I heard Michael speak at my BNI chapter recently about Flash and asked him to write a guest article for my blog.

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

Saw this article this morning about how this photographer uses Memory Cards. I was pleased to see that most of what he does I do anyway. For me it makes good sense but perhaps for others, it’s still something to learn, so I thought I’d share it with you.

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

Well, you could win something – I run occasional competitions and am able to contact email subscribers direct.

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!

If you’ve been reading this blog for awhile you would have picked up that I participated in Project 365 last year.  What this meant was taking a photo a day and posting it with a group at Flickr.  This was a great exercise to participate in as it made me think daily about going outside and taking a photo of something.  It was forcing me to remember to always carry my camera with me, and carry it I did.  I rarely go anywhere without it these days and it has meant I’ve had the opportunity to take photos of things that I might have otherwise missed.

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?

If you’re like me you don’t want to announce to the general public that your camera is always with you. So how do you carry it around safely so it doesn’t get bumped and knocked?

I’ve purchased a ladies leather backpack which looks like a regular handbag women would carry. But inside I’ve added the padded inserts taken from other camera bags so that I can protect my camera and spare lens in transit and every day use.

I also have one of those photographer’s jackets with lots of pockets for going on photowalks. I don’t have to sling a bag on my shoulder or back, which helps with balance and I have everything I need with me on my person, even a drink bottle.

What bags do you use and why?  And do you use a photographer’s jacket?