Photrade just doesn’t cut the mustard

I love trying out new web services especially when they are aligned with my principal passion – photography.  I have had accounts with Flickr, Ipernity, Zooomr, photobucket, Smugmug and now Photrade.  Having settled on Smugmug for my photo hosting website, I was loath to sign up to yet another photo website however This Week In Photography decided to move their photo challenge from Flickr to photrade and forced fans of the podcast and competitions to sign up.

First impressions of Photrade is that the website is really not finished.  It is those little finishing touches that make or break a website: settings which save properly, not being forced to use clucky web upload mechanism that has been discarded by most other photo sites or at ugly grey navigation buttons that look like my 7 year old son whipped them up in tuxpaint.  There is also no api which would allow me, as a software engineer by profession, to write an aperture plugin or standalone upload application… duh!.  It is certainly not a site I would choose to come back to unless there were a few caveats to keep me interested.

The first is the ability to sell your photos and have full control over pricing and distribution formats.  The second is the ability to embed watermarks automatically to all uploaded photos and ensure that the photographs are locked down and unaccessible to would-be image free loaders.

In order to be competative, phototrade needs to do a few things, and quickly:

1. Fix up all the niggling little bugs – “beta” is not an excuse to have buggy software.

2. Get someone who is not a developer to look at flow, screen layout and UI elements.  Phototrade is butt-ugly and it suffers from a look that was old in the 90′s.  It is an easy problem to fix and there is no excuse for it.

3. Improve on the selling and protection aspects of online photography.  This is what distinguishes you from other photo services.  The moment a better photo service like smugmug offers the same functionality I can assure you I will close my photrade account.

4. Get the outside development community onboard, open an api and let us write plugins for photrade.  Keep it closed and force us to use outdated postback image uploading and we won’t be around for long.

I realise that photrade is still in beta but to be fair I’ve had an account for a while now and very little has changed.

Photrade, while suffering from the setbacks listed above, still has promise – it will be interesting to see whether they can polish this site and make it stand out from the rest now that they have the funding.

www.photrade.com

Dark Rocks

Title	Dark Rocks
Taken on	23.09.2007
	Dullstroom, South Africa
EXIF	f/9 1/30 ISO100 Aperture Priority

The Coming Storm

Title	The Coming Storm
Taken on	23 August 2008
	12 Apostles, Melbourne, Australia
EXIF	f/9 1/320 ISO200

Out on the observation deck of the 12 Apostles I stood and managed a couple of final photographs while watching a storm come boiling in from across the sea. We’d been battling a fine misty rain most of the way around the observation deck and the camera I’d been carrying was not weather sealed so I was walking around with my camera in my jacket, whipping it out for quick exposures.

Minutes later the heavens really opened and soaked us through but the rainy atmosphere was wonderful and the dark and threatning skies added so much to the mood of the pictures.  I was really glad to be carrying my Lowepro slingshot camera bag which comes with it’s own raincoat; I dried, my camera didn’t have to.

This trip and the drizzly rain has given much impetus to fast-tracking to the D700, that and all the low noise high ISO happiness which comes along for the ride.

Split Point Apostle and the road to Lorne

A lone Apostle stands just off the lookout point at the Split Point lighthouse. It is a tantalising taste of the beautiful and rugged coastline to come, imposing, seemingly impenetrable against the wind and boiling sea.

Title	Lone Judas
Taken on	22 August 2008
	Glenaire, Great Ocean Road, Melbourne, Australia
EXIF	f/9 1/160 ISO100 Manual

We stopped for lunch in Lorne, a quaint little coastal town. The cliffs above the town boast an amazing lookout point (Teddy’s lookout) which offers spectacular views of the Great Ocean Road and surrounding countryside. We parked a couple of hundred meters from the lookout and stretched our legs on a rainforest walk along the ocean side of the mountain – a welcome and enjoyable walk after a nourishing lunch.

Title	Teddy’s Lookout
Taken on	22 August 2008
	Eskine Falls, Lorne, Melbourne, Australia
EXIF	f/11 1/50 ISO200 Manual

About 6km inland from Lorne is the cool, wet, rainforest walk down to the Eskine falls. I admit I lugged my heavy tripod down to the bottom of the falls and managed to get some wonderful rainforest waterfall landscape shots.

Title	Whispering Creek
Taken on	22 August 2008
	Eskine Falls, Lorne, Melbourne, Australia
EXIF	f/22 1.3s ISO200 Manual