Cowbelly Pet Photography Seattle Blog

I am very excited to announce that as of today I am officially signed on with my first (and only) Photographer’s Representative: Auscape International

Auscape International promotes themselves as being:

“among the world’s foremost sources of rights-managed natural history photography, that has developed a worldwide reputation as a premiere library specializing in wildlife and landscapes (and now domestic animals), working with 200 of some of the most highly respected nature photographers in the world.”

For those who are scratching their heads as to what this means to me, a photographer’s representative acts somewhat like an actor’s or writer’s rep, only works for photographers instead. A photo rep is a person with established contacts in the industry with art directors, ad agencies, magazines, publishers, stock agencies and more.

They do the dirty work to get a photographer’s images in front of the people who are interested in using them. They are great for photographers like me who are too busy running their businesses and don’t want to take on the daunting task of creating their own stock library and doing all of the costly promotions a small agency requires to find buyers for their images. And who also want their images to be of more benefit to them than they currently are sitting on their hard drives.

Auscape supplies images to stock agencies the world over, many of which are in Europe, so the potential for exposure is huge.

“How did this happen?” you ask?

I received an email from one of the directors of Auscape the day before my holiday vacation was over in early January, saying:

“I have been perusing your website and have found your work to be of wonderful quality and of great interest to us.

To this end we would ask if you are represented in Australia or any other countries worldwide. We have sub-agents in 68 countries and we would like to discuss the possibility of Auscape being your representative. Once again congratulations on your work and we look forward to your reply.”

Can you believe it? I was thrilled! Thrilled.

BUT not before checking them out. I have been contacted by a couple of agencies in the past and didn’t feel they were the right fit for me or I had issues with their contract so turned them down. (There are a lot of not-so-great agencies out there).

Working with Auscape (thus far) has been a great (and relatively easy) process, if you don’t count the time it took me last weekend to sort through my images, re-size and rename them and create metadata descriptions for each image. I started at something like 1072 images, then narrowed it down to about 730, then 400, then finally 340. (Their minimum submission requirement is 200 images). I am so thankful that I have worked hard on my photography the last year so I didn’t need to do extensive photoshop processing on each image. Had that been the case it would have taken me 3 weeks instead of 3 days. I have a ways to go with photography yet but this gives me even more incentive to get the shots right ‘in camera’. It will make it a lot easier to ’supply on demand’.

Today I am shipping off a DVD with approximately 340 images, all perfectly sized and renamed and looking purty.

What is really exciting (as if this isn’t exciting enough), is that the images will be going on a DVD that will be played at a major pet industry trade show in New Zealand in early March.

Whoopee!!

Now that I have finished this labor-intensive process I can get back to my regular work and (hopefully) start posting more often.

Oh and BTW, this was to be my big project announcement for March, but I beat myself to my own deadline!

Hope everyone is having a fantastic day! It’s SUNNY in Seattle!

Brady and Chopper are two adorable boxers that I had the joy to work with (their photos anyway) in December for a Christmas gift for their dad from their mom.

Last week I designed some cafepress products that were to be a Valentines Day gift for their dad. (Boy, dad’s getting all the loot!). I finally wanted to share their proofs and the super sweet comments their mom sent me, along with recent pics of the boys. I swear I have the best clients in the world!

Here are the boys’ images that I worked with, nice large file sizes, which I love:

Brady

Chopper

And here is the proof their mom ended up ordering for their canvas:

And below is my personal fave of the proofs I designed. It’s pretty different from most pieces I do. I think I like it because the colors are unusual.

And two shots of the cutie-pies that their mom sent me. Chopper the white puppy is apparently ‘growing like grass’. Fergie and I get to go to their birthday party in the spring and meet them in person. We’re very excited.

Brady and Chopper’s mom’s comment on their art:

“Thanks so much! My boyfriend loves his present!! He said it’s the best present he’s ever gotten. It’s hanging in perfect place in the entry area and is the first thing we get to see before we leave for work & when we come home! Everyone has complimented your artwork and our friends just love it!”

YAY