Finally.......website customized

This week there will be an overwhelming amount of things to shoot here in NOLA. Working with a friday deadline to an editor Im going to be shooting / drinking / editing / shooting / drinking /editing / etc..... With this in mind I really wanted my website to be in order, so when and if any of my pics are picked up, people visiting my site for the first time will get a good idea of the kind of stuff I shoot.

I still think I need to re-envision some of my galleries so that they work better as groups of images, but for now Im happy that I even got to this point. I was finally able to figure out how to customize my home page so that it was well integrated with my Photoshelter site. Now, I have three main categories highlighted on my homepage and have the rest of the galleries hidden in the archive section.

I used Dreamweaver to create my new homepage, essentially copying the design of my PS site, then created three galleries and embedded them in the dreamweaver site.

Take a peak, let me know what you think.

Happy for now! Heading to Saints Parade!!! More on that later

Mod Dance Party vs. Krewe De Vieux: So many pictures so little time!

This past weekend in New Orleans things really started to heat up. Krewe De Vieux followed by an amazing Mod Dance Party (MDP) set the tone for the month to come. This Mardi Gras (only being my second) I plan on shooting as many parades as possible to try and practice my night shooting. Yesterday I reviewed my photos from MDP and started thinking about where to post my gallery.

Ive been trying to re-focus my website so that only the "best of the best" photos go up there, giving the public a chance to see the style of work I do in a quick snapshot, however, by posting galleries of events that people want to see, might draw new audiences to my site. I will use my two latest shoots, Krewe De Vieux and MDP to test which gallery posts get more views, gal on my profile on FB or FB link to my site.

I figure KDV shots would be a good gal to post on Facebook cause Ill want to wait till the end of MG to select from all the parades to create a gallery on my website. Stay tuned for both posts.

Next post will prob be about the new template site Ive been testing, "Livebooks"

What do I do?

Live Music Scene - Images by Erica Stavis

In the last month i've wrestled with trying to re-design my website to truly showcase the work I do best. I have so many different photos and my strategy thus far has been to shoot and post everything that I think is decent. Last week my friend/teacher Owen Murphy sat with me and gave me some advice on how to re-invision my site and re-think how I edit my galleries. At the MVS lecture last month I was also reminded that users should immediately get a feel for the kind of work that I do.

Knowing that my site is a smorgasbord of galleries each with a surplus of images i've begun the process of trying to streamline and edit the work on my site. Before I go and slash slash away i'm thinking I need to categorize the genres i'm strong in. So far i'm thinking:

• Live Music
• Street Portraits
• Parades & Second Lines
• Festival Culture

I want to make sure that each category is distinct enough to house a series of photos that look unique. I've taken a stab at editing my gallery in the 'Live Music' category and have it showcased on my homepage and embedded as a slideshow at the top of this post. The question is...will people see these photos and say...wow those are some sick shots!

After a long talk last night i've also decided to explore some other Photo Template sites that might showcase my galleries better.....more on that later.

Who wants to buy my photos? Websites Exposed!

Yes I eventually do want to actually make some decent money doing this...yes its a long shot.

One of the tips I picked up at last weeks Mary Virginia Swanson lecture was the need to identify what kind of market my photos belong in and then really try and gear my site for people in those markets.

Over the passed year I've made major progress in shooting more, purchasing some important equipment, taking some classes, and getting my site up and have had some successes in actually being paid for a bunch of jobs. But now the task remains... trying to carve a niche out for my work.

According to Mary Virginia Swanson, the photography marketing guru, there are a few things photographers must do in order to have their websites actually "work for them"

Here they are:

1. Clarify what you do best, even if its several things, and design your website to showcase those specific skills/styles

2. In your bio, describe what you do succinctly, using language and images that cast you in a specific light

3. Use the language and images on your site to communicate and suggest to viewers what you do or want to do

4. Don't have a contact link that goes straight to email, use this page to give a bit more info about yourself and give a variety of different ways to contact you for different kinds of work.

5. Change language appropriately in site if geared towards different viewers, (ie. if in stock section of site, gear towards editors, if in fine art prints section gear towards art dealers and gallery owners)

6. The homepage of your site should clearly explain either visually or with text what you do or can be hired to do

7. With regards to marketing and brand strategies, seek out help from experts and brand everything you do, including website, emails, business cards, etc with same brand (color, logo, style,etc)

8. Sequence images on site well and appropriately for audience

9. Show pictures of your work hanging in galleries if you wish to sell fine art, or show tear sheets from published magazines if hoping to sell stock or book commercial gigs.

10. Do your research, try and bait the people that would be interested in your kind of work and get them to view your website. Always be as personal as possible when sending emails or sending work samples. If possible, look into consulting services like portfolio reviews or agencies like Agency Access that can help market your photos and connect you to the right people.

11. One thing not mentioned that should be added: Google Analytics, I personally think this is very important in terms of determining who is looking at your work and how people are looking at your work

12. There are a variety of different ways now-a-days to see if people actually open links you send them in emails, so if you're sending a link to a gallery on your site to an editor, see if theres a way to check if they've actually viewed the gallery.

Wow this a lot.......need to reflect a bit....more later

All of these are great tips and I will be trying to re-vamp my site over the next month to hopefully integrate some of this advice. I am going to re-attempt to design some of my own webpages in Dreamweaver and integrate and link to different sections of my PhotoShelter site. I will probably start by redoing my homepage to show more of a "style" and create buttons to access different aspects of my work. Maybe sections like this on my homepage will help me gear parts of my site more appropriately to different people looking to purchase or license my work.

Any comments? Especially from some of my art bus. friends?

Google Analytics: Holy Shit!

Ive officially geeked out and enabled Google Analytics on my site. I am now able to track all traffic to my website including features I didnt even know I wanted to track.

For instance Ive had

208

Visits since I started tracking (probably half of which are my own visits to my site) I've had

1,651

Pageviews. People spend an average of

00:03:07

Time on my Site. I've had 120 visits from Louisiana, 27 from Alabama, and 23 from New York, and random amounts of visits from countless other cities and countries, including one visit from Russia, one from South Africa and one from China, weird.

I can also see who visits my site from my Facebook posts vs. blog posts, and those who type my url directly into the browser.

What does it all mean? Im not sure yet...but im sure this info will come in handy one day. It all comes down to marketing, which Ill be posting about in length tomorrow when I write about the Mary Virginia Swanson lecture I attended last week.

I attached a fun pic of myself to this post that I took when I got my new strobe lights. Note to viewers...its not that easy to take your own picture.

Huh? This is my most viewed photo ?

One of the great features of PhotoShelter is the built in "Public Image Views" function. While logged in to your site, you are able to see the top 100 images posted on your site with the highest amount of views. It is always interesting to see which of my pictures draw the most attention.

Strangely enough one picture stands out above the rest as having far many more views than any other photo....and it is the one at the top of this post. Now....its a funny picture yes, but is this really the photo of mine that people look at most? What so special about it?

It makes me wonder who is looking at my site......Did someone fall asleep on their keyboard while looking at my site and mistakenly keep reloading this one pic? Do people click on the small thumbnail because it looks like the lead singer of Monotonix is wearing no pants? Do the drunken tattoed goons in this shot send a link to all their friends to show them their picture posted on the web? Is a friend who knows that I obsessively check my "Public Image Views" consistently, just trying to mess with me and clicking on this shot over and over again?

Ive been looking into Google Analytics, which apparently gives you more insight into exactly who and when people are looking at specific pages on your website and how they get to your website from other links. I tried to embed the code in my site but still haven't figured out how to make it work. Once I do, it should be interesting to see who,what, where, and when people are looking at my photos. Whats funny is that this image has 20 + times more views than any other picture on my site....weird.

Yes Monotonix shows are crazy, as is evidenced by my gallery of images posted from One Eyed Jacks in September, but is that what it takes to drive people to my site?

Photo Shelter Process and Meta Data

After months of trying to learn how to develop a thorough website of my photographic images I discovered a site called PhotoShelter (PS) which allows photographers to archive photos and create a gallery-based website of their work. Because the gallery function was hard to develop using Flash (a program I had never used before) on my original website, I did some research into PS and signed up for a one month account. What I immediately liked about the software was that I was able to create and edit galleries of photos which had the built in functionality of a slideshow/thumbnail view. My website has flash slideshows which I created after taking tons of YouTube tutorials on how to build flash slideshows, but the viewer has no buttons to scroll through images so they need to sit through the entire slideshow (which I know no one would ever do) Here is the general process for working with PS.

1. Organize and catalogue your images clearly and add IPTC and metadata to all of your images in Lightroom, or whichever program you use for RAW Conversion. It is important to ADD THIS DATA TO THE IMAGES THEMSELVES at this stage, because if you do it within a program like PS, Smug mug or Photobucket when you transfer images to another program all this data will be lost. This metadata allows people searching the web to find your specific images. Ie. if you're photo has specific tags associated with it within its metadata then when someone types "Portrait of old man in New Orleans" he/she will have a better chance of linking to your image if it has the tags, Old Man, New Orleans. Which I happen to have a good sample of on my PS site. The more people that click on your image, the higher up you appear within a search engine like Google. Im still in the process of doing this because obviously it is a major process and there is no limit to how detailed your description of an image can be. (more on this later) As of now, none of my files have any metadata, but after attending the PS webinar on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) I realize this is an important part of the process if you ever want to sell any of your work. Click here for a 16 min. vid on SEO from PS. If you can batch tag a bunch of images at once and then go in and add specifics that is good.
2. Import your images to the Archive section of PS. If you have certain albums or themed categories I've found it best to upload groups of images into folders within your archive. You can also upload photos all at once and then group them into folders within PS You will want to upload your largest native file to the archive because PS will save it as CR2 if you upload it like that, and automatically covert it to JPEG when posted to a gallery for viewing. I am still trying to develop an organizational strategy for how to store my images and categorize them into folders and I think it needs to really be thought out. This is one of the questions I always ask professional photographers that I meet. How do you organize your photos?
3. One of the neat features of PS is that now you have your native files backed up on a remote server somewhere so it acts as an extra backup. depending on which plan you get you have more storage room. I think I have the standard account (about $34/month) and I have 35 gigs, not really enough so store all my photos but its a decent starting point for images I actually would want people to see.
4. Once you've uploaded to the archive you can create galleries (either public/private/invitation only/passwords protected,etc) so you can send galleries to clients or friends using any restriction you want.
5. You now have tons of flexibility for how to showcase your galleries and customize your site , which is very user friendly on the PS interface.

There are a million other deatils to consider but the takeaways are:

• You dont need to learn to be a web designer to create a good site of your work. There are alternatives. All have a specific learning curves but there are many options out there.
• Better to learn all this SEO/Metadata/IPTC stuff now, because its easer to add Metadata as you process images rather than going back and adding data to a million photos you already have.
• Reflect on your workflow and consider how developing a pro-active system for photo organization can help you sell images in the future.

As always comments and questions welcome!

And then that happened....

In an attempt to try and use any outlet possible to promote my work as a New Orleans based music and portrait photographer i've decided to start a blog. People tell me that having a blog doesn't necessarily mean that I need to divulge deep dark insightful stories about myself daily so figured Id give it a whirl.

Ive realized that trying to attract people to my photo website is a huge undertaking that requires tons of research and developing some new skills so I will use this blog to track my progress developing my photo website particularly trying to optimize my site so that people actually see my work.

If you're a photographer trying to figure out how to showcase your work and are a beginner like me check back and subscribe to my blog so we can go throughout this process together.

Ill post what kind of stuff Ive done already to prepare myself for the long journey ahead.