SEO: White Hat Works Too

I am a big evangelist for making your sites SEO friendly. It gets a bit dicey when I try to explain what I do without using the term that I don't like very well; Search Engine Optimization. Eeeuuuwww. Reminds me of shadiness that I see in that industry so often. It has connotations of 'Black Hat" tricks and tips that are meant to 'fool' Google. I prefer a 'white hat' approach to doing it right. Google and the other guys are very open to you providing information that will help them place you in the right search. You have to have stuff worth finding though, and for so many that is the rub. "My content sucks, so I have to trick Google into showing my sucky content to people who are not looking for the crap I have to show."

Yeah, that's a great marketing plan. Let me know how it works out for you. That is why "Black Hat" has been so damned by the industry. Luckily there are some who are playing it straight with great results.

When you have content that is worth showing, then you help Google by providing pages and code and meta stuff that helps them show your good stuff.

That is 'White Hat" SE stuff. I like that.

I worked with a very practical and successful photographer who considers his website his most important tool for getting new work. It is working very well for him.

Recently the pages started to fall down in page rank and he found himself on page 4 or 5 and he had maintained a page one ranking for so long he knew he needed some help. We went through the site, made some recommendations to him and he left with a list of things to add/modify on his site. (Full disclosure: Don is a PHOTOtool user and also maintains his site with our Total-control-site product. These tools make the marketing component, and the content management very easy for him.)

Here is his note to me today:
I worked with a local photographer to help him regain his ranking on Google. Here is his note back to me today.

Thank you again for all of your advice regarding keywords, metadata and Google rankings. We implemented several suggestions and within 10 days our rankings - which had slipped from page one to pages three and four - were right back on page one. We'll be implementing the rest of your suggestions shortly. Let me know when your paper is released.
Can't thank you enough.
All the best,
Don Stevenson

You're welcome, Don.

Grab a Cold One...

... and sit for a while. Lots to see here. This blog presents some exciting and really innovative images. Looks like someone who loves photography and has a real talent for finding it and blogging it. (HT: Personism)

i heart photograph

The Internet's Biggest Challenge

...at least in my mind. The anonymous comment, website, spam, viruses, malware, threats and disinformation. In the analog world, they can be tracked, followed, investigated. Online, these veritably despicable vermin seem to reach evermore depths of depravity. One of my favorite sites is "Creating Passionate Users" seems to be under attack from some particularly low types of vermin. This site is a marketing, user experience site, not a political shoutfest, and the language used in the comments section is nearly unimaginable.

Creating Passionate Users: "As I type this, I am supposed to be in San Diego, delivering a workshop at the ETech conference. But I'm not. I'm at home, with the doors locked, terrified. For the last four weeks, I've been getting death threat comments on this blog. But that's not what pushed me over the edge. What finally did it was some disturbing threats of violence and sex posted on two other blogs... blogs authored and/or owned by a group that includes prominent bloggers. People you've probably heard of. People like respected Cluetrain Manifesto co-author Chris Locke (aka Rageboy)."

I used to have my comments turned off, but several friends asked for me to turn them on. So I did. I received very few comments, as I am not doing a blog that seems to fire that kind of response. And yet, I got a comment early last week that was vile, personal and totally ad-hominem.

I think it is time to turn them off again. I don't want to be involved in this kind of crap and it seems to me that I will be someday under attack and maybe I will stave it off for a while. The people who want to reach me should try e-mail. Then, at least some anonymity will be able to track.

I love the internet, I really do. This kind of vileness is so lame and disgusting that it puts a pall over us all.

Devon Looking Out Window

Looking Out Window
Originally uploaded by geroco.

I worked with Gerry on a one-on-one tutorial. He wanted to learn to shoot his favorite locations with his own equipment. That's smart. So we got together for 4 hours and worked at his historical home in central Phoenix. He hired a pro model and had all his plans ready.

We worked with strobes, mixed light and natural light. Devon was wonderful and we made lots of images. You can see them if you click over to the Gerry's Flickr account.

You can see more info at my Lighting Essentials site as well.
I have another Lighting Workshop coming up on April 14th, so sign up if you are interested in learning to light better.

Digital? Art?

A very nice intro piece on marketing and selling digital art. As we move further and further from film and darkroom, these types of discussions will become more prevalent.

Reto and I stepped out of the gallery and wondered whether a space that focuses on digital art was viable. Does it follow the same economical model as any other gallery? Does it have a market? A future? [DAM] is a bit isolated in the art gallery landscape (at least in Europe as New York, for example, has Bitforms and the Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery) so how does it work? I then decide to contact Wolfgang Lieser, the gallery owner and curator, and asked him if he'd find some time to answer my questions. I'll never thank him enough for his enthusiasm, the way he supports and promotes digital artists and for reminding me that the discipline is already some 40 years old. Here's an overview of our conversation:

Make that 3 boxes of practice...

Take a look at the great comics and fun stuff at "What the Duck".

He's right about the practice though, and even duffers like me should heed the call to practice our craft. Everyday is a learning day.

Sit and listen for a while.

Sorry I missed last week, but I was totally engrossed in the redesign of my STEEL ID site. But now, some jazz fun. Trane and Wynton Kelly... cool.

I love Cassandra Wilson.

Diana Krall in Paris... damn this is nice.

cheers..............

Monte Zucker: RIP

A genuinely nice man who will be missed greatly. Monty lost his battle with cancer today.

Who is Monte? | Monte Zucker: Portrait and Wedding Photography Teacher
Monte's images are simple, direct, and emotional. Each of them makes a simple statement. There is nothing in his photographs, except what should be there. All distractions were removed before he snapped the shutter. What you see is what he wants you to see. It's usually a face or a collection of faces. When It's a photograph of an individual, you will immediately know that person. When It's a photograph of a group you'll feel and experience their involvement with each other.

Ouch! That's Gonna Leave a Mark!

Oh man, if you recognize your company or, heaven forbid, yourself in this post by Seth, then sit down and decide to change. There are too many good people doing what you do. It isn't going to get any better. Good, good, good, good. They are everywhere.

Decide to be great. Do what it takes. If you have to work harder, work harder. As the good pool grows, the Great pool seems all the brighter.

My guess is that even for a thriving brand like Toyota, most of these guys weren't paid so much. They were 'good' salespeople, lifers who showed up, did what they were told and closed a sale here and there.

It soon became clear that the salesperson who was assigned to me wasn't 'great'. The dealership had messed up: He had no record of my appointment, no file, no history of why I came. But he just punted. He made no effort to engage with me or look me in the eye or empathize with my frustration at the complete waste of time my call yesterday had been. He gave up after about ten seconds, bummed out that he had lost his place in line. So I left.

My new STEEL ID site design

My new STEEL ID site design
Originally uploaded by Wizwow.

This is the second site that has been keeping me up late. My much neglected design site. I am taking a new approach to it, and hope to have it launched this week. Yeah, right.

Yousef Karsh

The amazing work of Yousef Karsh. I remember getting my hands on one of his monographs, Karsh Portraits, in a little book store in LaJolla. I simply couldn't put it down and bought it. I took it back to the motel and just sat and stared for hours at the images. What a master, what an incredible depth of emotion in a simple portrait.

I was on a forum in Flickr where they were discussing Karsh, so I thought I would share it with you.

Black and White: a Perspective

This is a long, and good read, for a Sunday afternoon. Especially if you like Black and White photography.

I had doubts, of course, about photography's moment in art's spotlight. For instance, it was obvious that photography was undergoing a physical face-lift to meet the demands of sitting alongside painting and sculpture in vast art centers and at international fairs; the predominance of big digital C-prints, laminated behind plexi, in small editions, was establishing itself. The hyperbolic, carefully controlled, museum- and gallery-specific versions of photography, in which every prop and gesture can be attributed to the artist's direction, have been the most pronounced arrivals in the art world. If you are, like me, schooled in the magic of photography's willful embrace of luck, mistakes, and happenstance, you view the art world's partial endorsement of this bastard form with some suspicion. I don't mean to deride the awe-inspiring creativity of a handful of artists who showed us that photography was a supremely capable and elastic art medium and were honored with monolithic, monographic exhibitions. I mean to indicate that their ascendance into the center of art practice does not necessarily herald the acceptance or understanding of photography's broad creative terrain as a whole.

A Real Man

In the midst of overpaid rock stars going ballistic, "men-of-the-people" moving 28,000 sq.ft. homes, senators who decry bureaucracies that sit under their noses, and a world that seems totally enamored of the superficial and vain, we meet this guy.

Today, he returns to the gate, huddling beside a fire in an old oil drum along with his American colleagues. They are his responsibility, he says, and he is determined not to forsake that trust.

"I don't want to be blamed," he says. "I promised these people a lot. Dying is better than to be blamed."

"A Guy In a Band"

Yes. And I bet he plays guitar too.

"Bloody Hell"

... thanks Ron. That was my thought exactly, just before going into the depths of envy and desire. Oh man, I want one of these... My favorite line - "No news on price, availability or weight yet." Really!

PMA 2007: Sigma has today announced one massive beast of a lens; the APO 200 - 500 mm F2.8 EX DG. This lens is stated by Sigma as being the worlds first Ultra-Telephoto Zoom Lens that offers an impressively fast F2.8 maximum aperture through its range. The lens also features and LCD panel with a readout of focal length and subject distance. If 500 mm isn't enough reach a dedicated 2x Tele Converter is supplied with the lens as standard and changes it into a 400 - 1000 mm F5.6. Combine that with a typical APS-size 1.5x FOV crop on a digital SLR and you've got either 300 - 750 mm F2.8 or a 600 - 1500 mm F5.6 (better have a good tripod). No news on price, availability or weight yet.

People people

I am passionate about portraits. My shelves are full of books of the masters, and the human element is one I try to incorporate even in my landscapes. This post over at Personism caught my attention. And the fact that the shots are done on 8x10 (I still love my Deardorff) make it all the more interesting.

Everyone’s talking about portraits all of a sudden, and the timing couldn’t be more perfect for me. It’s not just my solipsistic preoccupation with my own headshot that’s got picture taking of people on my mind. In fact that’s the least of it (can you imagine?) Next Friday, after the dust settles from the Winter ‘07 Edition of Hey, Hot Shot!, we’ll open our first solo exhibition in a while. jb artist Benjamin Donaldson is debuting a series he’s been hard at work on for a couple of years, Summerland. A bit further down the line, my Summer group show, which I’m co-curating with Joerg just happens to be called… The New American Portrait.

Ben is a smart cookie, and a fabulous technician - his portraits, shot with an 8″ x 10″ camera, and printed 24″ x 20″ are divine. His Summerland subjects have been hypnotized, instructed to visualize “the most beautiful landscape imaginable.” They are utterly at ease, shoulders are sloped, some have beatific smiles. Photographing them in this state produces a slightly uncomfortable, yet thrilling sort of voyeurism. I look at them and wonder what they’re seeing, and soon enough my thoughts are wandering off to my own gorgeous vistas.

Lighting Essentials for Photographers:

What I have been working on deep for the last few weeks. I really enjoy the workshops and seminars and have started to develop that part of my business. This site will grow like a weed in the next year or so.

"Learn to Light like a Pro. From natural light, 'hotlights', and small strobes to powerful studio setups, we cover it all. With tutorials, charts, setups, interviews and movies, Lighting Essentials will provide a place to learn how to light anything."

Interesting and Possibly Provocative

Journal » Is Originality Necessary In Graphic Design Today?: "The point is this – if we are too original in our work a) our clients won’t buy it and b) if our clients did buy it their consumers won’t buy it. The end result is no money and no clients."

WSJ "Journeys need Journals"

Very beautiful MM presentation. This is a wonderful blend of video, audio, stills... wow.

"Red Hot Rails"

... Red Hot Multimedia!

Richard Hernandez at the San Jose Mercury News has posted a link to his multimedia presentation on trains and their continuing impact.

If you have been following the great blog at MultimediaShooter, you know his work. I visit the blog every couple of days and find the inspiration linked there vitally uplifting. It is a new day dawning for PJs and he is a champion for embracing the change.

If you are not thinking about the changes that digital, video, audio and easy to use Flash tools are bringing to all of us, PJ or ad shooter, you should be.

Well done, Richard.