Portraits From The Real World Dick Sanders is an interesting guy. Like many of us, he became interested in photography while young, but the career path that led him to create the arresting images that populate this site (
"Never be afraid to try something new. Remember, amateurs built the ark, professionals built the Titanic."
While my quote of the month is from "anonymous," the subhead was a statement made by Ralph Waldo Emerson, who I think is of "Where's Waldo?" fame. In recent months, this column has featured some professional photographers who...
"If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?"
In another photo magazine's blog, the writer notes the passing of J. Frederick Smith at 88 and says, "I had heard his name but wasn't really aware of his work until recently." At first I was surprised by this sentence since it appeared in what was...
Never was there a time when it was so easy or inexpensive to create a great-looking website than right now. I created my own site (www.joefarace.com) using a WordPress template from Obox (www.obox-design.com) that’s hosted on GoDaddy.com and the whole magilla cost a little over $100—along with lots of my own time. What about your site? If you read Web Profiles regularly you know that from time to time I like to feature Shutterbug readers and if you would like to see your website or blog featured here, click my site’s Contact button and tell me about it.
I said it last month but it bears repeating: “Never was there a time when it was so easy or inexpensive to create a great-looking website than right now.” Yet one emerging trend is to pack as much text onto the opening screen as possible and if a picture must be used it should be tiny and maybe show a portrait of the photographer. There’s an old joke whose punch line is, “First, you have to get their attention.” That’s true of websites as well. That landing page should be your signature image—that gasp factor—that makes the viewer look, linger, and want to see more. Give it a try.
Thanksgiving Day is celebrated in the United States and Canada, although up North it’s the second Monday in October. Other places around the world observe Thanksgiving celebrations as well and I’d like to celebrate it here by thanking the people who make this column possible. Big thanks goes to Editorial Director George Schaub and Managing Editor Andrea Keister, who occasionally suggest sites for the column but mostly just make me look good. A big thank you goes out to all of the magazine’s readers for their support over the years. In recent issues I haven’t had as many Shutterbug Reader-of-the-Month sites but I’ll make up for it this month, starting with…
I only get to be in touch with you once a month through this column and Digital Innovations, but if you want more frequent reports, you can follow me on Twitter (www.twitter.com/joefarace) for daily updates on what’s new in digital imaging along with a dash of silliness. What’s more, my how-to blog (www.joefaraceblogs.com) has been restructured to feature a different topic each day of the week, such as Macro Monday, Travel Tuesday, and because I ran out of alliterations, Landscape Wednesday, Automobile Thursday, and Portraits and Glamour Friday.
In any given issue of this magazine you’ll see lots of different genres of photography represented, showing the diversity not only of subject matter but also how these subjects are treated aesthetically and technically. It’s this diversity of style that makes the magazine so readable as well as so much fun. Our readers are a diverse lot, too, and this month you will see an all-readers’ Web Profiles. These readers come from all over the country and use a variety of methods to display their work, but they all have one thing in common: an overriding passion for the art and craft of photography.
"The first step in blogging is not writing them but reading them."--Jeff Jarvis
Twice in the past I've tried to create a blog and failed miserably each time, perhaps because the blogging sites, not me, controlled the software used to create and maintain them. Recently my pal Ralph Nelson (http://www.ralphnelson.com"...
His Master's Voice The simplicity of Blake Shaw's homepage (www.blakeshawphotography.com) hits you over the head with a soft hammer belying the complex imagery within. The...
"...anyone can write a nonfiction piece. In fact, all nonfiction writing was just `What I Did Last Summer' over and over again."--Evan Hunter writing as Ed McBain
After returning from a trip to Puerto Rico last year I tried a small venture in self-publishing, resulting in a 7x7" travel photography book. It's like a micro-sized...
Spring will soon be here and I’m looking forward to snow melting and flowers blooming. It’s a good time to appraise your web presence and spruce it up. If you do, I have a suggestion: don’t use Adobe Flash. First, it means millions of people using iPhones, iPads, or iPods can’t view your site.
“To the complaint, ‘there are no people in these photographs,’ I respond, ‘there are always two people: the photographer and the viewer.’”—Ansel Adams
It’s June, a month of brides and Shutterbug’s Digital Darkroom special issue. In this month’s edition of Web Profiles, I’ll introduce you to a website created by an amazing...
“Scientists are saying the future is going to be far more futuristic than they originally predicted.”—Krista Now, Southland Tales
When Olympus announced the Four Thirds concept at PMA 2001, I was among the many members of the press who were, to put it in the most polite terms, skeptical. At the time, it seemed to me like a cure for no known disease, but I began to get...
The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.--Augustine
Of all the things photography does, showing us distant lands was one of its earliest functions. Before direct flights to Beijing, the first photographs of China that appeared in National Geographic gave readers a sense of what the country was like, even though few would ever make the trip. Two...