New Sponsor: PhotoShelter

Regular readers of The Travel Photographer blog may have noticed the small PhotoShelter ad on the right sidebar. Yes, PhotoShelter has become a sponsor of this blog because I believe its products are tremendously useful to photographers and photojournalists and this is reflected by its impressive list of clients....some of who are friends and acquaintances.

I, too, have now joined PhotoShelter not because I needed another website, but because I wanted an online archive and lightboxing system, and a sales mechanism for my images. I know that the many photographers and photojournalists who constitute the bulk of my readership will benefit by joining and using PhotoShelter if they haven't already.

The PhotoShelter ad will appear in the sidebar of this site, any paid signups that occur through links on The Travel Photographer will generate a commission**, and I will occasionally write a post about how and when PhotoShelter has worked for me.  The site will remain editorially and fiercely independent as always.

If youve ever considered signing up for online archive and purchasing system, click on the link on the sidebar. It only costs $1 to get started on PhotoShelter on a 2-week trial.  You will be doing your photography business a favor.

** All commissions will be donated to the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop, and aimed right back at helping emerging and aspiring photojournalists.

Read more »

Soundslides Embed Utility

It's now a cinch to embed your Soundslides slideshow unto your website and/or blog.

Joe Weiss has developed a web-based utility which allows you to enter the URL of your Soundslides, and you immediately get the necessary code to add to your website and blog....however be mindful that the dimensions of your slideshow must fit the width of your blog.

Here's the link: Soundslides Embed Utility

Read more »

American Photo: 2007 Best

If you're into this kind of thing, American Photo magazine just published its annual 2007 Editor's Choice of photograph's best new products. Utterly predictable and probably designed to 'play nice' with manufacturers (aka advertisers), you'll find everything but the kitchen sink in the exhaustive listing. I was amused when I saw that both Adobe's Lightroom 1.0 and Apple's Aperture 1.5 were listed.

Editors' Choice 2007

Read more »

Film Loop Studio

Film Loop Studio is a free download and creates a a slideshow of any images or photos. It offers collages, title frames, text, tattoos, bubbles, frames and transparency tools to enhance story telling for both Mac and PC users.

I found it very easy to produce a slideshow of photographs, however there's no audio capability so far. The slideshow can then be added to a website, a blog, etc. The advertisements appearing on the side of the player are distracting but I suppose they have to generate some income after all.

World Press Network uses Film Loop for some of its photo essays. Here's a feature on India's Snake Charmers on the dying craft of snake charming in Orissa. The photographs are by Adrian Fisk.

WPN's India's Snake Charmers

Film Loop Studio

Read more »

Flash Gallery Makers

As readers of The Travel Photographer Blog know, I use Soundslides to produce multimedia slideshows for my images, and find it more than adequate for my requirements. However, for those of you who are more interested in producing simple photo web galleries using Flash architecture, there are a few products that will do that quite easily.

The simplest photo gallery is the one in which the photographer's web site has a number of image thumbnails, which when hovered on with the pointer, open on to a larger version of the thumbnail. It's effective, clean and easy to navigate. and Macromedia Flash is widely available on most computers, whether these are Mac or Windows operating systems.

There are two software packages I know of which do what I describe. The free version is called Slide Viewer which is cross platform (ie both Mac and Windows) compatible. It's a simple viewer as the name indicates, and seems quite easy to install and will build the "thumbnails + main image" type of gallery some photographers seek.

A much more sophisticated slideshow maker SlideShowPro is available, and widely used by photographers and other visual artists to showcase their work with a bit more flair. Music and background soundtracks can be added to the slideshow, and it offers other plug-ins as well. It's available for $25 through its website.

Read more »