Posted 2 days ago by Andrew

We come to you today with a bit of sad news. Effective immediately, Yaperture will be winding down operations. The site will remain online as an artifact and archive of all the great work that was submitted, but all Marketplace, photo submission, and user support functions will cease to function. It was a tough decision, but unfortunately, the current team does not have the time and resources to dedicate to the site.

It has been an amazing journey. What started out as an ambitious pet project turned into an impressive venue for some truly spectacular photographs. We want to take this time to thank you, the Yaperture community, for helping to support and build our idea into something which we have been proud to be part of for the past year.

As mentioned before, the site will remain live, but will no longer function to the fullest extent. That said, if you or someone else you know sees potential for the idea, please let us know as we would gladly transition the site and hand over the reigns.

We thank you for making all of this possible and we hope you continue to keep the shutter clicking through 2009 and beyond.

The Yaperture Team - Andrew, Chris, and Sabs

3 Comments

Posted 5 months ago by Sabriya

Ok, so maybe there hasn’t been a blog post in awhile, and maybe this site looks different then when you last logged in, but there’s an explanation for all of that, just hear us out. We here at Yaperture have been toiling away behind the scenes, almost like those Keebler elves, but instead of delicious prepackaged cookies we have made something so much better: a shiny new version of Yaperture. It’s ok, you can take a minute if the excitement is too much. Our main goal has always been to make a user friendly site where people can share their photos, discuss all things photography, and buy prints to support other photogs. Best of all, we now we think we have made doing all of that that so much easier. How so you ask? Well, let me be the first one to introduce some of the new features:

- From the front page, you can easily sign up for an account, see what’s new in the Marketplace, check out new stuff posted on the discussion board, and read about happenings in Yaperture through the blog postings (which will be happening more frequently, we promise). Our goal here was to create a single page which encompasses as much of the site as possible, making it easy to see as much as possible, as quickly as possible.

- We like to give you options and we like to keep them simple. As such, the browse page now features two different page views for letting you see posted photos. The photos can be viewed in either a detailed view or basic thumbnail view which can be changed through a clever and easy to use drop down menu. There are also a few more ways to sort the photos when viewing them…be sure to check it out.

- We also introduced the concept of ‘hotness.’ Ok, so maybe the concept of hotness has been around since we were born, but we’re bringing it to Yaperture. In the simplest of terms, it’s a quick way to view the highest rated, most recent photos submitted to the site.

- All of your account pages are now fully accessible from any place on the site. By clicking on the ‘My Account’ dropdown, you can easily select what area you want to see. It makes for a fast and easy way to see things you have posted, favorited, and commented on.

- We also would like to introduce a new section called “Yaperture hearts…” . Here you will find things that we deem worthy enough for our users to consider purchasing in the never-ending quest to becoming better photographers. Full disclosure though: anything purchased through “Yaperture hearts…” goes towards making the site bigger and better for you, our loyal users.

Feel free to poke around, post photos, and in general welcome this new site into your hearts. As always feel free to send us feedback, and critiques. Be honest, we can handle it. We hope you enjoy it and thanks again for helping us bring the photo back.

1 Comments

Posted 10 months ago by Chris

Well, as you may have noticed, it has taken us a bit longer than the originally planned two weeks to get the marketplace up and running. While I don’t want to bore you with the technical details (believe me, you don’t want to hear it…I almost fell asleep when Andrew was telling me about it…and he’s usually a good story teller..), the point is that we are finally ready to post up some of the top photos.

So, before we get a flood of questions….why did we chose the ones we did? Going forward, it will be easy to pick out the ones for sale as we’ll get on a regular weekly routine and it will always be apparent which photos are voted to the top. This first time, however, especially with the delay, we had a whole slew of excellent submissions expiring before we had a place to put them. Therefore, we have a bit of a backlog of photos that need to be posted. As I mentioned earlier on ‘The Life Cycle of the [Yaperture] Photograph,’ we have stuck with picking 10 photographs at first which were both the highest rated and were submitted first. Just because your photograph isn’t for sale this week, doesn’t mean it won’t go up in subsequent weeks as we work through this first backlog of top rated photos.

Additionally, we have decided to add an extra week of time for a few of the most recent photos. The reason for this: we don’t want some of the recent submissions to get lost in the mix. Therefore, they’ll be put back on the voting block for a little extra time to have to opportunity to make it to the marketplace.

So the moral of the story: we had a bit of a delay, but we’re ready to sell [your] photos now! And remember…we’re not selling pansy-ass prints here….we’re selling nice, dressed up matted photographs with the highest quality materials. So keep the photos coming and we’ll keep getting them up on the marketplace…

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Posted 11 months ago by Chris

Oh how fast things can change at Yaperture! Barely a week into our fabled launch, and we are already switching things up. First of all, we quickly outgrew our community page (lovingly known as 'yaperturians' in these parts). This is A) because we added users faster than we expected and/or 2)....well, I needed a #2...but see (A) for the real issue. Either way...on to bigger and better things. You'll notice two major changes to this section: a 'Top Contributors' section which lists the top photographers in terms of number and quality of submissions (as voted by you) and a 'Featured Photographer' which is a random selection from our community. The basic idea here is that you can explore some of our more prolific and top rated community in addition to getting a taste of what some other photographers have to offer. All in all, we feel this is a more concise and interesting way to display our community.

The next major change we made is to the 'browse' section. We made quite a few improvements here, some of which are still wrapped up in construction tape which will be taken down in the very near future. When you first go to the browse page, you'll still be taken to the latest submissions. However, with a simple click of a button, you can switch to 'Highest Rated' or 'Most Viewed' (our use of titles is not only supremely creative, it is also quite descriptive, so I won't bore you with the definitions). Each of these views are a bit different, and they will evolve more throughout the next couple of days. The 'Highest Rated' and 'Most Viewed,' for example, will have voting and favorite buttons right on the summary pages. This will make it much easier to see which photos you have voted for and which ones you want to vote up or down....in other words, a much more user friendly and efficient process. The final improvement we're going to make in this phase is the ability to switch between views no matter how you want to organize the photos. In other words...you'll be able to customize until your heart's content!

So that about wraps up yet another exciting update. Again (or maybe for the first time), hit us up with comments and feedback...what do you think of the new layout and what would you change? After all, we're doing the changes for you...so let us know if we missed something!

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Posted 11 months ago by Chris

We've been getting quite a few questions about the life cycle of the photograph here on Yaperture, and since we're a bit light on FAQs at this point, I thought I'd clear up a few things. While I unfortunately can't post some sweet illustrations like The Very Hungry Caterpillar (let's face it, that's the best life cycle book out there), I'll do my best.

The first step is a bit obvious: you, our talented community, post a photo. After that, it is up to you and the rest of the Yaperturians to feed your photo (you see what I did there? a caterpillar reference? I know, brilliant) - each photo has 14 days to get voted up as much as possible. The more votes, the more likely your photo will end up in the marketplace where people can buy prints and you can fatten your pocket (more on that later). Each photo has 14 days for a reason: this puts every submission on equal footing. The submissions are rolling, so there are no cut-off dates for photos chosen for the marketplace. In a couple weeks, based on which photos are ranked the highest, we will pick ten photos to be turned into butterflies (ha!) and sold in the marketplace. After that, we'll pick 5 photos every week (again, based on ranking), and each print will stick around the marketplace page for 4 weeks. For photos that have made it through the initial two week voting period but have not made it to the marketplace, these photos will stick around on the site but voting will be disabled (it's a hard knock life out there! Not every print can be a winner...).

And now for the fun part: if your photo does make it to the marketplace, then you not only get your very own matted version of your photo but also a cut of the action. One of the main goals of Yaperture is to encourage people to actually buy prints....after all, digital photos are fine, but nothing beats a physical photograph. We take all of the orders, print the photographs, mat them on high quality museum grade matting, and protect them in polybags (which is really just fancy talk for a protective wrapper...a photo condom if you will). The photos will be $17 for a 5x8 print and $19 for a 8x10 print. No matter what the size, you walk away with a cool $5 for every photo sold on the site. Obviously, we would love to pay out $17 and $19 to the artist...but we have invested a lot in the quality of the prints and the materials we are using - we're bringing the photo back dressed in a tux, not in sweatpants and a pocket protector. Plus, we're good capitalists and need a bit of money to keep Yaperture moving onto bigger and better things. After all, the bigger audience we have, the more money you make.

We are of course open to all questions and feedback that you have. Our pitiful FAQ page has to be filled up, for example...so lay any questions you have in the comments below or send us a quick note and we'll get back to you lickity split.

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Posted 12 months ago by Andrew

So, I decided that doing an off-site Blogger blog was way too impersonal, so I threw together a blog this morning which will run in-house from Yaperture.com. I'll eventually get an RSS feed up here so you can keep up with the latest happenings off-site. If you are a registered user, you can comment directly on each entry by logging in with your Yaperture username.

We are thrilled at the number of submissions so far and we want to thank everyone for signing up and posting their respective work. There are some truly great photos going up. As you continue to use the site, make note of any problems you might see, anything you don't particularly like, as well as any suggestions you might have. Our goal is to continually fine tune the site so it caters to the needs of the people who use it the most...so keep us in the loop.

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