Sunday March 16th 2008

Well frankly this weekend has been a washout on the photography front. Driving wind and rain for two days does not a happy photographer make... I've just realised how much that generic phrase makes a person sound like Yoda. Anyway... I did manage to finally sort out the PC and get it cleaned and defragged... plus I ported 112gb of images over onto the Terastation to free up some space, so it's not been entirely wasted. My Mac is slowly dying... it's going to be time for a new one soon... however, since I got the new screen and doubled my RAM I'm actually finding the workflow on the PC to be much smoother so, maybe I'll ditch the Mac altogether. Don't faint, it's for practical reasons... you'd be surprised at the number of designers that are moving to PC's these days... several of my contacts at work have already transferred wholesale...

Traffic to the site seems to be picking up but I still need to concentrate on getting the optimisation sorted out, at the moment it's severely lacking. I also need to get the rest of the images uploaded and rationalise the file size... work, work work!

I'm hoping to be able to visit a fantastic spot I shot years ago this week providing the weather clears. I have some shots from the old prosumer that I took way back then and every time I look at them I want to return. There's also a steelworks being demolished in town at the moment that I intend to visit. I'm hoping that the 'local historian writing a book' line will work as well as it always has in the past on the demolition crew. Years ago nobody minded you wandering around sites that were a little unsafe... now they have health and safety regulations tattooed on their foreheads and can be a little uptight. We'll see how it goes...

M.

Sunday March 9th 2008

Took a walk back to a few of my old favourite haunts today. One particularly interesting place is an old barn near my grandmothers house that always enables me to fill my CF card with images. 450 shots later I returned home... man, I could write a book on that barn! I'm going to be uploading a few of the shots later into the latest images category... or rather it's new incarnation under another name.

I've also decided to have a dedicated page for print sales as many of the images on the site are for display purposes only and I really want to stress displaying images rather than selling.

The more I work on this website, the more there seems to be that needs doing! Anyway, I'm enjoying it...

Met a really cool artist online a few days ago, I suggest you check out Jazz Green's website... lots of fantastic abstract paintings using all sorts of materials and cool decay related images too. Jazz was also kind enough to give me some great constructive critique on the site which I shall be acting on over the coming days.

Peace and Rioja (like love and bubbles only far more stimulating...)

M.

Friday March 7th 2008

Well finally the site seems to be coming together... it's been a long drawn out process collating pictures and checking the image quality. I've decided to add some of the small cropped pieces that are visually interesting into the gallery later this weekend, even though some aren't suitable for large prints over 10x10. They, however will be the last to go in as I still have many many more to go through.

I sold my first site related print today! Well actually it was a canvas of Hidden Secret, to a young lady visiting the office so I'm really really happy (even though it wasn't strictly a web sale).

I'm anxious to get some more feedback on the site so please, if you can spare a moment, leave some feedback on the message board.

Today I was kucky enough to encounter an ornamental cherry tree in a car park (no, he wasn't driving) and got a few good shots of blossoms. I love it when the cherries start to blossom because it always heralds that most magical time of year, spring. Time to dust off the macro lens!

Later. M.