Promoting technique

[Nikolai Sklobovsky]

As some of you know, I recently shot a Christmas concert at my kids' high school.
I did shoot many similar events before, but it never generated neither traffic, nor sales . The reason was obvious - not many people knew about the pictures.
This time I decided to draw the attention. The band's BBS has been shut down for a few months already, so I decided to use the actual bulletin board - you know, the cork one. All I needed was the actual ad.
I decided to create a collage of all the pictures and provide the link.
I had to collate about a 100 of them. From the bitter experience I knew that I need small versions of pictures. Of course I could use Image Processor, but since I haven't uploaded ALL the pictures I had I'd have to go through the sorting process again. It wasn't too much of a hassle (all the winners were "rated"), but I have chosen the other path

With all the images on my smugmug site and the Star*Explorer on my desktop, I simply used its "download images" feature, and requested custom smaller size images:

Few minutes later all the pictures were on my hard drive. Then I used the trick Marc Muench showed during last summer: I used the Photomerge feature of PS on those smaller images to create a collage. Of course, few images were left out, and i had to manually rearrange a few shots, but, hey, creating a 100-image collage in a matter of a few minutes - that's pretty fast, at least by my standards.

Putting the image into Word doc, adding a link to the website was a totally trivial task. Tomorrow all the band students will see this:

with the link to the website, of course

I do hope it will bring some traffic. And hey - maybe even some sales

 

[Nikolai Sklobovsky]

And if you happened to have a rather talented and PS-proficient daughter who happened to have a few hours on her hands, you may even end up with this:

Collage by Natalie:

 

[Tim Armes]

Hi Nikolai,

I think that you bring up an excellent point with respect to the need for self promotion after such an event, however the photomerge technique is truly inspired. I'd never have imagined that Photomerge could be used with "unmergable" photos in that way.

A poster like that will certainly attract the attention of the musicians - not only will it catch the eye from a distance, but everyone will be actively scrutinising it for their own image, adding to its appeal and inciting them to visit your site. The fact that such a poster can be produced so efficiently is a very useful technique to know.

Your daughter's composition is in a class by itself. She should try to sell it to the organisers for the flyer of their next production. I wonder however if it will do as well for your indended purpose? My critique is that your daughter has spent a lot of time cutting out people and placing them onto black backgrounds. Unless you've also retrouched every picture that you're putting on your site (so as to remove unwanted distractions) then your potential buyers may be disappointed - their expectation having been set so high.

Tim

 

[Ray West]

Hi Nikolai,

Very interesting, as usual. I think your daughter has a 'crush' on the trombone player, maybe?

Anyway, something I've never tried, but I think you may like to, is this mosaic thing at http://www.andreaplanet.com/andreamosaic/download/. The samples look quite impressive.

Best wishes,

Ray

 

[Tim Armes]

Ray, another great idea.

Can anyone recommend a good mosaicing program for Mac OS X?

 

[Nikolai Sklobovsky]

Tim,

Hi Nikolai,
I think that you bring up an excellent point with respect to the need for self promotion after such an event, however the photomerge technique is truly inspired. I'd never have imagined that Photomerge could be used with "unmergable" photos in that way.

Thanks for your comments!
Yes, the first time I saw this done I was, like, "wow, why didn't I think of it myself" ...
Photomerge, being a rather lousy pano-tool, is a next-to-perfect collage starter. Of course, its results are usually pretty random, but if you are only going for a general effect, it's exactly what you want. It's especially nice when you have pictures of different sizes and resolutions...

A poster like that will certainly attract the attention of the musicians - not only will it catch the eye from a distance, but everyone will be actively scrutinising it for their own image, adding to its appeal and inciting them to visit your site. The fact that such a poster can be produced so efficiently is a very useful technique to know.

Yes, that was exactly my goal. And the fact that it can be produced in a matter of minutes makes this technique even more attractive...

Your daughter's composition is in a class by itself. She should try to sell it to the organisers for the flyer of their next production. I wonder however if it will do as well for your intended purpose? My critique is that your daughter has spent a lot of time cutting out people and placing them onto black backgrounds. Unless you've also retouched every picture that you're putting on your site (so as to remove unwanted distractions) then your potential buyers may be disappointed - their expectation having been set so high.

Tim

Thanks again, I'll pass the word to her.
Unfortunately, "the organizers" is the school band, who's always struggling for money. I lost count on how many "fundraising" events my kids had to go: carwashes, "pennies for piccolos", carolings, servicing corporate parties... The last thing they would pay for is an art work
As to the original pictures being not on par with the poster - it's a valid point, but at this moment probably the least of my concerns They all are way better that any parent from the audience can get with a P&S in green mode, with flash at 30..50 ft and all

Cheers!

 

[Nikolai Sklobovsky]

Ray,

Hi Nikolai,
Very interesting, as usual. I think your daughter has a 'crush' on the trombone player, maybe?

Thanks!
No, she doesn't (albeit she had had for a few weeks, but that was long time ago).
It's just happened to be a good "anchor" image and she left him be

Anyway, something I've never tried, but I think you may like to, is this mosaic thing at http://www.andreaplanet.com/andreamosaic/download/. The samples look quite impressive.
Best wishes,
Ray

I'll check it out, thanks!
Cheers!

 

[Asher Kelman]

With your daughter's talents, you have the foundation of an advertizing design studio. She is very talented. I'm impressed by her parsimonious selection of imaging and giving sense of the tombonist playing a solo.

Now I have to be proud of two Sklobovskys!

Asher

 

[Nikolai Sklobovsky]

Asher,

With your daughter's talents, you have the foundation of an advertizing design studio. She is very talented. I'm impressed by her parsimonious selection of imaging and giving sense of the tombonist playing a solo.

Now I have to be proud of two Sklobovskys!

Asher

If you ever try my yongest' cooking or read her pamplets, you'd have the full house of us to be proud of

 

[Nikolai Sklobovsky]

It worked!!!

Well, what do you know - promotion obviously worked, since it looks like some band mom ordered a whole bunch of pics of her dauttie (prolly xmas season also played some role into this).

At any rate - my marketing efforts worked, even if so little...