Wild "w" At It Again...free!

i think it would look better with an obama or a jesus on it.


---Mike Savad

It will be interesting to see how this approach works. Please keep us posted.

Mike, Obama or Jesus are political and religious strikes so I might do it but won't post it here. But I am eagerly awaiting verdicts on your Obama post, it may determine whether or not I want to do some of that as well.

Lynn, I think it can't hurt, you can get this size images from other sources already anyhow. If people can get your images anyhow, why not use it to your advantage and put your logo on it and stipulate how it can and cannot be used. It'll be hard to quantify its usefulness, but I think I will continue the effort anyhow as part of my regular regime.



-W

i decided just to remove the image i just have an odd feeling that the image will haunt me if obama somehow doesn't win and the guy who shot him starts taking it out on people like me. i felt it was safer to than to be sorry.

you can add a mustache to the bridge.

to be honest though i don't know what i would do with this bridge. a profile is easier to work with and that logo is easy to remove. and it doesn't have a .com on it - not sure how many would check to see who you were.


---Mike Savad

It's all about the subliminal message, Mike, product placement. ;-) Name recognition, marketing 101. I put wingsdomain everywhere. If you lived in a third world country, you may never have tasted Coke before, but you crave it anyhow! Wingsdomain is no Coke but the basic premise of the selling of Coke can be employed with any branding strategy. The Iphone 5 release this past Friday - lines were forming the days leading up to its release, I walk by the Apple store in SF every morning, a thought came to me that if only I had my logos as stickers that they can be plastered on lamp posts and the likes.....too late now, maybe for Iphone 6...



-W

i'm working on putting my face in almost everything i make, either that or the mustache in some fashion. i don't know if i can get it into all images, but the latest batch of digital's pretty much all have them in some form. i'll be uploading those pretty soon.


---Mike Savad

Seems like a good idea....let us know how it goes...might drive traffic and sales for you...

Lol Mike, I don't know whether to take you serious or not, but I'd imagine it difficult to put a face in every image if you are selling them here. The mustache though can be part of your signature logo if you decide to design one, kinda like groucho marx' 'stache+cigar

Thanks Donna, I hope it turns out to be a good idea.


-W

Ok, it's official, the site is live, and i've made a press release. I'll add a link to my faa/artistwebsite shortly and blog about it.



-W

here's two of the animal series. i'll have more later on.


---Mike Savad

Wing, any extra ways to get noticed is good in my book..keep us posted!

Pretty cool Mike. I'd like to see you work your full body image into creations with people in them...sort of how Hitchcock was always in the background of one scene in his movies.

-Peter

no one needs to see my full body....

and a face is hard enough to blend in. i have a halloween one that's next (later today), i used a pumpkin for the cameo.


---Mike Savad

I thought you were saving the clown for Halloween?

W - good luck in your endeavors. Always thought your artwork and skill is "spectacular" even if I don't say it out-loud!

i am, but that's my avatar on the left, the me's in the other work are sort of a watermark.


---Mike Savad

Thanks Donna, much appreciated. :-)

Mike, looks like you're adding a little comedy relief in your portfolio. The rabbit one looks like you face is a little low on the frame.

I think I will eventually make one of these free pages for each of my galleries to reach a wider audience.


-W

yeah i need to make space for the hat. i think i actually padded the background a bit to give it more loft. or i wouldn't be able to see it was a top hat.

if it's for free i would send this to flickr and add the creative commons tag on the bottom, mentioning you have to say where you got it. but assume they will clone the mark out. you might want to fill out the photo info in photoshop where it came from.


---Mike Savad

That's a good idea, Mike. I just wish there was a more automated way of doing this, like FAA allowing personal watermarks, but I know that discussion's been hammered to death already so I'm not going to start it up here again. In regards to people cloning out the logo, I think a small percentage might do that even though I have a statement that saids you can't. I'm thinking most would just use it as is (with logo) and not go through the trouble, especially if someone is using it as wallpaper.

Here's the statement on the page:

"Right-button on image and save-as. You may use for editorial and computer screen wallpaper only. Do not produce hardcopy prints. Do not remove wingsdomain logo. You may not edit nor use the images in any other manner. All contents copyright.



-W

the other thing is who your marketing too. another photographer probably won't be buying from you and will use the bridge as clipart. and a buyer won't get it because of the mark. i guess you can send it to free wallpaper sites.

---Mike Savad

There's no intended market here, Mike. It's just open to random cross breeding. Especially since my stuff is not limited to a genre. Just getting the name out there, like leaving bread crumbs that will lead anyone to my site. Again, every FAA image with the FAA watermark does the same, just that it leads anyone who stumbles upon it to the larger FAA site and not to your own site.



-W

7. Posts and threads of a political or religious nature are not permitted on the forum.

http://fineartamerica.com/showmessages.php?messageid=260080

you would probably do better then offering textures for that purpose and put your name at the bottom. people are always looking for free textures - metal, grunge, wood, etc. easy to take and you could probably advertise with them.


---Mike Savad

Wings, I think it's a great idea. If I'd have thought of it, I probably would have included a QR code either in the initial ad for this or one unobtrusively placed in the pic -- maybe like Mike's mustache idea. Maybe that could be for later once QR codes are redesigned to look less obvious or utilitarian (they're already moving in that direction). You mentioned walking by an Apple store; smart phones and mobile data exchange are where it's at.

I noticed your own picture index and tags are visible on the bottom. Is this a permanent feature? If you give the images memorable names it may help the public once the buzz over this kicks in and people want to refer to them by name.

As far as branding and the location of your logo, for various reasons a lot of people purposefully or inadvertently have icons and shortcuts plastered all over their desktops, or at least near the extremities or corners of their screens. In these cases, logo placement becomes an issue.

Like I said, I think it's a great idea and I, too, am interested in how this plays out. Best of luck.

BTW, I live in Oakland on the other side of Lake Merritt from your Grand Lake Theater shot; literally around the corner from the defunct Parkway beer & pizza movie theater, so I know the neighborhood around your pic. The Grand Lake features a live Wurlitzer organist before movies on Fridays and Saturdays. Was the giraffe there to see the Lorax 3D?

Mike, the texture idea is good, only thing, I have neither a wealth of textures (I have none) nor do I have any idea what a good texture is, I've only used them sparingly a few years ago. That's two strikes. The point of doing this is to offer the stuff I already have for sale as smaller logo'ed images for editorial or wallpaper use - without having to create new content, especially textures that I can't readily sell here. And by having those images circulated, they may bring someonw who wants a nice printed version on their walls to come to my site to purchase them.

Samuel, thanks for the feedback. The tags you see below the image is actually part of the file name. This set of images were originally used for my blogs where I wanted my logo on them and the file names were also strategically created to identify the image/owner/sitename to lead users and search engines back to my site. Thanks for reminding me though, the next batch of free images will still have such naming convention but I hadn't thought about it's use for freebies so I will have to pay attention to that. For example, some of the filenames still have part of a convention that I use to remind myself what I did to them (ie. "distort correction", etc.), so that will likely not be part of the next batch.

I lived in Oakland for one year after graduation a very long time ago, on Home Place off of Park Blvd next to the Oakland High School. It wasn't a very convenient place to live for mass transit (namely BART) so I moved to SF for a very long time before moving back to the East Bay near Bart recently.


-W

By the way, the webpage is very easy to create if you have Photoshop (other programs will have similar capabilities), you still have to either host your own site or find a site service that offers uploading of your own web design. There's a function in PS under File->Automate->Web Photo Gallery that will take you through the process. Takes about 30 seconds. The more hard part is getting your logo on the image and that is done separately. I'll explore PS a little more when I have time to see if I can automate batch inserts of the logo.

Next up, I will likely change the front end page to include a top header that will have my logo plus thumbnail gallery images that link to other galleries like "Trains", "San Francisco", "Bridges", etc. so one can maneuver not only the images within the gallery but to other galleries as well.

I've also added a direct subdomain now: http://free.wingsdomain.com


-W