Entries Tagged as 'photography'

Photographers’ sites in Australia

dsc_0560_edited-1As many of you know I’ve recently renewed my passion for photography in a big way. I’ve been doing a lot of Australiana photography but my recent trip to Canada and Alaska produced over 4,000 photos of landscapes, wild animals, plants and seascapes.  It’s been a wonderful time of travelling and then pouring through photos remembering each place Graham and I visited.

While away overseas I purchased a Canadian Photographer’s magazine and discovered two things I hadn’t yet thought about – Photo Tours (love that idea!) and Photographer’s sites for selling digital downloads of photos as well as print format.

So I’ve begun researching and found some tours done here in Australia and have them on my wish list, but I’m struggling to find a web service for photographers here in Australia that will do the following:

  • Provide a website for uploading images
  • Choice of templates
  • No need to know software
  • Large number of images can be loaded
  • Use own domain name (if wanted)
  • Set up a shopping cart
  • Allow purchase of digital images to be downloaded
  • Provide printed copies of photos for sale
  • Monthly or annual fee that is not out of reach for the average person

I’ve found many sites in the UK and US that provide this service but nothing in Australia.  At least, not on the same scale.  So I’m on a quest and if you know of something suitable, please let me know. The type of sites I’m referring to are:

I could use any of the above but I want to be able to offer sales in AUD, not USD or GBP and I want to offer local postage delivery costs and not international.

So, if you know of anything I’m all ears!

Hobbies and Business

We often read about how someone starts out with a hobby and because they do that thing so well, others ask for help or assistance in that area and before they know it, that person suddenly has a business developing they hadn’t planned on.

In some respects that has happened to me.  I’ve adopted and explored things that clients asked me about in my Virtual Assistant business, and then became so absorbed by those things that they became activities outside of my business (such as blogging and social networking) and eventually they became new arms to my business and services I could provide for others because I had honed the skills needed.

My latest passion is photography.  Actually it’s been a passion for most of my life, since my early teens. I was always snapping pics of anything and everything.  As my own family grew up I recorded their lives and events which we have in albums or on the computer and stored away.  My husband tells me that if it hadn’t been for me, we wouldn’t have many family photos and that is most likely true.  But I’d never taken it much further than that.

Last January I shared how my husband gave me a new camera for Christmas and I was sharing some of those pics on my photoblog at that time. Well, I’ve taken it much further now and joined a couple of forums online (best way to learn is to mix and mingle with others who have the same interests) and also joined a local photographic society.  I’ve also signed up for a course and a photographic expedition coming up very soon.

My photoblog (pictured below) has now got a brand new look and is hosted on my server, with new pics being loaded on a daily basis.  I’m even entertaining thoughts of taking this passion much further and exploring possibilities as my knowledge increases and my photos improve.  Last weekend I was at a mountain bike race in Mt Beauty and took over 700 photos!  I won’t be publishing all of those online but you can see some here.