Best Of
Re: Are you actually having any sales?
@mgraper said:
Are any of you selling/shipping outside your home country? I'm curious how you are handling sales outside the US SmugMug options for drop shipping? Any issues with extra shipping and/or VAT adding to the cost to client?Thanks!!
My sales seem to be a 60/40 split between Europe and USA respectively. I chose the US lab (Bayphoto) as I proofed my files for them and like the results and options SM give us with them. I can't produce quality prints here in Vietnam so have to drop ship regardless.
I get quite a few blind orders on my SM site both from countries in western Europe and USA/CAN, but majority of Europeans tend to e-mail me first asking questions about prints/shipping etc, so that's when I tend to take charge and fulfill the order personally outside of the SM system. Biggest issue is with larger prints and metalprints which can cost a fortune to ship, even through USPS. So I'll weigh up ordering through BayPhoto or switching to WhiteWall which is a German lab that can ship around Europe/UK for much less.
One thing to note, especially if you are using BayPhoto as your SM print partner, is that the shipping costs for larger sized framed prints/metal/acrylic/canvas actually might be cheaper through the SM partnership rather than ordering direct. Sure customers might be put off by the high shipping fees, but the reality is that's what it costs and they're not just arbitrarily marking up the prices. The biggest benefit of SM over doing it all yourself is that they handle any tax related stuff in the checkout, and help deal with any customer issues i.e. refunds/reprints. Doing it yourself is a lot harder and keep in mind most labs don't offer refunds so if you place an expensive order and the customer doesn't like it then you gotta handle that situation all on your own.
It's hard to find the right balance if you're trying to sell to the whole world, but eventually you'll find where your primary market is and work around it.
Shinrya
Re: Kenyan Safari
Great series and thank you for posting.
Marcelo
Re: Keywords
Lesley, looks like you have the same problem as me. A gallery is limited to 1000 photos being displayed. Example, your keyword "australia" has reached that limit. I solved this by using multiple keywords sorted by date. I used a smart gallery to count KW's for each year then added years to not exceed 1000.
example: (number behind KW not part of KW but year count)
yardbirds_2008_and_earlier (906)
yardbirds_2009_10 (537)
yardbirds_2011_12 (669)
yardbirds_2013_14 (883)
yardbirds_2015_17 (652)
yardbirds_2018_19 (540)
yardbirds_2020_up
Allen
Re: Agaves
Thank you all for the comments. The first and third were shot with a wide-angle lens. I wouldn't ordinarily do that. Sometimes just changing lenses makes us break habits.
Brown Scale Parthenolecanium corni on Vine
Our grape vine is at least 30 years old and this is the first time I have seen scale insects on it. The species of scale is commonly found on wood plants in gardens.
Some of these images show ants in attendance. I was completely puzzled by the second image, until I viewed a stereo pair, when I could make out the posteriors of two ants facing away from us and facing the scale.
The whole range of sizes of the scales in shown in these images. The stereos are crosseye.
The ant in the last image is strangely pale but it is not a lighting effect.
Olympus EM-1 (aperture priority), Olympus 4/3 x2 TC, Olympus 4/3 50mm f2 macro, f10 or f11, hand-held.
Harold
Re: Glasses
I assume you mean in camera, not with retouching, right? With a light source fairly straight on, most glasses are going to reflect. Sometimes (particularly with lenses with non-reflective coating or weaker prescriptions), just a small adjustment like angling them slightly downward will do the trick. Or you need to move your light source off axis (sides or high in the air) so that the reflections aren't visible from your straight-on view.
