(Tuesday, March 31, 2009) I just bought a new 35mm f/1.8 DX lens. I tried it out on my D700. I guess it’s a part time FX lens. If you close down the aperture and focus out the lens casing starts showing up. So, if this lens stays below 5.6 I think it’ll be fine. This is my friend Jared.

(***Pssst! if you can’t see any photos, please keep reading. I desperately need your feedback. thanks in advance!***)

I just made a gallery on my photoshelter page featuring some of my best portraits. After the jump is a slideshow of the gallery for your viewing (and sharing) pleasure.

Portraiture is my favorite kind of photography, and I’d like to make my living doing it in the future. So, these days, I’m trying to market myself as a portrait/commercial photographer.

But I’m a big enough man to admit when I need some help.

So, more than just wanting to showcase my work, I want to start a dialogue about the usability of digital photography online.

I think it’s pretty safe to assume most professional photographers want their photos to be seen. I think we can also agree that most pro’s don’t want their photos to get stolen, either right?

There are various ways to safeguard against theft online, but I’d like to talk, specifically, about utilizing Adobe Flash embedding, which is how I put up the photos on this post.

Who’s eyes just glazed over? Don’t worry this post is not technical. It’s all about usability. Like… can you even see these photos? (If not, tell me.) Would you use the embed function? Is there a better way (I hear people talking about html 5… which I know nothing about)?

DISCLAIMER: I’m in no way an expert in Flash. I’d love to hear the expertise of flash coders and web gurus alike. Your genius is very welcome on this post, but I’m begging, please keep the code-speak to a minimum. All the research I’ve done on this topic seems to be dominated by people fluent in techno-jargin, and that’s fine to a point. But when people like me want to know more about practical things like usability, i think many of us are left confounded and disengaged. So, thanks for understanding.

Flash, as I’m sure some of you know, has its good points and it bad points.

The good: From what I understand, flash embedded photos are basically unstealable. (If anyone knows otherwise, please correct me. I’m sure anyone reading this post might also like to be informed on  this topic too.)

BUT, a simple copy and paste of the embed tag makes them  sharable. I like this because a photo’s ability to be shared increases its chances of going viral, which is a great way to market cheaply and effectively. Better yet, the embed tag always, kinda like a leash, leads back to my Photoshelter site. This way, I have more control over my photos. All the IPTC data stays with it, too. This means I don’t have to use ugly watermarks, the captions are always there (just hover over the image and it shows up), and I don’t have to worry about someone of questionable integrity trying to utilize it as an “orphan work.”

And lets face it, everyone wants photos for their blogs, facebook pages, etc, but nobody wants to pay, right? Truth be told, I feel the same way.

In Chris Anderson’s book Free: The Future of a Radical Price he points out that online content is largely expected, by users, to be free, and if it’s not free yet, it will be.

Looking at the trends, I think he’s right. So, I can either fight the current, or I can try to make a better boat.

And there’s something to be said about being able to give customers what they want, too. I take pictures all the time (for work and for fun) and the people in the photos, more than likely, want them. Sure, I can sell them a print or two, or, in the case of my staff job, the Patuxent Publishing Co.’s marketing department can sell them an 8×10 of whatever’s been published. That’s a tried and true way of selling imagery, but lets be honest, the demand for it seems to be waning. More often than not, people want the digital file. Of course, letting loose our hi-res archival images is absolutely bad for business. But I think most people just want a file for their social networking pages. Perhaps we’ll save the free news online debate for another post. But one of the great things about giving away content, while still controlling it, allows us, the content makers/providers to not be such jerks. Think about it. When we say no, we’re not just saying “no,” we’re saying, “No. You can’t have that. It’s mine, and I’m not sharing! …but I’ll sell it to you for $30. AND YOU BETTER NOT MAKE A DIGITAL COPY OR I’LL SUE!”

By figuring out a way to just give them the picture the way they want it (websized), and yes, for free, then it seems like we benefit, too. We’ve become customer oriented.

By the way, I downloaded Chris Anderson’s book as an e-book via the iTunes store. Pressing HERE will route you to the iTunes store where you can still download the book for free.

And the flash embedded slideshows/galleries are really cool, too. You can make the slideshows full frame. go ahead. try it. The photoshelter slideshow gives you, the user, the ability to tile the images, AND if you like a photo(s) and wanted to make a purchase or get the embed tag on one photo in the gallery, just click on it, and BOOM! you can do either (or both!)  easily.

So, what about the bad side of flash embedded photography and galleries?

Portraits – Images by Matt Roth

All those benefits of a flash embedding are thrown out the window if it doesn’t work. Using a flash player really eats up processing speed. It slows down page load time. Like, I’m sure some of you aren’t even able to see these photos. So, you guys won’t even be able to embed anything. And, of course, iPhones (and I guess most cell phones?) don’t utilize the flash players.

So, do you think this format works? Not just for a blog, but for newspapers’ websites, online magazines, social networking, etc?

What about the big picture idea (photos able to go viral, while “leashed”) and is there a better way to do this?

Thanks in advance for your thoughtful comments, questions, and concerns.