Brian Matiash is a professional photographer and published author based in Portland, Oregon. He specializes in landscape & travel photography and has spent the better part of a decade educating and inspiring photographers all around the world with his tutorials, videos, and stories. He is a partner with some of the world’s best photography and technology companies, all of whom play vital roles in his creative workflow. He is a Sony Artisans of Imagery, a Zeiss Lens Ambassador, and a member of G-Technology’s G-Team. He also contributes regularly to a variety of photography publications, both online and in print. Admittedly, he has (not-so) tiny obsessions with long-exposure photography, neutral density filters and fisheye lenses. His passion is helping others help themselves with their pursuits of photography.
The WordPress Photography Podcast
The WordPress Photography Podcast
Episode 16 - Don’t Be Lackadaisical About Your Security w/ Brian Matiash







/

brian-matiashBrian Matiash is a professional photographer and author based in Portland, Oregon although he's originally a New Yorker. He specializes in landscape & travel photography and has spent the better part of a decade educating and inspiring photographers all around the world with his tutorials, videos, and stories.

Brian is a partner with some of the some amazing photography and technology companies, like Sony, Zeiss, G-Technology, and Imagely.

Brian has obsessions with long-exposure photography, neutral density filters, and fisheye lenses. His passion is helping others help themselves with their pursuits of photography.  Brian is also the husband of another incredible photographer and educator, Nicole S Young.

WordPress/Photography Related News:

Referenced Links:

Where to find Brian:

Transcription:

Transcription was done by Rev.com

Scott: Welcome to episode 16. My name is Scott Wyden Kivowitz, and I am joined by my co-host Rachel from FotoSkribe. Hey, Rachel.

Rachel: Hey, Scott. How are you?

Scott: I'm doing all right. Ready for another episode. The last episode we spoke with Mark from Flothemes, and that was a really cool conversation. Everybody who is listening and watching learned a lot about image sizes and things like that. That was a really cool conversation.

Rachel: Yeah, they really get to interact with a lot of photographer's websites so to hear their insights about trends and things they've seen, that was a really great talk.

Scott: I'm really excited about today's episode. Today we have Brian Matiash. He's a professional photographer and author based in Portland, Oregon, although he's originally a New Yorker, and then Massachusetts, and now Portland.

Brian: a Brief stint in California.

Scott: a Brief stint in California. Brian specialized in landscape and travel photography, and he's spent the better part of a decade educating and inspiring photographers all around the world with his tutorials, videos, and stories. He is a partner with some amazing photography and technology companies like Sony, Zeiss, G-Technology, and of course Imagely. What's so funny?

Brian: I love the ... No, it's really nice cadence. I appreciate it. Thanks.

Scott: He has a odd obsession with long-exposure photographer, very odd. No, I'm just kidding. I think I do, too. Neutral density filters, fish-eye lenses, and now toys. Where's your toy, Brian? Where's your toy?

Brian: Toys.

Scott: Toys.

Rachel: If you guys are listening instead of watching, we are getting some toy action on the video.

Scott: Brian's passion is helping others help themselves with their pursuits of photography. Brian is also the husband of another incredible photographer and educator, Nicole S. Young, who we will also have on the show at some point in the future.

Rachel: Nice. That's like a power team right there.

Scott: Yeah, it is.

Brian: The power's mostly with her.

Rachel: That's the way it should be.

Brian: Happy wife, happy life.

Rachel: Right?

Scott: Yes. Before we get into what's going on with you, Brian, let's talk a little bit about some WordPress photography related news. This week we have, it's a little less on the photography side, more on the WordPress side, but three small snippits of news. One being Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com and the main development of WordPress software, will soon be their own registrar for .blog domains and those will be available for purchase exclusively through Automattic originally. It's not actually from Automattic.com, it's from a sub, another site, so we'll link to that in the show notes where you can reserve your .blog domain today.

Brian: Have they mentioned the pricing for that?

Scott: Not yet, not yet. They also opened for other registrars to basically license the .blog domain through them, so eventually it will also be available through hovers and stuff like that, Google domains and stuff, but it'll all be licensed through Automattic in the end which is interesting.

Rachel: For photographers, is this ... We always tell photographers that the best use of WordPress is to all be on one domain.

Scott: Correct.

Rachel: To purchase suchandstuffphotography.blog, unless you're running an actual blog for it may not be ...

Scott: Right. It may not be the best for photographers overall but there are photographers who still continue to separate their website from their blog so in that case maybe it's worth it. The other thing is just for having the security of having the domain.

Brian: Yeah, I have 30 or so URLs that all they do is forward to matiash.com.

Scott: Yeah. In that case it's one of those things that might be worth investing in, depending on how much that they price it. I mean, if it's $100 a year it may not be worth it.

Rachel: Is it something like where you buy the domain and then you still have a different hosting plan, right? Like Imagely or GoDaddy or ...

Scott: That is soon to be determined.

Rachel: Okay, all right. We don't even know that yet. Awesome.

Scott: We don't even know. Right now it's really just a landing page where you can reserve your domain .blog. We'll see. The next thing is Caldera Forms, if you are using Caldera Forms, it's a form plugin, there is a medium severity security update so make sure it actually is, as of today which is May 24th, the time we're recording this, they just released an update. They're saying it's medium severity. They didn't say specifically what it is, but update it if you are using Caldera Forms. The last bit is WordPress 4.6 is already in development and there's a bunch of things they're doing but one of the changes they're making is an accessibility improvement to the tagging category pages. For those who don't know what accessibility is, that means anybody who is deaf or blind or has some sort of disability, there will be enhancements towards that on the tag and category screens specifically.

Rachel: I wonder how that's going to affect SEO because I know if you have a disability sometimes you can interact with the web different using readers that will actually read the webpages and that's what the categories and tags were originally ...

Scott: Well this is for the backend, right now. SEO-wise it wouldn't make a difference only because it's only in your admin, it's not touching your front end yet.

Rachel: Okay, because I know for photographers, categories and tags are the places where they put in those SEO keywords even though the original intent of categories and tags were to be for the accessibility community to be able to access the webpages in a different way. If you can't see the images, but you can read the alt tags in the categories, that's what they're originally used for.

Scott: Yep. Exactly. Okay, so there's the news. Brian, what's going on in your side of the country?

Brian: Well, Scott, it's a lovely, what is it, 56 degrees and overcast skies.

Scott: Nice.

Brian: Nice. Things are, photography-wise, we're kind of winding, kind of starting to wind down at least in the gorge waterfall shooting because the temperature increases and rain decreases and so the water flow, I can tell, is starting to go down but more in my digital life pretty much for the past month or so has been focused on live streaming with Facebook and that's [inaudible 00:07:29] most of my time. I shouldn't be surprised at how time-consuming it is, but I haven't been this excited about something in a long time actually, the action figures here that I'm going to be photographing. I'm so excited for that. The live streaming, it's nothing new with Periscope and Meerkat and stuff, but with Facebook because of that social graph that they have, the opportunities are ...

Rachel: Yeah, that was going to be my question because it isn't brand new, but what is it about it that excites you as a photography educator?

Brian: Specifically, unlike Periscope or anything, except for YouTube Live, YouTube Live is the closest comparable platform. With my Facebook show, which is just called The Photo Show, I can leverage software at hardware that, instead of just using my mobile phone which is currently what anyone can do, and with Periscope you can only do, I can leverage my two Sony cameras, have a two-camera setup, with my wireless Sennheiser mic and graphical animations make it kind of like ... I model it after kind of The Daily Show, kind of that format. Very loosely, obviously, I'm not a comedian and I don't have an entire staff of people producing it. That's the ability to use these capture cards and my a7 mirrorless cameras allows me to produce at a higher quality than most people.

Rachel: How do you do the switching? I didn't know Facebook had the ability to do that kind of technology.

Brian: It doesn't. The software I use is called Wirecast. If you're familiar with an app called ScreenFlow, that's by the same company. Wirecast was one of the first people out of the gate. At Facebook's FA conference last month, I think it was last month, it was a couple weeks ago, they opened up their API, their realtime messaging protocol, API, to third parties who basically they're allowing these third parties to publish streams. It's not Facebook that's handling the camera switching and everything. It's this Wirecast software. I'm sitting there on camera and I'm doing the switching. Normally, you'd have a producer off-screen who's doing everything but I don't have that luxury. I kind of like ... At first I was very self conscious about it, like super self-conscious, like if you start the first three episodes.

One, I made a ton of bungles not knowing the software, because it was an evolution. It was like laboratory science is what I called it. I was learning on the fly. There were times where I didn't set my audio correctly when I switched the graphic and I'd lose audio, that kind of stuff. I've gotten pretty comfortable with it now and like any show, the product is a reflection of the preparation you put into it so I always, before any show, I always have to go out and create the graphics and get all the assets ready to lay everything out and get the animations set and then there's the whole I have to do a prep video to my profile page saying, "Hey, we're going live in like 30 minutes." It's a whole thing.

Rachel: You've made it into a show. You've really made it into a production quality versus what most people think of Facebook Live for as an impromptu sort of selfie session. That's great as solo photographers, it almost opens up this unlimited usage.

Brian: It does. Had I known that all I needed to do was get a Chewbacca mask and just start laughing I would have done that.

Rachel: Do you not love her? I love her!

Brian: You know what, I watched that video. At first I was like, "What's going on?" and it wasn't until she started just that busting out laughing and then if you wait until the very end, she says, "It's the simple things in life," or something like that. That was, then the video ends, and I think that was such a great way to end the video. Totally. She was just on James Corden, the carpool karaoke type thing.

Rachel: Yeah. If you guys don't know what we're talking about and you're listening to think, you need to Google, "Happy Chewbacca Video," it just went viral I think this past week. Again, we're May 24th here. She is making the circuit of the morning shows. She's just full of joy. You can't not laugh with her and enjoy life with her.

Scott: You can tell that it was 100% genuine. There was nothing phony about it.

Brian: I think she was expecting like ten people to watch it. It's now the most viewed Facebook Live video. It's like over 120 million views. Cable companies would slaughter their kids to have that type of ...

Rachel: Right? No, for sure! Again, she took that selfie style, like we were talking about, and not the production that you're talking about, but just sort of one person. She made it genuine. I think that really is the best word for it. It wasn't about her, her day, per say, it wasn't about negativity, it was about just like, "Hey, guys. I'm here. This is awesome."

Scott: Yup. Did you see the followup video that Kohl's did?

Rachel: No.

Brian: I saw that they sent her a bunch of stuff.

Scott: I think they Facebook Lived it. I don't know if they did, or if they just recorded it and posted it, but they actually went to her day and presented her with a bunch of Star Wars toys, including masks for her kids, so her kids don't have to take hers.

Brian: Confiscate.

Scott: Yeah.

Brian: I love that, she's like, "confiscate."

Scott: They also gave her a whole bunch of Kohl's giftcards, like 5 grand worth or some large amount like that, plus 40,000 Kohl's Rewards points and a whole bunch of stuff like that.

Rachel: They should! Talk about free advertising, right?

Scott: I think that's ... It's not specific to WordPress but photographer businesses should take something from that, the fact that someone is talking about their store in a video that a lot of people have seen and they didn't have to do that, they didn't have to give it to her, but they took advantage of that virality and sort of just enhanced how fun that was and sort of made themselves as a brand look good, piggy backed on just a fun video. There's ways that photographers could do this if people are talking about their services whether it's just rewarding that person with, "Hey, thanks for mentioning. Here's a money off your next session or something like that."

Rachel: I think anytime someone talks about your business in a positive way, whether is Facebook Live, whether it's a review, there's always uses to share. I think that's sort of what ties Facebook Live into WordPress or to ... The reason that Periscope or Meerkat didn't really take off is because It doesn't have that sharing ability that Facebook Live does. Is there a functionality where you can share a Facebook Live on a WordPress blog?

Scott: Yep.

Rachel: I mean, right there, there you go, right?

Scott: Actually, one of the topics I want to talk about was actually how, Brian, you ... I know the answer here, but I want you to talk about how you're sharing these videos on your website and why you're sharing on your website and what you do different on a website than you do on Facebook.

Rachel: Yeah, I'd be very interesting in that, too.

Brian: Sure, yeah. I knew you were going there, Scott. There's a lot of, I guess ... What's the word. Dimensions. I am conflicted in a lot of ways. Let's start just with the simple broadcast itself before we even get to the archive. Right now, my Facebook profile has like 262,000 followers. Great. Happy. Whatever. My page, which is currently where I broadcast my show to, that has just like 4,200 followers. The reason why I've been so adamant about going to the page is the page gives you more robust metrics, it gives you the ability to boost posts. Facebook, they're quite clear that I'm doing these live videos to promote my brand and my brand is not ... Technically it's an individual, it's a person, but I consider myself a corporate, like I have Matiash Incorporated, and so I'm like a company.

Rachel: You are your business, you are your brand.

Brian: Exactly. The first thing, Scott, is I kind of wasn't sure should I be publishing to my profile because it has, in theory, a much larger audience but then it's subject to Facebook's algorithm, yadda, yadda. I ended up going with the page because I'm trying to grow it organically but I am also boosting some of the episodes that I'm really happy with the outcome, like the quality of it, I'm boosting those. I'll do $5 a day in Facebook ads. To your question, Scott, in terms of algorithm, here's how it works. Wirecast has multiple output methods. One of the output methods is Facebook Live and it uses the real time messaging protocol. Facebook limits a maximum resolution of 720P. That's their thing, it's not on the user end. That's all well and good to a degree. It's high enough quality to watch streaming on your mobile fun and you start to kind of get this decline as you view it on high resolution displays. Fine. To mitigate that, though, Wirecast allows you to record simultaneously locally so while I'm streaming I'm also recording locally at 1080P. The audio doesn't have to be compressed over Facebook.

Scott: The audio sounds better as well as the video looking better.

Brian: Exactly. I take that recorded file, I open it up immediately to ScreenFlow and I shave off the 5 minute countdown timer that I use. When I go live, the first couple episodes when I went live I got feedback that, "Hey, I saw you went live but you were already a few minutes into the show when I got in," so I built a countdown timer in after effects so basically if the show starts at 3:00, the 5 minute countdown starts at 3, so at 3:05 I cue my bumper which is 9 seconds long and then I go into the show. For the recording that I post to YouTube, I want to shave that off. Facebook, you can't edit a video on Facebook and you can't replace a video.

Rachel: That's good to know.

Brian: Yeah, so if you look at my countdown timer, below the clock itself it says, "If you're viewing replay, skip past this timer," because I want people to know. The other thing that I do with the countdown timer is I set the opacity to about 70% so that below the countdown timer I have the main camera feed so that you can see me. You can see that there's something going on. It's not just a static countdown timer. Again, back to Scott's point. I take that 1080P file and I upload it to YouTube. When it's uploaded and it's processed, I create a blog post on my WordPress blog and I embed the YouTube video and I [inaudible 00:21:00] it there.

Another conflict I have is ... For instance, this morning, I sent out a newsletter my e-news to my audience, and I'm always torn because I don't know whether I should push them to the Facebook post which gives me a higher view count and in theory I don't know if that's going to help with Facebook algorithm, or do I send them to my post on my website which gets my blog higher session count, also increases my YouTube view count. One is more self-serving. I feel if I sent them to Facebook that's self-serving because I feel like I'm giving them a lesser quality video but the bottom line is this is ... The way I build the show is this is the first Facebook Live show focused on photography and video. There's a lot of minor discrepancies I guess or things I'm really kind of trying to rationalize.

Rachel: I wonder if you reached out to Facebook if they'll start to ... I mean, this is the only situation so far on social media where you don't start your social media at WordPress and then share it on Facebook, you're starting it on Facebook and then you're sharing through the methods you talked about, YouTube and exporting in a different API on your WordPress.

Brian: Actually, let me touch on that though. Yeah, Rachel, that's a fair point. Before this whole setup before they opened up their API, what I would do is I would do my live show ... It wasn't even a live show, they were live video segments. I would record them on my phone and I used Reflector, which is a Mac app, and it essentially allows me to mirror my iPhone display. The reason I did that is because I would broadcast using the rear camera, the display I couldn't see it, so I used the reflector on my display. Here's the phone, and I'd use the reflector to make sure I'm composed properly. With Facebook Live, when you record on a phone there's a switch that says, "save local copy." That's actually not the point. The point is when the post was done, the live stream was done and the post and the video was there, there are Facebook plugins, it's like short codes I think, that will embed the Facebook video in a blog post.

Rachel: Okay, so you can do it that way. What you're sacrificing then though is the imagine quality and the audio quality.

Brian: Correct. The resolution. The overall experience.

Scott: Some of the advantages of having the content on your blog are branding, it's on your websites, people are there, they can navigate to other content, subscribe to your email list and so on, buy an e-book, buy presets, whatever. You also have the chance for link building. For example, we're going to be linking to one of your episodes. In fact, I think one of the ones I want to link to in the show notes is the video when you talk about how you're actually doing it, when you show the equipment. That's a link. That's helping your STO because now you have us linking to your site, you're going to have other ... Resource Magazine might pick up the fact that you're doing the first Facebook photo show, right? There's more link building from a great media website. You're going to wind up getting more and more of that which, in turn, will help you more than just having it on Facebook, right? Now you're building up your STO for your entire site but also you also increase the chances of getting more people on your email list which is far more important than just a Facebook like, right?

Brian: Yeah, and it's funny, I'll have these kinds of conversations and I'll start to second guess myself because now I'm like, "Well, should I do the best of both worlds," meaning create the post on my website but embed from Facebook instead of YouTube and just kind of let YouTube get it's views organically on YouTube through my subscribers there because I feel like I'm running 2 races at the same time. I really should be focused on either bolstering my Facebook view count or my YouTube view count.

Rachel: Well, I think you're one of the first ones, so it's sort of like you're the test case, you know?

Brian: I guess so. I'm happy to do it. I just ... I might ...

Rachel: I know. I don't know that there's a right answer. I think that this discussion is ... My end, where I see the discussion going, again, is SEO. Where do you want the traffic? What is more important to you? We always say from a WordPress point of view that you do want all this traffic back to your blog, back to your website, because it translates into other things like link building and email list building, but some of the questions that I get as a blogger is, "We're on Facebook, all of our clients are on Facebook, why do we even care about the blog anymore?" Obviously my answer is, "Because you own the blog, it is a place for link building, it is all those things we discussed", but in this situation where you're talking about Facebook Live specifically, what is more important? Is it the Facebook likes, or is it the link building, or is it just putting out great content?

Scott: To me, the fact that you can build up an email list by getting people to go to the site and you can ... Brian already has a really great ... Is it weekly right now? Weekly email?

Brian: No, it's funny. I did a SurveyMonkey poll awhile back and I asked people what's the frequency that they would prefer and this one guy, he did "Other", and qualified it by saying, "Whenever you have something to say."

Scott: Right.

Rachel: Interesting.

Scott: So it's not really on a schedule.

Brian: 5-10 days, I would say.

Scott: Or 7-10.

Brian: Basically.

Scott: You're already putting out a lot of content, great content, in the email that you send out. To be able to push people into the live stream to be able to interact with you live is great, so that's one thing. You're building up your email list and then you're able to send them to Facebook through the email list. The other advantage is, when you do the Facebook ads, you can actually target your email list.

Rachel: Right.

Scott: Specifically. At the same time, you can get people to like it by them subscribing to your email list or your website.

Rachel: For people listening who are photographers and may not know the technology, Scott, can you walk someone through the Facebook linking to your email list?

Scott: Facebook has a section called "audiences," I think. When you create an audience, you have the ability to ... If you use MailChimp you can actually link, basically authorize Facebook to access your MailChimp account and it'll automatically import your MailChimp list.

Brian: Don't you have to pay ... Isn't that an additional fee with MailChimp, though?

Scott: As long as you're a paying customer, not a free customer, then they give you access to the API.

Rachel: Yeah, I think you have to be at the paying level at MailChimp versus the free level.

Brian: Oh, I thought there was an additional service called like ...

Scott: Social profiles, I think.

Brian: Something like that.

Scott: That's actually in the reports for your [crosstalk 00:28:58].

Brian: Okay, never mind.

Scott: Yeah, that tells you the interactivity of that list member in the report.

Brian: Got it.

Scott: If you don't use MailChimp, if you use [inaudible 00:29:12] or something like that, you can actually export a CSV file of your list and upload that into Facebook's audiences and it'll do the same thing as MailChimp's auto one would do, where it looks at the email addresses, correlates the Facebook accounts to those email addresses, and then you can save that as an audience and target that audience specifically in your ads.

Rachel: We should say, I mean because it's a WordPress podcast, that Facebook has that functionality of the audience building, but when you use these tools, like MailChimp in conjunction with both WordPress and Facebook, so WordPress you can pull in the addresses, and then Facebook you can target the addresses, you really can create a complete circle of engagement. I don't even know the right business words parts of it, but really all these things work in conjunction with each other so it's not just Facebook, just MailChimp, just WordPress, but all together. You know?

Brian: Yeah, that's the beauty of APIs, as long as ...

Scott: Yeah. In previous episodes we talked about the idea of podcasting or doing webinars and now live streaming for clients. There's two approaches to this. One being what you're doing, which is photo education. Your clients are photographers, right? The idea of you doing a podcast like this or a webinar or your Facebook Live show, that's super beneficial, right?

Brian: I hope so.

Scott: Yes. It's doing really well already, but there's another idea of doing it to clients who pay you, I'm not talking to photographers, I'm talking to the mom who wants family photos, right? We talked to Bryan Caporicci about podcasting for clients. I forgot who we talked to about webinars for clients. What's your view on ... I know you don't really do much as far as the consumer level.

Rachel: Weddings, portraits.

Scott: Clients, yeah. You're more of a B to B as far as your photo business goes, but what's your take on doing any of those to B to C clients? There may not be. If you don't see a benefit, that's fine.

Rachel: That's where we got with the podcasting because it was audio based, right? This is video based. What do you think?

Brian: To me, I do this primarily just to build mind share to my brand. I don't think that what I do is kind of unique just to me or to B to B type of business. What I'm seeing is, I'm just looking at trends. I know that video ... firstly, just video has been booming. Especially consumption on mobile, it's been booming. It doesn't take a genius to see how much effort Facebook is putting into live streaming. You combine the two together with a little bit of elbow grease and a little bit of money because WireCast was $500 and the hardware, if you don't already have the hardware. Fortunately I had the hardware ready. It's thousands of dollars. Doesn't necessarily have to be.

Rachel: Yeah, it doesn't have to be.

Brian: It doesn't have to be but, again, when I do something that for instance I'm going to be putting a lot of time into I want to make sure I do it right. That doesn't necessarily mean that it has to be right out of the gate. Like I said, first couple of episodes, they're almost like a blooper reel, but I'm a big fan of taking my audience on a journey. I think the only, I guess, mistake for someone who's doing things at a wedding or portrait kind of photography business is to not do anything.

Rachel: Yeah.

Scott: Right. You want to try to do something that will make you stand out.

Brian: Which is totally easier said than done. Here's the thing. Bottom line. This is kind of how I approach everything I do is the most valuable thing that someone can give me is their time and if you're giving me your time then I owe it to you to give you the best that I can, meaning something worthwhile. Which is why, when I first started this show actually, I did it daily, like Monday through Friday. After 4 episodes, I completely fizzled out.

Rachel: That's a lot.

Brian: It was intense.

Scott: It's a good thing you didn't name the show The Daily Photo Show, then.

Brian: You're so right, because I looked back at the posts and I never referenced it as the first daily Facebook Live show, so I was like cool, I have kind of a reprieve. I'm setting a goal to do every other day, Monday, Wednesday, Friday. It's a bit more sustainable.

Scott: Still a lot of work.

Brian: It's a lot of work, and if tomorrow, Wednesday, comes around and I don't feel like I have enough for a show, there's not going to be a show. The other thing is I still haven't nailed down ... Every show has been a different time so far and that's something I want to fix because I'm experimenting to see if there's a particular time of day.

Scott: When you're looking at this, this is another thing for everybody listening or watching, you're looking at your insights, right? Your Facebook insights?

Brian: Oh, yeah.

Scott: It actually can tell you when people are on Facebook, when the people who like your page are on Facebook. This goes back to what you were saying originally how all those 200,000 followers you have on your personal profile, you get no analytics.

Brian: Correct.

Scott: You do on the page, that's why you're trying hard to push people from your personal followers to your Facebook so you can get 200,000 people worth of data instead of 4,000.

Rachel: Right, and the data's so clear in terms of Facebook stuff.

Scott: They're even growing their video data now that video's so big on Facebook. You're getting more and more analytics as far as the video specifically goes.

Brian: Totally.

Rachel: I do see an application for wedding and portrait photographers. Not necessarily like, I don't know that I would tell a wedding photographer to go out on the day of someone's wedding, but setting up a style shoot and letting clients know what the experience is with you as the photographer or doing a family shoot with clients that are doing it for trade. I do see Facebook Live, because it also has the archive capabilities that you mentioned, so I think more than both the podcast and the webinars, this is definitely a new avenue for photographers to explore with their clients too, more than anything I think we've talked about.

Scott: It may not work for majority of photographers, but try, fail, try.

Brian: Listen, there are certain variables that you have to be very comfortable with that aren't present in something like a ... Well, I guess a webinar is live, but you have to be really comfortable with presenting yourself, but also even more importantly how you handle when something messes up which it variably will mess up.

Rachel: I feel like Facebook Live is a lot easier, and I know you said the WireCast, you're taking it definitely to a next level production wise and I think that's great because I think there are people who are listening that are going to love that and want to emulate that. I come from a TV production background so to me this is total geek out stuff.

Brian: The interface reminds me as if I was a newscast producer.

Rachel: Yeah, and you can do that in your house! Right? That's awesome.

Brian: Yeah, I can do it right here. I mean, here. This is the setup. There is the main camera. It's on a video tripod. The camera's behind a teleprompter.

Rachel: Wow.

Brian: Yeah, and then I have a little Atomos Ninja Assassin because I can't see the composition so that's a monitor there, and then right there is my side camera. Then I've got these LED banks with a Puff's Plus diffuser.

Rachel: You really have a professional setup, and you've taken the Facebook Live to the next level, but a photographer could do this with their phone and being out in the field and have an assistant holding it and talking at the same time. To be able to do both super high quality production level and then super ... I'm not calling it low production level, but ease of production level, like you don't have to have a degree in television production to do it, I think that opens it up to everybody. Then the archival properties, the fact that you can bring it back to WordPress whether or not you use the YouTube or the 1080, those discussions aside, the fact that you can do it makes all the difference. We're always on this cutting edge of stuff. I see this as an application that a lot of photographers can use to their audiences of people who want their pictures taken.

Scott: Before we move on, the last thing I want to say about this is, and Brian touches on this, if you're going to attempt this, and you're going to go the route that Brian did for WireCast, it's easier with a team to produce it than it is to manage it by yourself, but it is manageable by yourself.

Rachel: Is WireCast Mac only because I know Screenflow is, right?

Brian: No, this is cross platform.

Rachel: Okay. Do you want to move into ... Our next section is usually guest recommended WordPress plugins and/or themes. We talked a lot about Facebook, but how do you use WordPress and what do you use in WordPress that you would recommend to other people?

Brian: Totally. Currently my site is built upon ... The theme is X Theme. Scott has actually helped me quite a bit over the years. The one plugin, though, from a photographer's perspective, the one plugin, Scott knows this, that I'm pretty adamant about, is FooBox. It's a third party Lightbox app but it's, in my opinion, one of the most elegant ones.

Rachel: Is it F-O-O?

Brian: Yeah. FooBox. I just like the way it works, the animation that it has when you open up a photo in Lightbox. For me, the number one requirement for my website is every single image has to open up in a Lightbox, the featured image, any image embedded in the post. I also like it because when the Lightbox opens up, if you hover over it, you get these little share intent icons so you can share to Facebook like right there.

Rachel: Right, from the Lightbox.

Brian: Yep. In terms of a plugin that I really just got into and actually talked about it on my show yesterday, it's called ... Let me actually get the, I'll go into my plugins page because you can customize the name in the sidebar of WordPress. It's called miniOrange Two Factor Authentication.

Scott: miniOrange?

Brian: Yeah.

Scott: I'm curious about it. Aside from, because I've never heard of that one, I'm curious if you can tell us a little bit about it, but also why you went with that instead of the Google Authentication.

Brian: miniOrange, I went through miniOrange because one, it was really highly rated when I did a Google search for Two Factor Authentication plugins. I think that was the number one.

Rachel: We should probably stop and say what is Two Factor Authentication for.

Scott: Sure.

Brian: Two Factor Authentication is a concept, a security concept, of combining something you know with something you have. When you log into any account with Two Factor Authentication, the something you know part is your password. You know your password. The second factor is something you have, which is typically your phone. When you have an account that is enabled for Two Factor Authentication, once you enter your username and password you have a second prompt to enter in a pin, usually a 6-digit pin, and that is the second factor. It's sent to your phone or your tablet, whatever you have authenticated. That basically means that if someone hacks your password, unless they also have your phone and can get into your phone, they can't continue the login process.

Rachel: Right, so it's really one of the most secure ways that's out there right now.

Brian: Yes. What's important to know is that every 20 seconds that pin code gets changed based on a specific kind of timing algorithm that's unique to the device.

Scott: I'm just looking in the plugin directory. There's a bunch of them. Are you using the Google Authenticator miniOrange plugin or a different one?

Brian: It's the miniOrange plugin and I actually pay the premium. That actually allows you to choose what kind of authenticator you want. If you want, I can share my screen to show you.

Scott: Sure. Yeah, that's fine.

Brian: Let me just go ... Where's my hangout window? Actually, let me make sure I don't show my API and token keys. All right, here we go. I'm sorry for anyone who's listening. Just pretend you're viewing my screen.

Scott: Or watch the video on the show page.

Brian: Or, yeah, do that. Here is what it looks like. You can see there are a variety of different options for your Second Factor Authentication. You can have it send you an email, you can do OTP which is over text message, meaning you'll get the pass code. Instead of using an app, you can use a text message. You can get push notifications to your phone. I use, it's actually a combination of these two options. It's Google Authenticator but I use the off the app. Scott mentioned Google Authenticator. Google Authenticator is ... let me just, I'll end the screen share. There it goes. Google Authenticator is an app like Google that essentially supports Factor Authentication. When you go to any sort of account that supports it, typically what will happen is when you go to enable it, it'll display a bar code, a QR code, and in Google Authenticator on your phone you click Add Account and it brings up a scan bar code which brings up your camera. You point it at the bar code, boom. Done.

The problem is with Google Authenticator, it'll only work on one device. If you have your phone and you go to your tablet and you log on to your Google account, that's Two Factor enabled, you have to get your phone and get the code. That was frustrating to me because I often switch between iPhone and Android and my tablets and stuff. It's a champagne problem, but the solution is an app called Authy, A-U-T-H-Y. What that allows you to do is create an account with Authy, a secured account, and you're essentially letting Authy centralize the timing for the pin code.

Rachel: Are these both premium, miniOrange and Authy?

Brian: Authy's free. The app is free. miniOrange, to get the options that you'll want, it's premium but it's a nominal fee. One of the options, I only want the administrator account to require to use Two Factor. I didn't want to have to make my users do it. Premium gives you that kind of grandeur option to deselect those, or to select which account types. Like if I ever have editors on the site, they'll definitely need to have Two Factor. It's kind of like an assist admin feature for your site.

Rachel: Authy, I would assume, fixes the problem. My problem with Two Factor Authentication is I have a 4 year old and that phone gets dropped in water, then you're done with your site. He's 4, it's not his fault, but now my business is shut out. Does Authy fix that part of the equation?

Brian: Absolutely, because what you're doing is you'd install it on your tablet for example, and you'd log in with your off the account, which ideally you're using a secure password, which all my passwords are stored in one password ... What's my point? My point is that you have your tablet, you launch the app, and there are your codes. It's kind of like a double fail safe.

Scott: Brian, I don't know if this is going to throw a bone into your process, but one password can also do Google Authenticator in it?

Brian: I didn't know that.

Scott: That syncs between devices as well.

Brian: Oh my God! Are you serious?

Scott: Yeah. That actually, in theory, would solve your paying for miniOrange plus having Authy, because you can just use the regular Google Authenticator and then use one password to have it across your devices.

Brian: There's a Google Authenticator plugin for WordPress?

Scott: Yeah.

Brian: Oh, I didn't know that.

Scott: Yeah.

Rachel: See? The things we learn.

Scott: I'll link to that one as well.

Brian: Who publishes it?

Scott: Let me double check real quick. WordPress.

Brian: Oh, I didn't know that one password does Two Factor.

Scott: Yeah.

Brian: I'll tell you straight up, I'm a WordPress whore. [inaudible 00:48:48]

Scott: Yeah, I love it.

Rachel: I was like, well we are too. This is a WordPress podcast. Of course we like WordPress.

Scott: There's a bunch of Google Authenticator plugins. The one that has the most active installs ...

Rachel: Which one do you use, Scott? Do you use one on your site?

Scott: I do not. I use a security plugin that prevents logins plus Imagely has security on the hosting level.

Rachel: Yeah. As with so many things in WordPress, there's a couple different ways to do sort of the same thing, and it really depends on your level of how secure you want it, have you been hacked. I know a lot of people that have been hacked in the past are more into the security, but I do caution if you haven't been hacked you probably want to be more into the security so that you're not.

Brian: Yeah, listen. This is one of those things that is a no-brainer. The extra step you have to take. Oh my God, one passwords, latest Mac update brings Two Factor support.

Scott: Yep, and it's on the phone, and iPad, and it's everywhere.

Rachel: One password is awesome. I think, a lot of the questions that I get is, "I'm just a photographer in so-and-so town, why would anyone want to hack me?" I think the important thing is it's not about who you are or what your business is, unfortunately, it's more about what server you're on and who's looking at what. You know?

Scott: Yeah. Getting hacked isn't just about your own vulnerability. It's about if your host gets hacked or if you're on a shared host and another site on that server gets hacked, you're not vulnerable.

Rachel: Right. In those cases, if you don't have a backup and even if it has nothing to do with you, you're done for that time period. That's why backups are so important and making sure that these security things are in place before ... You might think you've done everything right, but you just want to make sure that you have all those bases covered.

Brian: I don't get that at all. It almost gets me ...

Rachel: Get what? That people don't have their site secure?

Brian: That, "Oh, I'm a small ... Who cares? I don't have it ..." That's no excuse. You have a lock on your door. This is the episode I covered yesterday. Forget about your website. Think about all the things you have on your photos synced. I did a list. I have, I think like, 15 services. Core services. All of them support Two Factor. No one knows about them. I didn't even realize, just yesterday, right before the show I realized that 500px, which is a photo sharing site, they support Two Factor. In some cases they call it Enhanced Security, they don't necessarily call it Two Factor. Twitter, Instagram, MailChimp, [Champlifier 00:51:47], all of them.

Scott: MailChimp you get a discount if you use it.

Brian: I did not know that!

Rachel: I didn't know that either. That's interesting.

Scott: Yeah, I think they give you, I want to say it's 10%, I could be wrong, but you get a nice discount if you use Two Factor with them.

Rachel: I think back to the analogy about if you lock your front door, what if you had a storefront? Your website is your storefront. Wouldn't you lock your storefront in case there's money in the cash register? It's the same concept, just in a different world, in a different way. I do understand, because photographers, they have to think about their shooting, and the cameras, and the technology there, and then to go over and think about the websites and the WordPress and the themes. The nice thing is that WordPress does try and make it as easy as possible.

Scott: All right. I know I just threw a bone into the mix, Brian. Now you're going to re-evaluate.

Brian: No, no, no. It's happening. It's done. One password is my jam. I love it. Clearly I haven't been jamming with it enough.

Scott: The first time I added a Two Factor to one password I was a little confused and now it's like, oh, that's easy. It'll take you I think one or two tries before you get the hang of it because they didn't make it like, it's not like adding a secure note to one password. It's a little bit more in-depth.

Rachel: We can say one password is outside of WordPress. It is a separate application but it's great because you can use it for all, literally all, of your passwords and anything that you use on your computers.

Scott: Correct.

Rachel: It's very secure.

Brian: Basically, it works on a secure database and that database I have it set to Dropbox, so the first thing I do if I build a new ... First I log into Apple, my Apple ID for iCloud. Second I log into Google for Chrome. Then the third thing is I download and install Dropbox. When you first launch one password, it asks if you have an existing databox and where, and Dropbox is an option. Boom. Everything's there.

Rachel: You're saying with like a brand new computer out of the box, you're all totally linked in. Everything's already customized because of these things you have in place.

Brian: That's correct.

Rachel: Awesome.

Brian: I do kind of wish that they supported DriveSync, Google Drive, because just like 2 weeks ago I migrated from Dropbox to Drive because I don't know why.

Rachel: I think you get more space for less money, right?

Brian: Yeah, it's not even the space per say ... I remember what it was. I know what it was. It was the straw that broke the camel's back. I was in Word and typing a document up, and in the latest version of Office for Mac, Office 13 or whatever, 15, there's a little Dropbox icon on the right. I typed this post for Zeiss, a guest post, I hit the button, and I do the share with thing and I type in [inaudible 00:55:06] and I sent it to her. The link is sent to her. I quit. I go away. She comes back to me, she's like, "The link goes to a 404." My assumption, the freaking irrational assumption, was that when you generate the link and set the document name that it saves the document in Dropbox. No. No such thing. After that, I was like, I'm done. I will only use Office if a document is presented to me that I need to open, but in other words I'm using Google Docs.

Scott: Google Docs can open a Word document, too.

Rachel: Their functionality is amazing. We've talked about, oh my Gosh, I feel like everything. Facebook, WordPress, one password, Docs, Dropbox, but is there anything else that you kind of want to end on or close on?

Brian: Just don't be lackadaisical about your security.

Scott: That's a good quote. Don't be lackadaisical.

Brian: Lackadaisical ... Crack-a-lackin-daisical.

Rachel: About your security. Try out Facebook Live and check out your ... Where can we find you on the web?

Brian: Oh, yeah sure. My marketing director needs to punch me in the face. My website is just my last name, it's Matiash.com. M-A-T-I-A-S-H. I also have, I got thephoto.show, speaking of earlier, we were talking about kind of vanity top-level domains. I've got thephoto.show. I think right now, actually, I'm not even sure ... This is how ...

Scott: Is that a forward or is that going to a new site that you've created?

Brian: It's currently going to a 404 because I need to go to Google Domains. I use Google Domains to manage all of my domains. Let me just go there. I was surprised that Google had ... I'm doing everything in my power to leave, to get all of my domains out of, GoDaddy because they're just gross. I have thephotoshow.net to forward ... Oh, I'm not forwarding it, crap. I know we're kind of running late, Rachel, I apologize, but this is another thing, it's like, I can forward thephoto.show to the category URL because every photo on the show episode is a photo show category. Do I bring it to my site or do I bring it to Facebook? I think to bring it to my site.

Scott: I would.

Rachel: I would. I think that you'd have more functionality there.

Brian: Yeah, so now I have to find that category. Anyway, sorry to ... By the time this episode is broadcast, if you go to thephoto.show that will give you access to all of the high definition archive episodes. I'd love for you to participate live, just like my page which is Facebook.com/BrianMatiash.

Rachel: Awesome.

Scott: Awesome. Yep. We will definitely be linking to those in the show notes. Thank you, Brian, for joining us today. Thank you, Rachel, for being an awesome co-host.

Rachel: Thank you, Scott.

Scott: You can find the show notes from today's episode at Imagely.com/podcast/16.

Rachel: 16!

Scott: Yes. Until next time.

Rachel: Bye.

This Post Has One Comment

  1. I had such a blast as a guest with the two of you! Thanks so much for letting me join you guys and wax on about the blogging side of what we do.

Leave a Reply

Close Menu