Self-Promotion Machine. This Time.

I appear to have hit my self-promotion stride, on this go round anyway. Since email's dead* as a self-promotion tool, I needed to do something different. I decided to build my own three-fold mailer, using the "Make Shoes Move" demo campaign that Adam Weisman and Brad Soulas built around my running shoes photographs.

Using Adbase, I built a short list of companies and agencies that have something to do with athletic shoes, and rounded that out with a few reps I've been promoting to, for a total of about 40.

I used Moab Lasal doublesided, the same paper I'll be using in my new portfolio.

After finally surmounting some bizarre mental block, I managed to figure out how to insert the paper to get the proper orientation.

I printed these on my Epson, so the print quality is stunning, but inkjet prints scratch real easily, so I ordered some glassine envelopes. I've also heard that buyers would rather not have to open something before they decide to bin it, so the transparency's polite.

I included my new tag line, "Making good ideas beautiful, and bad ideas interesting", as well as the concepts for the iPhone apps.

I included a personal note with each promo seemed like a good idea. Took forever though, with this many promos.

Although email's dead, I still sent an email promo for the project, just to a much broader audience. Both the mailer and the email point to the Minisite I put together.

So, I sent the mailer, waited about a week, and sent the email. The following morning, I started calling all the people to whom I'd sent the mailer. I have been alarmingly bad at calls such as these, but this time around, it went really well.

It helps that:

• the demo campaign looks killer, and the mailer is real nice
• the target list is really narrow - I know they'll have some interest in the subject
• volunteering for the political campaign last year seems to have given me some sort of rapid-dial muscle memory
• the first guy I called answered the phone and said "Oh yeah it's right here on my desk it looks great!"

I got a lot of good feedback from the people I actually got to talk to, and a nice email back from one of the reps. Overall, I made 8 solid contacts, a response of 24% of the calls I made, and 18% of the mailers. Even the email did alright: I got a 14% clickthrough on that.

*Everybody's saying so. Plus, Adbase indicates whether the buyer wishes to receive email promos or not, and anecdotally, I now regularly see the entire staff of a company set to "does not wish to receive". More reliably, when I output a list, half of the buyers don't want email, where it used to be like 15%.

780

780. 780 postcards to 780 art buyers. 780 times my photo will cross the desk of someone who might be interested. 780 seconds to make an impression. 780 opportunities to grab enough attention to interrupt the trip to the trash can. Another milestone in my new career, and from what I've read, from what I've heard, I can expect...nothing. I'd love to start getting briefcases full of money, but everything points toward a long struggle before that happens. Over the next six weeks I'll be calling local buyers and setting up appointments to show my book. This usually results in more immediate results. But it's nerve-wracking. I fully expect to flub my lines embarrassingly the first couple of calls. But I'll keep doing it. At about half steam, ha ha. Anyways, feels good to be here. Yeah.