I blogged on Wednesday about the photo archiving site Digital Railroad's abrupt shutdown, leaving thousands of professional photographer customers confused and worried. On Thursday, I got a statement saying that the site will extend the window time until Friday, October 31, 11:59 p.m. PST, for customers to migrate their photo archives.
(Credit:
Dong Ngo/CNET Networks)
The statement comes from both PhotoShelter and Diablo Management Group, the firm in charge of the shut down the defunct Digital Railroad, and reads:
As part of the process of terminating the business operations of Digital Railroad, Diablo Management Group has informed PhotoShelter of its intent to shut down the DRR site as early as 11:59 p.m PST on Friday October 31. After this point, it is very likely that all the images located on the Digital Railroad servers could be permanently inaccessible. Given the strong possibility of this event, PhotoShelter, on its own initiative, is strongly suggesting that customers migrate their files from Digital Railroad immediately. Digital Railroad, at the present time, has no plans or resources to accomplish this task.
Earlier this week, on Tuesday, upon announcing the termination of operations, DRR stated it would provide only 24 hours of server access, which actually lasted only about 10 hours. This tiny window of time was exceedingly insufficient both in terms of making the news known to concerned parties, as well as time to download their photos off DRR's server.
Although the extension through October 31 is still short, it will provide more time to help photographers find backup options and transition their online presence. Both DRR and PhotoShelter stress that the situation is highly fluid and the deadline could be altered with little or no notice.
Since Tuesday, PhotoShelter has offered DRR customers a special three-month free offer and FTP solution to help migrate their images.
If you are a customer of DRR or know somebody who is, it is time to take action before it is late.
Related story:
If my eyes serve me right, you are gone.
If the news about bank collapses hasn't devastated you enough, I have another depressing one. This time it comes from the Internet, but is no less devastating for a good number of people, hopefully not including you.
As of Wednesday, if you go to the Web site of Digital Railroad you will be greeted with this:
To our valued Members and Partners:
We deeply regret to inform you that Digital Railroad (DRR) has shut down.
On October 15th we reported that the company had reduced its staff and was aggressively pursuing additional financing and/or a strategic partner. Unfortunately, those efforts were unsuccessful. Therefore Digital Railroad has been forced to close all operations.
Digital Railroad has attracted a loyal set of customers and partners, and we regret this unfortunate outcome. Without sufficient long-term financial support, the business had become unsustainable.
Thank you for allowing us to serve the photographic community these past few years.
The once popular Web site, where professional photographers archived and sold their photos, is now gone, completely. As it turned out, at about 5 p.m. EDT on Monday, the Web site alerted existing customers about the shutdown and gave them a 24-hour window to download their photo archive. However, just about 10 hours after the alert, the site was shut down completely.
It's unclear now if customers can still somehow retrieve their photo archive or will get money back for the undelivered services.
In the meantime, PhotoShelter is offering Digital Railroad customers a special offer--three month's credit for their Digital Railroad account. The offer is set to expire November 4.
Take the offer or not, but definitely take this as lesson that you can't rely 100 percent on online archiving services. It's best to keep a copy of your data offline as well.
Photoshelter's new storage plan offers 1TB for $1,000 per year.
(Credit: Photoshelter)Photoshelter has announced that it will now offer its standard- ($29.99 per month) and professional-level ($49.99 per month) members one terabyte of redundant storage for $1,000 per year. If that's too much storage for you, you can also opt for 500GB for $600 per year. Obviously this won't appeal to snapshooters, but it is among the most affordable Web-based bulk storage options for professional photographers at the moment. Photoshelter's standard members already get 35GB of storage with their monthly membership, while professional members get 100GB. The site also offers a basic membership with 10GB of storage at $9.99 per month. Why does this matter? Well...
Lots of Web sites offer a place to show off your photos (Webshots or Flickr), and discount online stock photo agencies let you sell your photos for pocket change, but neither of these solutions help pro photographers who want to make a living off of their work. Photoshelter lets you show off and sell your images online at prices you control, while storing your work in a pair of servers in a RAID configuration for full redundant backup. Plus, since the servers are located on opposite sides of the continental United States, Photoshelter offers another level of protection against catastrophes that could destroy your images, such as earthquakes or tornadoes.
Since storage isn't everything, Photoshelter also includes pricing assistance through its partnership with FotoQuote, so Photoshelter members can take advantage of a database of photo pricing information when trying to figure out what to charge for their images. Another partnership with online photofinisher EZ Prints lets you choose between automatic or personal fulfillment of print orders. Plus, since you can customize your Photoshelter page, you can easily integrate it into your current Web site, or create a new one with a personalized, professional look.
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