Cool. The folks over at Big Sky Documentary Film Festival got ahold of me earlier this summer to ask if it was cool if they used a photo I took (left) for their 2008 promo materials. I just noticed that they’re using it on their site, too. I get no cash for it, but I love that they’re using it. Go have a look at the original, uncropped photo.

Seems like some of my other photos are getting some notice as well. The folks over at Schmap sent me a message saying that two of my photos have been shortlisted for inclusion in the Minneapolis shmapplet. From the Schmap site: Schmap is a leading publisher of digital travel guides for 200 destinations throughout the United States, Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The innovative technology behind Schmap Guides is also used by clients, partners and bloggers to power schmapplets – a range of fully customizable map mashups and map widgets. Founded in 2004, Schmap is privately owned and based in Carrboro, North Carolina. Interesting concept, eh? The two photos are below.

Gluek opened in 1934 and is the oldest bar in Minneapolis.

Ryan
Uploaded by superchomeur

Beautiful animated documentary of a creative spirit.

As an unknown artist, I’ve tried to utilize a number of the free online tools available to me to get my name out there. Plenty of pay-per-use services are also available, but here I’ll highlight the free services with which I’ve had experience.

1. Deviant Art - Pros: ability to make prints of submitted art, ability to comment on other artists’ images, Creative Commons license possible, social networking, tagging possible, Cons: Does not support RSS, Batch uploads not possible, upload process takes too long: uploading one image required 6 clicks, Title limited to 30 characters, checkboxes behave as radio buttons in the Fullview Size section, if dropdown menu option is changed in Fullview Size section, checkbox becomes unchecked/cannot add watermark to fullview/original size, ads present on free accounts (not sure about paid accounts), did not use other features enough to make a judgement
2. Flickr - Pros: supports RSS feeds, 3rd party application/add-ons supported, ability to print supported, Creative Commons license possible, social networking, ability to link photos externally without repercussion if done properly, ability to easily add notes to photos, ability to moderate comments, ability to comment on others’ photos, social networking, batch editing, flagging photos as safe, moderate or restricted, ability to flag photos as photo, screenshot, or art/illustration, ability to hide photos from public searches, ability to add HTML descriptions to photos, ability to geotag and tag photos Cons: tied to Yahoo! account, unlimited uploads require a paid Pro account
3. MySpace - Pros: supports RSS feeds, bulletins, social networking, ability to comment on others’ sites, ability to moderate comments Cons: No nudity in the photos section. No batch editing/deletion of photos. UI not at first intuitive to move photos between albums
4. Montana-Artists.com - Possibly the least friendly of all sites reviewed here, which is a shame, as it has the potential to be something great.
   • Cons: submitting artwork is completely un-intuitive, the first step being to “submit artwork”, but there is no option to upload an image until after submitting details about the image being considered. The message that displays after the first step in submitting a piece of artwork for inclusion on the website is: Your new artwork has been submitted, and will be reviewed by one of our Quality Control Specialists to verify that the information entered is appropriate and acceptable. If their [sic] is a problem with the information, you will be contacted by our staff to provide a more suitable substitute. You must also upload at least 1 digital image file to the web site manually. Please send us the highest quality material that you can. The web site will resize the artwork. If you are sending a photo, slide, negative, diskette or CD please send them to: (no address is listed) Once this has been completed, one must upload an image, and even when the image has been uploaded, it does not display on the site, but must be approved by an admin.
5. Picasa - Never used, not enough information to make a judgement, though it seems somewhat useful. Support for direct export from Mac’s iPhoto seems to be a benefit.
6. Missoula Cultural Council Artist Directory - Pros: free directory listing, easy interface to post listing, anyone can suggest an artist Cons: One admin responsible for approving all submissions, submissions are not immediate
7. Digg - Used infrequently, not enough information to make a judgement. Supports RSS.
8. Facebook - Used infrequently, not enough information to make a judgement
9. Blogger - Pros: friendly and intuitive interface Cons: yourname.blogspot.com instead of yourname.com

Have others of you had similar or different experiences with any of the above sites? Can you warn us against sites not listed here? Can you recommend sites not listed here? Give reasons, rants and raves in the comments.

In the course of trying to promote my art, and art in general, I’ve signed up with montana-artists.com and elected to be updated via email about goings on. I got this email today that I think is important to share. After reading it, I encourage all Montana artists who are readers of this blog to head over to montana-artists.com and sign up while remembering to post any events you may be planning on the site.

Thanks.

Marc

I received a few emails in the last couple of weeks from people interested in art workshops. Specifically; private instruction, classes, college accreditation, etc. In most cases, they had searched on the internet for Montana art classes, Montana art events, etc, and found this web site. When they got here, they weren’t able to find any new information about what they were looking for. This is something I’d like to fix, but I need your help.

I’ve tried to populate our calendar of events myself, but it apparently hasn’t been good enough for visitors to our site. The more I’ve thought about it I realized I may not have emphasized the use of the Calendar of Events to you the Artists, Gallery Owners and Art Museum Curators. So please consider this your official invitation to post events to our Calendar.

What kind of events should be posted? Well, I guess any art related event that is open to the public, whether its’ free or paid. Classes, workshops, gallery nights, receptions, art auctions, art walks, etc.

Why should you list your events here? In March 2007, the Montana-Artists.com web site surpassed LivelyTimes.com (The Montana Arts Councils vehicle for arts event promotion) for total number of monthly web site visitors, as well as overall page views. Since then, we’ve widened the gap, and now get nearly twice as many unique visitors, and nearly three times as many page views. When people are looking for art events in Montana, it appears we are the number one stop.

If you have any questions or comments, please post them to this article, and I’ll reply to them as quickly as I can.

With Regards,

Branden

Flickr’s done away with NIPSA. Hallelujah.

For those of you who do no know, NIPSA was a flag that Flickr gave to users who were uploading questionable content, including non-photographic content. It stood for Not In Public Site Areas. If a user was marked as NIPSA, his photos/uploads would not display in groups to which he might belong, among other things. Now, as long as you “Make sure that all your content is categorized correctly (photos flagged as photos, screenshots as screenshots etc)” you are good to go.

When I decided to use Flickr as a showcase for my artwork, I created a new Flickr account specifically for the artwork so that my regular pro Flickr account would not be compromised with a NIPSA flag. With the new rules in place, I was able to move all of the images from the newly created account to my standard account without fear of reprisal.

Thankfully, Flickr thinks we are all stupid, and has a few “are you sure” screens forcing the user to commit to deleting his account.

Be sure to drop by my Flickr account to see my work and to peruse some of my snapshots.