Photography Searching Made Easy

I've been meaning to post about this website for a while now, but I'm just getting around to it now. For two years, a large part of my job was purchasing stock photography, picking images for marketing campaigns and magazines, and being the general go-to-gal for all things photography at my company.

I'd spend hour after hour searching for that perfect image for a campaign. You cook up this visual in your head of the perfect image, and then it is almost impossible to find an existing image that meets your imaginary criteria.

I recently heard from a contact at Masterfile about their new search functionality. It has been around for a few months now. It is AWESOME. It was actually honored at the Webby Awards. They have tools called "SimSearch" and "Visual Matching" where you can take an existing photo, and it will recommend other images that suit it well. I don't know how they do it. Tiny elves? Magic wands? Some kind of potion? (see why I don't work in tech?) However they did it, they did it well. Check out these examples:

Masterfile has posted a demo video here.

Winter Song

I am a huge fan of Ingrid Michaelson. I went to her concert about a year ago, and she is fantastic.

About the same time last year, I came across a song called "Winter Song" that she did with Sara Bareilles. The song is really beautiful, and the video for it is so ridiculously cute. I love the old-time movie reel effect, and the animation is so simple and fun to watch.

Given that it seems like it will never be sunny in Seattle again, this seemed like the right thing to post on a rainy, cold, windy day like today. Enjoy!

Social Media here to stay?

I found this really interesting video on YouTube today about social media and its effect on marketing and advertising. As more and more companies are learning how to market their product or service through social media, some experts are wondering if social media is just a fad, or something that will be a permanent change in the way we do business.

This video is really well done, and makes you think about the way social media affects our daily lives. Check it out.

Learn something new every day!

A friend of mine just passed along this link to Learn Something New Every Day. I think it is so cute and the drawings are really creative and fun. I also love that the writing is British English. I spend a lot of my day at work editing in British English, and I love the way they spell everything. Perhaps because I secretly wish I was British. And lived in London. sigh.

Here is today's.