01 Sep, 2010 | Posted by: psnotes



Can a Single App Make

It All Worthwhile?


Sometimes when a new technology hits, one use of it alone can make the whole development worthwhile.

Could this be true for apps? It is for me.

The new technology of apps has made my life more creative, more productive, and more enjoyable in many ways, but this one application would have been enough. I refer to one of my frequent tasks.

As a travel photo journalist, one of my ongoing challenges is getting model releases. The release is important. It makes my photos more salable, and at higher prices. Releases are critical for potential commercial sales of photos.

Managing paper releases in the past has been tedious. Sometimes I would look at a paper release and try to remember, exactly who was that person? Attaching the release to the photo was cumbersome. I would have to scan the paper release and email in the scan to an agency or photo buyer.

That has all changed for me with an app called Easy Release ($9.99). My agencies love it, and so do I. To use Easy Release, you need the appropriate mobile electronic device. I downloaded it for my iPhone in the Apple App Store. However, the software manufacturer now has it also for Android mobile devices. See their site at http://www.applicationgap.com/.
This is a good example of an app software now available for a larger spectrum of devices.

Here"s how it works. The release form appears right on my iPhone (or iPod, iPad). I fill in the blanks. The resulting form gets exported as a Pdf (Adobe’s ubiquitous portable document format) and as a jpg.

The release has prompts for data fields for all the expected info, such as Name of Model, Name of Shoot, Shoot Location, Shoot Date, Date of Birth (which kicks in the Minor prompt for parents to sign), Address, Phone, and Email. Some fields in the form are optional but may be handy, such as Gender and Ethnicity. There is a release for Models and for Property.

The language of the release is acceptable to the agencies with whom I work. The language can be customized if you prefer to change it. The release comes in 13 languages, useful if you want to get a Russian or Chinese subject, for example, to sign a release.

However, there are three special and nifty aspects of the release.

First, I get a prompt to use the iPhone itself to take a photo of the model, which becomes part of the pdf.
Second, the model physically signs his or her name on the iPhone with a finger as a pen, authenticating the release.
And third, at the end I am prompted to email the release to whomever I want, which might be myself, the model, and my agency. This is handy. The pdf/jpg emailed to me can also later be sent to any photo buyer or agent. I now have a folder for all my digital model releases created with the iPhone.

The pdf result of the release can be printed out to look clean and professional.

It takes a while to get comfortable with the small touch keyboard on the iPhone, but one can eventually develop a facility for it. If one older and pejorative metaphor has totally lost its punch in the modern world, it is, He is all thumbs.

For Model Releases alone, the apps technology and the iPhone would be worth it to me.

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Lee Foster
Travel writing/photos on 200 destinations for consumers and content buyers at http://www.fostertravel.com
5,000 hi-res photos searchable and downloadable at http://stockphotos.fostertravel.com
Two new photo travel guidebooks at http://www.fostertravel.com/book.html
Latest thoughts on travel at http://blog.fostertravel.com



Lee Foster has three apps in the Apple iTunes App Store. Search “Lee Foster” and up come the three in the iPhone Apps list below Movies, Albums, and Songs. Two are travel photo guides with a lot of functionality. They are San Francisco Travel Photo Guide (Sutro Media, $1.99) and Washington DC Travel Photo Guide (Sutro Media, $1.99). Lee’s third app is a travel literary book with photos, an ebook-style app titled Travels in an American Imagination: The Spiritual Geography of Our Time (IndiaNIC, $2.99)

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11 Aug, 2010 | Posted by: psnotes



LEARN ON THE GO -- App for iPhone and Android Enables Photographers to learn their cameras. The Photography Trainer app is an interactive step-by-step guide on how to set the camera to capture photos with impact – you tell it the type of subject being photographed and the lighting you’re in, and the app guides you on how to set items like shutter speed, aperture, ISO, focus, etc. It helps you get out of “Auto Mode” to allow for more creative photography. http://news.yahoo.com/s/prweb/20100805/bs_prweb/prweb4347024_1

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04 Aug, 2010 | Posted by: psnotes





What is Available in Apps....?

for the Photographer?
By Lee Foster

To see what is available to the photographer in apps, start by setting up an iTunes Account (at no charge) and browse around the Apple ITunes App Store. Start at Apple.com if you do not have an iTunes account. Click on the Store. You will need to have a credit card for payment and a billing address to set up your account. You will not need to buy anything.


DON'T BUY, -JUST LOOK, at first


Then begin browsing around the App Store, thinking of your area of interest, Photography... Browse, but don’t buy, unless you have an iPod, iPhone, or iPad on which to view the app content. However, browsing can be informative.

To browse, once you get into iTunes, click on the App Store. Then, on the right side of the App Store choice, you’ll see a dropdown menu. Choose Photography. (Ignore, for the moment, that some apps possibly of interest to you might be in a different category. For example, my travel photo guide apps are listed in Travel rather than in Photography.) Make Photography your first stop.

As you look at the iPhone Photography Apps page, what will jump out is the listing All Photography iPhone Apps. As I write this, there are 2,594 photography apps in the App Store. The creators of these products decided that what they fashioned was best categorized under Photography. Creators can put their app in only one category. As you consider all these apps, it may seem daunting to think that you will have to wade through all the 2,593 apps to find what you might want.

The Photography Apps page makes some recommendations on photography apps to help you choose. A New & Noteworthy list suggests 20 new photography apps that might be of interest. There’s also a What’s Hot list of 120 photography apps that Apple staff deems of greatest interest. And, on the right side of the page, you can see the 200 Top Paid Photo Apps and the 200 Top Free Photo Apps.

When a lot of people voluntarily buy a photo app, there must be something to recommend it.

The current best seller is the app iMovie ($4.99), which allows you to edit movies shot with the iPhone4. When browsing apps, be sure to click on “More” on the right side of the description page to see the full, informative text about the app. You’ll also see a few screenshots from the app.

STRETCH YOUR CREATIVE HORIZONS


Another top seller is Color Splash ($1.99), which turns your photos into black-and-white but allows you to save color in a selected portion, dramatically drawing attention to this effect. It’s an interesting photo manipulation possibility. You’ll find many photo apps of this kind, stretching your creative horizons if you like to alter photos.

Browse long enough and you are likely to get hooked, determining that you will want to get an iPod, iPhone, or iPad to display apps. (Or maybe you'd like to produce an app yourself.) Next month I’ll talk about just one app, which I purchased and use often. This app can make almost every photographer’s life easier, happier, and more productive. I’ll leave you wondering until next month what that app might be.

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Lee Foster has three apps in the Apple iTunes App Store. Search “Lee Foster” and up come the three in the iPhone Apps list below Movies, Albums, and Songs. Two are travel photo guides with a lot of functionality. They are San Francisco Travel Photo Guide (Sutro Media, $1.99) and Washington DC Travel Photo Guide (Sutro Media, $1.99). Lee’s third app is a travel literary book with photos, an ebook-style app titled Travels in an American Imagination: The Spiritual Geography of Our Time (IndiaNIC, $2.99)




http://www.fostertravel.com

Travel writing/photos on 200 destinations for consumers and content buyers at http://www.fostertravel.com
5,000 hi-res photos searchable and downloadable at http://stockphotos.fostertravel.com
Two new photo travel guidebooks at http://www.fostertravel.com/book.html
Latest thoughts on travel at http://blog.fostertravel.com
Travel Photo Guide app on San Francisco at http://www.sutromedia.com/apps/sfphotoguide
Travel Photo Guide app on Washington DC at http://sutromedia.com/apps/DC_Travel_Photo_Guide


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30 Jun, 2010 | Posted by: Alec



Lee Foster’s Photo Travel App

Racks Up 957 Sales/Month



Can a photographer who develops
and sells apps actually make a dollar or two?

The short answer is yes, based on my own experience. But the path is not simple or smooth.

One of my photo travel apps just sold 957 units in a 30-day period, 5-21-10 to 6-21-10.
I earned $574.20 in royalties from this.

That best-selling app is San Francisco Travel and Photo Guide (Sutro Media, $1.99) in the Apple iTunes App Store.

My royalty is 30% of list price, or 60 cents per $1.99 app sale. Do the math and 60 cents for 957 sales brings a royalty profit of $574.20.

My app ranked between #40 and #50 among all paid travel apps for a two-week period. I was competing with more than 11,000 paid travel apps now on sale in the App Store. I discuss this in more detail at http://bit.ly/cD3vc6

Why have I become successful? Partly, I am practicing patiently what Rohn Engh keeps stressing week after week in this newsletter. You have to build your “brand.” You have to develop a product and give consistent service to your customers. Each of us has our favorite subject area in photography. Mine happens to be travel. I give service in this area to my viewers day after day, year after year, at my website: http://www.fostertravel.com

Partly, I have also been fortunate. Someone at Apple liked my San Francisco app. Apple declared my app a Staff Favorite and put it for awhile on the front page of the Apple iTunes App Store. We live in a new world of marketing where such viral recommendations can create market opportunities.

The new world of app publishing creates new truly limitless opportunities for all of us to share and market our photography. For example, my San Francisco app has been purchased in 42 foreign countries. In contrast, my parallel travel photo book on San Francisco will never sell a copy outside North America.

Rohn has asked me to develop an app column for you, which is now appearing the first Thursday of each month. You can see earlier columns, starting in May, at http://photostocknotes.com/psn/index.php?catid=67&blogid=1 If you have questions, and I know you have a dozen, leave a comment and I will answer it there or in future monthly columns.

--

Lee Foster is an awarding-winning travel photographer and
writer, winner of eight Lowell Thomas Awards. Lee publishes 200 worldwide travel photo/writing coverages to consumers and to content buyers on his Foster Travel Publishing website at http://www.fostertravel.com
There you can see his photos, writing, books, and apps. His photo-selling site is at http://stockphotos.fostertravel.com


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02 Jun, 2010 | Posted by: psn





Apps Can Enhance Your Marketing Strategy

By Lee Foster



Apps may become an important part of your future. However, as you may well know, the subject of apps can be confusing and frustrating. You might have experienced some of that frustration if you read my first column on the subject.*
But let’s look ahead to see how apps can display your photos to audiences and enable you to view the photos of other photographers.
Here are some of the basic issues to keep in mind:

Apps work only on mobile devices, not on your computer. They are designed for the mobile device world. If you download to your computer, you will need to sync up your mobile device to the computer to load them and play them on the mobile device.
Apple iTunes App Store apps work only on the Apple iPhone, iPod, and iPad. They don’t work on other types of phones, such as Google Android and Blackberry phones. This is frustrating to a consumer, who will, naturally, want a program to work on all devices.
Why can’t the apps work on all devices? Good question. Each of the main developer systems has its own software standards and its own range of apps. Unfortunately they are not compatible with each other.
Apple is currently the main player in consumer apps for photography, travel, and other subjects.

My suggestion, don’t buy any apps (even at $1.99) unless you have the compatible mobile device to play it on.


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APPS have gained popularity and attention in the computing world.
Here are answers to some basic questions you might have:



WHAT DOES APP STAND FOR? It stands for “application.”

WHAT IS AN APP? Apps are designed to expand the functionality of a mobile device. Apps can be things like games, joke programs, ebooks, weather reports, personal planners, and a wide variety of other types of helpful information. They are available in “App Stores.”

WHAT’S AN APP STORE? An app store is an online store where people can purchase applications for mobile devices.

WHAT IS A MOBILE DEVICE? A mobile device is sometimes called a “handheld device.” It’s an electronic device small enough to be easily carried around, that can be used for a variety of computing functions. Mobile devices enable people to take advantage of computing power without being shackled to a specific time or place. These devices are quite pervasive nowadays. Commonly used mobile devices include cell phones, pdas, and multi-media players. Their uses are varied. Tip: At most department stores (like Wal-mart) the attendant in the electronics section will gladly show you what’s currently popular.

WHERE DO YOU GET OR BUY APPS.? At an App Store. The original app store was the App Store run by the Apple Company to provide applications for its mobile devices called the iPhone® and iPod Touch®. Other companies picked up the concept so that they could create and sell applications to their users as well. Applications in an app store can vary in cost, from free downloads to pricey ones, depending on who developed the application and its purpose. Most paid downloads are relatively low-priced.

HOW DO YOU ACCESS AN APP? Users can typically access an app store from their mobile device, with some manufacturers providing a hot key which users can use to go straight to the store. Once there, users can search for an application by name, or browse by type. Often, many competing applications serve more or less the same function, with users choosing by price, design, reputation, or style.

Want to read more?
http://www.photosource.com/psn-article/enhance.html



Lee Foster is an awarding-winning travel photographer and writer, winner of eight Lowell Thomas Awards. Lee publishes 200 worldwide travel photo/writing coverages to consumers and to content buyers on his Foster Travel Publishing website at http://www.fostertravel.com/ Thereyou can see his photos, writing, books, and apps. His photo selling site is at http://stockphotos.fostertravel.com



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05 May, 2010 | Posted by: psn






Apps and Your

Photographic Dreams


By Lee Foster

Occasionally a new technology emerges that can have a dramatic effect on the way we realize our dreams. That's happening today,with the new technology of apps.

Chances are you have dreams of publishing your photography.

You also enjoy seeing the photography of others. I share those dreams.

Rohn Engh helps you achieve your dream with his publication, of PhotoStockNOTES. Rohn is aware of the new technology and has asked me to pen a new column for you, called Apps, Ebooks, and Your Photography, to appear on the first Thursday of each month.

Like you, I have dreamed of publishing my photography in printed books. I have had success with this.

My most recent books are The Photographer’s Guide to San Francisco: Where to Find Perfect Shots and How to Take Them http://bit.ly/sanfranbook

I also published a parallel volume, The Photographer’s Guide to Washington,D.C http://bit.ly/washdcbook

But are there possibilities now for publishing our photos in an entirely different way, beyond books? Yes, there are. It's the technology of apps and Ebooks. You can create an app and sell it in the Apple iTunes App Store. Apps are different from books, and we'll explore those differences.

My first two apps are San Francisco Travel Photo Guide
http://www.sutromedia.com/apps/sfphotoguide and D.C. Travel Photo Guide
http://sutromedia.com/apps/DC_Travel_Photo_Guide

You can get a free account in the Apple iTunes App Store and browse around, seeing all the photography and travel apps available now for the i Phone. Eventually, different versions of apps will be readable on all mobile devices. If you have a cell phone, there are apps in your future.
A lot of questions are likely to emerge in your mind. We'll consider them as this column unfolds. This is a big subject, and we can't get it all said in a short space.

What is an apps? What if I don't have an iPhone or iPod? Can I make an apps myself or do I need a publisher? What special functionality in app software makes apps unlike regular books? How will things change as Google and its Android phone system for viewing apps becomes a bigger player?

So, let's begin our ongoing conversation on this exciting subject. I guarantee you one thing: The new technology of apps and Ebooks will dramatically change in positive ways your opportunity to publish your photography and enjoy the photography of others.
--

Lee Foster is an awarding-winning travel photographer and
writer, winner of eight Lowell Thomas Awards. Lee publishes 200 worldwide travel photo/writing coverages to consumers and to content buyers on his Foster Travel Publishing website at http://www.fostertravel.com
There you can see his photos, writing, books, and apps. His photo selling site is at http://stockphotos.fostertravel.com



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