photo by: Bill Snead

Kansas University basketball freshman recruit Wilt Chamberlain at KU in 1955.

As many an empty corner at a cocktail party can attest, no one really wants to hear me talk about my job. Regardless, I am going to share some news from the job front today because the Journal-World does have a new project I want people to know about.

The Journal-World and its sister website KUsports.com recently launched LawrencePhotoStore.com. It is our effort to take advantage of more of our resources, and specifically to become a bigger player in the world of University of Kansas basketball art. The online store offers everything from simple photo reprints to framed and ready-to-hang pieces.

At the heart of the store is one of our company’s largest resources — our archive of photos. I can’t provide you a precise number, but we have tens of thousands of digital photo files. We even still have a few boxes of actual old prints (although the Journal-World long donated many of the old photos to the Spencer Research Library at the University of Kansas.)

While there are a lot of them that you probably wouldn’t want to hang on your wall, there are quite a few you might.

KU basketball photos might be near the top of that list for many people. Our archives include everything from Wilt Chamberlain photos to 1988 National Championship shots to Mario’s miracle in 2008 and many others.

photo by: Nick Krug

Kansas guard Mario Chalmers elevates for a three-pointer in the remaining seconds of regulation Monday, April 7, 2008 at the Alamodome in San Antonio. Chalmers swished the three to send the game into overtime.

While KU basketball art is definitely a niche we are hoping to fill, we also have a lot of what we call Lawrence and Douglas County “beauty shots.” Those include several aerial photos of the KU campus, downtown Lawrence during the holiday season, and just great feature photos of nature and the area’s landscapes that we’ve taken over the years.

We have long sold reprints of photos, but the process has been haphazard at times. The new online store is designed to make the process simpler and also more comprehensive. The system will allow customers to simply get a photo reprint, small or large in size. But, for the first time, we are able to sell customers a reprint of a photo and also let people pick a frame, matting and other features. A framed, ready-to-hang piece is delivered directly to your home or business. All the ordering and payment is handled online at LawrencePhotoStore.com. However, there is a real person involved too. I’m pleased that a former Journal-World photographer and longtime photojournalist of KU basketball, Nick Krug, has agreed to help us run the store.

An aerial photo of the University of Kansas campus in August 2015.

Krug — who continues to own and operate his own private photography business in addition to shooting events for the Journal-World — can help customers find a particular photo they are looking for but aren’t finding on the online store. We don’t have our entire archive of photos on the store, and never will. We try to post what we think will be our most popular ones.

However, if you want a particular photo that doesn’t show up on the store — maybe one of a grandchild who was in the newspaper, or an action shot from a local high school sporting event, for example — you can give Krug a description of the photo and, he’ll try to find it for you and make it available for purchase. There is a form at LawrencePhotoStore.com that you can fill out, or you can email a description (if you know the date it ran in the paper or have a link to the actual online photo, please include that information) to photos@ljworld.com. We then will let you know when we find it and have it ready for purchase.

I’m also hoping that the store ends up serving other Lawrence businesses. Having some local images in the lobby of an office or the dining room of a restaurant can be an easy way to show a connection with the local community.

photo by: Nick Krug

Massachusetts Street is illuminated by holiday lights and vehicles on Thursday, Dec. 14, 2017.

The plan is to add photos to the store often. For instance, we will be getting KU football photos onto the site, including from the 2008 Orange Bowl season. We also may have a few from a slightly broader area than Lawrence. For instance, we are looking through some of our many shots from the Kansas Flint Hills.

Certainly, though, providing news, information and advertising options will continue to be the main business of the Journal-World. The photo store won’t distract us from that. But it is fun to look for new opportunities and ways to be more efficient in the online world. Hopefully, we will find more in the future.

All right, enough with the self-promotion. I’ll go back to my corner, which could use a piece of basketball art, by the way.