Travel & Humanitarian Photos
There are still plenty of shopping days ’til Christmas but the festive season has come early to my blog and here’s your first present. You must have been a very good boy/girl this year. Better than last year from what I hear about you.
This portfolio slideshow widget is free for you to use on your social networking page or blog. So if you’d like to festoon your FaceBook, beautify your Blogger or make your MySpace magnificent then go ahead and click the triangle in the corner and take the code to embed this slideshow wherever you like.
The content will be refreshed with new images and will be one of the first places where my new work is displayed. Images from Bhutan will begin appearing in the slideshow over the course of the next few days.
But wait, there’s more. I can offer you a customised slideshow featuring your own selection of images. So if you’d like a slideshow of images just from India or New York City or perhaps only Portraits or only Abstracts then just drop me an e-mail and I’ll sort it out for you.
You’re worth it.
Good use of the widget tool Gavin..
I’m curious: who do you think will use this? I love the images, just curious about how you expect people to use the widget. Can you track who embeds it, how many times it’s embedded? Can you track views from embeds?
Would love to hear…
Hi Taylor, good questions.
The idea behind the widget is that it’ll become a viral marketing tool. If people embed it into their FaceBook page or Blogger sidebar as pleasing eye-candy for their visitors, the embed code can be lifted by those visitors for their own web sites in much the same way as people can embed YouTube videos.
I haven’t seen a way of tracking where it’s been embedded but my web site stats should pick up any click-throughs.
I’d guess that PhotoShelter will probably offer customised skins for the widget in the future.
For anyone who likes travel photography, it’s a great way of including some constantly changing, frequently refreshed images into their web or social networking pages without having to steal images.
I’m just looking forward to the day when I’m idly surfing the web and come across a page with my widget installed! If you see it, let me know.
Gavin: thanks for the extra thoughts.
The more Photoshelter can create to allow you to track embeds and stats the better. I’m guessing it possible: Slideshare offers the same lembed-tracking and embed views from its presentation embeds.
I think it’s a good idea to offer, and a good first step, but I think we’re scratching the surface on the possibilities. The real step is to take it from IF people to embed it for fun to making it a NEED for people to embed it.
Can you embed individual images, not just a slideshow? I’m almost scared to broach the subject, but if one can embed individual images that’s essentially free web licensing. I’m guessing PS is too smart for that…
I if I see your widget around the web I’ll be sure to drop you a line!
Taylor, no problem.
Scratching the surface is probably right. How do you make it something that people NEED to have? That’d be very interesting.
I think it is possible to embed individual images in fact but that option has to be offered by the author and the use is restricted to the widget, which obviously has a link to the full-size image in the author’s Photoshelter account. Rather than free web licensing it’s perhaps more like free advertising for the photographer. Let’s hope so anyway
Appreciate your thoughts Taylor, thanks.
I’m not sure i was a good boy this year and if I was, i’m not admitting to it but many thanks for the early present and i’ll certainly be finding a use for it!
I like the idea a lot and it’d be good if others picked up on it as well. My site is still being tweaked and refined as many things have come up over the last few months that have put paid to a lot of my plans and intended schedules for photography. Seeing this widget though has given me the idea that rather than a purely “links” page which people may or may not click on and if they do, may or may not be interested or bothered enough to click any of the links on, a page with maybe half a dozen of these widgets from different photographers would be a great addition.
For the photographers it is as you say, free advertising that will hopefully generate traffic and maybe even sales. For myself, it’s a reason for people to stay a bit longer on the site and perhaps generate return visits and say “this is what i’m about, this is my direction”. It helps get my message across as well as that of the photographer whose widget is added. The other nice bonus is that it’s a great way to say “thanks for the inspiration!” to those people whose work you like which is in itself, the main reason behind links in the first place. It’s a winner for everyone.
Merry Christmas Gavin!!