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As a photographer, designer or creative professional creating your own brand can be very difficult. How do you stick out in a sea of competitors? Now anyone can make a Web site and amateur photographers take amazing pictures. Although I live in a society that is heavily addicted to business cards, whether you happen to be or not, this is often the first tool you have to gain someone’s attention.

I just received new business cards from Moo.com and after a lot of feedback and questions on Twitter, I wanted to share with you my impression of this company.

I’ve always been very wary of photographers who have images on their business cards. What if your client doesn’t like the photo you happen to have on your card? What if you print 1000 of them, and the color bleeds in all of the cards? How can you possibly pick one image that completely represents you as a photographer?

These are all tough questions to answer and have made me stick away from this sometimes cheesy form of self-promotion. Until now.

PHOTOGRAPHIC VARIATION
Moo.com allows photographers to use up to 100 different images on your cards. So theoretically if you ordered 400 cards, you could have 100 variations of cards (4 kinds of each picture). For photographers like myself who do a large variety of work this is nice. You can give a restaurant a food shot, a magazine editor a commercial or fashion shot and a newspaper editor an editorial style image. So – plus one point for Moo.com from me.

PHYSICAL SIZE
I’ve also been very intrigued by non-traditional sized business cards. I think it already makes whoever you give it to, take a second look which might result in them remembering you more. I went with Moo.com’s mini cards, which with a full bleed measure out at 70mm x 28mm (2.75″ x 1.10″). For reference, this is about 2/3 the length of an iPhone. So – plus two points for Moo.com from me.

CROP FACTOR
This relative crop size I’m very happy with. Its very narrow, but not too narrow that I couldn’t find images that I thought worked in this format. I found 100 images that I could crop this narrow in my archive with ease – and honestly, it was kind of fun (although I spent far too much time on it). What your seeing above and below are some of my favorite of these cropped images. So – plus three points for Moo.com from me.

PAPER WEIGHT
The weight of the paper seems like a very good compromise between, won’t be too bothersome to keep some in your pocket, yet, it won’t bend in your pocket. A lot of very heavy stocks make holding business cards actually annoying. Moo’s 350 gram stock (which they say has been sustainably sourced) won’t bend yet is thick enough to hold ink to allow for good photo reproduction. The cards themselves have a smooth matte laminate. So – plus four points for Moo.com from me.

PHOTO REPRODUCTION
Photo reproduction was good – but not excellent. Some cards printed a little dark, but nothing to the point that I’m unhappy or would complain. Detail is good in the highs and mid range; however, the lows become blown out at some points. When you upload photos to Moo.com they actually have a small photo toner which recommends lightening your photos. I’m always weary of these online photo editors and usually avoid it. Perhaps I shouldn’t have. So – minus one point for me.

PRICE
Price wise I think its a fair deal, although its not cheap. In a world where business cards are free if you want them to be, its hard to justify spending too much. For 400 Minicards (100 variations) and 1 Black Supernana Mini Card felt holder, plus international shipping from England to China I spent $65.05 USD. If you are investing in yourself as a creative professional and want to stick out amongst the circus of photographers around you, this seems like a good investment. So – plus five points for Moo.com from me.

DELIVERY
Although its hard to tell if its a China thing or just slow shipping, it did take awhile. My cards arrived today, November 18, 2010. The ordered was placed on October 19, 2010. I paid for DHL Standard shipping which cost about $11 USD. Moo’s estimated time of delivery was November 12, 2010 which still wouldn’t have been too fast. So – minus 1 point for Moo.com, minus 1 point for China for probably taking their time moving the package around.

CONCLUSION: MOO.COM 4, JONAH -1, CHINA -1
Overall I’m very happy with this product and company and bassed on the score above, they are the clear winner between themselves, China and me. I believe a photographer’s business card is extremely important and something you shouldn’t go cheap on. Business cards from Kinko’s or your local supermarket’s photocopier just don’t give a good impression of you or what type of quality you represent. Below, are some more of the images on these cards.

UPDATE: Here’s the link to this image on the NYT Lens blog.

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If you don’t remember, somebody else probably does — and there’s a photo to show you. The photo above, that’s where I was Sunday, May 2, at 15:00 hours U.T.C. The photo is taken over 243 seconds at f/10, ISO 50 with my Canon EOS-1D Mark II and Canon EF 14mm f/2.8 L II USM.

On Sunday the New York Time’s Lens Blog launched a project called “A Moment in Time” where they asked photographers, both amateur and pro, all around the world to take a photo at the exact same moment to create a “timely global mosaic.” From there:

Our plan — emphasis, “plan” — is to post almost every picture we receive. So your work will almost certainly be included, unless it fails any of the tests mentioned above or is more graphic than news photographs we would customarily publish.

The interactive gallery that will appear next week takes the form of a globe on which you can find your location, or those of other photographers. It was designed by Zach Wise of The Times and is, to use highly technical professional vernacular, too cool for school.

Although I was ready to take a picture at work that night, thinking I might still be working at the design desk of China Daily, I managed to run home and take a picture from my terrace which overlooks Beijing’s old city. I live on the edge of Beijing’s second ring road — and much of the property right in front of me has restrictions on building heights. This gives me a great view down onto the hutong life that thrives directly below me. And like any overly energetic, apparently geeky photographer, 1 moment was not enough, so I had two cameras setup shot with my remotes to synch them to 15:00 hours.

Although a hutong 胡同 in Chinese literally means “small alley” and specifically refers to the streets of Beijing, the word has much more meaning than that here. It refers to a lifestyle, home style and community unique to China. Like the structures you see above, homes are built directly into each other. An intricate network of small alleys allows people to get to their houses — but from above, sometimes the alleys are small enough they are completely unseen — blocked by shared roofs. Many of these homes don’t have kitchens or plumbing. People use communal bathrooms and showers in the alleys. As space is very precious, people either socialize in the streets or in their courtyards. A defining characteristic of the hutong architecture are homes called siheyuans 四合院, or traditional courtyard residences. In the photos above you can see small outdoor spaces dotting the landscape. These are people’s ‘outdoor living rooms’ and often even recreation space. The streets are lined with xiao chi, or “small eats” — tiny little hole-in-wall (literally) restaurants that serve noodles, dumplings, meat-on-a-stick and an enormous variety of unidentifiable foods that might actually eat you.

A lot of these alleys are too small to drive down, and I walk through them everyday to go to work and return. Sadly, these traditional living areas are being knocked down in the name of progress everyday. With the fall of the walls, comes the evaporation of this lifestyle. Fellow Saint Michael’s graduate and new media photographer Tim Wagner has a great photo essay on this threatened culture called “Beijing’s Hutongs: The Last Days of the Courtyards.”

Although this is where I was Sunday, May 2 at 15:00 hours U.T.C., this is where I am right now in life as well: Living in (and above) a hutong in Beijing. I thought this was the appropriate photo to share for the Len’s blog’s project.

As I said above, I did take two photos. The one I didn’t use is right here — of Beijing’s ancient Bell Tower. This tower is directly across form the Drum Tower (see photo of drum tower here) which I can see directly from my living room and terrace.

The Time’s photo blog says readers will be able to:

The photos will appear quickly on the Lens blog and on NYTimes.com, and — if you’d like — you’ll be able to arrange them by country, by topic or by how they were ranked by other readers. Or you can just view them randomly. Some will almost certainly be spotlighted on the Lens blog.

You can see some of the early arrivals from the photographic experiment in their post “From Many Instants, a Moment.” According to the National Press Photographer’s Association the “response was overwhelming” with over 10,000 entries on the morning of May 3 in New York. This will surely be a site to check out when it is finished sometime after Friday, May 7 at 15:00 hours.

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Updates: from NYT

• An Exhilarating (and Frustrating) Mom
• From Many Instants, a Moment
• A Few More Moments, Please
• Patience

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Just to give you an idea of what this view from my terrace looks like during the day, during sunset, during polluted days and during a sand storm — here’s some of the scenes I have seen in my first two months of living in this apartment over Beijing’s hutongs.

… and at last, a relatively silly video almost completely shot during a sandstorm from the terrace.