Your gallery has always allowed you to send it pictures by email. However, you had to caption the picture properly, as if you were sending it to an agency.

Now, it’s much easier! To send a picture to the gallery:

• Make a new email message, and attach your picture (it must be a JPG format picture, not Photoshop or TIFF).
• Write the nickname of the exhibition in the email Subject (if blank or unrecognized, the picture will go into your portfolio exhibition).
• Add any information, such as the title or caption (see below).
• Send the email…
  • Private gallery: If you have a private gallery in your own domain (e.g. yourdomain.com), then email the picture to pix@yourdomain.com.
  • Public gallery: If you have an account at mimetic.com (or another shared, public gallery), then email the picture to pix@mimetic.com (or the name of your public gallery).

You can set the nickname of your exhibition by editing your exhibition, then clicking on Show/Hide Advanced Features. Below the title is the field, “Nickname.” Use a simple word you can remember — if your exhibition is called “Fishing in Afghanistan,” you might write “fishing” for the nickname.

I’ve created an exhibition called “Snapshots” where I can send pictures from my camera phone (it’s an iPhone). Take a peek at www.davidgrossphoto.com/gallery.php?ProjectID=156.

About Security

Can anyone send a picture this way? No. The gallery only accepts pictures from email addresses it recognizes. If you send a picture to the gallery from an email account that isn’t the one in your profile, the gallery won’t accept it right away. Instead, it will look inside the picture, for IPTC caption information. If it can’t find a match for the credit/byline/author, it dumps the email message.

Adding Title, Caption, Date…

You can also add information to your picture. In your email message, you can write any IPTC field information you want. In particular, you can add a title, caption, date, city, and country to the picture. Just write the field name you want (e.g. “Caption”), followed by a “:”, then your text.

Below are the fields you can use. You can use one, or all, as you wish. Extra text in the message will be ignored, so don’t worry about your email signature.

Fields You Can Use:

Title: The title of the picture. You can also use the word, “Headline”.

Caption or Description: The caption or description of the picture.

Date: The date the picture was taken, written this way: YYYY-MM-DD. For example, write “2009-07-05″ for “July 5, 2009″.

Author or Byline or Credit: The creator of the picture, usually your name.

City: City where the picture was taken.

State: State or province where the picture was taken.

Country: Country where the picture was taken.

Example:

To: pix@mimetic.com
Subject: fishing

Title: Man Fishing in River
Caption: An Afghan man fishes for catfish in the Wazir river at sunset.
Date: 2009-07-05
Credit: David I. Gross
City: Kabul
Country: Afghanistan

From my iPhone....

Anyone can subscribe to your RSS feeds and be notified of any changes to your exhibitions. Simple send people to

feed://yourdomain.com/rss.php

and they’ll see your RSS feed. What’s really cool is that it works on the iPhone, too. Anyone with an RSS app, such as Free RSS, can see your new pictures right away.

You can also have an RSS feed for a single exhibition that shows the latest entries. You will need the ID number of the exhibition. Look in the URL for your exhibition, after “ProjectID=”. For example, if an exhibition is at http://www.yourdomain.com/gallery.php?ProjectID=156 then the ID number is 156, and your feed is:

feed://yourdomain.com/rss.php?action=project&ID=156

Be careful: “ID” is uppercase.