LiveBooks — Picture Soup

liveBooks offers photographers more affordable website options

Article by Diane Berkenfeld. Images as noted.

Since its inception, website design/hosting company liveBooks has created sites for more than 7,000 photographers and creative professionals. liveBooks recently added a new option for photographers and creative artists who want a professional website to market their work but can’t afford a custom designed website—a subscription based service offering pre-designed templates.

The company explains that it is able to offer these affordable, flexible payments for the pre-designed options after having secured $5 million in funding from both strategic and private investors. The subscription based service means no up front commitment of a large sum of money, which is the norm with many website design companies and is the case with liveBooks’ custom designed sites. The pre-designed website payment choices include $39 per month, $399 per year or a one time payment of $1,199 plus $90 per year hosting. Custom designed sites typically begin at $3,200.

These more affordable web solutions are popular with younger pros, just out of college, as well as established photographers and designers. We spoke with three photographers who have chosen to go with liveBooks’ pre-designed sites.

Tristan Cairns – www.tristancairns.com

Tristan Cairns, a student at the Art Institute of Atlanta found the “Edu | LiveBooks” offerings to be very affordable. He then upgraded after graduation to one of liveBooks’ pre-designed templates.

Tristan Cairns' website homepage. Photography © Tristan Cairns.

“I found that liveBook’s pre-designed sites are current with today’s trends/styles,” he says. “I use famous photographers’ website layouts as a standard of measurement from which to judge others.” He explains, “Most of the commercial photographers that I follow are the ‘trend setters’ in the industry so it is important for me to have a website that shares the same style if I am to remain current in the commercial world; LiveBooks met my criteria.” Having a website that is organized, uncluttered, and easy to navigate is important and will present a better image for a photographer, over competitors who have sites that are not as professional looking.

Photography © Tristan Cairns.

Photography © Tristan Cairns.

Matt Mills McKnight – www.mattmillsphoto.com

Matt Mills McKnight, a 2009 graduate from San Francisco State University is both a journalist and photojournalist. He’s also expanding his repertoire to include more commercial work. Matt’s site is unique in that his words are as important as his imagery.

Matt Mills McKnight's website. Photography © Matt Mills McKnight.

In his junior year of college, Matt designed his own first website. He notes that, “It worked at the time, but was extremely clunky and without warning would sometimes load broken images. After a while I started to think that my browser was the only one it actually worked on.”

Photography © Matt Mills McKnight.

Photography © Matt Mills McKnight.

“Before I pulled the trigger (or shall I say pressed the shutter) with liveBooks, I made it a point to [shop] around. There were a few other companies that offered websites at similar price points, but didn’t have features like using a multimedia tab that doesn’t require you link off-site to another page. The search engine optimization, client access section and ready-to-use google analytics were one of the many pre-built features that landed me with liveBooks,” he explains.

Jake Rosenberg – www.jakerosenberg.ca

Jake Rosenberg, a 2009 graduate of OCAD is focusing on fashion and lifestyle photography, with a desire to become further entrenched in the fashion advertising world. Jake had used a carbonmade online portfolio, but needed a more professional site to represent his work.

The Info. page from Jake Rosenberg's website. Photography © Jake Rosenberg.

“The liveBooks site allows me more freedom to categorize my work,” he says, and, “it looks much more professional.” He explains: “It allows me to upload online galleries, have client’s access, and use my personal domain… liveBooks also hosts my site and creates personal emails, which is great.”

Photography © Jake Rosenberg.

Photography © Jake Rosenberg.

“Livebooks makes everything so simple, even someone with very limited technical knowledge would have no trouble using their services,” Jake says. “Livebooks offers a huge variety of pre-made sites that cater to so many different styles of photography. It really wasn’t difficult to find one that suited my needs,” he adds.

Pros

All three photographers noted how easy the liveBooks site system is to use. Because the sites are templates, you don’t have flexibility over every single aspect of your site, but enough control to come across as a serious pro.

Jake says two hours was all it took for him to get his site ready to publish. “It was amazingly simple,” he says. “The back-end of the site is probably my favorite part of liveBooks. They allow you to stay so organized and since it is all hosted online, you can really update your site or do maintenance on it from anywhere in the world as long as you have an Internet connection.”

Matt explains: “You can either bulk upload your images through the administrative dashboard or do a single file at a time. If your files have any caption data embedded in them, it automatically saves that on upload. Then you just organize into folders, name your portfolios for the site and drag and drop. Click save and you’re off and running!”

“I have control over what music I play for certain pages, background colors, information window colors, transparency levels for drop down menus, the site’s title, how photos transition from one to the next, menu animations, loading page graphics, links, etc.,” adds Tristan.

Cons

The few cons that the photographers spoke about were a finite number of images per portfolio, as well as a lack of control over font selection and a fee for uploading a photographer’s logo, because those are considered customizations.

For more information about liveBooks, click here.

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Just Announced: liveBooks websites will be viewable on the Apple iPad

When Apple unveiled the iPad, Flash-based website users voiced a collective moan at the announcement that the iPad would not support Flash. liveBooks announced this morning that the version 5.9 upgrade, which will be rolled out to new and existing customers in early May will allow web browsers to view liveBooks users’ Flash-based websites on mobile devices including the Apple iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch.

The photography of Natalie Dybisz a.k.a. Miss Aniela

By Diane Berkenfeld

The ubiquity of the internet has allowed artists far and wide to reach a much larger audience than they would have been able to by traditional means. This is true of Natalie Dybisz a.k.a. Miss Aniela, (www.missaniela.com) a photographer and artist who has turned her self-portraiture, initially created and posted on Flickr for her own enjoyment, into a brand, complete with a new liveBooks powered website, two self-published books, exhibitions and more to come.

Natalie Dybisz a.k.a. Miss Aniela's website homepage. All images © Natalie Dybisz.

“Aniela is my middle name. I wanted a kind of alter-ego to serve as a name to use on Flickr,” Natalie says. Once she started exhibiting her work, she says it felt right to stick with that name as her artist’s moniker.

Natalie explains that she was fond of snapping photos as a teen, when she first began to shoot self-portraits. Her interest in photography blossomed when she went to university. It was at this time that she discovered online photo sharing as well as the joys of digital processing.

Early on she used Sony compact cameras and lacked a tripod. Natalie then graduated to a Sony R1, which features a swivel screen that makes capturing self-portraits convenient, and a tripod. She used the R1 for about two years. In September 2008 Natalie transitioned to her first DSLR, a Canon EOS 40D. She recently upgraded yet again to a Canon EOS 5D Mark II, a larger, sturdier tripod and flashes.

Natalie Dybisz a.k.a. Miss Aniela's website. All images © Natalie Dybisz.

Natalie’s first website was created in 2007, as a place on the web where she could display a gallery of her photos and write about herself. She transitioned to a liveBooks site this year. “I liked the look of their sleek, fast Flash sites. It looked ideal for displaying photography, and I also liked that I was able to talk about my ideas and have the designers create a custom site based on my vision for my brand,” she says. Adding, “I also like being able to edit my site whenever I want, to edit text, and to add or remove pictures, which is easy enough in the editSuite that comes with the site.” The liveBooks site is the portfolio or gallery, for Natalie’s more refined work, as well as a place to disseminate information about her books, prints and her contact information. “The website is a showcase, a place that is generally consistent. My blog, (www.missanielablog.com) however, is a place with constantly updating information, a place to share essays or thoughts, or to promote my events,” she says. “The way I choose to use Flickr is rather like a studio, where I share lots of images, to see which gauge the most reaction or comment, or just for me to see images build and then to determine which ‘do it for me’ in the long term, and I may then add them to my galleries on my main website. I use Facebook and Twitter to link through to blog posts or to Flickr posts,” she adds.

Miss Aniela and Rossina Bossio. Photographs © Natalie Dybisz and Rossina Bossio.

In addition to a number of exhibitions and speaking engagements, Natalie has produced two books which are available on Blurb (click here): Self-Gazing, a collection of self portraits taken over the course of three years; and Multiplicity, with images taken over the course of more than four years that showcases her evolution of multiplicity photographs. As savvy a businesswoman, as she is a photographer, Natalie also offers fine-art prints of her work and commercial licensing opportunities.

Natalie has also collaborated with other artists. The books She Took Her Own Picture, Selections from the Female Self Portrait Artists’ Support Group available on Blurb (click here), features the work of 44 female self-portrait artists on Flickr including images from Miss Aniela; and In Her Own Image, Selections from the Female Self Portrait Artists’ Support Group also available on Blurb (click here).

(l. to r.) Natalie's two self-published books: "Miss Aniela: Self-Gazing" and "Miss Aniela: Multiplicity" and two books she's collaborated on, as part of the Female Self Portrait Artists' Support Group: "She Took Her Own Picture" and "In Her Own Image"

Q: What inspires you?

A: I have an assortment of inspirations. I don’t look at as many photography books and exhibitions as I should, and I spend too much time online looking at photo-sharing sites. I am inspired by anything from childhood thoughts to dreams, to raging depressive thoughts, from the joy, yet futility of life, to the chilling mystery of death.

I like the work of several people I have seen online, like Rossina Bossio and Rosie Hardy. I also admire the work of Gregory Crewdson, Julia Fullerton-Batten, and Ellen Kooi.

Q: How did you know you were onto something with the Miss Aniela brand?

A: It wasn’t easy for me at first to see Miss Aniela as a brand, probably because my work is so personal, so it was like the images were not just my work, they were me. The stage, therefore, of separating myself from my brand whilst also being able to accept that my brand is very personal, was a challenging step. So, whilst I saw from 2007-2008 that my work was becoming popular and I wanted to go further with it and do it for a living, it still took me a while to see that my artwork can be considered as a brand and a business, something I can sell without feeling as if I were selling myself. As such—I could objectify the self-portraiture as one aspect of what I do, and not the sum total of my being.

Q: What did you think when you realized the large number of people that were viewing your images on Flickr?

A: I was surprised and pleased but always aware that it doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Just because a load of people have clicked on your work doesn’t necessarily validate one’s images. It just meant I had the attention of an audience for an unforeseen length of time, and yet, the audience wasn’t all mine to play with, it was an audience through Flickr. I try to use that audience the best I can in encouraging them to visit my site, join my mailing list, join me on Facebook and Twitter, etc. Even then, the number of people following you and your updates doesn’t often feel like it means anything till someone actually offers me an exhibition or buys a print.

Q: How have you been able to grow your photography into a brand?

A: It has been fairly easy to self-publish books and to make these available to people online, and also to show and sell them at presentations and events. Exhibitions are an aspect that is harder to achieve, as they require collaboration with galleries or other venues. Most of my exhibitions have been offered to me, so the whole scene of approaching galleries is something new to me. I try to keep my brand consistent across books, gallery shows, and my website, in terms of graphic identity, but with the exhibitions, it is harder because the gallery will present the exhibition on their own terms.

Q: What direction do you think you’re going to take your work into next?

A: I would just like to carry on doing what I do, producing images I am artistically engaged with, and pursuing exhibitions and print sales. I would like to have a large-scale exhibition that is accessible to both the art scene and the general public. Another angle to my photography goals is to broaden my experience and my learning of the technical side to the art so I can teach workshops in the UK and beyond. I would like to become a published author (outside of my self-published books) and write books on photography and art, something that I will hopefully begin this year.

All you have to do is take one look at Natalie’s work to see that she’s got a great eye for photographic composition and design, and we expect to see much more of Natalie Dybisz a.k.a. Miss Aniela in coming years. Go to the website www.missaniela.com to see more of her work, or check her out on Flickr, Facebook and Twitter.

Want more information about liveBooks? Click here.

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