tomoko yamamoto

Thanks, Michael and Mikael, for your posts. I did sign up at www.lightstalkers.com, however, my name has not come up in the section, "On the Move" yet nor has photosource.com displayed my travel dates yet.

Then this afternoon my web server went down. Nobody will be able to contact me until the server comes back up, which, I hope, will be SOON.

Thanks to both of you for your responses. I checked the Lonely Planet site for an area to post travel dates, but I could not fine one. I did find such an area at photosource.com. I submitted my dates although I don't have the firm dates for Tokyo except that I plan to book June flights.

When I change any dates, shall I just submit a form with the confirmed dates and the editorial staff there would update my entry?

I imagine any photo buyers would appreciate knowing approximate dates well in advance. I also contacted a potential client of mine to let them know my travel plans today.

I vaguely recall seeing a site where photographers are posting their

travel dates in various places in the world. When I searched for such

a site, I have not found anything close.

I am going to be in Tokyo in June and in Austria (mainly in Vienna) in

July and part of August.

If anyone knows such a site to post travel dates, I would appreciate

it. I will be posting my dates on my site, but I would like to reach

wider possible clients.

Reading through all the answers reminded me of two problems I have had with my carryon backpacks. Both happened on flights with presumably smaller aircrafts. I traveled with one small backpack on board British Midland Air between Edinburgh and Manchester. My seat happened to be the first seat, and there was no room left on overhead bin nor was there a seat in front of me to store that small backpack, to which I had attached a pricey rain jacket outside. Before I had time to protest, it was taken up to be stored in another part of the aircraft. When I retrieved my backpack, the jacket was missing.

Because of the above theft and the camera damage in the checked backpack on my way to Scotland, I now use a larger backpack, 35/45 liters (purchased in Japan) to carry my camera equipment on board. I check most of my clothes in a suitcase. Because of the size of this backpack, I once had a problem on a US domestic flight on my way to Europe. I was forced to "check" it to the storage area of the aircraft. On my return flight of the same US flight, I succeeded in avoiding this problem by taking the top part off the rest of the pack, as sort of a purse.

If your trip involves connecting flights, it is essential to have some toiletry and nightwear since it is possible either you don't make a connection or checked-in luggage won't.

On my last trip to Europe, I did not include my nightwear in my carryon backpack because my flight was not supposed to have a connection, but because of the cancelled flight I had originally booked for, I had to fly to Vienna by way of London. They checked my luggage with someone else's name on at Dulles, and although I noticed it at Dulles and reported it, they did not correct the problem in time and my suitcase arrived in Vienna one day late. I ended up spending my first two days in the Czech Republic without any change of clothes, but I did have all my camera equipment! (At least Austrian Air delivered my luggage at my first stop in the Czech Republic.)

"The National Geographic Traveler Japan" should give you a travel guide book with lots of photos and maps. ISBN 0-7922-7563-2

Since you are going to be in Tokyo, it might be worthwhile to browse books in large bookstores in Tokyo. Another source of photographs is mountain hiking magazines. I have some copies of those in my parents' house in Tokyo, but not here in Baltimore. If you write to me directly,

I can tell you more when I go to Tokyo this summer.

After having protected my images from hotlinking, I had a change of mind overnight. I decided to write to a company called musiccelebrations to point out their hotlinking one of my images. I suggested that they either pay for the usage of my image or link instead to my page where I am displaying the image being hotlinked along with the text of information about the site. I also pointed out that the information in the paragraph describing the particular Austrian site must have come from my site.

I got a reply relatively quickly from them, which said that they elimnated the hotlink to my image because they are not interested in paying for the link. They put the text link to another site describing the particular travel destination, rather than my site.

From this experience, I am afraid that the best we photographers could do is to have a clear/prominent display of our URL on each of our images, unless you have a bandwith problem.

I have had hotlinked file problems on my site, but this morning I decided to do something about it.

My host provides hotlinking protection on cPanel, as it turned out. I used that to enable hotlinking protection and redirected the hotlink to my homepage. I also revised my home page to add a text link to the page where this particular hotlinked file is shown on my site.

I doublechecked the hotlink to see that it redirects to my homepage rather than the linked graphic file.

Matt,

I read all the comments you got and then looked at your portfolio. That was wonderful and some of them were quite creative, but your old farmhouse series did not appear to be as good as the other sets. It would be easy to shoot what you shot there.

I was once asked for my shooting location by a commercially successfull photographer in my city and I can understand how you might have felt seeing some photos this mentor of yours shot after learning the location from you.

Recently I decided to give a guided walk to people who are interested to take them around on several spots along a stream I use for my shooting impressionistic reflection photos. Since it is a nature setting, it is hard to replicate what I have created.

Perhaps you might try another go at the farmhouse to come up with a better vision. I am convinced from looking at your portfolio that you might be able to do better than the first set you have shown.

My short answer to you, Mike, is that you should get a hardware calibrator.

I, too, have an LCD display. When I got my Monaco OptixXR late last fall, I really read my LCD monitor manual to understand what I am supposed to do to adjust the RGB levels. I discovered that I had been setting my LCD display to be for a colder, more blue image! The ViewSonic VG150 comes with the RGB control, which has three possible settings, preset 1 for a bluer image, preset 2 for a reddish image and user for adjusting RGB individually.

I did experience your problem using Adobe Gamma myself. The only solution is to get yourself a hardware calibrator. I am much more confident with my graphic file looking correct and was able to soft-proof the image when I sent out my digital files to an out-of-state vendor for printing. I even made a hard proof using my Alps MD100 printer in its dye-sub printing mode.

<P>I have a website which comes with Webalizer site statistics. This

morning I decided to have a look at site statistics by countries. In

March I had 19.34% by US commercial, 2.32% US educational, 0.68%

United States and 28% by Network. The rest, about 50%, is distributed

all over the world, but the UK comprising 8% at the top of various

countries. I am located in the US. About half of my website images

were taken in Europe and are landscape/travel/composer-related. The

other half were taken locally, but they are artistic photos of

painterly nature and do not relate to a place where they are taken.

<p>Is my site traffic by countries typical or not? I am trying to figure

out a way to attract potential customers of my photographic prints.

<p>To those of you who are selling prints well, are your customers mostly

from one country, the US or your country of residence?

<P>Here is my website:<br>

<a

href="http://www.tomoko-yamamoto.com">http://www.tomoko-yamamoto.com</a>

Mark, thanks for your response.

Yes, I am worried about possible substitution. I am selling my photographic prints, and how would I assure my customers that these are genuine Fuji Crystal Archive prints?

I take it that it is possible to get Fuji Crystal Archive paper without back printing.

Fuji's Crystal Archive Paper is estimated to have good low fading

characteristics with more than 60 years of life. I recently ordered

Lightjet prints by mail order (actually Internet order) and was

surprised to see the back of my prints blank with no brand name on

them. I contacted the company I ordered from and asked about it.

They said that their corporate accounts would like "no back printing",

so they only order no-back printing papers.

For many years I have had Ilfochrome prints done locally and those

prints had no brand name printed, but with Fuji, I have been used to

see its brand name printed on the back. How do you know Crystal

Archive from another c-type paper?

Walter,

You might want to check out www.ccnow.com, which I use. I am based in the US, however, and am thinking of switching to Paypal because my sales volume is too low to be paying a monthly fee to ccnow.

Before you set your site for shopping cart sales, it might be a good idea to see first whether your photographs would attract buying visitors. I recommend that you read the business aspect of photography at www.danheller.com.

Thanks, Ellis, for your quick response.

I looked at NacyScans. They seem to be the fastest of the three, but most expensive. Currently, AutumnColor and Parallax both offer discounts for first-time orders, 25% and 30%, respectively. Since I have no idea how well I do in selling at this new exhibit venue, I would like to go for the lowest cost as long as their quality is good. I had drum scans done locally and I am preparing my files now.

Does anyone have experience with either Parallx Imaging in Georgia or

AutumnColor in Massachusetts for Lightjet printing?

I'm trying to decide whom I should try to have my fine-art reflection

photographs printed for an exhibit? For the most part, I will be

using enlargements I already have, but I would like to add 4-6

photographs to make this exhibit more up to date. The size I have in

mind is full-frame from 35mm on 16x20 paper.

Thanks in advance for any comments about these companies. I am

located in Maryland, and I would like to use a lab close to me.

I recommend a book to learn basic HTML. The one I still use quite often is "Teach Yourself Visually" by Maran Graphic. It shows how a page you might want to build looks like and underneath gives you codes to build that page.

You can flip pages around to look for what you want to have on your website. It does come with a summary of html tags and index. I have not used style sheets yet, but the book does have a chapter on style sheets.

You can get additional help on the Internet like java scripts.

Another important thing is to get a reasonable hosting company to host your site. I don't think you need to pay more than $10 per month for this at the outset, but find a company which will give you enough storage space (it is important in graphic-rich pages like photographers' sites) and bandwidth. Some hosting company sites have their support pages accessible to potential customers and this way you can preview what kind of help you can expect from a hosting company.

I made an initial mistake of building my site as a free home page on my ISP account several years ago and then a second mistake of getting a cheap hosting company two years ago when I bought my domain name. It is important to get your domain name as soon as you can, and then shop around for a hosting company. I currently use Lunarpages and so far happy with it. Their offer of three kinds of website statistics (analog, Webalizer, and latest visitors log) is great. Error log is helpful in debugging.

"This year, it took me an average of 50,000 visits to sell one print."

Ah, no wonder I have not been able to sell any prints through the Internet last year since I don't get that many visitors. I did sell one print through the Internet in 2003. It was a landscape photo of a lake seen from the above in Scotland. I suspect very few if any American photographers bother to shoot at that location.

Last fall I decided to go back to direct selling by going to a local farmers' market several times. I also had an informal exhibit at a local church where the pastor is a patron of mine. I sold several small prints that way. Most of my customers bought them as gifts, so the time of the year is important in artwork sale. These two venues turned out to be much better than exhibits I had had at corporate buildings.

I am having an exhibit at a local coffee house in April and plan to promote my work by doing a nature/art walk because the reflection photographs I exhibit were taken in a city park near the coffee house. I'll use my website to have a virtual exhibit page during the period even though most of the photos I exhibit are already on my site.

Chris,

<P>Because of another thread on model release with/without addresses and phone numbers, I just realized that I failed to include two things included in the original version. These are the date and the location.

The top line should read:<br>

Datum______________ Ort________________

<br>

There is no address on this simplified model release form by Susan McCartney. She suggests that you make copies of these model releases three to a page. Get all three signed and you keep two copies and the model will get one. Give the model your name and address and phone number.

<p>If you want to get their addresses, you might want to add the following:

<p>

Adresse_________________________E-Mail____________________________

<p>I have to admit that I have not used these model releases while I was in Germany or German-speaking countries, but when I took any people shots that I would want to use later, I made it a point to ask them for their names and addresses so that I can send a print later. Nowadays if you shoot digital, you might be able to get a print either on the spot if you carry around a small printer.

<p>Alternatively, if you can get their e-mail addresses, you can e-mail them a copy of your photo of them later. I have not done e-mailing of photos myself, but I was on the receiving end of a photo by e-mail from those I met during my trips in Europe, so you might want to be prepared to get their e-mail addreses as well.

<p>If you have any questions, please feel free to e-mail me directly.

I would like to correct a couple of things. First, I should have used the lower case for the word "zur" as this is a contracted preposition.

On the other hand, "urheberrecht" should have been "Urheberrecht" as this is a noun. The original had the title of the form in all capital letters and the German word for copyright was not capitalized in the first letter. In German all the nouns are capitalized in the first letter.

Susan McCartney has written a book called, <a href="http://www.allworth.com/Catalog/PH122.htm">Travel Photography." </a>.

<p> In it she has several pages of short form model release in several languages. Since the book is out of print and the author wrote that the forms can be copied, I would think there is no harm in reproducing the language.

<p>The English sentence she uses is as follows:

I ________________ hereby grant __________________permission to use, copyright and publish the photographs taken of me today for purposes of advertising and trade in all lawful media.

Signed ____________________

<p>German version: Zustimmung Zur Veröffentlichung (Consent for publication)

Ich___________________________________(bitte deutlich drücken)<br>

gebe hiermit______________________________ Erlaubnis, die Fotografien, die heute von mir aufgenommen wurden, in allen legalen Medien der Werbung und Gewerbes zu benützen, hinsichtlich urheberrecht gesetzlich zu schützen und zu veröffentlichen.

<br>

Unterschrift ______________________________________

<p>In the above, I've added in parenthesis my literal translation of the German name of this form. Note it does not say model release, but permission for publication.

<P>Hope that this might help.

As I understand it, use tax applies to everyone in principle, but in practice those of us who file sales tax returns will have to fill out the use tax section at the same time.

I have once read in a photo mailing list that one photographer did get caught not filing use tax returns presumably when he was audited.

Belated thank you to all of you who responded.

By reading everyone's post, I realized that what I was really looking for was a description of the kind of pattern depicted in the photo. As far as I can tell, it is an interference pattern of light and gray produced by waves coming from left and bounced by the pier on the left.

I also realized that as far as selling a photo is concerned, it would be good to have an image of a well-known location with easily describable phenomena, e.g. sunset, sunrise, etc. Since this photo is not of a well-known place, it might be difficult to be discovered.

I sold recently to a customer a print of a Japanese coastal scene at sunset I photographed a couple of years ago. The important thing for her was that it was Japan and there is a famous Japanese poem associated with the place as she was giving the print to a Japanese relative of hers.

The first question that comes to my mind is what happened to your travel portfolio?

Your location might be ideal for a travel photographer since you can shoot in Taiwan and several countries in that part of the world.

If you speak the language there, why not trying to find the market right there to do documentary photography?

Another question you might ask yourself is what am I passionate about beside photography?

If you are a kind of person who is lost in Taiwan, you might end up being lost anywhere.

Ellis, thanks for your response, but what I was looking for are descriptive terms other than Inverness and sunset.

At present you can find a Web page containing this photo on the first page when you google for Inverness and sunset. However, I have not noticed anyone accessing this particular image despite the first page ranking, which is useless in this case because Inverness, Scotland is what people look for. The image is not yet in Google Images. I would like Google to index this image properly so that people looking for this kind of image will find it.

<p>I think we are all aware that it is imperative to have appropriate

keywords/titles for your images to be indexed in Google Web and Image

or some

other search engines. Otherwise our images will be buried among

millions of images on the Web. The importance of this was impressed

upon me by discovering that someone was using one of my images in

his/her online journal. I was curious how my image was found and

googled for sunrise and mist. I found my sunrise in mist image on the

second page in this search. This reminded me of another image I have

that I had difficulty describing with proper words.

My current title of <a

href="http://www.tomoko-yamamoto.com/photographs/Landscape/Maryland/Inverness_after_sunset_large.jpg">"Inverness

after Sunset"</a> is not good because this Inverness is located in the

United States rather than Scotland!

<p>What might be a good set of keywords or a good title for this photo

in particular? I also would appreciate if someone can tell us a story

of how he/she managed to get an image found by potential buyers

through good description of the image.