Category Archives: Article

Why I’m blocking Pinterest from my websites

Posted on by
3

There’s been a lot of comment on the internet about pinterest and its rapid growth recently, both positive and negative. I have to admit that I hadn’t paid much attention to it in the past but given the interest I decided to take a look at it.

Pinterest’s approach is simple – it’s a visual analogue of the mainly text-based social media sites dominant today. Users are invited to select content from other websites and pin this to themed collections and share with friends and others through the Pinterest website. Sounds simple and innocuous but has sparked controversy over the copyright implications of what they are doing.

Continue reading “Why I’m blocking Pinterest from my websites” »

Bookmark and Share

monochrome photography

Posted on by

I was asked this summer if I would give a talk on monochrome photography to my local camera club and agreed to do so. I gave the talk last Thursday … this is a slightly extended version of the content.

Background

I’ve been involved in photography for over twenty years, mostly monochrome photography, and used to have my own darkroom, as the darkroom was very much a part of getting the images I actually wanted. When I moved to Cheshire from Berkshire in 1999 I was unsure of whether I wanted to build another darkroom, and started experimenting with digital printing in 2000. This early start has played a part in the somewhat unusual collection of software that I use.  I’ll mention the various software packages I use at the end of this article, but this is principally about general issues in monochrome digital photography, not specific software.

monochrome photograph - steps up the beach

Silloth Steps

I’m primarily a landscape, floral, and ‘fine art’ photographer, not a people, portrait, action, or documentary photographer, so my views and approach definitely won’t cover everything! (I did shoot one wedding for a friend … while the bride and groom were happy with the results, I am definitely not open to requests from anyone else!)

Setting up

There are three basic tools involved in photography – camera (including lenses) for image capture, monitor (and computer) for processing, and printer for output.
Continue reading “monochrome photography” »

Bookmark and Share

Silloth Steps awarded Gold Label

Posted on by
monochrome photograph of a path up from the beach at Silloth

Silloth Steps

I entered this image into another competition – this time a round of the United Photographic Postfolios group I belong to. It’s a monochrome photograph of some old steps up the dunes from the beach at Silloth, which have clearly seen better days! (It’s a digital image, converted to monochrome using Photoshop and Silver Efex Pro). I was delighted to discover it had been awarded the Gold Label, with six of the eight other members awarding it top marks!

As a result, it will be exhibited later this year at the Annual meeting of the UPP of Great Britain. (Looking back over my records, I’ve had at least one image awarded a Gold each year except the first year I’ve been a member of this group.)

This particular image has a mixed exhibition record, scoring highly in some exhibitions (such as the Bristol International Salon of Photography) , while being rejected without a score in others.

Bookmark and Share

Structuring your website content for search engines

Posted on by

I’ve reviewed the structure of a few websites for friends recently and found some common errors with respect to optimisation for search engines. This article attempts to describe some simple things you can do that will help search engines determine what your website is about.

Which are the important pieces of text?

Search engines like pages that are well structured, and HTML was designed from the start to support well structured pages, with a title for the page, and then hierarchical headings within the content. Proper use of these helps search engines to more easily categorise a page. They also make it much easier for human readers to scan through a page for the parts that interest them.

The other thing that every page has is a ‘name’ – that is, a url. Names are important in the real world, and urls are just as important online. Continue reading “Structuring your website content for search engines” »

Bookmark and Share

Cotswold Monochrome Salon 2011

Posted on by

Monochrome photograph of a steam engine being restored at Threlkeld

Old Time Engineering

Cotswold Monochrome has reverted to a ‘print only’ format this year so I had to decide whether or not I wanted to go to the additional cost and effort (and planning!) of preparing and posting prints rather than digital images that I usually select and send at the last minute! I have some print boxes left over from the days before digital projected image competitions were the norm, so decided to enter, and shared the postage costs at least with a couple of other members from my local camera club. Continue reading “Cotswold Monochrome Salon 2011” »

Bookmark and Share

LCPU 2011 Annual Print and Projected Image Competitions

Posted on by

I belong to the Holmes Chapel Camera Club, and as usual the club submitted an entry to the Lancashire and Cheshire Photographic Union (LCPU) Annual competition. This year we had our best result yet (by quite a long way!) – placed 9th out of 55 clubs in the colour print competition. Continue reading “LCPU 2011 Annual Print and Projected Image Competitions” »

Bookmark and Share