I first met Dutch travel photographer Jochem Wijnands in Jerez, Spain when we both covered the annual Flamenco festival. With our shared interests in travel and the business of photography we have kept in touch ever since. Facing fewer stock sales, closing print magazines, and online competition Jochem took a step that may augur a hopeful future direction for photographers. He began publishing a free iPad magazine, TRVL, which has now won numerous awards including best magazine app of 2011.

Working with a small group of travel photographers from around the world, TRVL  produces visual-intensive photo essays on specific destinations (82 so far) with full-screen images (now for the Retina iPads too), along with story text, video and a photographer commentary. At first they charged for iTunes downloads but sales were slow so they switched to free downloads.  That made all the difference. Over lunch during one of his frequent visits to SF, Jochem and TRVL co-founder Michel Elings explained that they first had to build an audience, only then will they look at how to monetize the product. Numbers must be good since the app is consistently at the top of popularity lists.

Another step that differentiates the magazine has been to the move to a custom publishing platform, Prss. Built in native code with an emphasis on ease of use and efficience, the platform will be free for everyone to use. I’ve signed up for trial access and look forward to giving it a try.

Itunes link
Facebook page 

photo from Les Fêtes de la Nouvelle-France, Quebec and featured this week in the Quebec issue of TRVL

It has been a full year sabbatical, a long rest from regular blogging, and it is now time to return.

The year has been a busy one. The photography industry continues to struggle in full-crisis mode as the transformations wrought by digital image capture and transmission change the economic landscape and undermine the old business models. At the same time more and more people are producing, enjoying and sharing imagery, at home, on the go, formally, but moreso now informally within their social networks. Social media use has expanded amazingly fast (one billion now on Facebook!). And there’s Twitter, Tumblr and Instagram. I’ve particularly enjoyed repurposing old and new images on the iPad for posting to my Instagram account (now with over 70,000 followers)

On a personal front, old and new. My father Cyril passed away in December at age 90. He bought me my first camera, introduced me to international travel at an early age, and encouraged my world adventures and growing photography business. Then in January our first granddaughter Rose was born; and only 4 1/2 months later along came Samantha. Two darling delights.

So…Lots of time for thinking. I’ll be exploring new ideas, new directions for my photography and media adventures online over the next few months and look forward to your feedback, comments and support. It’s nice to be back

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle…..

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

Steve Jobs, 1955-2011

The secret to getting great photographs of the bridge is finding interesting points of view. Here are five location-aware tips of places to help you see the bridge in a new way, and come home with better photos. The original list of tips is set up on Foursquare and is visible in the mobile app whenever you are near each location. You can add them to your 4SQ to-do list using your phone or by clicking the “save” button” next to the location title on this web page. You can also of course checkin to the location.

If you complete the tip, i.e. take the photograph, then you can mark it as done and it shows up on your profile seen by your friends. Foursquare also tracks how many people list and complete each tip and the once most followed are more prominently displayed. Users can also “follow” the entire list and share it with their friends.

Golden Gate Bridge

When walking across the bridge be sure to look up and explore different angles of the towers and cables. You’ll find lots of intriguing compositions and abstracts. Early evening the light is best.

Hawk Hill, Marin Headlands

To get the bridge with the city of San Francisco in the background, pull over about half way up Conzelman Road. There’s one spot where the Trans America Pyramid lines up with the North Tower.

Fort Point National Historic Site

This Civil War fort offers a unique view from directly underneath the bridge. The intricate girders contrast with the historic brickwork. Shoot in the late afternoon from the top level.

Marshall Beach

To get the classic shot of the bridge from the ocean side, park at Baker Beach and walk along the shore to Marshall Beach, where you can frame the scene with surf on the rocks in the foreground.

Berkeley waterfront

In the winter you can get a great shot of the sunset behind the Golden Gate Bridge. You’ll need a long lens and a tripod. Move back and forth until you get a pleasing composition.

If you like these and are interesting in additional photo tips, or just want to connect on Foursquare you’ll find me at @davidsanger

I have been playing quite a bit lately with Foursquare, the location-aware social media platform, and am quite intrigued by the implications and opportunities for travelers, travel journalists, destinations and brands in the travel industry. The first movement in mobile computing was freeing the device from the stationary desktop so that we could “connect” while moving around. The second movement now is for our device to be aware of where we are at all times, so that the information and actions available to us relate directly to where we are in space and time.

Foursquare makes a game of it by allowing people to check in and accumulate points and badges. The more powerful theme, however, is to make available to users specific information depending on exactly where they are. On a city street? Here’s a map. In a restaurant? Here’s the menu. At a scenic spot? Here’s the history, and here’s some photo tips. At a train station? The next train is in x minutes. Been here often? 10% discount.

The consequence of this is that with location awareness we travel through an internet of places, rather than just look things up from afar. Venues such as restaurants are already using location awareness to offer specials or reward loyalty, if the user is interested. Travel journalists and publications too must begin thinking about providing information to users directly on location, of having a point of presence in real-space so that users can read, learn and share, right there. As this capability rolls out there will no doubt be many creative and ingenious applications which will significantly change how and where we interact as travelers.

As an example I have just set up the first of a series of location-aware travel photography tips “Top 5 places to photograph the Golden Gate Bridge” along with a blog post describing the list and how it works.

If you have thoughts or experience as a travel writer or photographer using location-aware platforms, please add your comments below. See you there!

Everybody dreams of castles, grand old-world opulence, majestic homes of lords and royals, with elegantly decorated rooms, defensive fortifications and ornate architecture flourishes. Now, of course, we only visit castles as tourist sites. Many ancient castles are now protected as national treasures and historical landmarks, where we can walk through and try to imagine what life was really like in those centuries, whether it was really as luxurious as the fairy-tale stories (most certainly not).

Here’s a gallery of castle images selected as a trial run of two new product offerings I am testing, RedBubble for t-shirts and stickers, and Cafe Press for mugs and greeting cards. These are in addition to my standard offering of fine art prints through Pictopia.

cards & mugs t-shirts prints

cards & mugs t-shirts prints

cards & mugs t-shirts prints

cards & mugs t-shirts prints

Please try them out and let me know what you think, what you’d like to see more (or less) of in the future.

Note: Empire Avenue shareholders get an additional 10% discount on prints.

Here are three essential tools that I use to help search for images on the web. Each one is a Chrome extension allows you to select an image on a web page using a contextual menue and find other places online where the image is used.

Search by Image
(by Google)

TinEye
Reverse Image Search

ImageExchange PicScout –
Every Image Gets Its Credit

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At long last Google announced this week a new Search by Image feature where users can identify a candidate image and Google will return a set of matching images. Toronto based Tineye has had this feature for years and has 2 billion photos indexed, but Google is clearly an immediate strong competitor with many billions more images already indexed.

For photographers who are concerned or intrigued about the distribution of their image on the web the Google service is a very promising offering indeed. There are several benefits for searching for your own image online. One is to find unauthorized uses for which you can bill the user (negotiate usage, or if need be take stronger measures). For non-commercial uses a photographer may instead choose linkbacks, photo credits and explicit recognition. And for authorized usage such as ads and book covers it is helpful know where the images are used if a stock agency doesn’t report details.

Even with a few spot checks it is apparent that Google Search by Image will be very effective. One of my most popular images of Laos showed up with six unknown usages in addition to my own site and two known publicity sites. One was a travel book cover I did not know about, most likely licensed through Getty Images (I will check). Tineye on the other hand showed two distinct other uses, one known and one an aggregator

Both services allow upload of candidate images or entry of a URL. With respect to ease of use, Google Search By Image has several nice features. The ability to drag an image from the desktop onto the browser is incredibly convenient. Also identifies other similar but not identical images of the same subject which can be helpful in identifying the subject matter. Google also allows you to add identifying text in some cases to improve match results.

Tineye still has several features that distinguish it. Logged in users’ searches are automatically saved online and given a dedicated URL. Also Tineye is much stricter, returning only exact matches and not near misses. Google may return lots of similar images of the Golden Gate, but Tineye will return the one with the exact same cloud and shadow formation. This gives photographers and photo buyers a much finer screen when looking for a specific images. Tineye also allows the user to submit an entire webpage and then pick the desired image to match from images on the page.

In addition to benefitting photographers image search gives users the ability to find out where an image is used or sourced. Anyone seeing a photographer’s image online, if it is not credited, can use Image Search to find the original source. Photographers can take advantage of this by being sure their own site is indexed by Google Images and clearly identifies them as creator. A third vendor, Picscout, recently acquired by Getty Images, has a distinct advantage in this respect in specifically identifying the licensing agent . On the other hand Picscout only finds images agents have submitted to the system.

An interesting sidenote to the release of Google Search by Image has been an alarmist reaction by some in the photographic community who seek to find fault with Google at every turn, and feel threatened by the technology rather than seeing the opportunities for photographers. Search by Image is a definite step forward in helping both users and photographers to get correct attribution for images.

Have you used Search by Image or Tineye to find your own or other images? Please post your impressions in the comments below.

Laos, Vientiane, Monks on riverbank on cover of Südostasien, Stefan Looser Travel Handbücher