Alvarez Photography Print and Stock powered by Photodeck

 

the new print and stock site is here

For a while now I've been looking for a client site to augment my online portfolio, a place for a client to preview images from a shoot and download the final files. E-commerce is secondary to me but still important. There are a few sites out there that do this. PhotoShelter is very popular and for a year I had a SmugMug account. In the end I elected to go with PhotoDeck. The decision came down to three things.

1. It looks good, in fact it looks just like my Aphotofolio powered web page. There is even a design template called "aphotofolio." The design on the other services was just a little too complicated for my taste.

2. This thing is dead simple to set up. I signed up for the service on Friday and was delivering images the same day. I find it incredibly intuitive to use. Clients can comment on pictures in private, password protected galleries. Even the e-commerce part is simple, all you need is a Pay-Pal account. If your images are already key worded, they key words read right out of the metadata on upload.

3. No commissions. Tired of Getty doing well and you making 24 cents on the dollar? I know I am. This is the only site that I know offering e-commerce that does not charge commissions on either licensing or print sales. None, zero. Just on principle I like that idea. I don't think that this is going to replace my traditional stock agency, but it is nice be able to license certain images myself without having to justify their commercial value. Also the commission-less system makes getting images to people for free a snap.

You do have to do the fulfillment on print sales yourself, but hey you get to keep all the money.

The new archive is here, it should have all my images loaded and key worded by the end of the month.

Comments

[Taobao in English]

Wow! I love this!*

[Stephen Alvarez]

@ Ben, I had notice that too. I mentioned it to the Photodeck team and they have changed the code. Now hitting the back button on your browser will take you back to your search results.

[Ben]

Congratulations on your new site - it has a very clean layout. I did notice one weird behavior though; when I search for photos and then click on one of them, I can't figure out how to get back to my search results. If I click the browser back button I get thrown back to the home page. If I click the arrow button above the image I move to the previous image which isn't in my search results. If I click on the image itself I get thrown back to its category. Maybe I'm missing something...

[Christian Beier (CBpictures)]

Hi, your new PhotoDeck site locks very nice and you have beautiful pictures there.

The handling in PhotoDeck is really easy compared to PhotoShelter and the support is always very nice and helpful. I wish you every success.