Viewbook Goals, Activities and Tasks

We are curious how you use Viewbook. Designed as a practical tool Viewbook aims to give people with creative professions a method to easily and professionally present their work. But a Photographer may have other needs than a designer in fulfilling their tasks. While an artist promotes his work in a clean portfolio format, an art gallery needs to be able to quickly select works to show to a potential buyer. Maybe you want to be able to publish directly from Aperture or Photoshop to Viewbook, so your workflow would be perfectly optimized. Or as an Agency you need better Image Management support and multi-user accounts to make Viewbook more valuable.

So what are the activities you use Viewbook for? What goals do you want to achieve? And what would make Viewbook more valuable in achieving those goals?

I’m definitely interested in publishing directly from Aperture or iPhoto personally. I have an account with Smugmug as well because they have a professional turnkey system for selling photos to clients (well, if you’re an event photographer).

However, I would be using Viewbook mainly as my “portfolio”. I would never use Smugmug as my portfolio. It’s too clunky, slow, kludgey, however you want to call it.

Viewbook is slick and polished. I would use Viewbook as my true, professional “face” portfolio website, and only show the best of the best photos.

I would keep maybe 2 or 3 portfolios up on my homepage, but would probably have many more in Permalink.

I would use Viewbook’s Permalink system as an excuse to send out newsletters to friends, clients and potential clients to let them know “new portfolio is up, check out such and such” and then have links to other portfolios that are not on the homepage but in permalink. It’s a great opportunity to touch clients, basically, and let them know they still have access, but maybe also bring back portfolios that have seasonal relevance. Basically, create an “event” of your website.

I’d also use the EMBED sharing features to mention these things in my blog and in other Web 2.0 type things like Meetup and Wetpaint.

So, how do I use Viewbook as part of this marketing-oriented workflow?

I’d want a plug-in that allows me to export albums I’ve created in Aperture or iPhoto just for these marketing purposes. For instance, I have albums that say “best of 2006”, “best of 2007”, “fashion and runway 2008”, “personal mythology series”, etc.

I don’t need Viewbook to be “THE” repository of all of my photos. Only the best. This is my portfolio, not my turnkey system (ie, where I sell photos).

However… if Viewbook started combining its business offerings with the professional turnkey of Smugmug… that would be a match made in heaven!

I’m a three year user of Flickr, and actually tired of that system remaining always the same. I love the stream over there, but they don’t offer high level, good looking quality presentation tools like you do – hey, did I told you that I love Viewbook? :)

I embed single presentations in blog posts, and used a portfolio to create a visual story. And would like the upload feature directly in Picasa, with an automatic resize option (I usually publish 800×533)

I’m an amateur photographer, but a professional journalist. So I’m not in the business of selling photos. But I’d like to enter: I received requests for publication via Flickr a number of times. So I need a system to… be contacted :D