I thought that if you’re looking for ideas you might like to see what others have done. Some choose to use their photos on their cards and others choose not to.

This one and others was listed at slodive.com

This one and others at the Mooblog.

And 12 different ideas about cards at photojojo.com

And if you’re still not sure there is a great book to read about business cards by Ivan Misner called It’s In The Cards’ – great for all sorts of ideas, not just for photographers.

However we did go visit his Team Sally mates at the Rockhop 2011 MTB Enduro last Sunday and while there I took over 600 photos of the riders and have now posted some of those shots online for viewing and purchase. I was chatting at the Rotorburn forum (MTB) to let them know I’d been at the event but also to catch up with the chats there and discovered some fellow photographers in a couple of threads. One thread in particular had a great link to a blog post about a photo taken in Austria using a fisheye lens. Now it’s got me wondering if I should get one

Tristan says:

This photo was taken on June 3, 2008, and despite the many questions I’ve been asked surrounding the way it looks, I can confirm that no, it is not fake.

In 2008 I spent 6 months travelling through Europe. I’d just turned 18, I’d just finished school, and I was just desperate to get out of Sydney to explore the world. So I did what many people my age do; I booked a one-way flight to Europe. While there I spent time in Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Netherlands, Slovakia, Vatican City, Scotland and England (technically not Europe but close enough for me), and Austria, which is where this photo was taken.  Click here to read the rest and see the picture he’s talking about.

Thank you for your email. At this time, Lulu is not removing this option. However, It is only through customer feedback such as yours, that we can continue to improve our products and services to meet your highest expectations. I will be more than happy to address your concern for copyright to our product team.

So if you’re concerned about the possibility of your photos being used in someone else’s photobook, make sure you do speak up!

What did Lulu.com say?

Thank you for your email. We give authors that option so they can upload their images from Fotolia.com. If you see someone publishing your work, please let us know and we will take action on that issue. Lulu.com is a self-book publishing print on demand company and we do not review the content. Most people who use Lulu make photo books of their trips, family gatherings etc. Please let me know if you have any further questions.

What did I say in response?

Why can’t they just upload from their computers then, instead of an external service?

And you do promote that they can search through over 5 million photos at Fotolio as I showed in my previous email (and as shown in the attached). It is a concern for those of us who do photography on a professional or semi-professional level.

While I don’t expect I’ll be listened to as an individual, if photographers band together to voice their concern, then perhaps that might be considered.  The image I attached to my response above is below.

He loved the photobook I had on display but was disappointed he couldn’t buy it and was asking if it was possible for me to get several printed.  What a lovely surprise to get that letter.  I checked with the company that produced that book for me but it would cost me over $40 to reproduce more copies and I felt that might be a bit much to ask of others so set out finding a service online that might do it cheaper for me.  I went to lulu.com as I have used them successfully in the past for other books.  However, as I began setting up the photobook, imagine my surprise when they gave a direct link to Fotolio encouraging their clients to use that service to source photos for their photobooks.  Huh?  Surely that’s not right. Many people produce books to sell via Lulu.com (as I plan to) and don’t think they should be selling books with other people’s work in it.  A quick check of their Terms of Service showed that people were not allowed to do that, and yet here they are encouraging people to create books that could well be sold in their system.

I immediately wrote a letter to them via email explaining my concern as a working photographer.  I told them that it would be rare/unusual for anyone who had taken the photos themselves to download via Fotolio when they could upload from their own computers, so it would be those who don’t own the photos who would be accessing them from Fotolio. And are they doing anything to police their rules relating to non-sale of books using other people’s work that may be copyrighted?  I wait for their response.

I wouldn’t be happy to see someone else selling a photobook filled with photos I took and I doubt that any other photographer would either.  What are your thoughts?

It also mentions some famous photographers, both present and in the past.  I belong to another group which has a photographic challenge each month and we have to produce an image in the likeness of a famous photographer’s style or with a particular topic, i.e. black on black for example (at the time of writing this I was still thinking on that).

One month was in the likeness of Henri Cartier-Bresson who progressed from painting to photography and in particular, black-and-white imagery and photojournalism. This photo to the right was my entry for that particular month topic.  It was taken on the weir wall at Lysterfield Lake Park.

I really enjoying learning so much about this much loved hobby, addiction, pastime and lifetime vocation of photography.

What do you enjoy about photography the most?

Flash based websites and photo galleries have long been the darlings of photographers; and not without good reason. Used to best effect they are capable of presenting beautiful portfolio style websites in a way that really does enhance a photographic collection. In short they can be visually stunning.

So what is the problem? Unfortunately Flash has a couple of quite significant drawbacks that suggest a limited future in mainstream website construction for anything other than quite specialist applications.

Problem 1: Ensuring Flash content can be read by Search Engines
In recent years it is true that Google have improved their ability to both index and link to content embedded in a Flash based website. It is not without difficulty though. Text based content needs to be stored in external XML files and special linking arrangements are required to enable search engine listings to link back to specific sections of the website. In other words, it is a work-around at best.

Problem 2: Apple’s mobile operating system does not support Flash
The consequence of this is that any iPad or iPhone user cannot view a Flash based website or image gallery . . . at all! If you think that is of little consequence consider this: by 2014 Morgan Stanley has predicted that they believe there will be more mobile devices accessing the Internet world wide than desktop PCs. From a business perspective, this simply cannot be ignored.

In truth I suspect that Apple, rather than being a bit off the pace, have just been among the first to see the writing on the wall. With the introduction of HTML5 and CSS3 and the great improvements of lightweight Javascript libraries such as jQuery, the need for Flash to create and embed special effects is rapidly declining. In short, there are now alternatives, and those alternatives are standards compliant and present content in a manner that enables it to be fully indexed by search engines without any workarounds.

As alluded to in the title – if you currently have a Flash based website for your business, it may be time to move on.

Michael Hayes,
TOSD Web Design

A Guest Post on Memory Cards from Andrew Mills.

The memory card – every digital photographer uses them, and they are the subject of many heated debates.

Everyone is different, and have differing opinions, rituals and ways of doing things, but this article goes into how I use/work with memory cards. It contains some tips,etc., that I have gleaned from other photographers and some stuff I have found myself.

Read more

Subscribing by email means it arrives in your inbox daily rather than having to remember to read your RSS feed or go to the site on a daily basis.

I do have it set up to publish at Facebook but the application doesn’t always work as it should which I do find frustrating. However, it is good to see the number of ‘likers’ at Facebook and opens up more discussions amongst us.

The email subscription function on the blog does work and you can see what I post daily in your inbox every day.  To comment on a particular post, just click on the title of the post in the email body and it brings you back to the blog so you can leave a comment. And bloggers do love getting comments!

The email subscription link is the envelope icon on the right-hand side of the blog at http://kathiesphotos.com/blog/ under ‘subscribe here’.  Better still, why not subscribe here now?  With an average of over 1100 visitors a month, would be great to see many more subscribing.  Thanks!

But that’s not the only thing this project has done. It’s given me the chance to get to know my camera, know which lenses are my favourites, what settings I like to use most, and to look at the same thing in several different ways and from several different angles.  This is particularly so for Project 52 which was slightly different. Taking a photo a week of the same object.

Mind you, I didn’t stick with just one photo a day. Once I got into the habit of picking up my camera on a daily basis, I found many things to take photos of.  In total I took over 12,000 photos through 2010. Now, there were quite a few ‘bad’ ones in there but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that I was learning from the experience and improving my ability in taking shots of all sorts of things, including birds and wildlife.  I can tell you that I believe I’m a much better photographer today than I was 12 months ago.  I was given permission to experiment, try things out, make mistakes and learn from them, work out why something didn’t work and so on.

I have had many say to me over the past year how much they’ve enjoyed my photography and wished they could take better shots themselves.  Well, I’m here to say, they (and you) can – if you make the effort to get out daily with your camera. Doesn’t matter what kind of camera you have – what matters is that you take the time to get to know it and how to use it.  Here is a slideshow showing you what I’ve done so far this year – why not come back and revisit this link from time to time?