Cool new digital photo site

I have to *pay* for their tips? How lame!

Did you visit the site?

If you want some great photo advice that’s free, check out KenRockwell.com. This article in particular is great. And Ken has done a lot to raise awareness of some really amazing photographers who use lame equipment to get spectacular results, like Raphael in the Phillipines. As he says over and over, your camera doesn’t matter.

I took some fun pictures at Carnival in Brazil last weekend. Here’s a quick-loading collage, and here’s a post with links to some of my favorites.

Those shots were all taken with a Nikon D70 in full-auto mode, and the only technical thing I did for any of them was to adjust exposure compensation up whenever the bright lights were in the frame (otherwise the photo is very dark because the bright lights fool the auto-exposure logic). If you only learn one thing about your camera, learn to adjust exposure compensation up and down, and freely experiment with it any time you take a shot that doesn’t look as good as you expected it to look. Don’t think or analyze, just spin the exposure up a ways and down a ways and see whether you like the results any better.

That’ll be $1.99, please.

*wondering* what funny thing did you find there? Tips are not for free, we have to buy videos and don’t see a point we have to spend money for the tips.

Good god, Scoble! Do you even visit the sites for which you shill? Why the hell would I pay for this content when there are hundreds of sites where one could get the same content for free? You now have interesting definition of what is cool. Go to sites that charge you for otherwise free advice. Brilliant!!!

Oh please, Scoble… I hope they don’t pay you for this ad..

I thought the blogmaster would never mis-use his blog.

When you start using your blog to advertise content that is not good and interesting – your blog loose all meaning.
How can I trust your entries if I notice some advertisements in your blog…THIS IS LAME…I want an excuse.

Scoble,

I am a big fan of your blog, but I have to agree with others on this one, very lame post and even lamer website. There has got to be some reason you blogged about this site as a “Cool new digital photo site”.

although I guess it could be cool if your new to digital cameras and that internet thing.

I checked it out too. How did you know there’s a blog? It’s not anywhere on the site that I could see. Also who are the ‘pulitzer prize winners’? I didn’t see any details on any of that. I guess I’ll check out the freebie and see how that goes. Will be interesting to see if this takes off given the cost.

The buttons and layout remind me of iTunes! You could easily find this tips on free sites…

The free demo video stutters and since it’s flash I can’t even download those for later viewing. Very, very lame. Plus there’s no info about who I am dealing with. Who are these guys? No Info about the length of the videos and so on and so forth. Really, this site is everything but “cool”.

All right, I am the apparently lame guy behind this website. I mentioned it to Robert because I know he likes photography, but he is not shilling in any way.

To reply to some of the comments:

To Tejas Patel, Dominator, Robrt Day and others – there are lots of free photo tips on the net, as well as many non-free tips, but they aren’t presented in the way we do, as video, with the quality of information. Many times they’re also not aimed at beginners, as ours are, and many of them come from photographers of questionable talent. I’d sincerely like to see some link examples for good, free tip sites (particularly video-based) that you all have seen.

That said, we haven’t done a good job with some things that I appreciate you all pointing out – such as the bios of our photographers.

So on the “who are these guys” front, Kevin Gilbert, who’s in the free preview video was the lead photographer for the Washington Times for over a decade, and was a five-time president of the White House New Photographers Association. He’s also the official photographer for television shows like The Contender and The West Wing.

We’re also adding lengths of the videos and have added links to the blog on the site as well.

Thanks for the comments.

What no daily RSS? Lame at best

Patrick: I saw a blog link at the top of the page listing the tips (but it might have been added since your visit).

Alex: I was disappointed to find the tips had to be paid. Nothing announces that on the home page, so when I find the price list I feel cheated. Plus, I’m not likely to buy a tip (even for 2$) unless I know it’s going to be worth it. How about (at least) letting people see a couple for free before making them pay?

Alex: Also, you might want to let people know how long the video they’re buying is. I tried the 30-second preview but it just fails silently (FireFox, OSX).

Steph -

Thanks for the comments -

On buying – the banner in the middle of the homepage says “Buy. Download. Learn.” and refers to the site as a “how-to store”. We can work on a way to make that clearer – any thoughts?

We do offer a free tip each week as a link from the home page, this week it’s Sunsets. We are working on durations as we speak.

In OSX/Firefox the previews/free tip require Flash 8 – we need to make that clear on the site.

Thanks.

Alex