Today we start publishing the Photo Media Stock User Manual for Photographers. The Manual will lay down the rules and standards for photographers who wish to aubmit their application to the platform.

Ermoupoli Syros Greece. Photo © 2010 Yorgo Nestoridis

1. Account Information

Your personal information must be full and accurate. Make sure your First and Last name are printed correctly, as well as your Street Address, City and Zip. Fill in all required fields. At the end of the application process you will be asked to provide a state issued ID which must include a photo of you. (Pass, ID, Drivers License). This proof of identity must be in .jpg format. If you don’t have a scanner, take a shot with your digital camera and show us how good your Macro shots are.

If and when your personal information changes, please contact support to modify or adapt your file with us.

You will find the full size user manual on the platform at Photo Media Stock as well as on static pages on this website.

Copyright © 2010 Photo Media Stock Photo Media Stock Manual is a post from: Photo Media Stock

The Greek island of Syros bears many treasures, namely when it comes to classical architecture. Here below a nice example which unfortunately I had to shoot from rather far away. Luckily today’s optical zooms on digital cameras have a good range to get some details banned on ‘paper’.

Classical Architecture in Syros

Copyright © 2010 Photo Media Stock Classical Architecture in Syros is a post from: Photo Media Stock

Evo2 by Semiomantics sets new Standards

Evo2 by Semiomantics is what I would call the ideal script to present photos, images of all kinds, videos, audios, in short all kinds of media in the most generous and astonishing way. The beauty of the web design is just one asset; what’s under the hood of this high profile script is the most advanced semantic publishing optimization Semiomantics has come up with as per today.

Semiomantics Evo2 will be released in early September and extensively commented. Look forward to it and get prepared for a new way to present Media online!

Semiomantics Evolution the Top Classic

My classic favorite remains Semiomantics Evolution. Recently we have seen some exciting developments by smart designers and it will be a pleasure to present an Evolution gallery in the near future.

Copyright © 2010 Photo Media Stock Top Photo Website Design is a post from: Photo Media Stock

Adobe Lightroom 3 Presets

Just 4 samples using some of my Lightroom presets for the purpose of the Ycademy Seminar.

Enjoy.

Ermoupoli Syros, Greece

Ermoupoli Syros, Greece - Original

Ermoupoli Syros, Greece

Ermoupoli Syros, Greece - Preset 1

Ermoupoli Syros, Greece

Ermoupoli Syros, Greece -Preset 2

Ermoupoli Syros, Greece

Ermoupoli Syros, Greece - Preset 3

Ermoupoli Syros, Greece

Ermoupoli Syros, Greece - Preset 4

Author: Yorgo Nestoridis, Media Marketing & Publishing, Founder of YORGOO Publishing, YORGOO Press and Semiomantics. If you enjoyed reading the above, please consider following future tips and strategies by RSS reader, Email delivery, or Kindle subscription.

This almost abstract Architectural detail is from Syros Greece and ranks amongst my favorites.

Get it from Photo Media Stock.

[mappress]

Copyright © 2010 Photo Media Stock Best Architecture Stock Photos is a post from: Photo Media Stock

This website will deliver news from and about Photo Media Stock to inform about new

• Stock Photo
• Stock Video
• Stock Audio
• Stock Vector Graphics

The site is part of Photo Media Stock.

[mappress]

Copyright © 2010 Photo Media Stock Photo Media Stock News is a post from: Photo Media Stock

Photo Media Stock Seminar Information

This week-ends Photo Media Seminar has a busy schedule like all Ycademy Seminars and to anticipate some of the issues I would like to invite participants to prepare the following:

Adobe Lightroom 3

We will introduce and work with Adobe Lightroom 3. There are some amazing features and improvements of the software which will make our work easier. Amongst the improvements you will  find:

1. Superior Noise Reduction
2. Support for DSLR video file formats
3. Improved Image Watermarking
4. New Image Importing Interface
5. Perspective Correction
6. Tethered shooting
7. Lens Correction
8. Improved Slide-shows with Music

and more.

Please download and install the 30 days trial version from Adobe: Click HERE.

DO NOT install unless you have attended last night’s session.

We will install and custom configure the software at tonight’s Ycademy call.

Camera Calibration

As far as I am aware of, all participants use cameras which out-put jpg format images, compared to RAW formats. We will therefore do an empirical calibration based on what we see. For this reason, we work with a few images shot with our camera as follows:

• 3 images daylight, normal conditions
• 3 images low light conditions
• 3 images flash (indoors, party, rooms,…)

Please load the pictures to a blog post or a page as wide as your column allows (for most 460 pixels).

Example before and after:

iPhone 4 Photos as shot:

Syros Ferry

Everybody knows the Vodafone red …. for my taste the above is too warm, too orange tinted.

Blue and White

Same here, the white is yellowish and the blue drifting off to a hazy warm blue.

Syros Ermoupoli

Again very warm and yellow …

iPhone 4 Photos after Calibration

I have used the above iPhone 4 Photos to create a calibration preset in Lightroom 3. Then I re-loaded the images again and applied the preset to obtain the following results:

Syros Ferry Calibrated

Purified mid tones and cooler tonal range, a bit of sharpening and the photo looks pretty much as I remember the scene.

Calibrated iPhone 4 Photo

The cooling provokes ‘blueish’ shadows … still better than yellow. The white on top of the image is closer to the real white.

Calibrated iPhone 4 Photo

Cooling helps a lot here; the countryside in the background has its real color. The walls of the buildings on the foreground are yellow in reality and dominate the color range. We are here pretty close to reality.

I have taken a similar photo with my P&S Leica V-Lux-20:

Syros with Leica V-Lux-20

You may notice that this Photo before editing is better than the edited version of the iPhone Photo … or a more zoomed version:

Ermoupoli with Leica V-Lux-20

As unreal as it may appear, these blues really stick out. However calibrating this camera, I would rather reduce the blue impact and create a preset which is less cool.

Note the church on the last image is also visible on the third iPhone Picture. The two pics have been taken from about the same location and distance. The optical zoom of the Leica provides a smashing result considering that we are talking about a camera about of the size of a box of cigarettes.

Size

You like this picture? Pretty sharp huh … that one has been taken with a credit card size Leica C-Lux-3 Point and Shoot camera. Nice details … you see all the dust and finger prints on the cam and the iPhone.

Author: Yorgo Nestoridis, Media Marketing & Publishing, Founder of YORGOO Publishing, YORGOO Press and Semiomantics. If you enjoyed reading the above, please consider following future tips and strategies by RSS reader, Email delivery, or Kindle subscription.

Seagull on Google Top 10

Our earlier post made it!
Our Seagull made it to Google Top10 and more to come!

Author: Yorgo Nestoridis, Media Marketing & Publishing, Founder of YORGOO Publishing, YORGOO Press and Semiomantics. If you enjoyed reading the above, please consider following future tips and strategies by RSS reader, Email delivery, or Kindle subscription.

Stock Photo Seagull

Tonight’s Ycademy call will focus on preparing an image for Photo Media Stock our new Stock Photo and Media Portal.

The call will highlight proper image titling, tagging and description as well as other properties such as those pertaining to Copyrights. We will also have a look at different versions of a Seagull Photo.

Seagull Image

Seagull Photo Image

This is the Seagull picture as shot reduced to 1000 pixels wide and 80% jpg quality. When taking the photo, I didn’t frame too closely as the subject was moving. Zooming has its price: you need more aperture and often speed to compensate for the shaking hand and you may lose more detail and gradients.

Seagull Photo Edited

The first step was to re-frame the picture without cropping it.

Seagull Photo

Then a bit of editing and cleaning… and a test with a bit of vignette for my own fun:

Seagull Image 2

Stock Photo Seagull

Stock Photo Seagull

The Stock Photo Seagull comes without vignette or edge treatments. Also I have re-sized it (without cropping) to 3:2 making it 930 pixels x 620 pixels.

Author: Yorgo Nestoridis, Media Marketing & Publishing, Founder of YORGOO Publishing, YORGOO Press and Semiomantics. If you enjoyed reading the above, please consider following future tips and strategies by RSS reader, Email delivery, or Kindle subscription.

Your Photos take you to Google Top 10

Proper image tagging and publishing is beneficial for photographers and publishers. This applies for printed publications as well as for online publishing.

Today when looking up my name on Google, I found on position 13 Charterworld.com which published two of my pictures about the destruction of the super-yacht Madiblue D.

From the same publishing house, other publications have picked up the images, namely the Best European Magazine for Motor Boats and Yachting. And then the following websites:

http://www.synfo.com/news/allnews.asp?news=&id=15421#

http://www.charterworld.com/news/yacht-madiblue-on-fire-in-greece

http://www.thecrewreport.com/superyacht_crew_news.asp?id=16846

madiblue-5

Copyright Notice underneath the photo.

madiblue-2

Copyright Notices underneath the Photos

madiblue-4

Copyright Notice …

madiblue-3

Copyright Notices …

madiblue

Copyright Notice.

If you magnify the images you see underneath each photo the copyright notice, which Google is happy to pick up. The Copyright Notices are embedded as Caption. In fact if you inspect the element of the last sample, you will find that the publisher uses the whole caption in the title or name of the image. This is of course a good promo for the photographer and helps the publisher to get higher visibility just due to the image.

Image tagging

The above is a nice example of efficient image handling by a professional publisher.

Photo and Media Publishing

There are different ways of publishing photos, the most common being as illustration to a text for your own purpose. Then there is publication of media for the purpose to serve other publishers with media to illustrate their texts.

The second case requires different publishing; the main objective is that interested parties can find your picture easily when searching on Google for example. There are also agencies and stock platforms which have high visibility and which have the connections to the end-user.

The above example shows, that interesting materials can be a source of income, provided the materials can be found by interested people. It is therefore of paramount importance to handle our pictures with the utmost care and then to publish them in the most efficient way.

If your site is not a high impact site with high authority as the above, it is often difficult to gain visibility quickly. Also, the Google image search is one of the most polluted search engines in as much as too many top search returns are completely irrelevant.

The Semiomantics Media Publishing Solution

In view of the above, we have been thinking for years about solutions for people who wish high visibility with media. Semiomantics Publishing Frameworks based on WordPress provide users the necessary platform to gain high visibility with media without the need to spend money on Google Ads and without giving away a high percentage to the owners of Stock Platforms. Semiomantics is specialized and second to none when it comes to reach Google Top 10 positions with media content.

Google Top 10 with Semiomantics

Semiomantics Frameworks have their origin in Search Engine Optimized WordPress based scripts. Immediately after the release of the first frameworks under the name of “The Magic Search Traffic Formula” we became aware of the almost shocking performance of the scripts: posts reached easily Google Top 10 Positions. We then moved on to other publishing elements, such as tags and images and later to other media. Since the necessary optimizations needed special tuning of the scripts as well as the creation of a ’semantically evolving dictionary’ for each site we created the Semiomantics SEO Module which runs behind the most professional Semiomantics based publications.

With success, as you can see from my Madiblue D experience.

Media Publishing with Semiomantics

At present we are working on a new framework and formula to satisfy the needs of mobile publishers. When sending a picture or a video from a smart-phone to a website, there is little that can be done to optimize the tagging beyond the data automatically attached to the picture. It is therefore important, to automatically translate some of the data and convert it to optimized tags on the receiving site. An interesting challenge for Semiomantics.

For example: some smart-phones automatically use Geo Tags; these can be translated and projected to a map and then additional keywords can be extracted therefrom. Other features concern traveling and trip information which is available on cameras and smart-phones. Notes, descriptions and such like help as well.

At present we are testing the new Semiomantics Formula for Mobile Publishers using the iPhone 4 and our site at iPhone 4 Photos. The first results are promising. The advantage of the iPhone are the numerous applications which can be used for advanced image editing and tagging; in the extreme case, we may need to write our own application to suit the exact needs when used with Semiomantics Frameworks.

Another test ground is the Leica Mapping. With the release of the Leica V-Lux-20 Leica provided their customers with a portal for automated mapping and smart-tagging of photos, based on the data automatically attached to each picture by the V-Lux-20. Other camera providers have similar projects. While the idea is brilliant, the projects lack punch and optimization to make them an interesting playground for us.

Remain free image portals, such as Flickr or Picasa. The downside of those are their terms and licensing policies; on the other hand you can use them to reach Google Top 10 positions by using the full tagging potential when publishing on the platforms. This applies for manual loading, not to mobile uploading.

The Flickr tag based search works quite well, provided people search on Google for the keyword and add “flickr”. Example Syros Flickr returns 8087 uploads, whereas on the first page which displays the top 24 returns, 12 are iPhone 4 Photos from my production  (or better, 9 of the top 10 are from iPhone4Photos.com).

flickr-syros

PS: On Google under Syros Flickr the above tag page is not only Top 10, but number 1, meaning that the way you publish may also help Flickr to gain Google Top 10 Positions :-).

Learn and Earn with Ycademy

All about Media Publishing at this month’s Ycademy Seminar. Get more info from HERE

Author: Yorgo Nestoridis, Media Marketing & Publishing, Founder of YORGOO Publishing, YORGOO Press and Semiomantics. If you enjoyed reading the above, please consider following future tips and strategies by RSS reader, Email delivery, or Kindle subscription.

Photo Media Stock News

Our new Site Photo & Media Stock is up and running. Today we will finalize the basic configuration and semantic optimization. At the same time we are testing the features and pipelines, as well as the community tools.

Photo_Media_Stock

Photo & Media Stock

Release Date

Officially Photo Media Stock will go public on September 1, 2010. At this stage, the site will have already an extensive inventory, namely of stock photos.

Pre-release Task

• Testing and adjusting features
• Implementing privileged accounts for Ycademy Seminar Participants
• Site content creation and implementation
• Terms and Conditions, Licenses
• Set up and training of Admin
• Training for users
• Quality specifications of stock media
• Uploading and organizing stock media
• Promotion

Some of these tasks will be dealt with at the Seminar, namely promotion and marketing issues as well as linking to Semiomantics Frameworks, Social Networks and so on.

Other tasks will need to be taken care of as from today.

Pre-Seminar Tasks

1. Admin

We are at the point where we can start with admin trainings. There are three levels of admin tasks:

• Website Admin and Maintenance
• Quality control
• Financial matters

Admin is responsible for the site content and the smooth operation, trouble-shooting and collection and pay-outs.

We are looking for the right managers for the above and will inform you as soon as the positions are filled. If you are interested in any of these, please contact Bianca Gubalke at bianca(at)ycademy.com.

2. Seller Accounts

There will be three subscription levels to the site: Basic, Standard and Professional. Depending on the level, sellers have more or less freedom or can profit from more or less capabilities of the site and of server capacity.

For Ycademy Seminar Participants (August 2010 Seminar) we will create special full-featured accounts. This implies manual configuration and it is therefore necessary to know the list of participants as early as possible.

3. Buyer Accounts

Implementation of buyer accounts and pricing policy, licenses, terms, testing.

Trainings

Admin trainings will start as from tomorrow, Media Producer Trainings will take place daily as from next Monday. To be able to participate in such trainings you need a Producer account on the site which we need to set up by the end of this week to provide you with the due privileges.

Quality requirements and control

Photo Media Stock provides High Quality Media. Admin will therefore exercise a tight quality control on ALL uploaded media. Also, new photo publishers will have to submit to admin a sample of 10 pictures for appraisal before being accepted. As from the release of the portal on September 1, 2010, the conditions for admission will change as well as the reward levels for new media producers who want to join the portal.

The Privileges and Seminar

All about the seminar and features HERE.

Author: Yorgo Nestoridis, Media Marketing & Publishing, Founder of YORGOO Publishing, YORGOO Press and Semiomantics. If you enjoyed reading the above, please consider following future tips and strategies by RSS reader, Email delivery, or Kindle subscription.