Social Media Buttons- post all or just a few on a website?

All or nothing- well, it depends how many of these social media platforms do you use, what is your goal and target audience...http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

I just happened to come across Selene Bowlby webdesigner who has some great ideas on web design, shttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifocial media and more. Since I am in the process of redesigning my site, I can't thank her enough for the list of social media buttons on her site that give me an idea to use them in the navbar or even provide a "subscribe to" RSS feed option at the end of my content!

She even has a FAQ tab in the primary navbar! She posts great ideas on her 15 Key Elements All Top Web Sites Should Have article, check it out!

Here are my take aways from reading her articles:
-Consistency (in navigation)
-Primary navigation above the fold (logo, main sections)
-Include ALL SM icons (same size, same position, on all sites)- MySpace, FB, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, iTunes
-Include “search” box
-RSS feed or Newsletter option
-Add a Sitemap in footer (links to all sites)
-1 or 2 featured contents per page
-Have the website available for mobile devices
-FAQ
-"Speak live with…" option

What to put on a main webpage?

I have been doing research on what categories to include on a hompage that I design in Dreamweaver. Needles to say, the answer is- IT DEPENDS. First of all, figure out what is the use of a homepage?
- to sell yourself/ employment purposes (the focus will be on you and your work)
- to build your freelance business
- to showcase your work
.... or because you are just bored, you want to learn web design, but you can only learn it if you try to design a site.

So, after much redesign and research, here are my categories: multimedia, photos, video, print, radio, teaching, research, blog, about, contact and related links (besides my logo in masthead and copyright in the footnote). These categories sounds exhaustive so I have two options:
- I can leave the categories as is or
- I can create a main category called multimedia work/portfolio (include the multimedia, photography, print, radio categories). This way there would be less categories on my site but if I state under my name that I am a multimedia journalist, this should be fine?
Which option do you think is the best in web design?

Some Web Design Basics

This is my journey in the realm of web design: information overload but I hope to learn a lot and I hope to learn FAST from Debbie Wolfe, a web designer, instructor, and freelance journalist in Tampa Bay.
A couple of things Deb pointed out in her web design workshop:
- file management (understand where your file lives)
- use appropriate key words (because the search engines are like a spiderweb)
- use the 2 clicks rule to design your site
- place the most important items in the top 20% of your page
- most websites are shaped like an F
- use heatmaps or Google Analytics to measure your views
Her last advice- you are selling yourself, not where your stuff got published, so don't place logos from other media companies on your site!!!!

Portraits with Alexandra

I shot Alexandra last weekend Downtown St. Pete. She is a journalist and she also likes to be a model. Thanks, Alexandra for the opportunity. It was a pleahsure working with you! The weather was great and I even had nice clouds to photograph.


Check out Alexandra's album on Flickr.

Strobist Photoshoot at the Pier

This was fun!!!!! I did some strobist style portraits this weekend in St. Pete.
Thanks to the model, Candy Cooke.

Family Photoshoot with the MacDonalds in Treasure Island

My recent photoshoot with the MacDonalds went well. Laurie wanted family portraits, a portrait of Ian for the invitation for his communion and business portraits for their website. They own an insurance company in St. Petersburg.
Time went fast, photoshoot was done all at once at sunset in Treasure Island.
Thank you all for the participation, it was a lot of fun!!!!

Using Social Media to Grow Your Business

Use Social Media to Grow Your Business, says Carrie Wildes wedding photographer + social media diva. Carrie demonstrated how she uses social media as a marketing tool attract clients and market herself:
- she blogs about the events and people she photographs to generate buzz
- she posts "thank you" emails she receives from clients and vendors
- she pays attention to keywords (keywords depend on your business, of cohttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifurse)
- she created a Google business profile (it's free)
- experiment with all social media platforms: Word Press, Twitter, Facebook, Squarespace, etc.
- she uses a blogsite as her website
- she uses hyperlinks and tags to rank her SEO
- she also uses her blogsite as her working photography archive- keywording makes even more sense now :)
- she creates photo galleries on Facebook, tags the subjects in the photo and through a link she redirects those interested to read more about the event and the subjects on her website!

But she agrees, using social media as a marketing tool takes a lot of time. It is well worth it for her and she schedules blogging and Facebooking into her work.
If you plan to follow her path, you should learn to manage your workflow and your time. She religiously blogs and monitors her Google ranking- you should do the same because it is fun and FREE!

I also suggest you follow other photographers to learn how they use social media for branding and creating a buzz!

Thank you Carrie Wildes for sharing the information and spreading your love for photography at the Menaul Gallery. I am looking forward to attending your next workshop on social media on June 6th at the Menaul Gallery in Clearwater! Special thanks to Jerri and Scott Menaul for hosting these workshops.

Full Moon Over the Pier

Armed with a DSLR camera, a tripod, a wide angle lens, and my Yongnuo wireless remote control I headed to the St. Petersburg Pier for an astronomical experiment. I was hoping to see the full moon rising above the pier. If you are a Google Earth users you should should keep in mind these GPS coordinates:
27.776756 N, -82.630451 W (It's just South of the Vinoy on Bayshore-East side of Straub Park)

Here are some of my shots of the Full Moon Rise Over the Pier.
I wish I had a long lens too to capture the moment!!!!

More Full Moon shots are posted on Flickr.


I wanted to get the starburst effect so I stayed with high f-stops (f13 or higher, I kept the ISO at 200 or 400). Other tutorials siggest these parameters to chttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifapture the full moon with that orange glow near the horizon: ISO 200, f/8, 1/40-1/50s.
Here are more details on capturing the moon.

Exposure calculator

This great tutorial on night photography also covers the basic terms I used in this blog. Thanks, LeslieEy.com!

Another tutorial on photographing the moon.

Article about this topic on DP Review.

My previous posts on blue hour photography.

Brooker Creek Preserve

Shooting video was not an easy task as I have an inexpensive, tape based camera. I edited the video project using Final Cut Express and I managed to convert the file into a movie file that works on Youtube. Crunching the project THE RIGHT WAY is so important when you post your images on YouTube. If you don't keep the right parameters, your video would loose quality. This tutorial helped me crunch the video file to the right size!!!!

Blue Hour

I came across this image a couple of days ago- Blue hour at the Pier in St. Petersburg. I had an earlier post about the blue hour, so check it out. A year ago I was trying to shoot more silhouettes, leading lines and the magical blue hour.

Strobist portraits: De'mone Heller

I had the opportunity to shoot De'mone Heller who is an advertising student at USF and a member of the Faces Modeling Troupe. I don't usually shoot male models but I had a lot of fun shooting De'mone. I used one softbox and went for the dramatic light. Thanks, De'mone for the photoshoot!
More pics on Flickr!

Beach portraits

I had a great photoshoot last night in Fort DeSoto. I was with a group of my friends, including Brenda Knoll and Mike Mackay to shoot biker Brian. Sun was way to bright and we had to overpower it with 2 alien bees and a reflector. Here is the setup, yes we bounced the light off of the reflector:

Here is another behind the scenes shot, Mike shooting the model:

And some of my images can be seen on Flickr.

Social Media – 3 Free Tools to Grow Your Business- Part 2

As I promised last week, here are more comments about Alan Brusky's presentation. Alan is the Founder and Creative Director of Fireleaf Design and an excellent speaker on social media and more. Please follow him on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and on Flickr because you can learn more from this dude who is also a brilliant photographer!
How do I use SM? I am using social media as a student, freelance multimedia journalist, and educator to join professional groups, network, get involved with local organizations and projects, and more. I do believe that all platforms of social media have a different purpose and audience. For instance, I am using Twitter to do research (using keywords) and find experts in a field. I tweet about my work and I also interact with other professionals. I post my own content (and make it more specific by including hastags and links, I ask my audience to retweet it and give me feedback on my content), I try to follow people who interact with my tweets, retweet other people’s content if I find the information is relevant in my field, post polls, and organize contests. I promote professionals, workshops, and businesses so that I can get mentioned in their tweets too. I also focus on branding, I promote my freelance business by posting my work on Facebook and on Flickr. But I do not pay for advertising and I do not post “buy one, get one free” deals.I like Twitter because it is instantaneous and I can reach a lot of people fast.
I am using LinkedIn for networking purposes and I am using Facebook to post my pictures and interact with friends and clients. Since most of my work is media, Facebook is an ideal platform for visual content. My purpose is to get people go to my website, look at my work and then spread the word and recommend me as a journalist or photographer to their audience.
I do believe content is king both in traditional and social media. Multimedia is the essential tool to attract an audience. Telling compelling stories using the cross channel media approach keeps the audience growing and coming back.

Social media revolutionizes education

Brad Stager Coordinator, USF on iTunes U says the Multimedia Tips podcast collection is getting a lot of downloads. The attached graphic is from Apple's main iTunes U site and Multimedia Tips is highlighted as a Noteworthy collection.
I am looking forward to feature photographers, photojournalists, students, and professors who have something to say!

31st ANNUAL COLLEGE PHOTOGRAPHY CONTEST

Online entries: pfmagazine.com/photography-contest/enter-contest-online/

EARLY Entry Deadline:
October 18, 2010 ($3.95 each)

FINAL Entry Deadline:
November 23, 2009 ($4.95 each)

FIRST PLACE :: GRAND PRIZE :: $2,000 cash grant
PLUS Nikon D90 camera and lens system (or equivalent)

SECOND PLACE :: $1,000 cash grant
PLUS Nikon D90 camera and lens system (or equivalent)

THIRD PLACE :: $500 cash grant

5 FOURTH PLACE AWARDS Five $100 grants

100 HONORABLE MENTIONS
All Honorable Mentions will be listed in the May 2011 issue of Photographer’s Forum magazine and will receive a certificate of outstanding merit.

Winning photos will be published in the May 2011 issue of Photographer’s Forum and entered into Nikon’s Emerging Photographers Hall of Fame. All contest finalists, top 8% of all entries, will be published in the hardcover book Best of College Photography 2011.

*

Early entry fee is $3.95 per photo entered.
(uploaded or postmarked on or before October 18, 2010)
*

Final entry fee is $4.95 per photo entered.
(all entries must be uploaded or postmarked on or before November 22, 2010)
*

Rights remain with photographer.
*

Subject matter is open.
*

Finalists notified by January 28, 2011.
Winners notified by February 14, 2011.

This contest is open to all high school and college students in the U.S., Canada, and around the world.

How to be a bad journalist and a bad professor

I don't want to whine anymore about my English language skills. Once and for all, I am here to stay and WILL work in the U.S. media. Yes, I am a foreigner, but I don't want to hear over and over that my writing sucks and I have an accent!!! I am done with this crap. I want to hear HOW CAN I IMPROVE (besides telling me continuously to read the papers- I am doing that already, thank you very much). PLEASE tell me how can I improve, why my writing sucks. Talk to me about my bad grammar; don't just tell me I SUCK as a journalist. That is not a good method to improve someone at all. I am more than happy to get critics if they are CRITICAL. If you can't do that,stop, because you are wasting my time.