Features

A gallery, not a catalog. The software behind the Mimetic Galleries was designed to show pictures as you would in a gallery or a book. It was designed to show stories, not just single pictures. 

 

Show in a format that suits your artistic vision

The Mimetic Gallery system starts with eight basic themes, with more on the way. It starts with a traditional wall of pictures, but you can create groups, grids, and even book arrangements. You can control grouping and spacing of pictures in each exhibition, and a theme editor lets you change colors and fonts of the built-in themes.

You can matte and frame your pictures, if you wish. You can group them and space them out. You can add your own audio to your slideshows, to give your audience a “guided tour” of your exhibition.

Easy Self-Promotion

Every gallery system automatically builds RSS feeds of your changed or updated pictures. Anyone can subscribe to a feed and be notified of changes to your galleries. RSS even works on the iPhone.

Sell fine art prints

The Mimetic Gallery system is not only a way to show your work, it is a way to sell your work. The system lets you sell limited edition, fine art prints directly from the website. It collects the money from your customer, sends an order and payment to your chosen fine art printer, then sends you the  money immediately, all automatically. To protect the value of your prints, the system tracks the number of sales of each edition and protects you from mistakenly selling extra prints.

Here is the exciting part: imagine shooting a story in some far-off place, then filing your best shot each day to an exhibition in the Mimetic Gallery, creating on-going interest in the project. Then, imagine that someone (anywhere in the world) decides to buy a fine art print that day from your gallery.

In less than a minute, your money appears in your Paypal account, available for transfer to your bank account and accessible from an ATM with a Paypal card, and you can stay in that far-off place and shoot more pictures. Even one picture sale can mean another week in the field.

 

Amazing Automation

One of the hardest parts of having a website gallery is keeping it up to date. The Mimetic Gallery system was designed for an independent photographer who does not have the time to worry about such tasks. Send a picture to the gallery by email and the gallery will read the caption information, resize the picture, and place it in the correct exhibition. It can even forward the picture (via FTP) to your agency or client, to save money and time on satellite phones and slow internet connections.

As exhibitions are updated, they appear in the “New Exhibitions” listing. When you stop working on them, they will move (after some days) to “All Exhibitions.” If you wish, the gallery will delete old exhibitions to save space.

To help promote your work, the Mimetic Gallery system can email a newsletter showing pictures from recently updated exhibitions to your private mailing list.

All automatically.

 

Collaboration

The Mimetic Gallery system lets you bring in other photographers who are members of your gallery to join you in group exhibitions. You can include photographs from other exhibitions into a new show, showing how your colleagues see a given subject differently.

Galleries can have any number of members, so you can show work from a cooperative of photographers with an installation of the Mimetic Gallery system.

 

Special Features for Photojournalists

The Mimetic Galleries system was designed by photojournalists and documentary photographers. They insisted on special features to make the system workable in the field, where Internet connections are slow and expensive, time is of the essence, and budgets are tight. The special features include:

FTP forwarding. Upload a picture to the gallery and have it automatically forwarded to your agency (or any other FTP location)

Low bandwidth web pages. The administration system uses no graphics unless you turn them on. Over slow lines, or a satellite Internet connection, graphics cost money and slow you down unnecessarily. One Hotmail page costs $15 to view on a satellite phone!

Email filing. Even when you cannot browse the Internet, you can often send email. The system can take a captioned photo from email and correctly place it in an exhibition…automatically.

Automated featuring, archiving, and deletion of exhibitions. When you are too busy or too far from civilization to oversee your galleries, you can turn on automated management of exhibitions to keep your gallery fresh even when you are not there to oversee it. The system can automatically move “new” exhibitions into “all” exhibitions (the archives), and it can delete archived exhibitions to make space. You set the number of days for a change, and the system does the rest.

 

Feature List

  • Easy to use: create exhibitions, upload pictures, and manage your galleries
  • Organize exhibitions as new, archive, by location, and by artist
  • Show group exhibitions with other photographers
  • Each photographer/artist has a personal “bio” page
  • Automated newsletters
  • Websites can be configured for different currencies
  • Flexible exhibition presentation: grouping, spacing, captions, and more.
  • Frame and matte pictures in your exhibition
  • Customizable gallery menus: link to your blog, your archive, or anywhere
  • Flash slide shows with audio
  • RSS feeds for self-promotion
  • Easily customize themes
  • Website administrators can create and add your themes
  • Modular themes for complex customization
  • Configuration files give administrators incredible control over presentation
  • All text is stored in editable text files and can be changed
  • All styles are CSS
  • Automated limited edition print sales
  • Print sales shop with framing, matting, glazing
  • System checks file sizes and will not sell low resolution prints
  • Choose your own pricing
  • Automatically and immediately pays the photographer, printer, and the gallery
  • Automatically sends orders and files to your fine art printer
  • Multiple fine art printers available. Administrators add their own.
  • Automated gallery maintenance
  • FTP forwarding to any FTP site to avoid uploading pictures twice
  • File pictures with email when no web access
  • Low bandwidth administration: no graphics unless you want them for slow and expensive Internet connections
  • And more…