Back on the ranch we’ve had quite a few active weeks out here. This as we pump in and push new content to the PowerDeck powered site.

As I get my head around what PowerDeck has to offer and as I add in more content, the more and more I like the way things are shaping. Likewise with what I’ve able to accomplish with both the site and the features that PowerDeck has to offer.

In this instance, its often the small things that count. With PowerDeck, there’s their integration with Facebook and Twitter. A sort of “set up and forget” thing. Now, every time I add new content to the site, PowerDeck posts out notices to Facebook and Twitter. Unless I’ve overlooked something, don’t recall this happening over at Photoshelter. There, this as I recall, was a decidedly manual affair, as in having to click on a button somewhere – if you remembered to ever do it. Don’t ever recall doing it.

While working on the site, there are couple of other small things I appreciate. One feature are the Statistics on the Activity page. Here you find a selection of stats relating to site visitors, search engine visits, site searches, price look ups and so forth. Over at Photoshelter they had stuff there but, unlike PhotoDecks day by day thing, everything seemed so remote from the everyday. About the only daily stat that I got on Photoshelter was the most viewed 100 images. Nice but that doesn’t really cut it or go anywhere.

While Photoshelter used to push how effective it was on the SEO front, for all the talk it never really seemed to get to the metal. On that side there were forever complaints about how only parts of collections were crawled, that specific images never showed up in search or stats and whatever. While SEO counts for somethings, it doesn’t count for everything. That said, PhotoDeck seems to hold its own in this regard. With the package I was using at Photoshelter, I could only use Google web tools and not Analytics to see what was happening on the SEO front. Thus, only got a general glimpse of what was unfolding there. Here at PhotoDeck, as mentioned before, things are much closer to the metal. While there’s no getting away from it, images have to be marked up and keyworded accordingly for them to feature in any search results – site-wise as well as across the Internet. Thus for, the results have been interesting – as in real time results and with everything being featured as intended.

One other items that’s made working with PhotoDeck such a pleasure and that’s been site integration. Like Photoshelter, when you start off, you get a generic site name. In my case, with Photoshelter I had http://rcoles.photoshelter.com. Not exactly the most user friendly or easiest of URL’s to remember. It served its purpose and that was about it. At PhotoDeck I started off with http://rogancoles.photodeck.com. In this last week took things a step further and “integrated” the site as a sub-domain into my main web site. I ended up making things a lot more complicated than they ever should have been. All it really took was to add a CNAME pointing to the PhotoDeck site on my site’s DNS management page and to make a small corresponding change on the PhotoDeck site. And, that was it. The PhotoDeck site is now referred to as http://archive.rogancoles.com.

On the main site there’s now a new menu link at the top of the page – as in SALES. Clicking on this will now take you straight through to the PhotoDeck/Archive site. Back on the archive site, click on the “Home” link and this will bring you back to the main web site. All very easy and seamless.

Yup, there’s still a fair bit if “fine tuning” to be done on the site. But, we’ll get there as we add more content and “round out the house”, so to speak.

Enjoy.

Yup, Tickey the Clown, aka Eric Hoyland, makes a second appearance on these blog pages. The last time was at this link – Tickey the Clown.

There are several reason for running this image a second time. The first is, this current image is reworking of the previous image. While the original image is on film, the scans I had made I used to pull them through Photoshop using a complex process of changing the Image Mode to greyscale and then to quadtone and then pull the curves to get the sepia colour and detail I wanted for the finished image. It used to take me hours to pull off similar results across a bunch of images.

Just recently I indulged myself and acquired the Nik Collection of Photoshop plugins. This has turned out to be one of the better software investments I’ve made in while. In buying the package, I was able to take advantage of a special that Google, as new owners of Nik Software, were offering for the whole collection of Nik Software plugins. Good move.

For all the monochromatic images that will soon be appearing on the new archive site, I’ve used the Silver Efex Pro2 plugin. Using this plugin I now get a more consistent finish to my black and white images. Not only that, also get a decent image framing effect. If I was going to sell prints off these images, this is how I would print them – white edge with thin black edge boarder close to the image proper. In times now past, would have used a Leica Focomat enlarger to do much the same – whether I would have had to file the neg holder to get a similar effect remains to be seen. Would be nice to get back into a darkroom again. The Niks plugins are now perhaps the next best thing to getting in there.

On the second, did I mention a “new archive” site? Yes. For the past couple of years – as in the last half decade – I’ve been using Photoshelter to host my image archive and where I had hoped to be doing other things there. Never quite got around to ever using their services as designed or intended. In the meantime and as far as I’m concerned, seems like Photoshelter has lost “traction” somewhere out there. They’ve been promising “significant changes” since 2011. Aside from some “cosmetic” changes to the backend operations and an update to third party themes, its the same old, same old. Not that I’m looking for anything gee-whiz-bang, just something that’s a little more manageable on the backend and a little more responsive on the user side, especially with all this mobile media blah.

That said, started looking around and, in the process, came across PhotoDeck. With Photoshelter, there’s just one too many layers of onion in there for my liking. A bit like looking at the facets of a cut diamond, in looking at one facet you seemed to lose sight of the others. With PhotoDeck, seems like one is much “closer to the metal”, so to speak. I’m not going to suggest that PhotoDeck is easier to use than Photoshelter. To the contrary. But with that said, with PhotoDeck you take control of the process and are responsible for the finished product. That’s it. With Photoshelter you have this elaborate structure and, there in lies the rub, in some ways its too structured and a touch too rigid. Photoshelter purports to be a lot of things to a lot of people and, with some things, they do things really well. BUT, there’s a something of a huge disconnect in there somewhere and thereby, traction is lost somewhere – as in not being able to touch the ground.

With PhotoDeck, I don’t know, it just works. Seriously. After settling down with a GUI design choice which you can customise to your heart’s content, its almost simply a matter of uploading images and that’s about it. PhotoDeck does SEO and seemingly better than Photoshelter as far as I’ve been able to discern at this stage. It does social media – Facebook, Twitter and whatever – without having to really think about it. It is mobile media responsive and there we go.

Will probably come back to PhotoDeck and its offerings again in other blogs in the very near future. This is my future for the time being, this as I say hello to PhotoDeck and goodbye to Photoshelter. I’m hoping to get what I have of my archive up at Photoshelter transferred to PhotoDeck by the end of this month. Added to this, there’s a huge chunk of images currently being prepped and these will see the light of day on the PhotoDeck site in the very near future.

For the PhotoDeck plug bit, use this coupon code – YG@UBQHBW – for a 50% discount on the first month’s fees. Check out their main site at photodeck.com.

Oh, and the last reason for running the above image – it rates as the most viewed image over at the Photoshelter site. Let’s see what happens at PhotoDeck shall we?

Enjoy and take care.

The week leading up to the Easter break was something of a momentous week for me – mainly in the name of change and in things changing.

In this week a couple of things have taken place that are likely to alter both my social and working landscape and may, in turn, lead to changes in ways I’ve tended to view or see things.

In one of the more uplifting moments, received an email this week from na architect client with an attachment featuring a project we had collaborated on in mid-2012 . This was a 4 page spread in one the regions more upmarket interior decorating magazines – Dwell Asia.

The article was informative, nicely laid out and the pictures were well used.

“Way to go”, so I thought.

In thinking more about this moment, about our collaboration in general together with some of the other events that have taken place during the week, there was something here about, “adding something to the conversation”.

I mean, this is what I generally do and perhaps excel in – as in, “adding something to the conversation”.

Not all conversations are vocal, nor written. In this case, just a bit of visual content.

In the course of the week and in an event unrelated to the above, I was first asked about my availability for an architectural assignment. Then, after responding, I was turned down on an opportunity to photography a Frank Gehry project.

This may have had something to do with my availability or rather, the lack thereof – as in not being in town where the project is located.

It may have had something to do with money. Knowing the business climate as I do in the location where the project is located, this is more likely to be a matter of fact and a sad one at that.

There, little if any credibility is ever accorded to “creative endeavour” and, even less so, in terms of what could be added to any “conversation” so to speak.

As long as the price is right and however the job is squeezed out, that’s good enough and that’s just about all that’s required in those parts. More a case of “job’s worth” than much else. Another story for another time.

Back to the commission. In terms of “conversations”, it wouldn’t have been so much a matter of: “I photographed a Frank Gehry project” or even, “Who photographed that Frank Gehry project”?

Personally, this is not where its at for me. Put briefly, the most interesting part of any fair “conversation” is “participation” – as in bringing something to the table.

In the image accompanying this piece, hopefully it serves to illustrate the point.

While this was my best effort on the occasion and under the prevailing circumstances, I’m not going to suggest that the images used in this feature were particularly “great”. More to the point and, to be specific, there was enough material to make up a “conversation” that was spread across 4 pages. In this particular instance I’m glad I was able to contribute to this particular conversation in the way I did.

With respect to the above, the Frank Gehry project would have been interesting. Well, more interesting than interesting. Not that I would have gone out to out-bilbao or out-experience music than anyone else out there. This is not my style. The project mentioned here is a oncological out-patients unit attached to a local hospital. The story here is not so much about the architect or the structure and its design, its more about purpose and function. Less about architectural photography and perhaps more about “social documentary” photography, more about documenting the architect’s and commissioning party’s intent and mission than just photographing another Frank Gehry project. And, this is my point, adding something to the conversation and bringing something to the table. My purpose and mission I guess.

With Michael Ong’s Apartment 26D project, seems like we got some of that conversation going. The purpose and intent is not to dominate and overwhelm but to conjoin and to find common ground. I like what we accomplished here.

Enjoy.

…, well, not quite. The reference here is to the new web site. “New web site, he says, there’s nothing new here, its the same old stuff”. And there, you would be just about right.

To “lean on” the title of one of Leonard Cohen’s albums, this web site update/upgrade is something of a “new skin for an old ceremony”. Basically I’ve “reskinned” what was there before. To my mind, this “new skin” brings me a little closer to the manner and way in which I’ve been wanting to present my work – this as a “working portfolio”. The site now best expresses what I do and where I am, this on the work front.

As far as websites go, this site has come a long way over the years – from something that was initially tinkered out of HTML and Flash, then out of pure CSS and on to what we have now. After taking on WordPress as my preferred operating platform, I’ve “played around” with various photographer themes from several vendors. In my experimentations, have gravitated towards the themes offered by Graph Paper Press (GPP). In a sense they let me get “closer to the metal” so to speak. My meaning here is that, with these themes, there’s still room to customise and tailor the themes to suit requirements. At the same time, the themes are advanced and sophisticated enough to offset and differentiate one’s own site from others. With all things mobile, these recent themes plays nice with the variety of mobile platforms out there, be these tablets, mobile phones and whatever. In terms of presentation, this theme is described as “responsive” – as in responding to the varying dimensions the curent crop of media platforms we have around us. So, the site looks nice, no matter the platform.

The theme used here is GPP’s Reportage. On the site before this one – as mentioned in the previous post – there I was using GPP’s Albedo theme. There’s a strong similarity between the two and where I now view Reportage as being a refinement of the Albedo theme.

Aside from what’s presented here, this site is part one of a two stage upgrade/refurbishment. Essentially this site will be the doorway to something that’s been in the works for a while now – namely a new site presenting my image archive and the means to effectively manage image licensing and picture/print sales. More on all this later.

As a plug for Graph Paper Press, head over there to check out what they have on offer. Using this coupon link, there’s meant to be a 25% discount on their package offerings. Take a look, you never know.

So, this is stage one of this little effort – enjoy.

Seems like its that time of year again – as in the end of one thing and the beginning of another. No, not the New Year, as on January 1, nor the Lunar new Year whenever that happens. On March 20 we had the Spring Equinox. Checking out prevailing weather conditions in both Europe and North America, seems like both regions are still stuck in the freeze of Winter. Back at base here, the Equinox is just that, when the length of the day is the same as that of the night. Put more prosaically, light is now gaining at the expense of the dark. This means its time to prepare, to sow, to expect and herald in new things, to sweep out the old, to think afresh, bring to fruition new ideas, thoughts and those things that have been germinating long in the dark – be this in the darkness of winter or the recesses of one’s mind. Yes, new things and things anew.

With all this change and things anew, we’re gearing up to make some changes here as well. Above is a snip of this site’s current front page. This is set to change as we change over to a new theme. The changes aren’t going to be too radical. More incremental than a change in direction or of content. We’ll be forsaking Graph Paper Press’s Albedo theme of their Reportage theme. The two themes are very similar. Just think that Reportage is a little better finished off than Albedo, hence the move.

Aside from the theme change, new content is being added and the older content updated. The thing that made the current front page fairly unique, as in the pairing of two vertical images to fill up the decidedly horizontal format of the theme, will change and where single images will be used instead.

Aside from the changes to the current web site, this web site is set to become the “front end” of a new business operation. We are now looking to manage image licencing and picture sales almost directly from this web site. The theme change will take place during the week some time. The new back-end operation will be introduced in April some time.

There we are, in with the new and out with the old.