Not that we’d have any server crisis going on, mind you:

The service availability for April was 99.98% (yeah, even though we deployed some pretty significant infrastucture changes). For the past 12 months, it was 99.95% — still a number to be really proud of.

Still, it has happened a couple of times that we had to wake up in the middle of the night to attend a server. And like everybody else, we don’t like being woken up in the middle of the night. There’s been a couple of hardware failure we can mitigate but not prevent. There’s been a network outage at our infrastructure provider, also unpreventable. But we’ve also discovered that we could make some parts of the PhotoDeck architecture more robust still.

And that’s exactly what we’re doing – some heavy lifting on the infrastructure for even more robustness, and to accomodate our growth.

The most complex part of the project is behind us (well, for this round, as this is also about continous improvement). We still have a few bits and pieces to take care of, and we’ll soon also upgrade (again) the servers hardware, so that’ll keep us busy for a couple of weeks still…

Oh, I almost forgot:

We’re also playing with a great new feature in our lab, one that will be of interest to most of our members… It shouln’t be very long until it makes its way to the live service!

By Above All Spain.

Every week, we feature an image that grabbed our attention, by a PhotoDeck member.

By Maxblackphotos.

Every week, we feature an image that grabbed our attention, by a PhotoDeck member.

Today, we interview David Garcia about his business.

David is an interior design and real estate photographer based in the UK. He uses PhotoDeck to power his portfolio, and as a client proofing platform.

I live in central London not far from Tower Bridge

Natural

Most jobs involve loading the car full with equipment, lights and bits I will never use, but if I know that whatever is missing is the one thing I will need. My assistant is usually there to help and then we drive to a location house somewhere, often in London, for the day’s or week’s shoot.

I shoot 50% medium format digital and 50% dslr depending on the job. Capture One, Lightroom and Photoshop are the main programs used on the laptop. “Photography is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent moving furniture. ” Arnold Newman. That quote sums up a major part of my day.

Some of my clients have a hard drive with them and we transfer processed High and Low Res files at the end of the shoot, with others I may have an hour, or a day of editing and post-production to do before delivering the files. I use PhotoDeck’s client pages to deliver high res jpgs, and also DVDs or ftp sites. I think it’s useful to be able to offer your clients multiple ways of delivery and let them choose.

My major clients are the big furniture businesses and also I do a lot of work photographing interiors for designers and real estate developers with some editorial in the mix too.

I’m a veteran now, having started in the 80s as a fashion photographer’s assistant then becoming a fashion photographer myself before moving into the interior and advertising side of the business.

I have an agent who looks after the marketing though I do my own website and have just started trying to keep up a tumblr blog.

My agent uses my new blog entries to update their twitter feed sometimes, and I use the Photodeck private gallery pages to show work to potential clients for particular projects, much like a private lightbox view.

Moving from fashion photography into interiors.

I don’t really look back like this. There would be many mistakes for sure, but every one of them was part of the learning process.

Modern technology both in image capture and new forms of social and professional networking make for a positive future for photography, though not one that may support the vast numbers entering the profession.

Keep taking pictures of course and don’t be afraid to make fool of yourself, either in getting the picture, or later in marketing yourself.

I have started doing the “behind the scene” type videos clients are coming to expect from a shoot. I am wary of doing full blown productions without the team such things really need, but can see that if I was a younger ambitious photographer this is a direction I might pursue.

Biggest challenge at the moment, as always, is finding new clients. I hope my agent is addressing that.

Marketing and file delivery.

I have had more clients approach me since I moved my site to PhotoDeck and that is all the feedback I need.

No hassle with flash anymore.

A UK based print fulfilment lab could be useful.

Welcome to Ambience Images, who turned the lights on this week!

Every week, we feature an image that grabbed our attention, by a PhotoDeck member.

By Lucia Herrero, as part of her PORC-no-GRAPHIC series.

Every week, we feature an image that grabbed our attention, by a PhotoDeck member.

By Michael Antoniou.

Smile, it’s Friday!

Every week, we feature an image that grabbed our attention, by a PhotoDeck member.

So in this spirit, we’ve improved the way navigation between images and videos, to make it more useful, classier and less intrusive.

New image navigation

We could write a long story on how we’ve designed the details towards that goal, but instead we’ll just invite you to check out the result.

With this new navigation now in place on all websites, it can make sense to remove the old navigation arrows. To do so, go to My Website / Style and Layout, and click on the Navigation / Breadcrumbs component to edit its options (look for the option called “Arrows to navigate within a collection”). If you are on a LITE plan, simply re-apply your theme.

By François Nimal, part of an impressive series shot in the ponds of Normandy, France.

Every week, we feature an image that grabbed our attention, by a PhotoDeck member.

Still, we were not entirely happy with it, as it sometimes proved too intrusive – and this was confirmed by others.

So, today we’ve rolled-out a change to this option, that makes it less intrusive and more intelligent – while keeping the option to easily access full image metadata.

In essence, the improved overlay only displays the image title and description (if either is present), and gets out of the way within a couple of seconds if the viewer doesn’t do anything. Dragging the mouse towards the top of the frame is enough to bring up the full metadata.

Enough talk: see it in action!

PS: Remember that the overlay is just an option, you can also chose alternative ways to display metadata (and chose what metadata to display), via the Gallery Styles!