Archive for the Category »free photos «
28
Aug, 2010
Once you’ve taken photos with your digital camera, you need to store them somewhere. You could always leave them on the memory card, but that would get rather expensive, so let’s explore a few other options.
1. Transfer your images onto your computer. Most cameras come with a wire to connect your camera to your computer, a CD with a downloading program and an instruction booklet. Transferring the images is fast and simple. Once they are on the computer, you can delete the images from your memory card and start taking more photos.
2. Burn your images onto a CD. If you have a CD burner on your computer, you can make photo discs to store or share with others. When it comes to pictures, it is often best to use a CD that can’t be written over. This will save the heartache of losing precious photos. Label the CD and store it where it can be gotten easily when you need to see your pictures.
3. Store your images on a public web site. There are many photo-hosting sites on the internet. Some charge for the service, but many are completely free. You have the choice to password-protect your images or share them with the world. This option helps if your computer should crash. Your pictures are safe.
4. Print your images and place them in a photo album. Many people still like turning the pages of a photo album and reviewing the memories. This also makes it possible for those without a computer to view your pictures.
5. Create a photo gift. There are places out there that will take your digital image and place in on shirts, mouse pads, cups, calendars and numerous other items. These make wonderful gifts and provide a way to keep a cherished picture near at all times.
These are just a few suggestions. Using your creativity, you will come up with many more ideas.
Category: free photos
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21
Aug, 2010
So you learned to take a great picture and now you would like to make some cash from them (and of course, share your artwork with the world). Here are three ways you can go about this without costing you a fortune.
–Create your own products using your photos, such as framed prints, greeting cards or t-shirts, and sell them on Ebay. Ebay receives millions of visitors eager to buy, provides easy step by step instructions on getting you set up (their website also offers advice and tips on selling) and costs are very minimal. You have the choice to auction your product or let your customer “buy now”. Your biggest investment in this is producing your products.
–Sell products on Cafepress. They provide the products (framed prints, t-shirts, coasters, mousepads, clocks, teddy bears and much more) which you will apply your photos to (just upload and add to the product you choose) and they provide complete service (orders, delivery, complaints). You build your store (through their website) either using one of their templates or you can customize your own using HTML. They have a base price for each product and you set the price above that. You are paid the price above the base price. You can open a free store or you can pay a small fee each month and receive more benefits. Thou your products will appear in their Marketplace (which they receive millions of customers) so will millions of other products. So your biggest investment here is to advertise your store. I am not going into advertising here but there are free and low cost ways of doing this (read articles regarding this matter).
–Submit your photos to online stock agencies such as Shutterstock, Fotosearch or iStockphoto. Stock agencies house large files of images and markets the photos to potential clients. You are paid a percentage or a set price of each sale. You give these clients permission to use your photo (such as in their magazine or on their personal website) but they can not resell to profit from.
Whichever way you decide to sell your photos, the better the resolution your pictures are, the better the quality. To achieve this, first you must have a high megapixel digital camera. This does not mean you need to buy the top of the line. A 5 megapixel is quite sufficient. Second, your picture should have a high DPI (dots per inch) such as 300. If you want a high quality 8×10 inch picture, you will multiply the DPI by the inch. For instance, 8×300=2400 and 10×300=3000 so you want your picture size (resolution) to be 2400×3000 pixels. You can always decrease the size of your picture but never increase the original size.
Before joining any program, be sure to read their terms carefully. I wish you much success!
Category: free photos
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17
Jul, 2010
Whether you are planning to build an online product catalog or a printed version including rich digital photos will enhance it and will increase potential sales. When building a catalog photos are a powerful tool that you must use. Here are a few tips for taking digital photos that will bring justice to your products and will help increasing sales.
Product catalogs that do not include photos are boring. For example imagine that you are looking to buy a new digital photo printer. You just found a new online catalog or got a catalog via regular mail. The catalog has plenty of digital photo printers and also a lot of information about them such specifications, capabilities descriptions and more but it does not have any photos of the printer. You are most likely going to dump that catalog and search for the printer in another place.
This behavior is common to most consumers especially in this era of immediate gratification and impatience. Consumers do not want to spend time reading and figuring out what the product can do. They want to see a photo and get a short snippet of what the main features of the product are and what the price is.
Just taking photos and adding them to your catalog is not enough. Good photos can add a lot to a product image but at the same time bad photos can really damage that image. Here are some tips and concepts that can help taking good photos that in turn help selling products online:
Variation: Take more than one photo. Show the product from many angles: zoomed in and zoomed out and in different positions for example if the product is a clamshell-phone you should show it both in the opened and closed positions.
Quality: The photo quality must be as high as possible. Don’t confuse quality with file size or resolution we refer here to photographic quality: Follow the rules of good photography, use a tripod when long exposure is needed make sure the photo is not overexposed or underexposed and that it is not blurry.
Background: It is very important to shoot with the appropriate background. Usually you would stage a background that is in contrast with the product and that has no details or distracting objects that can catch the viewer’s attention. Make sure that the background is matte color and that it does not reflect light. For example when taking a photo of a black digital photo printer use a white or light gray background.
Show details: Emphasize the product details. Every product has unique features or important details that you would like to draw the viewer’s attention to. The best way to do that is to take close-up photos of those details. You are not limited to physical details for example when selling an digital photo printer that has long battery life take a close-up photo of the digital photo printer’s LCD screen displaying how much battery is left. Such a photo conveys credibility and is much more powerful than the product battery life specifications text.
Support the product description: Take photos that support the textual description of the product. For example if the text claims that the digital photo printer comes in three colors: black, silver and red show three photos of the printer in those colors.
Convey physical attributes: If your product has unique physical attributes that you would like to emphasize take photos that convey them. For example if the product size is important use a known size object in order to help the viewer visualize the size take a photo of the digital photo printer next to a quarter coin to show how small the printer is. It is much easier for viewers to visualize and understand measurements if they are put in reference with objects they know very well. This is much more powerful than specifying inches and ounces in a textual specification.
Keep file sizes small: This is relevant for online catalog only. Keep the photo file size small. When viewing a photo on a computer screen low resolution photos are more than enough. In most cases a VGA (640X480) picture is all that is needed and such a photo file size can be 50Kbytes or less. It is important to keep this in mind and not be tempted to put high resolution big photos files. Such big files load slowly on the viewer’s computer and in most cases the viewer will get frustrated from the slow response and would just skip to the next site.
Category: free photos
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