Ralph Lambrecht (left) with FotoTV founder Marc Ludwig
© FotoTV 2010.
Then an email dropped into my box from an outfit called FotoTV drawing my attention to their site. I have become used to most of the innovation on the web coming out of the United States, but in FotoTV a German company Stellar Attractions, has put together the best photography web video site I've seen.
Forget most of that wobbly stuff on YouTube and Vimeo, FotoTV is professional, interesting and more important, informative. It's aimed primarily, at professional photographers although entirely suitable for advanced amateurs, and it chock full of videos about, and featuring, big name international photographers. FotoTV is available in German and English language versions. With the German site Fototv.de being in operation for a couple of years whilst Fototv.com has been on the web a bit over a year.
There
are claimed to be almost 700 different videos on the German site and about
180 on the English, which is being expanded rapidly with new programs
being added each month.
I'll get the bad news over first — FotoTV is a subscription
site — or it is to access all of the material on it. And as far
as I am concerned it doesn't present a problem ... if you want to read
what I think of the Free versus Paid sites debate, Click
here.
The English version currently costs €49.95 ($US69.95; $A75) for a year's subscription, a 58.5% reduction on its normal rate. In my mind that's a real bargain — as a comparison, Australian Pro Photo is $A7.95 per copy.