Yin and Yang

Photography News that's Fit to Blog (This Week)
by Kerry Raminiak

In our scouring of photography tidbits that are both interesting and informative we are faced with the yin and yang of pro photography, i.e. the market research of the status of our industry and the technically fun stuff that inspires us. Enjoy this week’s roundup that has a little of both.

Yin stuff: Market reports are out that describe the photo book market and how “moms” are influencing online purchases…

According to the most recent PMA Data Watch report, the classification and description of photo books is perplexing to the non-photographer as it is often lumped with scrapbooking and creating your own album pages with digital ownership of images (and printing to local, inexpensive home printers) versus how pros want the term “photo books” to equate a very specific photography product offered to the masses. As marketing experts put their minds together to mitigate this confusion, those that sell photo books are seeing an increase in demand (4%) but that demand is far less than anticipated in comparison to last year. Is the solution simply about getting the word out? (You can buy the 2009 PMA Photo Book Report here)

In the latest InfoTrends report, they surveyed Western European “females between the ages of 25 and 44 with children under the age of 12” whom represent a very large market segment in the $900 million photo merchandise market. The research indicates that this particular demographic takes, prints, and shares more photos than the general population while also being a little more elusive to market to as they represent a very specific socio-graphic (i.e. marketing to moms, in particular, is a very niche-based science). In addition, this segment is more likely than total photo merchandise buyers to purchase from online sources, citing convenience as a powerful deciding factor. (You can purchase the very thorough InfoTrend report for a pretty hefty price tag here. For a better summary, you can also review PMA International’s report synopsis here.)


Now the Yang stuff: Cool photos and is 3D photography “in” again???

Two prominent online sources have been getting a lot of “hits” with 3D concepts because they are relevant, fun, cheap and inspirational… or so I assume. Check out this Flickr page (courtesy of the #photography feed on Twitter) that gets you to cross your eyes and give yourself a headache for some pretty fun results. After that, check out an older post on Photojojo on how to make your own 3D images (for crosseyed viewing or with instructions on how to animate your 3D image for online viewing) for under 15 bucks. Of course, if you have an iPhone, and to quote their recent advertising campaign, there's an "ap for that."

Our favorite photoblog post of the week is from Discover Magazine. Science can be fun… especially with a good camera, eh?


And finally… just a reminder that PhotoReflect Users are entitled to free webinars in the next week designed to get you selling online.

* If you are not a PhotoReflect User sign up is free and easy. Learn more here.

** A basic primer to PhotoReflect’s free internet storefronts will be held on Tuesday, May 26 at 3:00pm Central. Sign up and more information can be found here.

*** A more advanced user webinar (for those that are already familiar with PhotoReflect but want to take their storefront selling to ‘the next level’) will be on Wednesday, May 20 at 3:00pm Central. Sign up and more information can be found here.