ExposureManager News & Tips

Featured Photographer: Michelle Scarano

This month I wanted to talk to someone who was new to ExposureManager. I wanted to see why they decided to make the change and how their experience was going thus far. I spoke with Michelle Scarano of Michelle Scarano Photography out of Middletown, NJ

Michelle is pretty new to the EM family, only having been with us for two months now. EM was recommend to her from another photographer when she was frustrated with the company that she had been previously using. Her favorite things about EM is the live chat feature as well as the ability to send an invoice and sell her prints all in the same location.

Not only is Michelle new to EM but she is relatively new to the photography community. Although she realized her passion for photography very early on, “I had to be around 6 yrs old when I got my first camera.  It was a Le Click camera, and used disc film." It wasn’t until this past fall that Michelle went from shooting for fun to shooting as a full time job. “I had been a high school special education teacher for 9 years.  I really did love my job, but I always felt torn, because I had other passions. Teaching was stable and it’s what I went to school for."  It wasn’t till after her second child was born that she decided it was time to make a change. She resigned at her teaching job to follow her dreams of opening up her own photography business. “I figured I would see what I could do.” 

Michelle specializes in maternity, baby, children and family portraits. Although her favorite subjects are children. “They add spontaneity to a shoot.  They don't worry if their hair looks good or if their outfit looks okay. They know how to just be fun, and I like trying to capture that on film. I like candid more then posed pictures.  I like my photography to tell a story, one that is special to the family I am photographing.  It's my way of freezing time for them, giving them something they can look back on."

When I asked Michelle if she had any photography tips she could share she said that, “composition is the most important thing to focus on when shooting. Keep in mind the rule of thirds.  I also always use my flash, even when outside and always check to make sure your lens is clean!”

To learn more about Michelle and her company check out MichelleScaranoPhotography.com

Featured Photographer: John Smierciak from Smierciak Images Inc.

I had the pleasure of interviewing photojournalist, John Smierciak last week for this month’s featured photographer article. I found talking to him fascinating.  John has had many incredible experiences and opportunities in the photography business during his thirty-eight years in the industry. Among his lists of accomplishments is that he was part of a team of reporters and photographers who won a Pulitzer Prize in 2001 for a story about air travel in America.

John spent eighteen of his thirty-eight years working as a street photographer for The Chicago Tribune handling general assignments. He also went on to cover sports whether it was MLB, NBA or college, if it involved Chicago he was on the sidelines.  His work took him on assignments and to places most people only dream about. “If I hadn’t had the job I did, I would never have gotten to have these experiences.” From chasing tornados in the western plains, to landing the only shot of Drew Peterson getting arrested,to volunteering with Hearts and Motion in Guatemala, John has seen it all.  

One of his assignments landed him right in the middle of ground zero just two days after the devastation of 9/11. While on a assignment to cover a local firehouse in Chicago one of the guys asked if John would like to join them on their drive to NY. John accepted the offer and called his boss from the road to explain that he would be back in a couple days.

It took getting laid off from The Chicago Tribune in 2009 for Jon to be able to have the time to start his own business, Smierciak Images Inc. It's also when he started using ExposureManager. “When I started my business a friend of mine recommend EM to me.” “The site is easy to access and I can call anytime with questions."

John may be a true adventurer but to this day he swears that his favorite thing to photograph is his daughter. “ I have hundreds and thousands of photos of my daughters on my EM site.” John photographs his daughter and her friend’s prom pictures,“I set up backdrops and lights and I take their pictures for free.”

When I asked him how he has stayed so successful he had some interesting advice, “I talk to anybody and everybody. I always hand out my card to small businesses or look in the local newspaper. I’m always emailing people because once you give up your done. Once your name isn’t out there anymore you are done.” It’s fighting words like that, that makes Jon one of the most reputable photographers in the Chicago area for the last forty years. If you would like to check out some of his work, head to his site, http://www.johnsmierciak.com/ or http://simages.exposuremanager.com

 

Update on EM 2.0

Hey everyone!

Just wanted to send out an update on 2.0. We are still working very hard on all the new functionality, and are finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. There's an old saying in software development: there's the first 90%, and then there's the second 90%!

Thank you to everybody who volunteered for the beta testing. Everyone that has used 2.0 has loved it! It makes us excited to be able to develop something for our clients that is so user friendly.

We know that everyone is eager to get this update so we appreciate your patience as we strive to make it perfect. New accounts will start using the new version in June, and existing accounts will be able to start using it soon after.

Stay tuned for more details!

Kim

Featured Photographer: David Gravely from David Gravely Photography

David Gravely of Davidgravelyphotography.com was born and raised in Virginia. Although it was his brief time spent out of Virginia that sparked his interest in photography. David enlisted in the army and was stationed at Fort Bragg when he was assigned to be the battalion photographer. He went on to document Operation Uphold Democracy in Haiti. With no formal training it was all trial and error. “They handed me an old Canon Rebel and said go.”

 After returning back to Virginia David got a job working at a foundry. Nine months into David’s job he was inside a machine cleaning when it closed down on him and nine thousand pounds of pressure came down on top of him. “Eleven years after jumping out of airplanes and blowing up stuff I go back to my hometown and almost get killed.” “I was pronounced dead at the hospital four times that night, broke my back in three places, punctured my lungs, crushed my skull and broke some of my ribs.” No one expected him to make it but David claims it was his “hard headed” nature that got him through. “I’m a blessed man there is no question.”

After his accident there is little that David could physically do. After recovering David wanted to find a job that would keep him safe and never jeopardize his well being again so he got back into photography. He started photographing his daughter who was a cheerleader at the time. “Photography fell into my lap. No one around here had the time or love of it to take time to do it.” David started off shooting just as a hobby. He would buy tickets to the sporting events in town and just snap away. He would print the pictures at home and at the next game he would give the kids the best five or six pictures he had taken. A local sports writer saw some of his pictures and asked if he could start using David’s pictures to go along with the stories that he was writing on the high school teams. David jumped at the opportunity.

A few games later David got his press credentials and was shooting regularly for the newspaper. He would even fill in for the sports writer when he had to miss a game. Now a days David covers three to ten game a week, he also still works for the newspaper and he runs some of the websites for the teams at the high school.

 With David’s sideline access he is always heading to events and taking photos. After each event he loads the pictures on to ExposureManager and the high school kids head on to his site to buy photos. Every kid in town that is involved in sports knows David by now; he’s been on the sidelines for twelve years. “A lot of them I’ve coached as kids through basketball, soccer and football."

David credits a lot of his photo sales to ExposureManager’s stats information. He is able to tell what pictures people are looking at and what galleries are the most popular. If he see’s a specific town is really checking out his pictures he makes sure to cover more of their kids next time the high schools play each other. He also loves how user friendly ExposureManager is, “the way it’s organized it allows people to easily find pictures from different years. Just last month I had someone order pictures from a gallery from 2004.”

 When I asked David if he had any advice he said that, “some of the pictures that you think are not worth having, someone is going to want. I am always shocked at how many pictures I sell of crowd shots, or people in the stands. My advice is to not just focus on the game, get everything around the game. The crowd, the people working in the stands, the cheerleaders, and the band are all part of the game. Someone out there is going to want that picture.”

 

Featured Photographer: Rob Andrew from Rob Andrew Photography

Rob Andrew was born in Detroit but moved to San Diego as a kid after his dad had decided to retire there. It was in San Diego that he started getting into music and started his own band. “Music is what got me into photography. I was always the guy in the band designing the flyers, creating the logo and taking random stock photos for promotions.”

 After earning his Master's in Guitar Performance, Rob went in to web design as a side business.  “I quickly became bored with being tethered to my computer and answering tech support calls. My clients began asking me to take product photos for their websites and that's when I had the revelation.”

 At the time Rob was shooting with a 1.3 megapixel digital point & shoot and a 35mm film SLR made by Yashica. The Yashica was made of solid metal and had about three dials, all manual. Rob quickly had to learn to shoot manual controls and deal with full stop increments. “For my web clients, I simply had to make the transition to digital, and in 2001 I acquired my first digital SLR.”

Now five years later and with Rob Andrew photography in full swing, you will see that Rob’s talent for photographing and lighting his subject is exceptional.  He says that most of what he knows about lighting he learned from his first couple gigs as a product photographer. “Photographing knives and other shiny objects taught me a great deal about lighting, shadow and reflection and this is a big part of my work. I became inspired by the popular "strobists" - Joe McNally, David Hobby, Zack Arias. But I also got into the photojournalism of James Nachtwey and the fine art of Gregory Crewdson and Mitch Epstein. I was soon fully obsessed with photography and shooting every day.”

Although Rob still does product work, his focus has shifted to commercial portraits, advertising and fashion. “I have a studio down here in San Diego (Mission Valley) but I also shoot outdoors on the many beautiful San Diego locations. I am fortunate to earn my living shooting all different types of jobs and meeting new people.” Rob also offers classes and workshops in lighting and composition. “This year I hope to narrow my focus and obtain more ad agency and editorial work.”

 Rob is also an avid user of ExposureManager. “I found you guys through an online forum. I was reading on who to use for online proofing.” “I use EM cause it’s such a nice clean interface for proofing. I like people seeing a nice light box or be able to download the original.”He is also a big fan of EM’s lightroom plug-in. 

When I asked Rob if he could share some of photography secrets with us he said “Get yourself a good quality strobe and one good modifier (umbrella, softbox or beauty dish) and stick with that one thing for a while. There's nothing like practicing over and over with the same setup to really learn the angles and make it a part of you. If you can get great shots with one light, multiple lights are a breeze. Also,
Don't buy any continuous lighting or stuff that is "made for product photography". It’s almost always awful! Ask some great photographers how they do it instead.”

Some of Rob’s clients include John Deere, First for Women Magazine, JWT, Blade Magazine, Knife World Magazine, Pi Beta Phi, Ashdon Golf, Perfect Foods Bar and more. You can find his work at his site,  http://www.robandrewphoto.com  or on his twitter at https://twitter.com/robandrewphoto

 

Featured photographer: Jami from K and J Photography

This past week I had a chance to interview Jami from K and J Photography. Jami and her fiancé Keith are the owners of the company that operates out of Temecula, California. The two of them are quite the team with Keith as Graphic Designer and Jami as the photographer. In business now for five years their work speaks for itself.

Photography wasn’t always the plan for these two. After graduating high school Jami enrolled in culinary school hoping to pursue a career in the food industry. She knew she wanted to do something creative and thought working with food was the right avenue for her. Every day that she went to class she brought her camera. Instead of listening to the lectures she found herself shooting pictures of the food, the kitchen or the waiters. It was then that she had an epiphany and realized her true passion, photography. She soon dropped out of culinary school and enrolled in the photography program at Riverside Community College.

Jami and Keith, who have been together since high school decided that they would take the photography class together and it wasn’t long until their business took off. Keith who has a background in graphic design and computer science, helped with the look of the logo and website. He now handles the lighting, studio and paperwork. Jami, a self-described “control freak,” handles the photography and editing.

In the process of starting their new business, Jami and Keith discovered ExposureManager. They wanted to find a place where clients could buy prints but also have it be easy to use. They weren’t happy with some of the other companies that they had seen and didn’t want to settle. So one day while searching the web they found ExposureManager, signed up for a free trial and loved it! They know that they never have to worry when customers buy a print from EM because the quality will always be great. Jami and Keith have now been EM users for over four years! 

What I love about these two after learning so much about them is that their photography is very outside the box. If you scroll though their website you will see beautiful modeling photos as well as shoots involving boudoirs and body painting. They also stick to more traditional lifestyle photography with newborn, maternity, engagement and wedding shoots. The two strive to “not be amazing at just one type of photography, but instead be able to be amazing at it all.” As you scroll through their work, I think you will find that they have truly learned to tackle it all.

When I asked Jami if she had any photography tips she said, “to always find new inspiration, if you stay in a little box then you don’t branch out and see the world differently.” Jami and Keith make it a priority to travel and see the world. They also love spending time outdoors taking in nature and wildlife. The inspiration they come across while out on their adventures can definitely be seen throughout all of their pictures.I encourage you to check out their website at kandjphoto.com, their work will definitely inspire you

Coming soon: EM 2.0

One of my new year's resolutions is to do a much better job at keeping you informed with what we're working on here at EM. With that in mind, I am thrilled to announce the upcoming release of, what we call internally, EM 2.0 – the “new and improved” ExposureManager! It will a big upgrade for both you and your customer.

We started working on EM 2.0 nearly a year ago. Based on your feedback, we had a good idea where our weak spots were. One, clearly, was our utilitarian admin interface, and other was the lack of 21^st century looking templates for your customers. In other words: design and usability. Over the years we have hired several designers to help with that, but since they weren't able to assist with implementing we would often end up with unusable designs for the web. In this case, I decided to find a design and development firm that could assist. Luckily, we found one just a few miles from us. They were even in the same building where EM had its first office many years ago!

 The project description could be summarized as:

• completely redesign ExposureManager admin interface

• design new storefront template that can be easily customized

• design additional website pages so that a photographer can have their entire website with ExposureManager

That sounds pretty straightforward but when you realize how many completely different types of pages ExposureManager has, and different options, it quickly becomes overwhelming. We wanted to make sure we went through every page and made things as easy and intuitive as possible. So let's take a quick look at some of the upcoming changes:

In the admin interface:
A new dashboard: easily see the latest orders, your sales and access recent galleries:

 
Manage your photos easier, from within the management screen and drag & drop sorting:

 
Quickly manage all your pending orders:

In the storefront:
Super fast, maximized screen size browsing:

 

An even more streamlined cart with cropping:

 

Just redoing the design of course wasn't enough. In order to make it much faster to use, we completely redid our server architecture as well. Besides speed, this has some additional benefits like the ability to now provide an optimized experience for touch devices (phones and tables).

In addition to all that, if you are currently a long term subscriber (account older than April of 2011) then you will also get a bunch of new features such as gallery expiration, category management and early bird discounts.

 To summarize, here are some of the things you'll see in EM 2.0:

• full website capabilities (homepage, plus additional pages)

• the first of beautiful storefront templates

• easy customization of website / storefront

• cropping of photos in cart (optional of course!)

• a redesigned admin interface optimized for daily tasks

• better work flow for creating and managing galleries and photos

• integration with social media services (Facebook, Twitter, G+) for gallery promotion

• easy e-mailing of visitors of a gallery / category

• optimized shopping experience for iphone / ipad and other touch devices

• and much more!

   

When will this be available? Soon!
Naturally the first question I've received when I told people about this is 'when will this be available?' While I wish I had a hard release date, I don't have it yet. We aim to have a select group of people start beta testing it by February 1^st, and make it an optional upgrade soon after. We want to be fully up and running by the time WPPI comes around mid February. And since I postponed our honeymoon until this is done, I have plenty of incentive to get this done! 

Will prices go up? No!
I've also been asked if our subscription fees will go up. No, they won't :)

I am happy with my current setup, do I have to switch? No!
We know that you use ExposureManager for you business and that switching to a new system overnight when you are not prepared for it can be an unwelcome surprise. So we'll continue to support 'EM 1.0' for the foreseeable future and allow you switch over when the time is right for you.

Can I use the new storefront template with existing galleries? Yes!
When you upgrade to EM 2.0 you will have the option to use your current template or switch over to the new template. If you use the old templates, you will not be able to create additional pages or have a homepage however.

Can I help beta test? Maybe!
We can definitely use some additional help in testing. So we're looking for a small group of about 5 people to put it through its paces. If you are interested, drop me a line at donovan@exposuremanager.com. Ideally we get a diverse group of photographers (wedding, sports, etc.) because everybody uses EM in a different way. For the initial testing you'll get a new account, and for the second part we would convert your existing account over to it.

I hope this post gives you a better idea of what's coming down the pipeline. There's still a lot of work to be done, and we're all working very hard on getting it done. We're very excited about how these changes will help your business, and looking forward to releasing it to everybody soon. In the meantime, a big thank you from all of us for using ExposureManager for your business!

Donovan and the rest of the EM team

A preview shot of our new template

Hi everybody,

Part of EM 2.0 is a completely redesigned storefront and website template. This new template is much easier to customize with your preferred colors and background patterns. You can even choose a background image per gallery!

Besides looking great, we rewrote the entire underlying architecture. The result: superfast loading photos, and the template automatically resizes based on your customer's screen. No more guessing about image sizes, this way your photos will always display perfectly.

Much more details will be released over the coming days and weeks but we wanted to give you a quick taste of what's coming. Click on the image for a bigger version. Enjoy! - Donovan

(Re) Introducing the ExposureManager Team

As we’re about to release more details of the upcoming EM 2.0 release, I thought this would be a great time to re-introduce us all to you. It’s been nearly 8 years since Rhesa and I started development on ExposureManager. What was supposed to be a one week project has grown into a lifestyle! It’s been fantastic to see EM grow step by step, and we now support over 5,000 clients with their business. One of the best, and most satisfying, things is that many initial clients are still with us today! To all of you who joined in 2004 and 2005, thank you for proving to us that we could build a great photography company! It has been a pleasure to work with you!

If you joined during that time, you probably remember that at that time it was just Rhesa and me (Donovan). There’s a good chance that we emailed back and forth! However, if you joined after that time period, you may not know exactly who everybody is at EM. It’s about time that changes! So, without further ado, let me introduce our, very geographically spread out, team! 

Because everybody is so spread out, we never actually all met in person until my recent wedding in November. Here’s a snapshot from the brunch the day after.

From left to right: Jack, Donovan, Stephanie, Rhesa, Travis
Not shown here because he only joined EM a month ago: Dave

Rhesa: our server and database expert (co-founder)
Furthest away from our home base in Los Angeles, is Rhesa. Though we met when we both lived in The Netherlands, Rhesa now owns a farm in Hungary. When he is not busy optimizing our servers, writing backend code or chasing bugs, he tends to his many animals with his wife and two small daughters Lotte and Tessa (5 and 2). He was also my best man at my wedding!

Stephanie: master task juggler
Steph joined EM in March of 2008. Although technically on a part-time basis, she couldn’t resist working with such a fun group and turned full time after just 2 days! She keeps the trains running on time for us by taking care of all legal and accounting matters, as well as many other things. An Idaho native that lives in LA, Steph loves all things horses and has a great teenage daughter Tori. There used to be a time when we could bribe Tori to stuff checks with candy but sadly, those days are over!

Jack: our resident photographer and in charge of making you happy
Jack also has been with ExposureManager since March of 2008 (it was a busy month!). Since Jack is in charge of customer support, I am sure most of you have chatted with him. One of the great things about Jack is how unflappable and patient he is. No mean feat considering he has to work with two developers every day! He lives with his wife in southern New Hampshire and has been involved in photography since an early age. As time permits he shoots local events, sports and weddings as well as scenic photography wherever he goes. Jack enjoys photography, computers, travel, reading and spending the summer on Madison, New Hampshire’s Silver Lake.

Travis: people pleaser
Travis joined the shipping department of ExposureManager in 2009. He was fantastic in managing our daily lab operations so when we moved the printing over to our lab partner, Travis moved over to customer support in 2010. He currently resides in Michigan with his black lab, Abbey. Like myself, he has a passion for golf.

Dave: pixel wizard
Ok ok, you can say it. One of the big EM deficiencies has been our outdated look and our lack of beautiful templates. Although we spent most of 2011 working with a great design firm, when we started the implementation it was clear that we needed additional help to build the front end of the admin interface as well as additional templates. After a world wide search, Dave came out on top. We’re thrilled to have him on board! Dave does live the furthest away you can be from Los Angeles and still be in North America: St. John's New Foundland! He has a three year old daughter named Leia, who is named after Princess Leia from Star Wars. If he can work that kind of magic we can't wait until you see what he will come up with next.

Donovan: developer and co-founder
Where Rhesa works on the server end of EM, most of my work is on the front end itself. I am always looking at our data to see what we can tweak to increase your sales, and making the purchase experience as easy as possible for your customers. When I get some free time, I love playing golf. Other hobbies include flying and motorcycling. Although I was born in New Zealand and grew up in The Netherlands, Los Angeles has been my home since June of 2000. I live in Long Beach with my beautiful wife Allison and our new black lab pup named Hogan.

How we work together:
Since everybody works remotely, communication is key. Although we tried many different ‘collaboration’ tools, in the end we settled on using Skype for group chats. We have a ‘Support bubble’ and a ‘Development bubble’. It’s super easy to keep track on multiple devices that way, and keeps a nice log. That’s helpful since we’re all in different time zones!

Openings:
It’s a great team and it’s been great to work with all of them. If you want to join our team, we’re always looking for a great front end developers, and perl hackers. Just send your resume to me: donovan@exposuremanager.com.

A big thank you to all our EM clients. We’re gearing up for an amazing year, and I cannot wait to show you what we have in store for you! A teaser image will be posted next!

Introducing our new editing partner: PWD Labs

We're all familiar with the 'plight' of the modern photographer: after shooting a great wedding or event, you're stuck in Lightroom for days (or worse) sorting through photos and editing them. Time that could be spent shooting or just enjoying life. Wouldn't it be great if you could find a company that handles your editing, just like you let EM handle your online sales?

 If you are like me, you are probably a little skeptical about editing services. Can they really match my artistic taste as well as deliver images as good as my own editing? At a recent tradeshow, we were exhibiting next to PWD Labs. Their owner, Jerry, and I started talking and I expressed my concerns. He addressed them one by one and told me about all the great services that are available through PWD. For example, they can assign you an editing person who is trained on your specific style and taste. You'll have an instant 'mini-me'! After seeing the results on an event I shot a few weeks ago, I have to admit, I am a believer! And I am not the only one. Fellow EM-er Jim Graham says about PWD:

 "PWD has been a very welcome addition to my business, and their customer service has been wonderful."

Because of those reasons, I am very excited to announce the new partnership between PWD Labs and ExposureManager. You'll be able to send your raw files to PWD, they will edit your photos and, when the photos are ready, publish them, without additional fees, to ExposureManager. Just remember, the better your photos look online, the more sales you receive!

So go ahead, and give them a trial run. Use coupon code 'EXPMANAGER' to receive 25% off your first order (offer valid till 12/31/2011). Visit them today at http://www.pwdlabs.com/ .