About Us
StudioCMS is the product of SYSWork, a small but mighty team of super-powerful software developers (with
expertise in Ultra-Large Scale data unification and processing), and one crazy-good professional photographer
(with expertise in... photography). For years the latter has been pestering the former to solve problems with
photo storage, exhibition, ordering, printing, sales, and all the other things an actual studio would normally
handle. Meanwhile, we've all have had our personal struggles managing troves of precious, family photos
languishing in dusty albums, boxes, and who-knows where, along with possibly less precious snapshots rapidly
accumulating on various devices, some of which we no longer have the cables for, and possibly the cloud.
So finally we decided to take it on and do something.
Washed in the blood of test-driven, lean, fail-fast-and-fix-it, agile development (with
automated Dev(Sec)Ops, of course), we're iterating away on the StudioCMS MVP (minimum viable product), which
you have now discovered. We hope you find it useful even in this nascent form and will hang with us as we work
toward delivering on our mission and vision. We invite you to influence how that goes by sending us your
feedback.
Be happy, write code! (...and take some pictures 😃)
-- The SYSWork team
Mission & Vision
Our mission is to provide an affordable service that solves the photo problem. For most people, that means
making it easy to store, organize, find, and display photos. For aspiring amateur and professional
photographers it also means providing a suite of studio services.
And while we're at it, we aim to establish a world wide gallery of studios where the public can freely enter
and explore the images that studio owners choose to exhibit. Taking a very long-term perspective, our vision
is to enable everyone to curate and preserve the images that will one day represent our history.
How We See It
Getting out is as easy as getting in
We aim to make our services so affordable and natural to use that you'll never want to leave us. However, if you should decide to go your own way, we'll make it as easy to get out as it was to get in. We don't lock your photos up in some proprietary format that requires you to twist yourself in knots to get them back. And we don't keep any remnants of you after you're gone.
You control access
By default your photos will be visible only to you. You choose which, if any, photos to exhibit to the public and to your studio clientele. You control the visibility, copyright, and licensing terms for your photos and commentary.
Publicly shared content must be above-board
Literally, we have a board who takes down any publicly exhibited content that crosses too far over the line. What line? Well, that's up to the board.
Your work, your profit
We each profit from the value we provide to our customers. Our prices cover our costs plus a very small profit. If you're selling photos, our cut is so small that you won't care. And we're not going to soak you as you grow from a dude-with-a-camera to an in-demand pro. We want you to succeed!
Everyone gets the good stuff
We don't ransom the best features. Amateurs get access to all the pro features. Features that cost us more to provide may cost you more to use, but if you never use them there's no cost.
We're not going to make you rich and famous. That's up to you.
We don't pay you for traffic to your studio or likes or whatever. Although... if your studio is highlighted on our home page, that might do you some good. In any case, we're not using you as bait to sell ads.
Your photos are yours
We preserve your photos in a backing store using whatever cloud technology gives us the best bang (i.e. reliability, security, performance, etc.) for the buck. We also enable you to curate the embedded metadata. But the photos and all that metadata goodness belong to you. We don't sell your photos or metadata, or otherwise make them accessible to anyone beside you and whomever you designate.
Shielded from AI by default
Unless you actually want your images to be available for AI developers to use for training their models, we do whatever we can to prevent it. Now that's a tricky business, but we're using industry-leading AI blocking technology, and we post appropriate legal notices that AI developers are supposed to respect.
Ours is a long-term perspective
We aim to make it easy for you and your family to manage what happens to your photos when you leave (gasp!) this mortal plane. We're thinking hard about how to ensure your legacy is passed down generations. As time goes deep, what do we want to happen to our photos? The stories of our lives are meaningful and should be preserved with respect, dignity, and in accord with our wishes. One day, this will be our history!