The past few months has seen an unprecedented number of economic, market, and political changes. Dave and I have been absorbing the implications of all these changes just like the rest of you have. These changes have definitely increase the challenges faced by FocalPower as a boot-strapping startup. Regardless, we continue forward with even more enthusiasm behind what we are doing because we believe that:

• the FocalPower vision speaks even louder today to the challenges facing photographers
• recent changes in the photography market only validates FocalPower’s vision and plan

Dave and I have both been busy with our day jobs (which is what currently funds FocalPower toward our initial service launch).  Yet we still burn the midnight oil working on the FocalPower Photo Asset Management service.  And we are both excited at the continual interest and increasing usage of the Photo Quote Widget, now serving up thousands of quotes daily!

On a personal note, Dave and his fiancé took a long weekend break a few months back to sneak off to elope with a handful of friends in attendance. Congratulations Dave!

Life changes and changing times aside, we have been hard at work executing against our launch plan. As we push toward a public beta of the service, we have expanded our development team by bringing on additional contractors. We are also looking for even more contractors, specifically Flash developers.  Any talented flash developers out there who have a passion for photography or digital media and want to strut their stuff to the world as part of the FocalPower Photo Asset Management service, get in touch with us!

As we march forward to a public beta, we do have early access passes available to those who enjoy getting their hands on the latest technology and understand the rigors of early product release (i.e., working with an evolving service, running a service through it’s paces, providing feedback to help shape the future of a service).

Interested? Send us an email to the contact us address on the main website.  And make sure you convince us of why you should earn the priveldge of an early access pass.  We’ll get in touch with your early access pass.

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I found this an interesting targeted vertical market for some photographers to cater to.  If you have experience capturing architecture, why not leverage it in a new way?  Marketing this type of service as a high end service to a high end clientele is important.  You want to remove the C and B clients from the A clients as soon as possible.

Of course, being a photographer in the right market helps.  Offering this service in New York City, San Francisco, Miami, or Los Angeles and you can build a nice little revenue stream to feed into your business river.  Offering this in Nashville, San Antonio, Milwaukee, or Los Alamos most likely isn’t going to be worth the business investement.  However, keeping your eye out for new focused vertical markets is smart regardless of your locale.

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Vote your opinion on the situation and leave a comment with more details explaining your opinion.  FocalPower is interesting in a discussion about the professionalism around Jill Greenberg’s actions as a photographer, please keep the disucssion focused on the profession of photography.  We reserve the right to delete comments that stray to far into political rhetoric.

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World Trade Center Tribute in Light was taken by New York City photographer Jon C. Hodgson. It has been featured in various New York City area publications and used here with permission.

Bruised & Battered But Still Standing was taken by me during a trip to New York City in April of 2002. The Sphere was a sculpture that was part of the World Trade Center plaza fountain and (mostly) survived 9/11. It was moved, in it’s damaged state, to Battery Park where this photo was taken.

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1001 Noisy Cameras recently posted a blurb about the FocalPower Photo Quote Widget.  The Photo Quote Widget is still enjoying continued popularity and support from the online photography community.  1001 Noisy Cameras is a great source for digital camera news, rumors and more.  (note: they recenlty underwent a blog transition).  With Photokina 2008 coming up soon, the Photokina Situation Room is useful to keep track of all the noise and news coming from this industry event.

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The impact of this on photographers will be a hit to your business bottom line.  Depending on how many photos you upload or transmit over the internet to customers every month, you’re business costs for broadband service could be going up over time.  And that’s before considering the future that video will have for photographers.

In addition, the online backup solution previously mentioned will be much more difficult to use.   The issue with these services is always performing the initial backup of all your data.  When that data is 100’s of Gigabytes or multiple Terabytes of data, having a monthly cap of 250 Gigabytes means that the initial backup could take months or cost you extra fees.

One thing that hasn’t been mentioned by Comcast is what affect this usage cap will have on the pricing of their broadband offerings.  If they are now limiting their unlimited bandwidth, I image many customers will be expecting to pay less for the capped service. But will Camcast and other broadband providers who cap their usage agree?

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Want to explain in more detail your answer? Leave a comment and explain away..

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