Jacob Maentz’s Blog

I had the opportunity this week to interview Pedro Patrício one of the founders and developers of Photoburst.net, a travel photography daily contest. Pedro was kind enough to answer all of my questions, revealing a little more behind this new and creative contest he has helped start. Photoburst.net is a fairly new website that publishes a daily winning photo from their contributors. Then the best photo of the month is awarded a $100 B&H gift card! This is one of the bigger award winnings I have come across for a daily photography contest. If you take a look at Photoburst.net you will see they have a very professional looking website with a fancy world map and other unique features.

I have submitted some entries to Photoburst.net and today my second one got published (shown below). I have yet to win the monthly award, but maybe that will come in time. I think contests like this are a great resource for photographers, not only to see what others think of your work, but also to get a feel of what others in the field are doing.

See this photo on Photoburst.net

Q: Where did the three of you Pedro, Pedro, and Gastao meet and come up with the idea of starting photoburst.net?
A: We met each other in Covilhã, a small city in Portugal’s highest mountain - Serra da Estrela - foothills (we all work in the same place). We decided to start Photoburst after emailing each other thousands of links to inspiring (mainly travel) photos. At that time, we almost reached a saturation point, our bookmarks were getting intractable! And, so, we thought it would be cool to have a website gathering so many talented and/or almost anonymous photographers whose work is spread around the Internet.

Q: Do you have a background in photography?
A: We don’t. Two of us, Gastao and Pedro Patricio, have a background in Mathematics and Pedro de Sousa’s is in Computer Science. We all have been photography enthusiasts for over 12 years and, between us, have had a dozen or so published photos in a couple of magazines and also some local and national contest awards… and that’s about it.

Q: What types of photos are you interested in receiving on photoburst.net?
A: Well, it’s a travel photography contest… we’d say that an everyday scene, a landscape, a portrait, etc, are all valid entries provided they are compelling images. Basically, we are looking for photos that either make you feel like you’re traveling or make you pack instantly.

Q: Can amateurs and professional alike submit photos?
A: Yes, Photoburst is an open contest.

Q: How is your website different from other travel photography related daily contests or sites like earthshots.org?
A: Some daily contest or similar websites end up publishing anything, making it difficult for you to sense, say, what Tanzania’s like without having to go through a lot of images. Earthshots is a more nature photography oriented website, although they publish travel related photos regularly. Overall, we highly respect and admire many similar websites and we try to learn from them while making some improvements. By the way, we’d like to take this opportunity to thank John Emmerson for his fantastic work with the world map and, also, Jay Soto for his great work with the simplicious template we have adapted.

Q: What is the current prize for each months winning entry?
A: The current prize is a B&H $100 gift card. B&H has been our choice from the very beginning for their great worldwide service and prices.

Q: I’ve seen some wonderful photos posted on photoburst.net, are images submitted from people all over the world?
A: Yes, fortunately, although there are more photographers from western countries submitting their work.

Q: Should photographers have to worry about copyright issues when submitting images on photoburst.net? Will the images be used for other purposes or print in the future?
A: Absolutely not, photographers retain their copyright on every photo they submit, either it is published or not. For the time being, we don’t plan on using Photoburst’s published photos for any other purposes or print. If we come up with some idea, we will obviously contact photographers for their consent.

Q: How do photographers submit an image for your daily contest?
A: Just click “submit” on photoburst.net or follow the direct link: http://www.photoburst.net/photo_section/submit/submit.php Photographers have just to fill the photo’s details and choose the file they want to upload. Alternatively, they may also submit their photos by e-mail to: submissions@photoburst.net

Q: What are your long term goals for photoburst.net?
A: First and foremost, we’d like Photoburst to be highly regarded by photographers and the general public alike. We also plan to significantly increase the monthly prize value by obtaining some sponsors. And, lastly, we hope Photoburst may soon feature a photo taken by you, dear reader.

After a few months of planning and organizing I finally sent off around 1500 slides and negatives to be digitally scanned. I feel relieved, but anxious at the same time to see the final digital images which will eventually be added to my stock gallery. These images are mostly from my travels to Latin America, the Philippines and Malaysia.

During the past few months I have been trying to locate all of my old slides and negatives from friends and relatives houses around the country. I have also been looking into purchasing a new Nikon ICE scanner to turn these slides into a digital format. After a lot of research and reading on-line reviews, etc. I decided to use a scanning service called ScanCafe, which is based out of California. I don’t remember how I came across this company, but I think I must have found them while reading a review or in Google. The moment I saw their professional looking website, I bookmarked it and have been reviewing their services and company for over a month now. I must say to this point I am very impressed with my interactions and use of their service. Not only do they have the most affordable prices in the industry, but they are very professional and customer service oriented. Their website is top of the line and shows you exactly what stage of the scanning process they are in for your order. Although, I have just today sent my slides to them, I can tell the next eight weeks will be worry free.

My wife preparing slides to be sent to ScanCafe.

How Scan Cafe works: Basically, you send them your slides and negatives and eight weeks later they send you a dvd with all of your images. Besides having great prices, the best thing I found was you don’t have to keep or pay for all of the images you send them. You only need to purchase a minimum of 50% of the actual amount you send in. This is a great advantage…you don’t have to sort all of your negatives and slides before hand. Just send everything in and select the ones you want later. They make all of your images available on-line for viewing and selecting. I’ve included a chart below to show the entire process.

The standard price for a 3000dpi slide scan is $.24 and $.19 for a negative. I opted for the professional scan which is $.09 more per scan and adds another 1000dpi to the resolution (4000dpi). These are the best prices that I was able to find on-line, by a long way. You may be wondering why they can have such low prices? Well, it’s outsourcing. They send all of your originals to Bangalore, India to be scanned. When I called their office in California, the women said they send everything over by Fedex in a large bundle, so nothing gets lost. They have 24hour security at the facility there with over 400 workstations. It seems like a good operation they have going and I’m not worried at all about losing my slides or having them be so far away. I’ve sent many international packages via Fedex and have never had a problem. You can see some more information about their Bangalore facility here.

Like I said, I’m still at the beginning of this process, but I look forward to seeing the final digital images and I’m excited to have found such a great service. Be sure to check back in a few months to see some of these images in my stock gallery.

A box full of my slides and negatives getting ready to be shipped.

I recently finished reading Dan Hellers book titled “Profitable Photography in the Digital Age.” I would recommend this book for anyone wanting to get a better look into the photography business. I learned a lot about the photography industry and he provides a good background about using the internet to promote your images. The chapters that I really enjoyed were Chapter 2: The Five Truisms of the Photography Business, Chapter 5: Photography Marketing, Chapter 6: Photography Pricing, Chapter 8: The Stock Photography Business

Dan Heller is a stock photographer from California and has one of the most successful individual stock websites on the web.

You can purchase his books online from his website. His site also has a lot of useful information I believe taken from his books that is available for free. It’s not too often that you find someone who is willing to share information like this with everyone.

I also just started another book of his that I ordered at the same time as “Profitable Photography in the Digital Age.” This book is called “How to Make Money with Digital Photography.” It looks like there is some overlap of information in the two books, but just the first few chapters. The second book has a lot more pictures and is printed in full color. I’ll be sure to let you know my thoughts after I have read through it all. So far I have found that the first book provides more information that pertains to what I am looking for.