Jump for Joy

Posted July 2012 in PhotoSeed

 

 Yesterday officially marked one year since I launched PhotoSeed.com as a public site and I wanted to thank everyone who has taken the time to visit or who has inadvertently stumbled upon us. To date, this site has had tremendous world-wide reach in its short life, with hundreds of thousands of page views perused by visitors hailing from a total of 163 countries & territories. In addition, PhotoSeed received a Webby, the highest industry award for a website in the Art category during a ceremony in New York City this past May.  And who knew we could count a very loyal following from those residing in Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City?  I’m not a micro-focused person by any means, but the wonders of Google Analytics never cease to amaze.

 

C.M. Whitney, (Chester Moulton) American, b. 1873: "Peter" or "A High Jumper": 1907: vintage gelatin-silver photograph: image: 19.1 x 14.7 cm | primary support: 20.4 x 15.4 cm | secondary support: 30.5 x 25.4 cm : from: PhotoSeed Archive

 

My plans and goals for the next year are many. Ultimately, I would like to devote my time to the site full-time, with the means of supporting this dream through a combination of an online sales gallery selling vintage material, licensing agreements, and, perhaps, select archival reproductions for purchase. As always, your suggestions are welcome as I approach this fork in the road, and I sincerely welcome your input and ideas going forward. As my own time allows, it is my intent to continue building on my own evolving scholarship as I assess and then post material from the vintage work making up the PhotoSeed Archive.  As I’ve said before, there is every reason to “get it right” the first time, and I don’t see it as a race.

 

And so it is my honor, delight, and satisfaction to be able to shine light and—hold for this metaphor—let the creative flowers from my photographic brothers and sisters bloom after hiding in the dark far too long. I hope you enjoy the discoveries and continue the journey with us.

 

-David Spencer

 

 

 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 17th, 2012 at 5:21pm and is filed under PhotoSeed. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

1. 

   on July 19th, 2012 - 12:56pm David Spencer said:

   Dear Jose,
   
   I appreciate your comments and it is wonderful to hear you found out about us so early!  It is very reassuring that someone like yourself keeping one of the old, noble processes alive-in this case the carbon process-is finding PhotoSeed a continued source of inspiration.  Before the site was built, the idea of including written "snapshot" vignettes of some of the more prevalent processes included in the PhotoSeed Archive had always been on my idea list, and it still is, especially with your suggestion here. I will put this on track for say a dozen or so processes to be included for the next year and determine their future area of placement on PhotoSeed.  I recently posted a few cyanotypes and included a working explanation of the process with one of the images but I certainly understand how this process information needs to find a better home on the site. Thanks again for spending time with us!
   
    David Spencer-

2. 

   on July 18th, 2012 - 12:44pm Jose Velez said:

   Dear Mr. Spencer,
   My warmest congratulations for the 1st. anniversary of Photo Seed! I discovered your site by coincidence nearly one year ago while searching for photogravure images and techniques, one of my favourite subjects, and since then I keep coming back when there are new posts... and when there aren't, simply to spend some time enjoying the beauty of the images.
   I have only one suggestion: although this is a image focused site and IMHO it should continue as such, it probably could be enriched with a (marginal) section devoted to the explanation of some underlying techniques which were used to create these images. I don't suggest to fill in a lot of technical details, because there are already a lot of sites devoted to these subjects, but this could be an useful section to give a brief twechnical insight to the vierwers, eventually including some relevant links.
   I must say I'm a bit parcial on this subject, as I have a great interest in graphic arts and handcrafted printing techniques, and I am myself one practitioner of an old, almost forgotten process, the carbon printing process (around 200 practitioners worlwide, I'm the only one in Portugal, as far as I know).
   
   My congratulations once again, and thank you for improving my life quality :-)
   Best regards,
   Jose