NEW YORK, March 11 /PRNewswire/ — Photobook industry leader MyPublisher announced today the addition of famed storytelling photographer Rick Smolan to its editorial team.

Smolan joins MyPublisher as a consulting editor. He will advise the company on trends in consumer and professional photography and digital technology. Also, Smolan will counsel MyPublisher on selecting user-generated content to be displayed at www.mypublisher.com. In addition to his work as consulting editor, Smolan will create a Photobook including some of his favorite photographs to display on the MyPublisher website.

“Rick knows everybody in the photography world, both on the technological side and on the artistic side. He has his ear to the ground and can give us information that no one else has access to,” said Carl Navarre, CEO and founder of MyPublisher.

Smolan added: “Professional photographers don’t make 4×6 prints anymore – they make complete Photobooks that tell the story of their vacation or their wedding or their daughter’s magical fifth birthday party.  MyPublisher was the company that launched this entire new trend and many professional photographers, including myself, believe they offer the best software, the best product, and the best customer service. I am honored and excited to be working with MyPublisher because I passionately believe this is the future of photography and I want to see it continue to grow.”

Smolan, a former Time, Life and National Geographic photographer, is best known as the creator of the Day in the Life and America 24/7 series. He is president of Against All Odds Productions, which specializes in the design and execution of large-scale global projects that combine compelling storytelling with state-of-the-art technology. Many of his books have appeared on the New York Times best-seller lists and have also appeared on the covers of Time, Newsweek, Fortune and U.S. News and World Report. More than five million of Smolan’s books adorn coffee tables around the world; titles include The Obama Time Capsule, Blue Planet Run, America at Home, UK at Home, 24 Hours in Cyberspace, The Power to Heal, Passage to Vietnam, One Digital Day, and From Alice to Ocean.

© 2010, The F Stops Here. All rights reserved. (Jessica D. Korman)

he site, designed in collaboration with Shutterstock, the world’s largest subscription-based stock photo company, reflects the company’s deep knowledge of the global stock image marketplace, and its commitment to expand Bigstock’s global presence after acquiring the company last year.

In addition to its sleek new interface, the site boasts a full spectrum of functions to improve user experience, including advanced search capabilities, more intuitive navigation, larger image previews and thumbnails, and improved tools for contributors. Bigstock also launched a new blog dedicated to covering company news, as well as updates from buyers, contributors and guest bloggers.

“We kept the customer in mind at every step of this redesign,” said Jon Oringer, CEO of Bigstock. “These upgrades to Bigstock, along with our proven payment and licensing models, will help image buyers get the right image fast and ensure the continued success of our contributors.”

An important feature of the site is its vastly improved search engine, which has been enhanced to provide the perfect balance of quality, relevance, popularity and freshness in search results. The engine’s specialized search algorithm will enable buyers to quickly and simply find the perfect stock photo, vector or illustration for their needs.

© 2010, The F Stops Here. All rights reserved. (Jessica D. Korman)

PhotoBiz customers can bring absolutely any external website link, video, blog, contact form, social network, slideshow, Facebook, Twitter, Chat or Studio Management system or anything else imaginable which is published online, into their “Smart Light Box” which appears directly on top of their website. This feature is available under ANY menu item with PhotoBiz Flash and/or HTML website templates. The power of this tool is the ability to keep website visitors on your site as long as possible, and so they can easily navigate all your content, chat, message, Blog, Network, all about you . There are virtually unlimited options available with the new PhotoBiz “Smart Light Box”.

The “Smart Light Box” is a customizable feature. There is an opaque faded background that goes over the website. Couple that with a very sleek border that surrounds the embedded content, giving all content an elegant frame. All of the colors that can be seen on this embedded page are completely customizable with our PhotoBiz enhanced color picker.

A roll-over caption feature is enabled on each embedded content page so that the PhotoBiz customer can give a little bit more information to their viewers. Colors and fonts choices come in abundance.
The customers are given complete control over the size of this “Smart Light Box”. By simply inserting the size they would like their work to appear in, the “Smart Light Box” will automatically be centered over their website. Since viewers will all have different monitor sizes, our “Smart Light Box” will adjust to any monitor size and maintain the light box as centered. The customer can choose to control background music from their website, without interfering with the Light Box content.

As a PhotoBiz customer; there are no upgrade fees or hassles to add this feature. PhotoBiz is the only website template company that is truly cloud computing, this feature is already enabled in our web based drag and drop control panel and ready to use.

For more information about PhotoBiz.com, or to get started using the new “Smart Light Box”, visit us at PhotoBiz.com.

© 2010, The F Stops Here. All rights reserved. (Jessica D. Korman)

One of my favorite contemporary documentary photographers, Shelby Lee Adams,  has been featured in the March 2010 issue of Smithsonian Magazine.

I have previously written about him and his Appalachian Portraits. He was accompanied by a writer who wrote about his Capturing Appalachia’s “Mountain People.”

© 2010, The F Stops Here. All rights reserved. (Jessica D. Korman)

NEW YORK, Feb. 16 /PRNewswire/ — Today Shutterstock® announced the addition of its 10 millionth image, a milestone that underscores the company’s rapid growth and commitment to high quality, crowdsourced visual media.

In a typical week, Shutterstock adds 80,000 new images – a rate of nearly eight images every minute – and provides designers, bloggers, advertisers, publications and marketers with a continuous stream of fresh new content. Shutterstock crowdsources the talents of more than 200,000 digital photographers and illustrators around the world who collect earnings when customers download their images. Shutterstock’s review team screens every image for quality and compliance, enforcing some of the highest standards in the imagery business. Just 40 percent of the images submitted by approved artists are accepted.

Shutterstock’s 10 millionth image is by Matthew Jacques of Bedford, Nova Scotia, Canada. Jacques submitted a dramatic image of two male Dall Sheep locking horns against a snowy background, photographed at a wildlife park in Nova Scotia. Jacques has been a Shutterstock submitter since 2006. Though he started taking pictures as a hobby, Jacques recently used his Shutterstock earnings to invest in a professional-quality DSLR camera and has branched out to shoot motor sports, weddings and portraits. “My hobby’s paying for itself,” said Jacques. “That’s what Shutterstock and online stock sales have done for me.”

As the leader in subscription-based stock photography and illustration, Shutterstock has delivered over 125 million image downloads to customers since its founding in 2003. Shutterstock remains the largest online subscription image library in the world.

Graphic designers have come to regard their subscription service with Shutterstock as an invaluable business tool. Every subscription provides instant access to an ever-growing library with the convenience of high-resolution files, watermark-free images, and a simple pricing structure that fits every budget. Customers have nearly limitless creative options in using Shutterstock images, which are provided under a royalty-free license. Shutterstock guarantees the legal integrity of every image with $10,000 in indemnification.

Shutterstock’s pioneering strategy has helped it dominate the image subscription market amid an industry of imitators. “We have earned our spot as the number one subscription imagery site by being inventive and by building our own successful business model,” said Jon Oringer, founder and CEO of Shutterstock. “Others try to copy our 25-A-Day subscription, but customers are not fooled. They come to Shutterstock expecting the most innovative solutions to their image needs, and we work hard to exceed their expectations.”

© 2010, The F Stops Here. All rights reserved. (Jessica D. Korman)

Despite a tough trading year, the world’s largest online stock photography site was able to produce a healthy income for its image providers. Alamy pays 60 per cent of each sale to the photographer, one of the highest royalties in the industry. Of the £8 million, around £5 million went to individual photographers rather than picture agencies.

Head of Content, Alan Capel said: “Yes it’s a tough market but we’ve come through a tough year and are still turning a good profit. In these testing economic times for us all, we feel it’s even more important that we return the largest share of the sale to the creator of the image. This can in turn lead to the production of a steady supply of high quality imagery.”

© 2010, The F Stops Here. All rights reserved. (Jessica D. Korman)

Rancho Cucamonga, CA (PRWEB) February 11, 2010 — Hot on the heels of its popular PhotoTrader social photography application for iPhone, Tapestry today announces the immediate availability of Beautiful World for iPhone and iPod touch. It can be downloaded for free from the iTunes App Store.

Beautiful World provides a clean, attractive and exceptionally elegant slideshow interface to the popular Flickr photography service.

With a single touch of a button, users can view a continuously updated feed of the most recent photos submitted to the service. Another option offers a selection of the service’s most interesting – and, just as often, incredibly beautiful and inspiring – photos as selected by its users.

In addition to the above features, optional enhancements to Beautiful World offer selective viewing of photos based on keyword tags, by creator or even the physical location photos were taken. Finally, a combo view option allows users to mix multiple photo feeds in a single display, offering hours of enjoying.

“Whether held in the palm of your hand or docked as an Internet-enabled photo frame, Beautiful World continues Tapestry’s commitment to mixing art and technology in an exceedingly delightful, easy-to-use manner,” said Jeff Campbell, Tapestry’s founder and lead developer.

Founded in 2009, Tapestry’s applications for the iPhone and iPod touch bridge the worlds of technology and artistry.

If you’d like more information about this release, you may contact Tapestry at the following email address: pr(at)tapestryapps(dot)com

© 2010, The F Stops Here. All rights reserved. (Jessica D. Korman)

CUPERTINO, Calif., Feb. 9 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Apple® today introduced Aperture(TM) 3, the next major release of its powerful photo editing and management software, with over 200 new features including Faces, Places and Brushes. Building on the innovative Faces and Places features introduced in iPhoto® ‘09, Aperture 3 makes it even easier and faster to organize large photo libraries. Aperture 3 introduces new tools to refine your photos including Brushes for painting image adjustments onto parts of your photo, and Adjustment Presets for applying professional photo effects with just one click. Stunning new slideshows let you share your work by weaving together photos, audio, text and HD video.

“Millions of people love using iPhoto to organize, edit and share their digital photos,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “Aperture 3 is designed for both professionals who edit and manage massive libraries of photos and iPhoto users who want to take their photos further with easy-to-use tools such as Brushes and Adjustment Presets.”

“Aperture 3 gets it right,” said National Geographic photographer, Jim Richardson. “The image editing tools are exactly what I have been asking for, they’re so easy to use and give me a level of control that I never even thought possible.”

“I chose Aperture because it was the most powerful archiving application around, but it’s now an unbelievable imaging tool as well,” said Bill Frakes, Sports Illustrated staff photographer. “I am beyond impressed with the massive changes made in Aperture 3.”

Aperture 3 allows you to organize large photo libraries with even more flexibility using Projects and the new Faces and Places. Faces uses face detection and recognition to find and organize your photos by the people in them. You can view faces across your entire photo library or view just the faces that appear in selected projects. In a new view that speeds up the organization process, Aperture 3 displays faces that have been detected but haven’t yet been named. Places lets you explore your photos based on where they were taken, and like in iPhoto, Places automatically reverse geocodes GPS data into user-friendly locations. In Aperture 3, you can assign locations by dragging-and-dropping photos onto a map or by using location information from GPS enabled cameras, tracking devices or your iPhone® photos.

The new Brushes feature allows you to add professional touches to your photos by simply painting effects onto the image. Aperture 3 includes 15 Quick Brushes that perform the most popular tasks like Dodge, Burn, Polarize and Blur, without the complexity of layers or masks. Brushes can automatically detect edges in your images to let you apply or remove effects exactly where you want them. Aperture 3 includes dozens of Adjustment Presets that apply a specific style or look to the entire image with just a click. You can create your own custom presets or explore the techniques of other photographers by importing theirs.

Aperture 3 makes it easy to share your work with stunning slideshows that weave together photos, audio, text and HD video. You can select one of six Apple designed themes or choose your own transitions, background, borders and titles, and even add your own soundtrack. You can export your slideshows directly to iTunes® to take with you on your iPhone or iPod touch®. You can also share photographs as beautiful prints, create custom-designed hardcover books and publish to online photo sharing sites like Facebook and Flickr, right from Aperture 3.

Pricing & Availability

Aperture 3 is available through the Apple Store® (www.apple.com), Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers for a suggested retail price of $199 (US) and existing Aperture users can upgrade for a suggested retail price of $99 (US). A downloadable 30-day trial version is available at www.apple.com/aperture/trial. Aperture 3 runs as a 64-bit application on Mac OS® X Snow Leopard® on Macs with Intel Core 2 Duo processors. Full system requirements, online tutorials and more information on Aperture 3 can be found at www.apple.com/aperture.

Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital media revolution with its iPod portable music and video players and iTunes online store, and has entered the mobile phone market with its revolutionary iPhone.

© 2010 Apple Inc. All rights reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, Mac, Mac OS, Macintosh, Aperture, iPhoto, iPhone, iTunes, iPod touch, Apple Store and Snow Leopard are trademarks of Apple. Other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

© 2010, The F Stops Here. All rights reserved. (Jessica D. Korman)