Buying Photos from Rick Olsen Photography

The Rick Olsen Photography Web Site is “hosted” at Zenfolio.  Zenfolio is an online photo-hosting company chosen by Rick Olsen to display and market his photos.

There are MANY ways to buy Photos from Rick:

• He can print and send the photos to you
• He can send you the “digital files” from which you can go to Costco (or Walmart etc) and have printed yourself
• You can order prints thru Rick’s Website

It all starts with communication:  communicating with Rick what photos you are interested in, how you would like to use them, and how you would like to receive them. 

Digital Files & Downloads:

Many people want “digital files & downloads” these days.  This allows them to have the image file to use for Facebook postings, or to go to Costco or Walmart to print.  Rick offers this option. 

To buy Digital Files: 

• You can buy Digital Downloads following the same procedure as outlined below - it shows up as an buying option amongst the many options to buy prints.  You will then be allowed to “download” the prints directly to your computer for use. 
• You can call or email Rick directly and he put on a Disk or a “USB or Thumb Drive” and mail to you (sometimes when ordering MANY photos (hundreds) this option is easier as depending on your connection to the Internet the downloads can take some time.  This is usually not a problem when ordering just a few photos)

Buying Prints from Rick’s Web Site:

Through this website, Rick makes his photos available for view - and for sale. Zenfolio is owned by printing companies Mpix and Mpix Pro who’s business model is to drive print business via the hosted photographers web site - so you will see all sorts of options to buy a multitude of print products from this site.  These printed products can be offered at “BaseLab Prices” or with a “MarkUp” from the photographer - allowing the photographer a method to earn income from his photos.  Zenfolio and their print partners set the Base Prices for these print products and these Base Prices go to them.  

Quality of Printed Products:

Rick has found the quality of the Prints from Mpix and other Zenfolio partners to be very competitive with most print labs available.   

Note on Shipping:

Shipping is charged by Zenfolio and Partners for print products.  Rick Olsen recommends buyers choose the “Economy Shipping” (currently at +/-$4.25) as opposed to “Standard” - as his experience shows the delivery time to be much the same.  Rick also recommends buying multiple photos to help keep the shipping cost as a proportion of the order as low as possible. 

How to Buy Photos: 

The main tool for ordering photos and products is the Buy button. If selling has been enabled by the photographer, it will be displayed on most gallery pages or displayed over the images in the site.

If the Buy button is not displayed, this means that selling is disabled.  In this case, it is best to contact the photographer directly to let them know that you are interested in purchasing the photos.

Adding photos and products to the shopping cart

1 Navigate to a photo you would like to purchase, click the Buy button at the top of the page. Choose Select product from the menu that appears. A pop-up window will open prompting you to choose which category of photo product you would like to order.

2 If you would like to switch currencies or shipping location, click on Settings then select the desired currency and shipping destination.

3 To change the way the product options are displayed, click the Product Catalog.

4 Select the category you are interested in. A new pop-up window will open with available products and sizes.

5 Use the options on the left to further narrow down the product choices.

6 Look for the desired product in the main window.  Hover the mouse pointer over the product then click on More Info to read a brief description of the product.

7 Click Customize. The product configuration screen will be displayed. 

Configuring the Product before adding to the Cart

1 Click one of the cropping options to apply one of the preset cropping options, Center or Fit.

2 Optionally, click on of the color conversion buttons to convert the image to Black and White or Sephia.

3 You can also choose to manually crop the image. Use the Zoom slider to zoom in and out of the image.

4 Click on the image to drag and drop the image into the desired position in the print.

5 Note: Everything inside the red line will be printed, including any white space. Critical parts of the image (such as the head of the subject) must be inside the red line. 

6 Any available product options will be displayed on the right.  Make the desired changes here before the next step.

7 Click Add to Cart. You will be returned to the gallery so you can purchase other images

Repeat until you've added all of the desired photos and products to the Shopping Cart.

Checking out

Once all of the desired items have been added to the cart, proceed with checking out.  Click Proceed to Checkout to checkout and pay for the items in the cart.

Please note, items added to the cart when not logged in are only stored for seven days.  This means that the order for the items in the cart must be placed before the seven days or the cart will expired and be automatically cleared.  The cart can also be cleared if the browser's cookies are cleared.

To save a cart and avoid losing the cart, click on Save Cart to save the cart to an account in your photographer's site.  If you've already created an account and you were logged in to the account when items were added to the cart, the cart is automatically saved to the account and will not expire in seven days (in this case, the Save Cart option will not be displayed).

The option is also provided to Share the cart.  This allows you to share the cart with your photographer or with someone else.  This can also be used to create a back up of the cart.

After clicking Checkout Now, you may be prompted to Register or Login.  Registering a new account or logging in to an existing account allows you to store the order details in an account under your photographer's site.  This can be used to check on the status of the order as it proceeds.  This also allows you to review previous orders.

The option is also provided to Checkout as Guest.

The Register or Login page will not be displayed if you're already logged in to your account when placing the order.

After entering the desired Shipping Address, choose the desired shipping method from the shipping methods displayed.  The total will be updated in real time as the shipping method is selected.

RICK RECOMMENDS his customers choose the “ECONOMY” shipping!

Any coupons being offeredcan be entered in this page into the COUPON CODE field.

On the next page, you can enter your desired payment method and complete your order.

Please call Rick with Questions!: 

With any questions or problems with ANY of this, please call Rick at 360-631-1222 or email him at [email protected] and he will respond as quickly as possible.