It feels good to give back. I’m currently in the process of framing this beautiful Mt Rainier photo for this weekend’s Lunafest film festival here in Seattle. I’m always happy to consider donating a framed photo, so feel free to contact me if you’re a business or individual raising money for a cause.

Spray Park, Mt Rainier National Park

For a limited time I am offering a 16×24 canvas gallery wrap of this image for only $200. Get one before it’s too late!

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For those of you who live in the Seattle area, next Saturday, Nov 8th, is the NW Snow & Avalanche Snow Summit. The day consists of talks from various folks in the know about avalanches (Martin Volken from Pro Guiding Service for example), ski touring in the Cascades and, for all you backcountry skiers, some useful discussion on stability tests. So, check it out! Following the summit is the Friends of NWAC’s annual Snowbash fundraiser at the Tractor Tavern.

You can buy tickets online for both:

• Avi Summit – http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/44301
• Snowbash fundraiser – http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/47281

All in all, it makes for a great day of avalanche awareness and of course, kicking off the ski season with some friends and a couple beers.

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I live for being outdoors. Whether it be riding to downtown Seattle or cycling over the North Cascades Highway, paddling in Puget Sound or sea kayaking alongside orca whales in Johnstone Strait, BC, I long for that next adventure. The reality is though, many of these trips would be far less enjoyable without the outdoor gear we have available; and I love gear, really I do. I wouldn’t consider myself a gear-head per se, nor do I rush out to buy the latest and greatest stuff. But I do flip through magazines with a keen interest on advancements in backcountry skiing gear and super light mountain bike wheels (neither of which I can really afford but that’s besides the point.)

As someone who works for a SEO Seattle Internet marketing company it’s not only the gear itself that’s cool, but how companies go about marketing their products that intrigues me as well. Take for instance Crank Brothers, a bike company that started out developing the now very popular Egg Beater clipless pedals but has since moved into wheels, cranks and other bike components. I’ve owned many pairs of the Egg Beater pedals due to their relatively low cost and low weight. Unfortunately I’ve had more and more problems with them recently as the spindles fall apart. Matter of fact I recently sent back three pairs, all of which broke while riding. Thankfully Crank Brothers is really good about warrantying their stuff, so I anticipated receiving at most some new pedals. Instead I received this in the mail -

So no, Crank Brothers didn’t replace my pedals. Instead they received a bit of a spa treatment. So although I wouldn’t necessarily recommend these pedals anymore, I find this piece of advertising quite effective, and entertaining. Kudos to the Crank Bros (who basically rebuilt my pedals, which are now working perfectly again.)

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It’s a pretty common question, one that I believe comes from photographers and stock agencies alike. No stock photography isn’t dead; matter of fact, some photographers I speak with who have been in the industry for quite some time think otherwise. Yes it’s changing, but it has been for a while. As an amateur photographer though, I can tell you with some (limited) experience, it’s a very difficult arena to play in, even with the myriad of services out there that market your images for you. All you need to do is take pictures, upload them to their site and before you know it the $$$ starts rolling in right? Not. I never thought it would be this easy, just the opposite actually. Which is why I (a bit reluctantly) started working on images and posting them on Photoshelter (the company and idea behind their stock collection was awesome by the way.)

So I was bummed, although not all that surprised, to receive an email from the CEO of Photoshelter this morning:

We have typically used the blog to inspire and congratulate. Today is atypical.

When we started to envision The PhotoShelter Collection in early 2007, we went out and conducted research to understand the needs of photo buyers. We consistently heard from a myriad of sources that they were disappointed with stock photography because it lacked diversity and realness. We talked to a number of photographers that wanted to get into the stock photography game, but didn’t know where to start. They were good photographers, but not full-time stock photographers, and therefore they were largely ineligible to play with the traditional agencies.

We believed that we could create a more democratic system – a marketplace for stock photography where virtually any one could participate. And a few months later, The PhotoShelter Collection was born. Upload your images, keyword & price, attach the appropriate releases, and voila! You were now a stock photographer.

Despite the naysayers, the photography was actually quite good. A number of stock executives and consultants corroborated this fact, and we felt good about being able to provide imagery that had largely been unseen and unlicensed before. The pricing was fair, and photographers received the majority of the sale.

We knew that sales would be challenging, but we honestly underestimated the complexity of sales. Licensing photography isn’t like selling a widget on eBay. It’s intellectual property fraught with clearance issues. Here are a few key learnings:

1.    Stock photography is a slow growing market dominated by a single player
There was a single moment for a company to capitalize in stock photography, and Getty took it. The use of stock imagery isn’t growing fast enough to create a displacement opportunity, and Getty is far too aggressive (and smart) to allow secondary players to displace them in any fashion.

2.    Research Requests move too quickly for individuals to react in a timely fashion
We believed that using the crowd to fulfill research requests would give us an enormous advantage over the competition, but the nature of the industry is such that many research requests are due within a day, making it nearly impossible for non-fulltime stock photographers to react. Research requests are therefore relegated to what they’ve always been – namely the locating of existing images within an extant library that are ready for immediate licensing.

3.    Buyers desire more diversity, but convenience (aka subscription deals) triumphs this desire
The largest consumers of stock photography are often locked into subscription deals, which makes it very difficult for them to consider alternate sources. Subscription deals are very bad for photographers, but great for business.

4.    A crowd-source model for stock will likely never work
Licensing a photo is not a simple proposition. It is not like selling a widget. There are huge intellectual property issues, technical issues, and meta data issues that are difficult for even full-time pros to grasp. Companies that represent collections of stock photography have to build entire divisions of staff to deal with rights clearances and lawsuit that arise from improper clearance.

Despite these odds, we did make incredible in-roads to agencies and publications alike. But when we viewed our growth over the past few months, we became all too aware that our trajectory wasn’t putting us on the right path. And despite repeated attempts to alter our trajectory, we were unable to substantially change it. Even though we are in the midst of our best month ever of sales, we believe that the growth trend isn’t step enough to sustain the stock photography business in the long term.

So we are exiting the stock photography marketplace, and getting back to our roots with the Personal Archive, which still gives individual photographers the tools to market and license their images themselves. That business is doing quite nicely, and we look forward to continuing to support photographers and photography.

The pundits will surely say “I told you so.” And maybe we will end up being just a tiny footnote in the history of photography, but on the other hand, we were also the largest aggregation of photographers participating in stock photography ever (And no, I do not count those places where a photo sell for $1. I remain defiantly stubborn on the microstock front as ever). We never assumed that this would be easy. Quite to the contrary. And yet, it was a goal worth fighting for. Tonight, I’m going to bed knowing that we tried something that had never been tried – a way to provide photographers with something they hadn’t had in a long time: a fair deal and respect.

I feel for them. I can only imagine how difficult it was to take on the likes of Getty. I feel Photoshelter truly tried something different, but alas, the good folks don’t always win.

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A friend of mine from Whitefish had this great idea for a bike tour. Let’s ride from New York City to Washington, DC. The result was Climate Ride 2008. If it sounds interesting, you better hurry up as there are only 5 spots left!

What is Climate Ride 2008?

Do you want meaningful action on global warming and renewable energy? Do you want it now? Do you like to bicycle country roads and meet fun people engaged in making a difference? If so, join the Brita Climate Ride 2008, the first multi-day bicycle tour where you pedal to raise money and awareness of climate change and hope for a future powered by renewable energy and a green economy.

This is your chance to get out on the road and drive the ultimate carbon-free machine: the bicycle.

Join us today for a bike ride you will never forget.

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I truly want to support businesses that feed my habits, which mostly include, but are not limited to, cycling, backcountry skiing and hiking. Unfortunately for me, these are all somewhat gear-heavy sports…I like gear and that’s a problem because gear is also expensive. So most of the time I just get to drool on my keyboard as I scroll through the latest, lightest, fattest, bad-ass’est big-boy-toys on the web.

This morning I received an email from backcountry.com, which means only one thing…winter, believe it or not, is not that far off. But the email wasn’t about some semi-annual sale (which I unfortunately did stumble upon, because now my keyboard is all wet); instead it was a reminder to update my ‘online profile’. No problem, I thought, as often times profiles are great ways to get your adventure photography website noticed (Don’t tell anyone!) Backcountry.com also recommended a photograph to complement my profile. Cool, another place to add one of my ski photographs. But just as I was about to do this I read the now-infamous terms and conditions. Here is the first paragraph:

Any comments, reviews, posts, feedback, questions, answers, notes, messages, images, video, audio, materials, ideas, suggestions or other communications you submit on Backcountry.com are not private or proprietary. By submitting User Content on or through Backcountry.com, you grant Backcountry.com an irrevocable, royalty-free, worldwide, perpetual right and license to use, copy, modify, display, archive, store, distribute, reproduce and create derivative works based upon such User Content, in any form, media, software or technology of any kind now existing or developed in the future

Basically, whatever image I use on my profile page is there for the taking. Does this mean I won’t post an image? Not necessarily…it just means whatever image I upload is going to be very small and contain a watermark. It bothers me to uncover things like this, especially for organizations that I truly want to support…

So, my photography tip of the day: read the terms and conditions if you’re posting images online and if you are posting an image, re-size it so small it would be tough to get even a 4×6 print out of it.

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Please tell me this is NOT ok. Not sure if this photography contest is supported by National Geographic or Energizer just paid them a lot of money to be affiliated with it, but regardless the ‘official rules’ disclose something that appears to be more and more common with online photo contests:

For all Photos: No photos will be acknowledged or returned. By entering a photo in this Contest, Entrant grants a nonexclusive, transferable, royalty-free, worldwide license to edit, adapt and publish any or all of the Photos, and Sponsor may use them in any media without attribution or compensation to the entrant, his/her successors or assigns, or any other entity.

Up until recently I honestly didn’t read the fine print for the few picture contests I’ve participated in. That’s surely going to change though because although I do and can appreciate (and enjoy) some recoginition for my photography, I have to ask myself if it’s really worth giving my images away…for ever. And unless photographers STOP submitting their images to these contests, nothing will change. Unfortunately the number of photographers reading the fine print is probably pretty small…

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The photography business is very tough. Stock agencies are overloaded with certain types of images and offer photos at absurdly discounted prices. Simply selling images online is difficult, not impossible, but difficult. If you find a niche though and have the ability to market yourself, one can be very successful in the world of photography. For example, selling ebooks about Photoshop or Lightroom or landscape photography tips and offering these online can do wonders for a photography business. Teaching photography workshops or leading photography trips can be very prosperous. In my opinion though, there is one thing that will help you rise above the rest, regardless of what you are trying to sell, and that’s networking.

And there’s something else: offering your images and/or services for free. OK, so this doesn’t make you any money, but in SOME cases, for example, exchanging photos for a link on a high-traffic website, can be worth quite a bit down the road. I touched on this last week and how I was able to take pictures at the 2008 Spearhead Traverse Whistler Backcountry Ski Race in exchange for (what I hoped would be) future publicity and maybe some leads. Lo and behold I started seeing traffic to my site pick up…and that’s because my photography website was placed on the homepage of the race site at http://www.wbfj.ca/index.html. Awesome.

But sometimes things don’t always work out as you would like, which is the reason I’m writing this post. I’ve “donated” many of my photographs, many of them without even a moment of hesitation. I love what I do and if I can share my experiences with others who may not be as fortunate or may find inspiration in them, then I’m OK with that. But when someone (in this case a very large and extremely well-known co-op whose name I will not disclose except for the fact that they sell outdoor gear) wants to use a photograph in their marketing material without giving a SINGLE bit of credit to the photographer…well, too bad.

When this offer initially came to fruition I was excited, and what photographer wouldn’t be. The opportunity to have your picture in front of thousands, if not tens of thousands, of people is a dream come true. But when I was informed there would be not a single piece of credit given, I thought otherwise. All photographers work extremely hard to capture unique and inspiring images, so if a company, who has a very large marketing budget, won’t offer even the smallest form of appreciation (my name on the image) then I say screw em.

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I've been spending a lot of time on my bike lately. In two weeks I head up to Victoria, BC, for the start of a 7-day mountain bike stage race, the BC BIke Race. I wish I could say I was physically ready to roll…hmmm. Although my base fitness is pretty good and I have no problem hopping on the bike for a relatively easy 4 hour ride, throw me in a race and all bets are off.

But this post isn't about me, although it is all about cycling. A good friend of my is organizing Climate Ride 2008, a five-day 320-mile road ride from New York City to Washington, DC, to create awareness about global warming and renewable energy sources. Although they are limiting this, the 1st annual, tour to 100 people (it's probably going to sell out fast so click here to SIGN UP NOW) I highly recommend checking out the website regardless as it contains a bunch of great resources, and links to, climate-related issues, websites, etc.

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Are high gas prices stressing you out? Do you have to give up a couple lattes a week in order to fill up that gas tank of yours (which I don’t recommend by the way, coffee is good for the brain and provides all sorts of health  benefits…yes I am a shareholder of Starbucks)?

Here is the #1 secret to saving money at the pump:

Don’t Drive

Crazy? Not at all. At least, not if you’re willing to make some slight modifications to your lifestyle and give up some of the conveniences that we’ve enjoyed for decades here in America.

I bring this up because I read an article today on medicalnewstoday.com titled "The Psychological Cost of Climbing Gas Prices."

Rising gas prices are affecting more than the family budget. More pain
at the pump results in more employee stress on the job, says Wayne
Hochwarter, the Jim Moran Professor of Management at Florida State
University’s College of Business.

Admittedly, I am able to forgo driving because I like to bike and Seattle is a relatively bike-friendly city to live in. Plus biking (but any exercise will do) makes YOU FEEL BETTER! But here’s the kicker, and this is exactly why it’s taking $4/gallon gasoline for people to finally rethink the way they live day to day.

Hochwarter gleaned the information by surveying more than 800 full-time
employees this spring when gas prices hovered at about $3.50 per
gallon. All of the people surveyed work in a wide range of occupations,
primarily in the southeastern United States. All drove personal
transportation to work and had an average commute of 15 miles each way.

"All"…as in everyone…not one out of 800 people carpooled, took public transportation, walked, commuted by bike…crazy.  Now I can understand (but not necessarily feel bad for) for those who live in the suburbs and truly have few options besides their own personal vehicle. But you know, why not get together with friends in your neighborhood (that is if you even talk to your neighbors) and see if a couple folks are on the same schedule heading to similar work spaces? There are options, but understandably adjusting to them is not easy. We need make changes, hard changes in some cases. We need to move away from instant gratification (or what feels like instant gratification) and realize that an extra five, ten minutes in time may actually lead to a healthier, less stressful day in the long run.

I just had to run up to Best Buy. Their is one south of here or north. Either way it’s about 15 miles one way. It took me a hour plus to bike there (nasty headwind) but truthfully, had I driven I may have gotten there in 45 minutes as traffic was snarled on I-5. In the process I would have spent at least $5 in gas (one way) let alone the wear and tear of accelerating, stopping, accelerating, stopping…

But best of all, as I rode my way north and through the now completely chaotic Greenlake neighborhoods, I witnessed the most bike commuters I have ever seen in this city. Granted the weather is pretty much perfect today, but still…

People are beginning to change their habits, myself included. No their’s no doubt about it, driving is getting expensive and depending on what radio station you listen to or newspaper you read, the chances of it continuing to rise appear pretty good.

So, save money, save gas, save yourself (and others)…and drive less.

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