Watermark or the photo??

Tweet
Share

We all know the story of watermarks. Why they are there and what will happen to your photo if it’s not there and so on. But we all personally agree that we are here to show our work and admire others work. This is the main reason why we submit work to online galleries and going a step further we join groups and share our work as well. So we should think twice about the role of watermark in places like that.

Are you here to showcase your watermark or your photo? I hate the big watermarks. Some sites actually support to put a pre formatted watermark in your pic when you upload them. It just ruins the whole photo and its mood most of the time. If it covers up the best parts of the shot then it’s just a distraction.

Going further if you add your personnel watermark do you do the same mistake? Is it too big or fancy that your fans actually notice the watermark than the photo itself?

Think about it before placing a watermark. If you really want to have one on your photo make it small and make it simple. And place it in a place where everyone can see yet hard for anyone to remove.

And who knows it might make your shot to be admired by many !!

Let the artist know how you feel...

Tweet
Share

Most of the time when I go through the comments I receive on my pics and the comments which was given to others photos I tend to realize that people are becoming lazier and lazier to write. First of all let me thank the fans who even say “NICE” or “GOOD shot” to begin with because from what I know they took a step further to actually appreciate the shot than many who didn’t comment at all. Even I don’t comment on each and every shot I see. But when I see something worth some key strokes I don’t hesitate to write a few lines.

Photograph - Priyantha Bandara - Galle - Sri Lanka

Don’t get me wrong here. You don’t have to write a ton of stuff to make your comment a better comment. Everyone don’t have the luxury of time to write long comments including me.  But you can make your comment a read worthy, memorable one even by writing few small lines. What vital is what exactly you want to express within that few lines. I think the most important aspect of a comment is letting know the artist how you feel when you see the photo. Each photo has its mood. Created with subject, lights , focus etc. What mood it convey can differ from person to person. So knowing what it really means to the fan is important. For example one shot made me feel lonely and abandoned while another person thought it shows affection and love. Which is a totally different way of looking at the same work.  So if you can express that in a small line it will be nice.

The other important thing would be to relate that work to your personnel life, experience or something. It can be a smell, desire, memory whatever. Each photo does not comes with one but when you come across work that do so make sure you express yourself. Not in detail but it will make others to live that moment  with you.

Don’t rush via photos because you have a lot in your message box to check. Take your time and enjoy and feel what you see.

There is a whole extended way of commenting called ‘constructive criticism’ which I will write about in future. 

Photograph - Priyantha Bandara - Mahiyanganaya - Sri Lanka

Important things to remember when uploading photos to internet

Tweet
Share

Internet is a vast ocean of goodies. You can find anything and everything in it. The very first reason why you think of uploading your pics on to the web is because you got inspired by what you saw at the first place.

Let me tell you few things about which you should know and do when you put stuff on the web. There are nothing complicated or hard to adjust about these points.

1. Add a watermark. You know that something which says that the photo is taken by you and it belongs to you. Like “Priyantha Bandara photography” Which I have on my work. Its helps to make an audience and prevent your work from used in places which you don’t want. And when you put the watermark place it in a place where it’s hard to take off. If you place it right on the border someone will remove it easily and claim the work is theirs.

2. Don’t upload photos in high resolution. Always down size it because who ever use internet don’t want to waste their bandwidth on big photos which take forever to download. Any way if the photo is looking good and has a decent size that’s all what you require to show it.

3. Don’t flood your work or ‘spam’ your own work. Which means do not upload dozens of photos to the web at once. The best of galleries on the web were filled with years of work gradually. Not over night. My rule is max 5-10 shots for a new album and 3 for new additions to that album. If it’s a open gallery like Deviant art I will upload max 1-2 images a week.

4. Choose what you upload wisely. Maybe you think some photo stream looks good. Maybe some several shots of a bird feeding its little ones. But uploading them entirely won’t do good. Fans visit your page to see a photo. Not a mini documentary. Choose only the one or two best shots out of the lot and post those only.

5. Keep some information about the shot when ever its appropriated. Maybe the location of a landscape or the name of the bird etc. It helps.

6. Categorize your shots. If you have the facility to name the albums or upload them in pre defined categories use it accordingly. Unless you have bunch of shots which does not need categorization. Always keep the albums neat. I would upload landscapes and waterscapes separately. And other shots on a theme. Maybe depending on the trip made. Something like “Katharagama” Which has a bundled value than uploaded individually in different albums. But there are no rules for this. It’s your photos after all.

Hope this information will be useful. Let me know your comments and suggestions as well.

Comment comment to get comments!!

Tweet
Share

What I'm about to provide you is a golden advice. This advice comes after browsing web galleries for countless hours and making 1000s of interactions with other artists and their work for last several years. And yes its takes time but it proves to work.
Maybe you are a photographer who would like to share your work with the community. As I have mentioned here there are several ways of doing it. And there are many good places which you can list your work and get feedback on. But sometimes you may feel like your work is not recognized or you are not getting the expected amount of interactions towards them. There can be several reasons for this.

• Your work is crap and no one want to see it or comment on it (Admit it! only way to overcome this is to work hard and more on developing your skills)
• The web site which you list your work on is not attracting the public (Look at the number of registered members and traffic)
• Web site you upload your work has different purposes. i.e. They let you upload photos but actually run other businesses on it like photography equipment etc.
• You are uploading for the wrong audience. Maybe you are a landscape photographer but your work is listed in a place where many comes to see studio photography.
• Time you spend on the site is considerably limited. You just upload and check back next day if it has any comments. (How easy is that!!)
• You don’t interact with other artists/fans.

Out of the above reasons listed I find the last 2 are more important even though its listed at the end. From my experience more you give more you get. If you want more fans you have to earn them. You cannot just do it by making good photos and uploading it. Accept it. Internet is a vast place. It has many good photographers not only you. So people visit and comment on their likenesses. But you can always go a step further to show that you are concerned about the society as well. Isn’t this the issue we all have?? An American president once said always do something for the country than waiting for the country to do everything for you. The sample principle applies here.

Embilipitiya - Photographed by Priyantha Bandara

My solid advice is to interact as much as you can. Spend some decent amount of time in the site. Look at other peoples work. Don’t just look at them, add to favorites/like/share/recommend to others. Keep comments. Tell what you like about the shot and tell what you don’t like as well. Ask what you want to know about the subject or the technique. Believe me many photographers on the web are very social people. They would love to tell you what they know.

The more you interact positively you will keep more marks on the site. And more people will recognize you and visit your work as well. Some will just come to appreciate you and some will want to know who you are. This is what’s community is. Be a part of it and use it wisely. And after some time you will see that you get more favs on your work and you get more comments as well. It never wrong.

Good luck!!

Sora bora tank - Mahiyanganaya. Photographer Priyantha Bandara.

Showing art to the community 2 - Places you must visit

Tweet
Share

Now that my facebook photography page is published and usable I thought of writing a bit more about showing art to the community. This will come as the extension to my previous post. Today I will express my thoughts (Or rather reviews) of some photo sharing sites which I had interactions with.

At the initial stage I have published my work on flickr. Many of you must be having flickr accounts and must be knowing how it works. I actually liked my flickr account and the feedback I was getting but there was something missing. At that time flickr was not very user friendly in interactions. Mostly about keeping track of your fellow fans and keeping track of artists. There was less flexibility in notification systems which helps you to track the new work uploaded by the artists that you currently interested in. And little options of messaging and ratings as well. And after some time flickr started to get pretty slow as well. Guess at that time flickr was one of the most busiest sites on the internet (Thankfully facebook was not invented by then!!) I can’t remember the actually time period but it made me a bit lazy to check out flickr as time went by

Don’t ask me how its pronounced coz I don’t think even all the admins know that lol. But the site actually is pretty cool. Caedes is more of a wallpaper gallery at the inception. Therefore it had limitation of uploading photos. Photos were resized to several sizes depending on the most popular pc desktop ratios. The good thing about that was that all the photos and artwork was in pretty big size. And the community was really friendly and chatty as well. I met some real nice people there mostly from USA and UK. Some of them still keep contact up to date. How nice that is. Later on Caedes gave a break to the artists by allowing to update photos as photo formats rather than wallpaper sizes. And they were once in the top 5 list of photography upload sites on PC.com (If I remember clearly. Correct me if I'm wrong fellas) Check that place out if you can. They have some stunning wallpapers if you’re hungry for any.

I have spent hours and hours on caedes for several months until one day I found the wholly grail of art on internet. DEVIANTART.

If I say Deviantart is just a site which makes you upload photographs and your other forms of art I will be just talking about a fraction of what you can really do there. In simple words DA (in short form) is freaking amazing and mind blowing journey in to a artistic wonderland. DA contains the most amazing.. I will tell it again.. the MOST AMAZING pieces of art and photography which you can never finish browsing on your whole life. Yes that’s how fantastic this place is. World’s most talented and upcoming artists of all kinds share their work in this place. Since I’m a big fan of drawing as well DA supply me a daily dose of art which keeps my artistic nerves pumped 24x7. If someone ask me what the best place that you can upload photo on internet I will say Deviantart. However because of the sheer awesomeness of this place there are millions of fans roam around and same way millions of artists who are hoping to get discovered. But getting discovered in Deviantart is that much harder because of the same reasons. DA is too big & too much to be handled by many. If you have enough time to surf around the net then go for it. It will take some time for you to really get the taste and learn how to find the best work there. But once you get that taste you will never look at any other place. And it will totally change the way you interact with the community and your views on any kind of art. Trust me!!

Currently I’m one of the most famous photographers in Deviantart who represent SRI LANKA. There are only few local talent in there. So why not join it and make use of it while its free. I'm here

Hmmmm facebook. Many hear this word even in their sleep these days. So no introduction is required. Currently the most famous social networking experience on internet. If you don’t know what facebook is go take a hike and ask some aborigine. Even they know!! I have my own profile page and recently launched fan page as well. The only good thing I like about facebook is that it made me to increase my interactions with local artists. Show them my work and get feedback. Therefore I like it. But as a place for an artist for his artistic requirement facebook is still not matured enough. Maybe in due course. But not just yet. My facebook page address is right on top of this post so check it out some time.

So that’s about it. There were some other sites as well which I had uploaded some of my work but most of them are stock photo sites and small size ones. There for I will write about them on a later stage. If you have come across any good sites which turns to be better than what I have mentioned above do share. Adios for now!

Showing art to the community

Tweet
Share

What’s an artist’s greatest joy? Some may say its creating art. Some who goes a bit deeper might say expressing of his inner feelings via various methods. I thoroughly agree on both of these. But I would like to add one more, Which creates a more deeper warm sensation to an artist’s heart. FEEDBACK.

Balangoda - Photographed by Priyantha Bandara

If I say artists really do not care about the feedback they get from their audience that can be hardly true. There are some artist who would like to create and display their work of art for the sole reason of expressing them but not for getting any feedback in return. But that type of artists are seldom. Which is the reason why giving and taking feedback on all art forms including photography is highly effective and important. This truth must be kept in mind not only by the art lovers but the artists themselves. Because we switch sides so often that we don’t even realize.

How important is community relations to an artist? I will say A LOT. For generations, expressing of art was mostly done via exhibitions, books and some other similar forms of modes which mostly the art lover or the fan must visit the artists work putting some effort. Going to an exhibition or buying a book maybe something which majority does not do for number of reasons. Main reason would be the time factor. Every one’s life has become so tide up with many responsibilities and deadlines they find it hard to set up a time for them selves to enjoy the traditional art forms. And even though they somehow manage to get in touch with the art itself, getting in touch with the artists himself is nearly impossible. This goes same for the artist as well. Even though an artist would like to express themselves to the public and become more community friendly the same factors could limit his movements in the society.

Habarana- Photographed by Priyantha Bandara

However thanks to the internet and its web communities it has become a lot simpler and convenient for artists and well as art lovers alike to communicate within themselves. There are several very impressive art communities on the internet which quenches the never ending thirst of showing art and seeing them. We as photographers love some of these websites which has no strings attached and mostly let us show our art and get feedback from the community for totally free.

Habarana - Photographed by Priyantha Bandara

I myself have several places on the internet which I have put my work on display (look no further you are on one of it at this moment). This has given me immense exposure and opportunity to communicate with many individuals around the globe just by sitting comfortably in front of my pc sipping a cup of coffee at home. Furthermore these websites has provided me with great influence and potential in creating photographs which goes beyond what I some time back thought as impossible.

I would write some more about the community relations on the internet some other time. In the mean time you can check this link where I have a load of my work on display

http://www.farcry77.deviantart.com/

Happy surfing and opening up art accounts.

All photography in this post belongs to Priyantha Bandara. Illegal use is strictly prohibited