I’m a keen photographer myself and I use both Flickr and Pix.ie to share my images. I have also had the pleasure of meeting many of the people I know from these Photo-sharing sites in the real world, I’ve had a lot of fun on some photowalks with my Flickr friends and am constantly impressed with the quality of photography from everyone.

So I was thinking that I could involve some of my contacts from the photo-sharing sites to help me find some images for using on this website I am working on. Unfortunately none of the photo-sharing sites allow any kind of commercial work on their sites, so I have set up groups purely for the purpose of getting in touch with suitable photographers who may want to supply some images for this project outside of the photo-sharing sites.

Brief for ‘Ireland at Work’ photos

We are searching for great images that show the citizens of Ireland in real working environments.

We will pay £45 GBP per each shot that we select for use on the website and you may submit several photos. We may use more than one photo from any one photographer.

All photos will be credited where they appear on the site, as follows:
Photo: (Your Name)

We are paying for use of these images and so require the rights to use them on our website, and printed matter, for a period of one year from time of issue. Other than these agreed rights copyright for the photos remains with the photographer. We reserve the right to edit or retouch the supplied images, if required, to best suit their display on the layout of our website.

Please note that these images will be used on a website promoting Ireland remaining in the European Union, so your images will be seen in support of that viewpoint.

Essential requirements (all must be met):

• We must have a copy of the model release, or written permission from the subject to use their photo for commercial purposes.
• Photo must show Republic of Ireland persons and locations.
• Persons must be shown in a working situation/environment
• Realistic people and situations
• Photos must be at least 1024px wide at 72dpi, but preferably larger
• Photos must be colour
• Supplied photo must not be watermarked

Desirable requirements (any one of these):

• Nature of work environment should be community-based, if possible (e.g. waste collection, milk delivery, bus driver etc.)
• Women at work
• People who are happy at their work (a positive looking image)
• Trades/labour/retail/engineering/farming images welcome
• Large engineering projects are welcome, but must clearly feature the people doing the actual work
• Photos should be landscape
• Photos should have a clear space (without any significant subject matter) on approx 1/3 of the overall image area on the right side

What we don’t want:
Landscape/scenic photos
Abstract images
Obviously posed shots

If you have any images you think may be of interest please get in touch (on or off the photo-sharing sites).

Here is the Flickr Group

Here is the Album on Pix.ie

Deadline?
- Of course there’s a deadline!
We will need to make our final selection of photos on Sunday 14th June, that’s 10 days from posting this message so if you want to submit any photos you need to get to it.

Thanks.

Such a project would involve several capable, and efficient, people with a diverse range of skills to complete this project in such a short space of time. They would also have to be prepared to work for free. The initial request for voluntary help came, as always these days, via my favourite network: Twitter. I saw the request on Wednesday last week and said yes immediately, I thought it was an inspiring project and, although I didn’t know Maryrose all that well in person (only met once at Belfast CreativeCamp) I follow her on Twitter – and I do find Twitter to be a pretty reliable reference in finding like-minded personalities. I knew I could work with Maryrose’s team so I offered to lend my help in designing the cover for the book, for the PDF download version and for the final printed copy.

Then the fun started! The project kicked-off like a wild west barn-raising party, such an energetic bunch of people, I’m so impressed with the effort and work of all involved here in accomplishing so much in such a short timeframe. Much of the team were freelance like myself, and had never even met, yet here we were operating swiftly and almost friction-less thanks to the organising skills of Maryrose and Basecamp. I’m a big fan of Basecamp, but my typical use is for longer span projects and fewer (known) people involved, really good to see how robust Basecamp is when under pressure like this, it really did keep the project moving.

I had early concepts for the design of the book cover planned by Friday and first visuals uploaded to Basecamp on Saturday, team members were dropping in to the project site during the weekend (freelance working hours – don’t you just love ‘em!) and the favourite idea was chosen Sunday night. I was pleased with the final choice, it was the strongest idea, nice clean graphics and all done with illustration and background texture – no stock photography needed. It was also a tricky brief to answer, we didn’t want to dwell on depressing images of losing a job, especially important as David’s book is all about the practical things you can do to improve your situation.

With unemployment scare stories becoming horribly repetitive nowadays it’s good to see such a positive, and practical, attitude in David’s book. I hope this book helps a lot of people deal with their situation, if they are unlucky enough to find themselves out of work.
You can still download a free PDF of the book until midnight tonight, after that it becomes a paid edition at €4.99 – with the paperback version to follow soon after. Be sure to checkout the website and the blog.

I’m thrilled to have been part of this project, much thanks to Maryrose, David Jones, Rachel Early, David Duignan, Alex Gibson, Gordon Murray and Digiweb, great to ‘meet’ you all and keep in touch.

Good People, Good Work, Good Karma…

Good Grief!

I’m a huge fan of Basecamp from 37Signals, so I’m pleased to see they chose to publish the ‘welcome message’ that I enter as the first post on all my Basecamp projects.
I remember writing this and, not having too much time, just blazing through it in an effort to succinctly get across the important ‘ground rules’ for new users unfamiliar (and possibly hostile to) using Basecamp.
Thinking back on it now I was really focussed on a ‘Just the facts ma’am’ missive, even though there’s quite a bit of text to the finished piece. Thankfully most of my clients ‘get it’ fairly quickly with Basecamp, but I like to think that putting out the ‘Welcome mat’ helps.

Built by Kolbrener, a branding company

Our brief is to promote Northern Ireland as a leading resource in ‘best practice’ web for business, hence ‘Northern Ireland’s Digital Hub’.

But, as they say, “a picture’s worth a thousand words” – so go check out a few million word’s worth in the video.

Hmm, word’s worth – how poetic…

We’re using Brightcove to host the media file, will probably post to YouTube as well, in due course.