Thanks to all who responded to the PhotoShelter Freebie Friday post. And our random winning commenter is...

Martine Cotton!

She wins a one-year subscription to a PhotoShelter Basic Personal Archive account! We'll get in contact with you directly to give you your prize.

For everyone else who didn't win, PhotoShelter has decided to give away a PhotoShelter Personal Archive Standard Account -- 3 months free -- $29.99/month thereafter. Includes 35GB storage, 20GB/month hi-res bandwidth, Seamless Customization Available (for integrating with your web site), $50 ecommerce activation fee waived.

Anyone who reads this blog post can take advantage of the discount by visiting this page. And if you'd like to learn more about this you can take their tour.

Thanks again to all who participated. See you again soon!

As you may have noticed Photoblogs.org has a new sponsor and now a new Freebie Friday with Squarespace, Inc. Squarespace has been around for years, offering high end solutions for creating blogs. And now these clever people have made a version specifically for photobloggers. Check out photographers.squarespace.com to see what they've got.

Part of what interests me about Squarespace is that it's a blogging company making a photoblogging tool and not just a photo sharing tool. This means that their journal features are solid, including great XML and XML-RPC ping settings, spam blocking, and comment control options. It also means that they have a lot of components that fit nicely with a photoblog; ie. forums, forms, static pages, and some solid gallery display features for large collections or user generated submissions.

At the moment Squarespace photoblogs do not offer social networking components or photo printing and selling, but I've been told that these features are in the works. For creating a serious photoblog Squarespace is a great choice, because of all the customizable features, versus a venue like Flickr that is more focused on the social aspect.

The Freebie

Squarespace is giving away a one year pro account worth $12 a month so you can create your own online portfolio or photoblog.

How to win?

The prize will randomly be awarded to one lucky commenter, so go to it!

Deadline

Be sure you make your comment by the evening of Thursday, February 28th in order for it to be counted!

Last Week's Winner

Also, we'll be announcing last week's Freebie Friday winner in the next few days, so stay tuned.

pinwheel (kazaguruma) by Photomo

Citing falling sales Polaroid announced on February 8th that they would be ceasing production of instant film and photobloggers across the world went into mourning, swiftly followed by hoarding.

Although we think there is little chance that public outcry will convince Polaroid to reopen its factories there is a petition with several thousand signatures we urge you to sign. Polaroid have said they are open to licensing the rights to produce instant film to a third party, so the more people sign the petition the better chance there is someone will realise there's a viable enthusiasts' market for small scale production.

Fujifilm are now the only company producing instant film products.

It's time for another Freebie Friday! This week we've got some goodies from one of our newest sponsors, PhotoShelter. Over the past week or so I've been talking with them about how they help photographers store and sell their photos online. I decided that I wanted to work with them because they've got some solid tools and they really seem to value photography and care about the photographer. This isn't just another stock agency.

Up to this point their main product has been the PhotoShelter Personal Archive. It's a way for you to store and backup your photos remotely on their servers. (If you want, you can even backup an entire terabyte!) Now here's the twist... Once you have your photos safe on their servers they have tools that allow you to sell your photos directly from your online archive. They do all the e-commerce stuff, so you don't have to. They've already got over 20,000 photographers using that service to power their websites and online galleries.

Then just recently in 2007 they launched The PhotoShelter Collection. This is a stock photo marketplace for pros and amateurs that actually lets photographers keep 70% of every transaction. (In a lot of places you won't even see 40%.) I also like the fact that they defend the value of the individual photographer's work by providing guidance and not allowing any images to be priced less than $50. It's free to join and submit images. (All submissions go through an approval process to keep up the quality.) And over the course of 2008 they're going to spend $1 million to attract buyers, so this will be an interesting space to watch.

The Freebie

The team at PhotoShelter will raffle off a complimentary, one-year subscription to a PhotoShelter Basic Personal Archive account.

How to win?

Search The PhotoShelter Collection and find one of your favorite images. Copy the link to this image and paste it in a comment below. Everyone who submits a link to their favorite PhotoShelter image will be entered into the raffle. Stay tuned for the winner, and PhotoShelter will provide some extra Personal Archive discounts for everyone else, too.

Deadline

Be sure you make your comment by the evening of Thursday, February 21st in order for it to be counted!

The World Press Photo organization has announced the winners of its 2008 contest.

The overall winner, shown above, taken by Tim Hetherington shows an American soldier in Afghanistan. As with last year's awards, conflict is a common theme amongst the news category winners. The first place winner in the spot news category is a photograph taken by UK photojournalist John Moore at the exact moment a bomb explodes in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, killing Benazir Bhutto.

My favourite of the winners is the series of shots by Erik Refner of marathon runners taken at the finish line in the sports feature category.

Untitled, by Eyes Wide Shut (profile)

Nominate an image for Post of the Day!

x marks the straight edge., by Double Crossed (profile)

Nominate an image for Post of the Day!

Just found this quote on The Sonic Blog. Figured it was worth sharing.

Step out onto the Planet.
Draw a circle a hundred feet round.

Inside the circle are
300 things nobody understands, and , maybe,
nobody’s ever really seen.

How many can you find?

Lew Welch, 1926-1971