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This was the explanation that Canon gave me when I sent my 17-40 f/4l in for repair:
What was improperly not functioning properly again?
Many may have noticed for the past few weeks my blog articles have been sparser. Unfortunately, I wasn’t trialing the new Canon 60D or 8-15 Fisheye lens (Canon, you can always send new equipment to me to try!), I have been hard at work on several projects. Over the next few months I am going to share some of those projects with you, but today I announce that I am finished with one of the more major ones - a website overhaul. As part of this announcement I am going to provide a little insight into my design requirements and the history of my website.
First, a fun (and a little disturbing) look at the last 10 years of the Journey of Light Photography website. I hopped on the Wayback Machine (Internet Archive) as far as it would go to get some of these images.
Egads! What was I thinking? This was my website design in 2000. Well, I guess navigation was easy, but all those frilly images probably took a long time to load on the dial-up connections of the day. I can understand why this was my look for only about 1 year. I bet it was well-optimized for Netscape though! (The centered - black background - top menu look is oddly cyclical)
Ahh, the days of tabs. From 2001 until about 2003, my website sported tabs and my first little flash animation (that Journey of Light in the corner moved!). I will say that my website looked slightly better than this, the Internet Archive didn’t have all the data. It didn’t look much better, though!
From 2003 until 2005 my website design switched to the left-hand menu look at the time. Additionally, I put in a back-end XML framework which still exists, even on the new website (though modified). I also did fancy stuff like add-ins that automatically re-sized photographs and sorted things. Slow and ineffective.
Ahh, my 2006-2010 website. I did away with the fancy add-ons and went back to basics. During the past four years it’s been viewed by roughly 110,000 unique visitors (give or take 10,000). Not bad, but it can be better. Out of a little sentimentality, but mainly because search engines still reference it and occasional returning visitors ask me to find something on the old site, I always leave the old structure up for 1-2 years. This site will remain, somewhat hidden, during that time.
Now, my requirements for my new and improved website.
As I mentioned, my previous design had the same format for roughly 4 years. In a world where people get a new cell phone every 3 months, my design was stale, but effective. During those years I will say that I continued to update the site, placing new photography out weekly and sometimes daily, adding e-commerce links, new pages, and search functionality. But, just like a house that gets addition after addition, after a while stuff tends to look tacked on and not part of the normal flow. As such my first design requirement was simplification.
In addition to adding pages, I spent a lot of time on optimizing the site for search engines. Since I am not Art Wolfe or Thomas Mangelsen, I can’t just sit back and let people search me by name. I wanted to retain the work I did on SEO, although there is always risk with any major change to a website. My second requirement was continued Search Engine likability.
Over time Internet speeds have generally increased, but not everyone has the fastest line and I want everyone to have a good experience. My third requirement was to maintain a fast loading time or to make it even faster.
About 3 years ago, I spent a lot of time making sure that my site was cross-browser compatible. It took some time, but I managed to get it looking the same between Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari. My forth requirement was good cross-browser compatibility.
Lastly, I wanted it easy to use. I’ve always tried to provide an intuitive site that could be accessible and easy to navigate. As my last website evolved, it became obvious from my web statistics that the advanced features such as search and keyword look up were not be utilized. My last requirement was to streamline this and to implement a search function that working like most of the search functions out there.
For the last few months I have been gathering ideas, looking at effective navigation, preparing code, and bugging my wife to put it through its paces (Thanks, Holly!). I launch my new website, Journey of Light 2010!
Everyone is taught photography by others. Consciously or unconsciously we receive the majority of our instruction from other artists, friends, instructors, etc. In many photographer’s early careers, I find many resumes and statements that contain such phrases as ”completely self-taught” or “was not instructed”. By these descriptions, the artist is trying to validate their perceived lack of formal credentials. It is my experience, first, this is never true, and second, it doesn’t matter.
In regard to the first point, the non-intentional lack of honesty inherent with being “self-taught”. Most of the time someone chooses to become an artist because of inspiration they have received from seeing other’s work. It is their wish to create something of similar beauty and if they continue to evolve, to improve upon the work with their own voice and style. Photographers look at images from various sources, calendars, postcards, the Internet and then they attempt their own creations, initially by imitation. In this manner they are being instructed by those disassociated slices of imagery. If they find they are not successful in imitation, then they research how to achieve those results. Often, they find their answers in books and the internet. After the artist reaches the desired results, the next step is developing vision and style. (Some artists never evolve past imitation)
For those that have received formal instructrion, I submit that they may start with a disadvantage. The student’s voice and style is heavily influenced by the instructor. The instructor chooses the lectures, the example artists, the images. While they maybe attempting to broaden the student’s understanding of the art, they may still be applying their vision on the students, albeit unconciously. Additionally, the instructor maybe required to grade, therefore applying an objective rating to subjective material. Thus, the evolution of the style of the student could be changed accordingly. In this respect, photography instructors should be very careful on how they influence.
Now, in regard to the second point, it does not matter if one is “self-taught”. If the art is good enough, fits the needed requirement, and is priced appropriately, no art buyer will turn down a piece simply because the artist was not formally instructed. Now, if someone is trying to get into an agency, or get a position as a staff photographer, this may matter, but if your goal is to sell stock or prints then it is really not necessary to point out that you received no formal instruction. I believe the phrase “self-taught” detracts. Strike it and let your art speak for itself!
Technical Details:
Canon 5D Mark II, 300 f/4l + 1.4 tc, f/5.6, 1/800 sec.
Schramm State Recreation Area, Nebraska
If you’re in Lincoln, Nebraska on a Thursday between 1 and 4, be sure to stop into the Nebraska Governor’s Residence and receive a guided tour. You’ll also be able to see 20 of my photographs on display on the lower level. If you will not be able to make it, visit http://store.journeyoflight.com/governors-exhibition for a virtual tour!
When I was a young college student I thumbed through the works of Cartier-Bresson, Adams, and the like and assumed that once one became “good enough” at photography, the recognition and the money would follow. I guess it’s the same motivation that causes high-schoolers to go “practice” for their eventual rock stardom in their parent’s garage banging on drums. It is the belief that financial success is directly tied to artistic success.
As with most photographers, I quickly found that this belief only served to propel me toward an eventual downfall for two reasons. First, most of us do not realize until later we should not be the ones determining when we are “good enough”, and I was no exception. Most of the time, in our minds during the formative years we imagine ourselves as stronger artists than we are in reality. Given enough time and experience, however, we can come to recognize and honestly critique our true ability. It is then that we can affect the appropriate change. Some do not make it this realization.
Second, and more importantly, the world just doesn’t work that way. As a parent, I realize why my parents gave me the various sage advice day after day as I matured a grew. “Pack an extra set of clothes”, “always have $5 and be 5 minutes early”, and of course, the most popular, “the world isn’t fair”. That’s right, for some people financial success is joined inexplicable to artistic success. For those, the composition is strong and the lines lead the path that they must take. Then there’s the rest of us.
When speaking of most commodities and goods, traditional marketing literature tell us that there are two basic production paths, quantity (i.e. McDonald’s - Billions of hamburgers served), and quality (i.e. Lotus - Seen a handful in my life). The world of photography was traditionally no different. There have been and continue to be stock photographers dedicated solely to the pursuit of quantity. There is a set procedure, a list of subjects, a description of settings, and then the capture and processing. Mechanical, efficient, and historically cheaper. Then there were the singular experience quality photographers, waiting years for the correct celestial events, the perfect weather conditions, and spending countless hours setting up and finding the strongest composition, all to elicit the desired mood or story - historically more expensive.
That was the photography world of yesterday. Today, digital cameras and the Internet has changed everything. The issue of quantity is no more. With the tens of thousands of individuals taking photographs and posting results on the web, almost any type of image becomes imaginable. Even non-professionals can capture extraordinary images whether by choice or by chance. Communication between photographers, writers, advertiser, publishers has become instantaneous. Ideas and visions collide and mutate and then spawn new ideas and visions.
How does a photographer who wishes to “make it” really do “make it”? Through building a Quantity of Quality. Not only must this work be consistently high-caliber, but it must also be improved upon indefinitely.
So what does that really mean and how does one consistently produce and thus improve upon this quality?
The second of yesterday’s posts, “Farewell Rosenblatt - A College World Series and Omaha Icon”, was used this morning on Channel 3 - KMTV’s Morning Blend! Below is the video from the show.