About

The ProjectThe Shakodo TeamAcknowledgementsImprint

• The Project

  The Problem

  Photography is one of those professions without any fixed prices; everything always must be negotiated. Up until recently, the photographic market was very isolated and the art of price negotiation was one of the keys to success for professionals. With the influx of talented amateurs a market shift began to take place. With their lack of experience and knowledge about current market rates and not understanding client's budgets and needs, these talented amateurs have settled for lowered price offers. As a result, they have unintentionally undercut professionals while leaving money on the table because they are not aware of the true market value of their photos or services.

  

  The Solution

  There is a fundamental lack of photographic business education out there. It is easy to find information on "how to take good photographs" or information on "what camera to buy." But, when it comes to pricing, a lot of the photography business websites and forums become very vague. Nobody is willing to give a straight answer on photographic service rates, licensing fees or even give detailed information on how to make money from photography.

  Shakodo wants to change this by offering a free service where amateur and professional photographers can talk openly in a public forum and make the entire photographic service process more transparent, especially in the pricing area.

  Our goal is to revive the photographic service market by building an open repository of pricing and business information.

  The Name

  "Shakodo" is Japanese and stands for...wait. There is no word "Shakodo" in the Japanese language, we've made it up. However, the 3 Kanji characters we selected to represent our vision are:

  1. 写 (sha) - defined as "reproduction" or "photograph",
  2. 好 (ko) - defined as "love" or "like" and
  3. 道 (do) - defined as "road" or "path".

  The literal meaning can be read as "the road to love photography", but since we've invented this word, we have chosen Shakodo to mean "The road to profitable photography", which is exactly what this site is aiming for.

• The Shakodo Team

  • 

    Juergen Specht

    Juergen Specht is a Berlin based former professional photographer and a consultant to the international photo and Internet industry.

    Prior to starting Shakodo in December 8th, 2010, he founded and successfully sold 3 Internet companies, been CTO at a top Fortune 500 company and started the first forum dedicated to digital photography, D1scussion, in 1999.

    In 2005, he opened the eyes of many professional photographers and camera makers by spearheading the OpenRAW initiative. OpenRAW conducted the largest photographer survey about RAW usage to-date, creating a major shift in the attitude of camera makers regarding interoperability with software developers and triggered the ongoing development of a universal RAW format.

    Some of the major photo related consulting projects he has done include a global B2B service for automatic collection, transmission and distribution of photos for a leading photo restoration company, as well as creating the technical concept and managed as CTO the launch of the entire photo sharing and printing business for Japan's biggest online retailer and their 50+ million members.

    Over the years, Juergen's techniques, concepts and workflows have been and are widely used in the international photo industry and beyond. His solid understanding of cutting edge technologies and methodologies have given him the ability to advise various startups and small businesses to Fortune 500 companies.
    Along with his technical abilities, Juergen is brimming with a wonderful creative side. He is internationally known for his imaginative and exciting photographs together with his serious documentary photographs, which have been shown in several exhibitions and published in hundreds of magazines and books worldwide.

    As Juergen's history shows, the free exchange of information is the most important aid for the working photographer and this is especially true in today's extremely competitive photo industry. Juergen created the Shakodo concept and managed and supervised the design, programming and development of the service.
    He is certain that Shakodo will play a positive role in reviving the photography business.

  • 

    Akiko Specht

    Akiko Specht is an award winning professional photographer based (formerly) in Tokyo, Japan.

    Akiko started off photography in an unusual way. Before specializing in wedding photography, she worked as one of the very few female underwater photographers in Japan, documenting different underwater subjects such as industrial constructions to capturing rare species of aquatic wildlife.

    After she turned to wedding photography, she quickly developed a large clientele and reputation with her fresh and unique photographic style and inspired many photographers by breaking the rules of traditional Japanese wedding photography with her new pioneering approach of personal and emotional photography.

    Akiko is no stranger to challenging tradition and with her 15+ years of photographic business experience, she believes what Shakodo is trying to do will bring the business of photography to the next necessary level.

• Acknowledgements

  Shakodo would not be possible without the support of many individuals. We would like to send a big thanks to the following people, who were in one way or the other involved in turning Shakodo from a vague idea into reality:

  Bernd - thanks for the great design and Logo, Alla - thanks for working countless weekends and night shifts to get it all done, Viktor - thanks for slicing and splicing, Yuriy - thanks for his wisdom and programming goodness, Peter - thanks for believing in the idea from the very beginning, Tom - thanks for system administration and keeping the servers serving, Chris - for great advice and motivation, Max - for his flexibility and seeing the big picture, Mark - for his critiques and support, Akiko - for her understanding and patience, Alan - for his great designs and quick delivery, the people from Stackoverflow - thanks for the inspiration and running a great site, our early Beta Testers moominsean, Wilkie, PhotoDawg, mijonju, Jack --, John Albino, Tim Andrew, John Armstrong-Millar, Tony Arruza, Ralph Arwood, Gary Austin, Phil Bebbington, Dave Bouvier, Dan Bronson, Peter Brooks, Marco Cimino, David Coleman, Neil Cooper, Francis Corvin, Jez Cunningham, Svein Erik Dahl, Cathy Dixson, Thomas England, Mark Fagerburg, John Francis, Gary Gardiner, Dwayne Girvan, Mike Gong, Stefan Gosatti, Sandy Gray, Richard Green, Linda Gregory, Israel Hadari, Urban Hafner, Richard Hanson, PJ Heller, Ron Heusser, Ron Hiner, Joseph Holmes, Frank Huster, Larry Irvin, Kevin Isabeth, gregor jamroski, Harold Laudeus, Ian Leslie, Clive Liddell, L. Rashad Mahmood, Berry Mak, John Marting, Chris McMillan, Anthony Medici, Jigal Meijer, Dave Metta, greg mironchuk, Dale Nelson, Andrew Niemann, Peter Paine, John Palmer, Stavro Papadopoulos, Mauricio Pascual, Steve Pelton, adrian pope, David Preutz, Steve Puntolillo, Dale Reagan, Geoffrey Rowe, Malcolm Sales, Mauricio Sapata, Timothy Schroeder, Patrick Shanahan, Andreas Siegert, vicky slater, Thomas Steffan, Salvo Toscano, Scott Trebble, Steve Tyler, Brian Valente, Kirk Van Zandbergen, Rich Wagner, Stephen Weaver, Michael Weis, Barry White, Richard Wills, Doug Wilson, Yuriy Zisin, 2SKPs, aghauri, AlaskaPhotographer, AlexWolff, allenrussell, andersjir, bdewey, benasaj, Bertho, Bill, caleb, calford, CCJones, CDG_D100, chris, ckh, CliffordS, cliffordwhite, cliveb, cygnet10, dan_souza, darrinphegley, Dav, davidenglish, denisjc, deryk, DouglasUrner, Dre, driggettphoto, dsilver, DuncanSoar, edthened, Erica, Gardenerbob, hoppint, IanJoseph, james, jayson, jeffharrison, jeremyhilder, jlerager, jmkays, JohnDouglas, jonas, Kuroneko, Lexy11, LizMasoner, max, Maxaryaman, mbraca, mitchino, mjmfoto, nadams, Nhkkaplan, NickT, NormScott, nsapcor, Orcatek, Original_Ann, peachmtphotog, peteralan, rpmfoto, ShelleyLipton, spudjer, suerakes, svlists, tetrode, vfnewman, and WRRPhoto - thanks for finding and reporting bugs, great feedback and just trusting us and helping to bring Shakodo alive...and everybody we forgot to add to this list! Thank you!

• Imprint

  Contact Information

  Shakodo Management c/o Juergen Specht
  Blumenstr. 45
  D-10243 Berlin
  Germany
  
  Phone: +49-151-52583028 (to contact support, click here)
  Email: contact@shakodo.com
  Web: www.shakodo.com
  
  Haftungshinweis: Trotz sorgfältiger inhaltlicher Kontrolle übernehmen wir keine Haftung für die Inhalte externer Links. Für den Inhalt der verlinkten Seiten sind ausschließlich deren Betreiber verantwortlich.
  
  Disclaimer: This Website may contain links to external websites. Shakodo is not responsible for the content presented by external websites, which you use at your own risk. The providers of these external websites are solely responsible for the content presented by these websites.
  
  For any content related matters, please refer to our Terms of Service and the contact information stated here. Please refer to copyright@shakodo.com for reporting an infringement of copyright.