Twitter

On photos and terms of service

During the last two weeks, Twitter has been burning up with tweets about a recent change to the terms of service for Twitpic, the photo sharing service folks use in conjunction with Twitter. Long story short, Twitpic has begun a partnership with another company to provide user posted photos as royalty-free photos. By posting your photos with Twitpic, you are basically giving away your rights to the photos that you post. This whole phenomenon really came to a head when a french news agency used some photos a freelance photographer took in the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake. The photographer sued the news agency for its use of his photos and I believe the case has not been resolved yet.

This case prompted a lot of photographers to reconsider how they share their photos via social media sites like twitter or Facebook. Up until sometime last year, I did use Twitpic to post photos but I mostly limited those photos to iPhone snapshots rather than nice sized processed photos. I’ve always been a little leery of having my photos used for another purpose but never really envisioned a situation like the case against the french news agency. One day, something clicked for me. One of the photographers that I follow on Twitter tweets out photos but they have been hosted on the photographer’s website. I liked this approach so I looked into doing something similar.

Using the tools that Smugmug (my web host) provide, I was able to put together my own “tweetflow” and here’s how I did it:

On my Smugmug site, I created a gallery called my Twitter Photostream. One feature of using Smugmug as a host is that your galleries have the ability to automatically apply a watermark to photos you upload. So- any photos I do upload to share via Twitter will get a watermark without any additional work on my part. That’s a nice time saver!

Smugmug has also created a mobile phone app for both iOS and Android devices making it very easy to upload photos directly to your account while you’re on the go. I do use the mobile app sometimes and it’s pretty easy to use. Before you upload your photo, you have the option to add a caption for your photo as well as keywords for SEO purposes. Once my photo has uploaded to my Smugmug gallery, I use a “tweet” button that accompanies the photo in the gallery (a Smugmug feature) to actually tweet out my photo.

Now, I realize this solution works great if you use Smugmug but what if you don’t? For people that use WordPress sites, there do appear to be apps for iOS devices such as WP Dump and even an official WordPress app. I don’t know the android marketplace very well but it’s reasonable to assume that there are similar apps for WordPress there as well.

I, personally, don’t use Flickr but I think you could set up a tweetflow like this with Flickr. One caveat about using Flickr is that they have an agreement with stock photo giant Getty Images which allows their customers royalty free access to photos uploaded to Flickr. Hopefully this gives you some food for thought about how you might be able to keep your photos YOURS when you share them with the world via Twitter.

Twitter-Free Follow Friday

Twitter has been a really great social network to become part of. I’ve come to know and learn from a lot of photographers out there (both “pros” and amateurs alike). One of the traditions on Twitter is the act of “Follow Friday.” As the name implies, twitter users list out the names of other twitter users whom they think people should know about (if they don’t already). It’s a really great way of learning about others whom you might not otherwise know who share common interests.

Many photographers have thrown themselves full bore into social media sites like Twitter but there are still those who have not. I thought it would be a shame NOT to promote these great photographers and their work. So- if haven’t heard about these photographers…why not click a link and learn some more?

Darwin Wiggett
http://www.darwinwiggett.com/

Darwin is a photographer located in the heart of the Canadian Rockies. Not only does he produce spectacular landscape photos, he is also a wealth of useful information both in book form (his guide to photographing the Canadian Rockies is a must have) and on his blog which is updated almost daily.

Charles Cramer
http://www.charlescramer.com/index.html

I first was introduced to Charles Cramer during a conversion with professional photographer Jon Cornforth. He works using large format cameras and captures fabulous “intimate” landscapes. He really has a knack for visualization and finding patterns and relationships in a scene. He is also known for being a print “guru” and offers workshops on that topic.

Jim Salge
http://www.jimsalge.com/Welcome.html

Jim is a landscape photographer from New England. His work captures the four seasons throughout New England beautifully.

Pat Ulrich
http://www.patulrichphotography.com/

Pat is a wildlife photographer from the Bay Area in California and knows the Point Reyes Seashore like the back of his hand. I first became aware of him through a comment he left here on my blog. Since then, I’ve admired his work on his blog and I’m constantly amazed at the quality of the images he’s able to capture.

Jack Brauer
http://www.widerange.org/

Jack is a landscape and sometimes sports photographer based out of Colorado. The depth of his catalog is impressive and features mountain scenes from across the world. As of late, his blog has been featuring a series of posts from the Alps in Europe.

Lee Mann
http://www.leemannphotography.com/

I think it’s a pretty safe bet that most people living in Washington State have seen a Lee Mann photo. He has captured many of the “icons” of this area which have been turned into posters quite successfully.

Jason Hummel
http://www.alpinestateofmind.com/
http://www.cascadecrusades.org/

Jason’s photography will leave you breathless. Jason spends a lot of time in the backcountry of the Washington Cascades ski-mountaineering and always returns with jaw-dropping photographs of skiing, snowboarding, and the mountains during the harshest months of the year. Trips like his winter traverse of the Pickets last year leave me in awe of not only his athletic abilities but also his photographic skills.

Greg Lief
Greg’s Website
Greg’s PBase Galleries
Greg’s Flickr Photostream

Greg is a Portland area landscape photographer and his PBase galleries are a tremendous place for anyone to spend time researching their first trip to the Columbia River Gorge. The photos are all wonderfully captured and really give you the mood and sense of being there. I have used this site to help with planning my own trips south. Highly recommended!

John Scurlock
John’s PBase Galleries

John is a small plane pilot who uses that to his advantage and captures jaw dropping aerial photos of the mountains throughout the Cascade Range. Next to the USGS photos taken back in the 70s by Austin Post, John’s photos have been highly regarded by climbers who use them to study climbing routes or just daydream. VERY impressive stuff!

So there you go. Just a few photographers you might not be familiar with. Hopefully you might discover another photographer whose work inspires you. Know of another photographer people might enjoy? Feel free to leave a comment and a link!

Follow me on Twitter

If you look closely at my blog, you’ll notice a new link in the upper right of the page. This past week I set up a Twitter account and will be using it to post updates and news about my photography. You can now follow me on my page at Twitter!

 Scroll to top