Site Refresh In the Pipe

February 20th, 2011

Some people have heard me lament my search for an iPad capable portfolio software since we now use the iPad extensively. I won’t bore you with the number of solutions I’ve looked into or tried the past few months. Those that have worked with me before you know that I both back up and deliver images via PhotoShelter. It’s a fantastic service that I always recommend to both other professional photographers and prolific amateurs.

Rejoice for PhotoShelter now offers a non-flash (ie iPad capable) portfolio system. I’m in the process of finalizing the new site and, as I always do, it will come with a graphical refresh and will include a new navigation system. I’ll be rolling it out in about 2 weeks with the new photo packages that will go into effect in April.

To check out the site in the mean time visit hyak.photoshelter.com. Please be aware that it is not complete either from a photo or text standpoint.

Queued up blog posts about recent photo shoots will continue to be queued up until the new site is live.

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Find Your Portrait/Event Moved

March 11th, 2010

I’m sure visitors have wondered why the Find Your Portrait Session and Find Your Event section haven’t been updated this year. In January I moved to a new system that involves <yourname#>.hyakphoto.com that now include all sessions and/or events that I have covered for you. Clients who have had photos taken since January are aware of this change and, in most cases, prefer it. This takes advantage of some features of Photoshelter that I had been using for groups of events, such as the liberty.hyakphoto.com site, but have now expanded to all services after some discussion. The same security options (individual logins, group passwords, hidden URLs, etc) are still available both for the main site and for each specific gallery, event, or photo session on request. All specific galleries can still be e-mailed to friends and family if set to hidden or password protected and specific logins can still be assigned at any time. I will set up an example using my portfolio images and cover it in a future post.

The blog itself, which was built around the old find your session method will be undergoing a redesign in the next few months to provide a more graphical experience showcasing both portfolio images and also images from recent shoots.

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New Site and Fall Promotions

October 16th, 2009

While most won’t notice that the site is new, since it looks almost exactly the same… the site is new. This is part of the kick-off of the fall promotional push that includes the new in-home focus. It’s about a week turnaround time plus shipping on photo Chrismas/Hanukkah/Holidays cards so there’s about 6 weeks left to get those done. Templates are at http://www.pickyourholidaycard.com/ and samples will be here next week.

Stop by the Tri-Cities Women’s Expo, the Bzen Solutions booth has a raffle to win a free portrait session including a free 11×14 print. They also have some discount cards to hand out that are worth picking up.

The in-home aspect of what I offer is now my new focus. My studio has always primarily consisted of lightweight gear, most of which goes in bags that sling over my back. I’ve paid a hideous premium for my Bogen ultra compact (19″ collapsed!) lightstands. Half of my umbrellas are double-folds. My entire backdrop support system is one of the bags that sling across my back. A lot of my best children’s work has been in people’s homes already.

Moving completely to this has a lot of upsides, both for my and for my clients. For me there’s no studio rental overhead. For clients I don’t have to pass studio rental overhead on. (I still have the option to use a local studio, if clients so desire). But, really, that’s not the biggest thing. Children are more comfortable at home. My wife likes to tell the story of pair that raided their play chest and came out in dozens of costumes, wanting photos in each and every one.

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Integrating WordPress and PhotoShelter

September 22nd, 2009

Those that have gone before.

Once upon a time, I read an article about putting the two together. I decided to put it on the to do list, but promptly lost the article. When I finally had enough time to start working on the blog, I went ahead and just did it as I couldn’t seem to find the article anywhere. But, now that I’m almost finished I’ve found it… and the similarities are shocking.

So, props to David Moore who did the same thing before me, and chose the same PhotoShelter theme to do it to. As I’m actually in the process of making WordPress into my main page I’m going to borrow a couple of his ideas, but I, personally, prefer the more common right sidebar that I used, though I’ve tried the left sidebar on a few sites.

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Blog.HyakPhoto.com

September 10th, 2009

Welcome to the new Hyak Photography Blog. The site layout is a bit of a work in progress as I match the WordPress theme up with the PhotoShelter theme.

I’m covering a lot of events over the next few months and wanted to find a place where I could write some bits about what I was doing, provide a bit of the what happened, and generally announce that something new was up in a format a bit less cold than simply having a new gallery on the “Recently Updated” list.

If someone stumbles across this and has any questions, I’ll try to address those, too.

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