Foundation (redux)

Unprinted colour photo titled Foundation (redux) depicting barnacle encrusted pylons penetrating the salt waters of Picnic Bay, Magnetic Island. Photographed on Fuji Reala 100 with Plaubel Veriwide 100 (6x10), 47mm f/8 Schneider Super-angulon lens @ f/11 60sec.

Putting lipstick on the pig

I read an interesting article on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) related by Donncha O Caoimh by way of PhotographyVoter.com over at InPhotos.org on 11 SEO tips for your photoblog which was an expansion of Richard Hearnes article on SEO For Thin Content Sites - Making A P h o t o B l o g More Visible--Whew!

Anyway, it got me to thinking about the amount of time and effort that is required to undertake all of this techno-bridge building in the blogsphere so to speak. I wonder that with the limited time that we have as part-time and hobby publishers that perhaps our time would be better spent writing more meaningful content rather than worrying about SEO. So following on from Donncha O Caoimh's good advice here are a few of my own tips on getting your self noticed.

• Above all write something interesting! Let's face it the internet is stagnant with everyone aggregating everyone else's stories or worse, simply retelling them in different words. If you're going to do that then make sure there is a fair mix of your own work represented as well on your blog. In other words, aggregating others stories is only useful (in the main) if you are looking to drive your existing readers to interesting content written elsewhere--it won't bring new readers into your website and those it does bring will more than likely be just passing through.
• Have an opinion and don't be afraid to use it--so what, if you're wrong? :)
• Try to publish regularly rather than haphazard. By that I mean, try not to post one article today and then nothing for a month--hard I know but you'll need to do this if you are going to maintain momentum and interest in your writing. :)
• Not only is it important to link to other sites as mentioned by Richard but search engine rankings rely more on incoming links that anything else I know of. So, get your a$$ around to other blog sites and leave comments i.e. use your opinion. Don't just say "Yeah cool" in a comment thinking you've said something meaningful or that it's going to drive traffic to your website. Think critically about what you are commenting on, bring your own thoughts and experience to bear on the subject. In other words ADD SOMETHING MEANINGFUL to the conversation.
• Write about things that no one else is writing about and write it in a way that is topical i.e. has context in the here and now but also has longevity as a subject rather than here today and gone tomorrow.

Content is still King! Spending your time writing good stuff will be responsible for bringing more traffic to your website than any SEO optimizing tips will ever bring.

Resources

Content is King: writing and editing on-line (Emarketing Essentials) available now on Amazon.

Light Studio for Photographers (Tabletop)

This instructable shows you the easy, inexpensive, and quick way to create a light box that can get you the same photographic results as a 150 dollar light box. The only difference is that this one can ultimately be built for under 10 dollars. Read more at:

http://www.instructables.com/id/E1FON0MF2CRK8KL/

A crisis in nature photography

Niall Benvie over at Open Democracy talks about the commercial and professional pressures that have reduced nature photography to a tedium of airless familiarity. Niall believes that the practice desperately needs a wider and more truthful depiction of its subject not just an evolution of style, but of fresh things to say. Read more at:

http://www.opendemocracy.net/theme_9-landscape/article_418.jsp

Overcoming creative block and self doubt

Every photographer, for that matter every creative, I've ever met comes to a point when they're not happy with the work they're producing.

Canon crams 50 megapixels into a CMOS prototype - Engadget

You won't be seeing one of these sensors in your fashioncam any time soon. Canon has built a 50 megapixel CMOS monstrosity, which is reportedly almost twice the resolution of its nearest competition, and is prepping it as a sort of large format surveillance camera for monitoring large, busy areas such as parking lots and theme parks, along with detailed work like factory part inspections.

Linux not quite up to snuff with RAW Photography

Don't get me wrong... I still love the Penguin ( for now, Solaris 10 / ZFS review coming up ) but the penguin just doesn't like my photography work.

My requirements were not very high. I shoot with a dSLR and capture RAW images. I want to download, sort, re-develop, and post process my images with a small amount of effort. Under windows I had been using Picasa with much success. I don't think these requirements are too much to ask for.

Imatch Image Management on Linux

I'd been using Mario Westphal's excellent Imatch Image Management software for my digital image management on windows since early 2003. Some months ago I decided I no longer wanted to use Microsoft Windows as my operating system and environment but ultimately had to resign myself to having to run my must have Imatch software in VMware. It worked quite well but it irked me having to still be tied to Microsoft Windows.

After some initial false starts trying to install and run Imatch on earlier versions of Ubuntu up to and including Edgy Eft (6.10) I decided to have another try after upgrading to Feisty Fawn a week or so ago. Talk about easy :)

I had already purchased an upgrade from Mario a few weeks earlier and so I used the Wine File manager to install the demo version of IMatch and simply applied my licensed update over the top and it all just worked.

Well nearly all. At his stage of testing the only thing not to have worked is right-click Image > Open which is I imagine because IMatch is looking for an external image viewing application native to windows which of course doesn't exist under WINE. However, right-click Image > Edit serves the purpose of viewing an image anyway--so no great loss.

Batch processing works albeit not quite in the expected way. By this I mean that choosing a fixed size to export an image seems to result in it's longest dimension being 280px unless the Adjust for Landscape Portrait Images check box is checked. I'm still to figure this out and it might just be something I'm doing wrong. However, re-sizing by percentage works fine as does applying canvas borders and text attributes to images although I haven't checked every available combination thereof.

All tool bars, scroll bars, buttons and window borders lay out correctly albeit there does seem to be some minor transparent buffering at the top of some windows where the screen from any previously used workspace seems to show through but for the most part I hardly notice it. All menu drop down menus respond quickly except for the scripting menu for some reason and the right-click image pop-up menus seem a little retarded but not excessively slow. One click re-scan worked very quickly scanning some 20,000 images along with some mods and errors for invalid file formats in around 8 minutes including several new folders with 4mb images being processed in around 1/3 to 1/2 of a second each on my Dell D800 1.5Ghz notebook with 1Gb RAM with several other applications already running in other workspaces. Importing EXIF data took around 30 seconds.

The few scripts I have run including HTML Slideshow and Photo Gallery Creator worked flawlessly except that the Photo Gallery Creator only created clones of the index page thumbnails but again perhaps this was just me.

All in all it's a very practical and speedy application on WINE installed on Ubuntu Feisty Fawn--your mileage may vary. Feel free to ask any questions about feature performance and if possible I will test it for you on my install.

If I could only get PhotoShop CS3 running under wine I could abandon my VMWare sessions completely--sigh.

Photographer’s Journey » New places. New photographs.

Do you plan your photographs or just let them happen? The concept of travel photography and what it really means to Christopher Scholl. For Christopher the very process of photography is a journey. With every turn of our head toward something interesting, with every choice we make between aperture and shutter, with every click of that button, we are on a journey toward discovery.

Rain Photos - Photographer's Journey

Rainy days and Mondays always get me excited. Well, okay, maybe just rainy days. Rain can be a wonderful gift for a photographer looking to make moody images. But rain photos are also logistically tricky. Here are a few ideas to help make the most out of a rainy situation. Read Christopher Scholl's 10 great tips for shooting better photographs in the rain.

Equip Your Camera with You: Photographer's Journey

Your camera: don't leave home without it. Christopher Scholl at PHOTOGRAPHER’S JOURNEY.com talks about the advantages of always having a camera with you wherever you go.