Customer stories


Moonchasers

Keeping Track of the Moon

For Gail Ward and James Rigler, the full moon is more than just a transient pleasure to be enjoyed once a month. Its a full time job, as they travel the globe gathering striking photographic images. And keeping track of those Images, and of their ever-growing business is a full-time job for FileMaker Pro, the award-winning database software application from FileMaker, Inc.

James Rigler has specialized in photographing the moon for more than twenty years -- photos that capture the majesty and the mystery of Earth's celestial companion. When a decade ago he discovered a kindred spirit in Gail Ward, who had been an environmental writer/photographer, their collaboration led to the creation of Moonchasers.com, a website devoted to the joys of moon photography, to the Moon House Gallery in Marin County, California, and to a series of exciting books collecting their most striking work.

San Francisco Moon -- available from Ten Speed Press -- collects images of the moon above the Bay Area, Hawaii's Sun Aloha Moon -- available from fine retailers throughout Hawaii, or from the Moonchasers.com website -- takes you to the Islands for dramatic views of the night sky, and Yosemite Moon offers the result of a close collaboration between Moonchasers and the Yosemite Fund, a non profit organization devoted to special projects emphasizing the beauty of Yosemite National Park.

All this work has produced a vast library of images -- and all along, FileMaker Pro has kept them organized. Gail Ward is no stranger to FileMaker -- she's used the software since her days as a computer consultant in the 1980s, and has stuck with the application through all of its various versions and refinements. 'I've been a FileMaker fan from the very beginning,' Gail enthuses.

As Moonchasers has grown and evolved over the past decade, Gail's found all the more reason to wax enthusiastic about FileMaker Pro. 'We use FileMaker Pro to track our slide inventory for each book we create,' she explains. 'Along with the images this includes the captions for the book, the location of the slides, the page on which the image appears, and details about the image.'

Everything necessary to bring a book together can be stored in the database -- and this makes editing a snap. 'For instance when we got the rough cut back for the first draft of our Hawaii book, we felt it needed to be reworked,' recalls Gail. 'We needed to be able to provide detailed instructions for the publisher on the changes we wanted to make. Using FileMaker made it easy to specify pages, images, and captions to be changed -- and to print out a detailed list of the final edits. This cuts way down on the chance of human error. With 250 images in the book, each with its own caption, you can see how being able to do this work on a database would be a timesaver!'

FileMaker has also proven an easy fit for other applications -- mailing list management, inventory control, invoicing, all the tasks that go into a successful business. And just as FileMaker keeps up with Moonchasers, the user-friendly features of the software make it easy for James and Gail to keep up with FileMaker. As Gail notes, 'FileMaker's modifiable integrated database templates are a big help in reducing the learning curve and errors for busy entrepreneurs like ourselves.' Moonchasers are currently running seventeen FileMaker databases -- containing more than 2500 records, and the number keeps expanding.

Every month, the moon is full. And when the moon is full, the Moonchasers are on the job -- with FileMaker Pro waiting to handle whatever develops!



Contact information

Contact Info for Customer:

Gail Ward
Partner
Moonchasers
415-332-6367
moonchasers@moonchasers.com
http://www.moonchasers.com


Filemaker Contact:

Kevin Mallon
Public Relations Manager
FileMaker Inc.
408-987-7227
kevin_mallon@filemaker.com
http://www.filemaker.com


Overview
  • Photographers Gail Ward and James Rigler travel the globe capturing striking images of the moon, then publish those images for all the world to see. Keeping track of those images, and of Moonchasers.com, Gail and James' growing business, is a full-time job for FileMaker Pro.
Industry
  • Creative Services
  • Creative Markets
  • Small Business