Yesterday The Quantum Collection, our free set of Lightroom presets, was shared by a 365project user, and I wanted to take a moment to introduce myself and the new website behind them (and other free tools to come).
I'm Diana Southern from The Photon Collective, a new photography website that launched yesterday (February 10, 2015). My boyfriend Ian and I have a passion for photography and travel, and The Photon Collective is the home of our photography adventures as well as a place for like-minded creatives to collaborate with us.
On TPC you'll find our best efforts to impart our own knowledge and experiences in photography to you. We’re working full-time on the content of The Photon Collective, and everything you find there is the original work of our awesome team and carefully-selected guest contributors. I'm most excited about our free tutorials and tools, but we'll also be sharing gear reviews and our thoughts on the latest happenings in the photography world.
We'd love to have all you photographers here on 365project.org check it out and let us know what you think! You can read more about us and our website in Ian's welcome post here.
We want to make The Photon Collective one of the best photography websites on the Internet, and if you're into creative and collaborative photography, we hope you'll join us!
(I discovered that for some reason including links wasn't working when first creating the post -- I kept getting an 'invalid content' notice -- so I posted without links and then clicked 'edit' to add them afterward. Worked like a charm!)
Congratulations on the launch and thank you for giving out free presets. I'll make sure to take a look at them.
Out of curiosity (blame the marketing side of me), can I ask you how Photon Collective is going to differentiate itself from al the other photography websites out there. I'm excited to see another resource for us photographers but at the same time, part of me is going, my facebook feed / RSS aggregator is getting full of photography stuff.
With DPReview, imaging-resourcel.com & DXO Mark covering camera/lens reviews to Digital Photography School, Strobist, DIY Photography, Fstoppers, 500px (blog), Petapixel, The PhoBlographer to photographer blogs like Chase Jarvis, Trey Ratcliff, Joe McNally, etc... there seems to be an endless supply of online free resources for photographers.
I would love for Photon Collective to be successful (as it would be exciting to watch a new publication grow from the start..) so I'm curious how Photon Collective is going to compete for my online reading time. Or maybe this is the time to solicit feedback from us photographers and find a niche to fit in.
Our main differentiation point from many photography sites out there is that we will only post original, high-quality content. Rather than re-posting other blog's content at warp speed, our articles will be published more slowly and deliberately, making sure the content is interesting to readers. We've got 2 years of experience running a successful Milky Way photography blog over at lonelyspeck.com, and that has taught us how important and appreciated original content is.
That doesn't mean we're not fans of the re-blog sites, though! On day 1, we've already had an article re-blogged by PetaPixel: petapixel.com/2015/02/10/levitation-photography-tutorial/
And the same article reached the top of /r/photography on Reddit that day.
Definitely a good thing for getting the site going.
Another way TPC will set itself apart is with a clean, readable design. You won't see an over-cluttered or ad-ridden design on our site, as you'll find on some (even most) of the sites you mentioned above. We're going for distraction-free reading, focused on our content and the community's feedback.
Lastly, we're looking to form a sense of community with The Photon Collective. We have plans for regular audience engagement and requests for feedback on what our readers are interested in learning. We'll be rewarding our readers with not just free content, but free tools, like our first pack of free Lightroom presets, The Quantum Collection. There'll be more where that came from!
I'm sure we'll have our ups and downs and not all of our tutorials and free tools will be instant hits, but that's the nature of the business. And we're certainly having fun learning from it all.
I hope you'll continue to visit our site in the future. (Hopefully you'll see us grow!) If you've got any tips for us, please don't hesitate to send them our way.
Just visited your website and it looks great, congratulations! The tutorial on levitation photography is very well written.
Keep up the good work, I'll be visiting frequently!
Tweets ahoy!
Join the Group
Pin With Me
(I discovered that for some reason including links wasn't working when first creating the post -- I kept getting an 'invalid content' notice -- so I posted without links and then clicked 'edit' to add them afterward. Worked like a charm!)
Congratulations on the launch and thank you for giving out free presets. I'll make sure to take a look at them.
Out of curiosity (blame the marketing side of me), can I ask you how Photon Collective is going to differentiate itself from al the other photography websites out there. I'm excited to see another resource for us photographers but at the same time, part of me is going, my facebook feed / RSS aggregator is getting full of photography stuff.
With DPReview, imaging-resourcel.com & DXO Mark covering camera/lens reviews to Digital Photography School, Strobist, DIY Photography, Fstoppers, 500px (blog), Petapixel, The PhoBlographer to photographer blogs like Chase Jarvis, Trey Ratcliff, Joe McNally, etc... there seems to be an endless supply of online free resources for photographers.
I would love for Photon Collective to be successful (as it would be exciting to watch a new publication grow from the start..) so I'm curious how Photon Collective is going to compete for my online reading time. Or maybe this is the time to solicit feedback from us photographers and find a niche to fit in.
Our main differentiation point from many photography sites out there is that we will only post original, high-quality content. Rather than re-posting other blog's content at warp speed, our articles will be published more slowly and deliberately, making sure the content is interesting to readers. We've got 2 years of experience running a successful Milky Way photography blog over at lonelyspeck.com, and that has taught us how important and appreciated original content is.
That doesn't mean we're not fans of the re-blog sites, though! On day 1, we've already had an article re-blogged by PetaPixel: petapixel.com/2015/02/10/levitation-photography-tutorial/
And the same article reached the top of /r/photography on Reddit that day.
Definitely a good thing for getting the site going.
Another way TPC will set itself apart is with a clean, readable design. You won't see an over-cluttered or ad-ridden design on our site, as you'll find on some (even most) of the sites you mentioned above. We're going for distraction-free reading, focused on our content and the community's feedback.
Lastly, we're looking to form a sense of community with The Photon Collective. We have plans for regular audience engagement and requests for feedback on what our readers are interested in learning. We'll be rewarding our readers with not just free content, but free tools, like our first pack of free Lightroom presets, The Quantum Collection. There'll be more where that came from!
I'm sure we'll have our ups and downs and not all of our tutorials and free tools will be instant hits, but that's the nature of the business. And we're certainly having fun learning from it all.
I hope you'll continue to visit our site in the future. (Hopefully you'll see us grow!) If you've got any tips for us, please don't hesitate to send them our way.
Cheers,
Diana
Keep up the good work, I'll be visiting frequently!
Thanks for the answers. I'm looking forward to the articles on Photon Collective and watching you folks grow.
Best of luck...
Dave