I have just completed an interview with ArtChix, which is an online magazine.
Visit the magazine & read my interview at:
http://artchixmagazine.com/post/751474546/artchix-special-cover-feature-an-exclusive-interview
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Thursday, June 17, 2010
My Negative Experience with ArtSelector.com
My last blog entry talked about beginning a new round of self-promotion. So after that entry I began making the rounds to some various art oriented directory sites where I could create some promotional profiles. One of those sites that I had found previously and then went to create a profile on was www.ArtSelector.com.
My initial impression of the site before I went to create a profile was a positive one. They promoted themselves as a site oriented towards the contemporary artist. And they represented all major areas of artistic discipline including photography.
So I went through the process of creating a profile on the site. After I created my initial profile, I proceeded to begin uploading images of my photography to my profile to finish the setup process. At a certain point in the upload process an error occurred, and the upload process was interrupted. That then forced me to have to re-login to the site. When I did I found that my new profile was completely lost along with my initial signin codes. I couldnt get back in at all. At this point in time it was late in the evening, and I decided to deal with this problem the next day.
The next day begins, and I again attempt to signin to my profile. And I find that I cannot. My created signin codes fail to get me back in. So I am forced to re-create a profile a 2nd time. And during this 2nd attempt I am able to completely finish the process of creating my profile including the uploading of images for my profile gallery. So I'm feeling good at this point except for a minor irritation. That irritation being an error msg that was created after the first failure at uploading my profile gallery images. That error msg was reading "Embedded Gallery2 is not available or requested URL does not exist." No matter where I go on the site this error msg is constantly following me around on the screen. It refuses to go away.
At this point this error msg is irritating me enough to contact the site operators and report the problem. Other than this error msg not going away I'm feeling ok about the site and expect to gain some quality promotional benefits from working through the site. Afterall, the site seemed to fairly active and had a large number of registered artists on the site.
A few hours go by, and I find in my email box a reply from ArtSelector.com in regards to my sent msg. They replied back apologizing for the problems I had with the site. But then they laid a major bombshell on me immediately after their apology.
They specifically stated the following, "Unfortunately we are unable to show your work on ArtSelector as i contravenes our terms and conditions of use on which our funding agreement is based. We are a contemporary art website that aims to support, promote and bring together criticaly engaged, contemporary art practioners and viewers. Sorry about this."
At this point after reading this I found myself becoming more than irritated. No where during my signup process was there any form of a warning that would alert me to the idea that maybe my work would be flat out rejected or be undesired so that I would not waste my time on this site. It's not like I am a producer of adult hardcore porn. I generally work with fitness models. I produce fitness, fashion & glamour images. And I will on occasion produce soft erotica. Soft erotica that's softer than a Playboy magazine centerfold spread. I tend to personally consider my work as sexy as the annual Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition. So in my book, I dont consider what I produce or what I posted up as examples of my work for my profile to be a problem.
But apparently there was a problem for the people at ArtSelector.com. Because it took my signing up onto their site twice, and apparently automatically having my profile blacklisted & removed to learn that my work was a photographic work was a problem for them.
And this whole experiecne begs several questions that I'm quite sure I will never get an answer from, from anyone at ArtSelector.com. Such as why does it take 2 signup efforts to learn about there being a problem to begin with? If the site operators are concerned about contemporary art than I have to wonder why there is a problem with someone that produces fashion & glamour style imagery? My personal experience tells me that fashion & glamour photography is fairly contemporary in its development & production?, and the site stated that they allowed photography among its disciplines. So how was my posted work not contemporary?
During the period that I was successfully online with the site and my profile, I did see other others in using other media that were showing work that was figurative and that was semi-nude & nude. So why was it perfectly ok those artists to continue to be on the site, and not me?
When I got ArtSelector.com's reply to my problem, I immediately responded back some questions to get a better understanding of what their problem truly was with my work. But as of yet I have not gotten any response to my questions. And I do not expect any response at all.
So at this point considering my experience with this site, I am here to tell everyone reading this that they should scratch off ArtSelector.com as a site to consider for artistic promtional use. There are other sites that do not concern themselves with cherry picking which online members are worth keeping online and which one's are not.
I have created profiles on other art oriented sites and have not had any problems at all. Those sites I will discuss in upcoming posts.
But when it comes to ArtSelector.com, all I can say at this point is this, if ArtSelector.com changes its policies and contacts me with an invitation to rejoin, I am here to tell them to flake off. They need me alot more as a member than I need to have them as a vehicle to promote my work. Ignore ArtSelector.com in your artistic online travels.
My initial impression of the site before I went to create a profile was a positive one. They promoted themselves as a site oriented towards the contemporary artist. And they represented all major areas of artistic discipline including photography.
So I went through the process of creating a profile on the site. After I created my initial profile, I proceeded to begin uploading images of my photography to my profile to finish the setup process. At a certain point in the upload process an error occurred, and the upload process was interrupted. That then forced me to have to re-login to the site. When I did I found that my new profile was completely lost along with my initial signin codes. I couldnt get back in at all. At this point in time it was late in the evening, and I decided to deal with this problem the next day.
The next day begins, and I again attempt to signin to my profile. And I find that I cannot. My created signin codes fail to get me back in. So I am forced to re-create a profile a 2nd time. And during this 2nd attempt I am able to completely finish the process of creating my profile including the uploading of images for my profile gallery. So I'm feeling good at this point except for a minor irritation. That irritation being an error msg that was created after the first failure at uploading my profile gallery images. That error msg was reading "Embedded Gallery2 is not available or requested URL does not exist." No matter where I go on the site this error msg is constantly following me around on the screen. It refuses to go away.
At this point this error msg is irritating me enough to contact the site operators and report the problem. Other than this error msg not going away I'm feeling ok about the site and expect to gain some quality promotional benefits from working through the site. Afterall, the site seemed to fairly active and had a large number of registered artists on the site.
A few hours go by, and I find in my email box a reply from ArtSelector.com in regards to my sent msg. They replied back apologizing for the problems I had with the site. But then they laid a major bombshell on me immediately after their apology.
They specifically stated the following, "Unfortunately we are unable to show your work on ArtSelector as i contravenes our terms and conditions of use on which our funding agreement is based. We are a contemporary art website that aims to support, promote and bring together criticaly engaged, contemporary art practioners and viewers. Sorry about this."
At this point after reading this I found myself becoming more than irritated. No where during my signup process was there any form of a warning that would alert me to the idea that maybe my work would be flat out rejected or be undesired so that I would not waste my time on this site. It's not like I am a producer of adult hardcore porn. I generally work with fitness models. I produce fitness, fashion & glamour images. And I will on occasion produce soft erotica. Soft erotica that's softer than a Playboy magazine centerfold spread. I tend to personally consider my work as sexy as the annual Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition. So in my book, I dont consider what I produce or what I posted up as examples of my work for my profile to be a problem.
But apparently there was a problem for the people at ArtSelector.com. Because it took my signing up onto their site twice, and apparently automatically having my profile blacklisted & removed to learn that my work was a photographic work was a problem for them.
And this whole experiecne begs several questions that I'm quite sure I will never get an answer from, from anyone at ArtSelector.com. Such as why does it take 2 signup efforts to learn about there being a problem to begin with? If the site operators are concerned about contemporary art than I have to wonder why there is a problem with someone that produces fashion & glamour style imagery? My personal experience tells me that fashion & glamour photography is fairly contemporary in its development & production?, and the site stated that they allowed photography among its disciplines. So how was my posted work not contemporary?
During the period that I was successfully online with the site and my profile, I did see other others in using other media that were showing work that was figurative and that was semi-nude & nude. So why was it perfectly ok those artists to continue to be on the site, and not me?
When I got ArtSelector.com's reply to my problem, I immediately responded back some questions to get a better understanding of what their problem truly was with my work. But as of yet I have not gotten any response to my questions. And I do not expect any response at all.
So at this point considering my experience with this site, I am here to tell everyone reading this that they should scratch off ArtSelector.com as a site to consider for artistic promtional use. There are other sites that do not concern themselves with cherry picking which online members are worth keeping online and which one's are not.
I have created profiles on other art oriented sites and have not had any problems at all. Those sites I will discuss in upcoming posts.
But when it comes to ArtSelector.com, all I can say at this point is this, if ArtSelector.com changes its policies and contacts me with an invitation to rejoin, I am here to tell them to flake off. They need me alot more as a member than I need to have them as a vehicle to promote my work. Ignore ArtSelector.com in your artistic online travels.
Saturday, June 12, 2010
A New Round of Self-Promotion
As a photographer I find myself regularly working on self-promotion of myself & mywork. As I have several years of experience as a webmaster for various models, my promotion efforts are generally oriented online. And my efforts tend to take a slightly different direction because of my webmaster background.
Good web promotion goes beyond just submitting your site to the search engines. Building a good name recognition factor requires increasing the relevancy of your name to the key search terms and phrases that you choose to associate yourself with. And increasing relevancy in search engine results also requires making an effort to associating your name with other relevant/similar types of sites.
For myself, I focus my photograpghy services in the areas of fitness, fashion, glamour & erotica. One thing that I do myself is constantly search out directory oriented sites that are strongly built around my chosen themes.
In the last few days I have done another round of web searching and built up a list of over 50 websites that concern themselves with erotica art & photography, glamour, fashion & modeling. So I am going to being the process now of going to each of the sites on my developed list and begin creating profiles on these sites. Increasing the number of web profiles through these sites will in the long term strenghen my name association to the key themes that I want to connect with.
As I begin this process I will update here on the specific sites that I am submitting too. And also discuss the quality of the sites that I submit too.
Good web promotion goes beyond just submitting your site to the search engines. Building a good name recognition factor requires increasing the relevancy of your name to the key search terms and phrases that you choose to associate yourself with. And increasing relevancy in search engine results also requires making an effort to associating your name with other relevant/similar types of sites.
For myself, I focus my photograpghy services in the areas of fitness, fashion, glamour & erotica. One thing that I do myself is constantly search out directory oriented sites that are strongly built around my chosen themes.
In the last few days I have done another round of web searching and built up a list of over 50 websites that concern themselves with erotica art & photography, glamour, fashion & modeling. So I am going to being the process now of going to each of the sites on my developed list and begin creating profiles on these sites. Increasing the number of web profiles through these sites will in the long term strenghen my name association to the key themes that I want to connect with.
As I begin this process I will update here on the specific sites that I am submitting too. And also discuss the quality of the sites that I submit too.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
My New Toy
My newest toy was delivered this afternoon by UPS. It happens to be a digital camcorder that my mother ordered for me as an early birthday gift. (My birthday being July 24th) She allowed me to begin using it when I got it. Actually its arrival today was a bit of a shock being that she ordered it on the 5th from HSN.com. We werent expecting it for a few more days.
So which digital camcorder did my mother order for me? The latest special offer from HSN.com which is for the DXG model # DXG-5C8V-HD. It records 1080 HD video in a device that is as thick as a dime is wide, and small enough to fit inside a shirt pocket easily. A nice little digital camcorder to add to my photography tools.
BUT, this afternoon's efforts at setting up the camcorder and trying to get the provided editing software to install left with some frustration. After I got the camcorder battery charged up and the device itself operational learning to record my first video clip was fast & easy. The ArcSoft Total Media HDCam 2.0 software on the other hand has so far proved worthless since I still am unable to get the software to install on my Toshiba laptop which is less than 2 years old.
Every time I tried to install the software I kept getting an error msg that no device was connected, and that was with the device connected to my laptop via USB port. In fact I connected the camcorder to my laptop via every USB port it had. And rebooted the laptop with the camcorder attached and still got the same error msg each time I tried installing the software.
After several attempts at trying to install the software I finally broke down and went to the company website and registered my camcorder. During the registration process I had to identify my model # and found that my model wasnt even listed among the product models. I guess its that new.
After the registration was done, I sent a support email. Within a short while I did recieve an email response. That allowed me to successfully get the device drivers installed on my laptop. But not the editing software. During the process of getting the device drivers installed, I wound up downloading a Canon codec file which allowed me to view the video test clips I create through Windows Media Player. So that got me a level of basic success with my new camcorder. I can now create new videos and view them.
But I still need to have some editing software, and so far the provided software that came with this camcorder just aint working for me yet. I hope to see if I get more info from the company DXG on that problem. And I will continue to keep you all alerted to my experience with using this model camcorder.
So which digital camcorder did my mother order for me? The latest special offer from HSN.com which is for the DXG model # DXG-5C8V-HD. It records 1080 HD video in a device that is as thick as a dime is wide, and small enough to fit inside a shirt pocket easily. A nice little digital camcorder to add to my photography tools.
BUT, this afternoon's efforts at setting up the camcorder and trying to get the provided editing software to install left with some frustration. After I got the camcorder battery charged up and the device itself operational learning to record my first video clip was fast & easy. The ArcSoft Total Media HDCam 2.0 software on the other hand has so far proved worthless since I still am unable to get the software to install on my Toshiba laptop which is less than 2 years old.
Every time I tried to install the software I kept getting an error msg that no device was connected, and that was with the device connected to my laptop via USB port. In fact I connected the camcorder to my laptop via every USB port it had. And rebooted the laptop with the camcorder attached and still got the same error msg each time I tried installing the software.
After several attempts at trying to install the software I finally broke down and went to the company website and registered my camcorder. During the registration process I had to identify my model # and found that my model wasnt even listed among the product models. I guess its that new.
After the registration was done, I sent a support email. Within a short while I did recieve an email response. That allowed me to successfully get the device drivers installed on my laptop. But not the editing software. During the process of getting the device drivers installed, I wound up downloading a Canon codec file which allowed me to view the video test clips I create through Windows Media Player. So that got me a level of basic success with my new camcorder. I can now create new videos and view them.
But I still need to have some editing software, and so far the provided software that came with this camcorder just aint working for me yet. I hope to see if I get more info from the company DXG on that problem. And I will continue to keep you all alerted to my experience with using this model camcorder.
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