The blog’s been quiet, but things have been non-stop action over at PhotoMerchant since I last posted! So, time for an update…

Thanks to all the readers who agreed to be Alpha testers for PhotoMerchant. Over the last few weeks, our testing team has been working their way through PhotoMerchant’s features and giving us feedback. We’ve been responding quickly, and we’ve released 2 ‘alpha test’ upgrades, each with new and extended features.

Some of the exciting features we’re looking forward to releasing:

• Templates that give you display options for your photo-selling website;
• An ‘at-a-glance’ dashboard that lets you see what action’s been happening on your site;
• Integration with PayPal and print houses - your customers order prints, and that order is sent directly to the printers.

As well as Alpha-testing, we’ve been working with some of Australia’s top photographers, ensuring that PhotoMerchant will meet the needs of high-end photographers and those starting up their business. So far, we’re delighted with the feedback we’ve had from both ends of the market - overwhelmingly, we’re being told we’re on the right track.

We’re into final stages of development now, so we’ll be keeping up the pace over the next few weeks. We’re on track for release very soon, so we’ll attempt to keep you posted more frequently and whet your appetite for some of the neat features you can look forward to when we release.

We’d welcome your comments - especially our Alpha-testers - and feel free to ask questions about PhotoMerchant’s features!

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I hope by now you’ve all had the chance to read my last long post about PhotoMerchant alpha testing.  We’re still accepting alpha-testers, so if you’re interested, drop me an email.

Since then, we’ve been pretty busy working on the development of PhotoMerchant. The last post gave you a good outline of the features you can expect to see in the application. Right now, we’ve got the core structure and functionality working, and we’re focusing on some of the advanced features and the interface development as well as printing house integration for 4 countries.

To give you some more context around the application, PhotoMerchant is Continue reading “Creative challenge: dream up the ultimate photography system”

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Welcome to the first post of the PhotoMerchant Blog.

PhotoMerchant’s first appearance online is not quite the beginning, for me - it’s… well, somewhere in the middle. I’ve been working on Project PhotoMerchant for a while now, and getting the blog online is an exciting step, but there’s more to come. Let me give you a brief profile of PhotoMerchant…

Who we are

I’m Derek and PhotoMerchant is my brain-child. I’m a software developer with a keen interest in photography. Through my own experiences and my involvement with the photographic community, I’ve recognised that photographers today also need to know a lot about computing and digital technology to be able to work efficiently and produce high-quality images. But no-one wants the technology getting in the way of what you can do - it needs to be transparent and easy, and it needs to add something that wasn’t available before.

My specialty is the development of web applications. After spending a lot of time participating in online forums, talking with other photographers, and working through my own challenges, I’m keen to contribute to the photographic community by helping other photographers to take advantage of the opportunities that web technologies offer.

PhotoMerchant is more than just me. I work with a very talented team and hopefully through this blog, you’ll get to meet some of the other developers and designers working on the project with me.

What’s the project?

PhotoMerchant’s first foray into the web is via this blog. This blog will be a discussion of the ways photography, the web, and software intersect. Some of the topics I’m planning to look at in the first few weeks include:

• Workflow challenges - the challenges are many, but there are ways technology can help photographers.
• Sales - generating income from your work - how do you get customers to purchase? How do you make buying and selling easy (for you and the customer)?
• Presentation - using the web to showcase and sell your images.
• Time management - improving the way you work with customers and suppliers (print houses, couriers, etc.)
• Web - you’ve probably heard the term Web 2.0? There are some interesting developments here that may be useful to photographers.

But, as I said, the blog is ’somewhere in the middle’. I’ve got a lot to say about these topics, but I’ve also been working on developing some solutions to these problems. I’m not going to say much about that now, but will be revealing more in the weeks ahead.

I’d also be interested to get your thoughts on a number of different topics. I’ve placed a poll to the right of the page. Don’t hesitate to answer it, it takes 2 seconds!

I’m planning to post about three times a week. I hope you’ll stick with me - I’m really excited about what I’ve got to offer in the way of advice and solutions and I hope you find it valuable. To make sure you don’t miss a post, subscribe via the RSS feed and your comments are welcome.

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