gina_marie1

Hi, just a follow up to the comment on the 10D & noise. This has probably been discussed before. My Husband shoots with a 10D and I use the 30D. We were surprised at the difference in noise between the two. We both used the same lens, a Tamron 28-75 2.8 shooting early evening (not a wedding) and even at 400 ISO the 10D had a lot of noise. We had to use noise remover on every photo shot with 400 ISO or higher on the 10D. Once we did that they were just fine though.

 

If you get the Sigma, would love to hear your thoughts on it. We're in the same boat right now with only an older canon 70-210 3.5-4.5. We'll probably just have to save for the 'L' lens.

BTW...Love the blog, beautiful photos.

Hi Anne,

I'm really loving this program as well. I love the bw & antique bw features on it, though I usually tone it down a bit and it also really helps add that extra *pop* when I need color saturation.

 

I'm fairly new to this and heard so many scary things about RAW workflow, but as soon as I downloaded Lightroom, I started working in RAW and haven't shot too many images in jpg since. It was a little sluggish at first but then I added some more memory and been good speed since.

 

I used to wonder if it was *cheating* to do minor enhancements in photoshop (bump up the color saturation & contrast, etc.), but then I saw several popular photographers demonstrating their workflow & showing before & afters and it seems it's just another tool like the good ol' screw on filters for film cams (best used in moderation of course).

 

Now the question is....how much is going to cost when it's officially released!? Guesses anyone?

Well I guess sticking with before sunset is the best option. I'll try test shoots, but we've been going out about an 1 1/2 hour before sunset and guess if that's what's working we might as well stick with it.

 

Plus I'd hate to put gals in a puffy face situation :)

Unfortunately, sunrise is not an option. Realistically, nothing earlier than 9am is an option.

 

Rob, that's a good idea, especially if I want to check how buildings may block light & cast shadows.

 

Thanks for the answers so far everyone.

Hello, I did a search for similar posts but didn't find much info. So far most

of our engagement photo shoots have been in the late afternoons and the

lighting has worked out very well. However, I'm interested in some areas that

may be a better fit for morning shoots. In general, is there a 'best' time of

morning hour to shoot in?

 

Thanks for any advice,

Gina

Michelle, if you do give a try at designing your own logo again, www.dafont.com is a great resource for insteresting, unique fonts and they are free! Spend time looking at other photographers logos you admire, not to copy but for inspiration. The recommendation about going for a look similar to your website is also a good one. Lastly,(not sure if this was already suggested) craigslist is a great resource to find a student designer who may work with your budget. Good luck!

Steven, I guess we have just been 'schooled' a bit differently. I've used CSS to alter Heading tags mainly to keep with a design theme, and the results have not been 'harmful' to my or my clients sites.

Also I am a designer before I am a developer, there is difference.

 

Your comment assumed my professional skills are "several years behind the curve of technology" and though I nor anyone can be absolutely ahead of technology on the web, with this being a public, searchable board, which my real name and business links associate to, I had to correct an untrue statement like that.

 

I have yet to apply any SEO efforts to my own photography website since I am concentrating on photo skills rather than advertising at the moment.

 

I apologize if this thread has become off topic, and since I have no more advice for Michelle, I'll leave it at that.

Hi Lauren, just wanted to add MyPublisher. I made a MyPub book to use as a guestbook for our wedding last summer and I thought the quality was pretty good. Just formatted all the text & images in photoshop and the MyPub software was easy for importing the layouts & accurate previews. Only about $20 w/ a coupon or costco discount.

I'm a newbie, but I recently got the kodak gray/white card combo and have been using the white side to set the custom balance. It's definitely made an improvement.

>>>Anyone who tries to convince you that you can 'trick' the search engines is several years behind the curve of technology, especially when they recommend things like this. For a long time, search engine spiders have been programmed to look for this sort of hack and they WILL ACTIVELY PENALIZE YOU for using it.

 

Well it's a bit hard not to perceive that as disrespect. No one is implying to 'trick' the search engines. It's merely a way of following a common practice (many search engines like 'h' tags at the top of the page) so that one can maintain the look of the site without adding blaring text all over the page. Also, technology changes all the time, but some search engines, and I know this was true for Google at at time, do not place high rankings on sites that have images or flash as the first thing on a webpage.

 

For what it's worth, I have other business and the websites have pretty good rankings, in a search for 'vacation rental web design' or 'vacation web design', my business (designmygetaway.com) comes up #1 & 3 in yahoo out of over 12million.

 

Type in the name 'Gina Marie' and my fine art web site is #1 (I created it with an old drag & drop editor before I learned web design..so please don't call me on any design issues for that, it's in dire need of a redesign.) My web design biz site is #5 & 7 in over 11million (there are a lot of Gina Marie's out there).

 

Only one of these sites comes in at #1 in Google, and it's not the one that has an image or flash in the first lines of the code. I recently changed code on the others to experiment with google engines. We'll see how that goes.

 

Anyway, my point is certain comments can be very inaccurate assumptions, and when one puts forth a comment like that, it is indeed disrespectful.

 

Michelle, regarding the SEO, there is no exact science and anyone who claims to guarantee rankings could not back that up. I am no expert and actually don't do anything other than use meta tags, link exchanges and keywords in the body text...I prefer to stick with design, but regardless, these old TRIED AND TRUE methods still work, it seems to be working very well for me. SEO is great, but don't let it rule your design & online marketing, after all..many more people are likely to find you through referrals and those are the people you want to be sure to sell yourself.

 

Good luck.

Hi Michelle, I'm new to photography, old to web design (that is my 'real' job for now.) If you are really on a tight budget there are a few tricks you can do for now, rather than revamp your entire site. Your flash site is not that large in resolution size so there is no reason why you can't convert it to an html/flash site. If you want to maintain the overall look, you can add a line of static html text to the top of the page for instance, just a few SEO phrases and even make them 'invisible' by making the font color white to blend with the background. You can do the same underneath the swf file as well. There's a little more to that, but you get the idea.

 

 

I would advise against choosing anyone who charges less than $500, after all, you get what you pay for. Also, why not try a barter w/ a local web designer? Your photography services in exchange for the design gig? You'd be surprised at what you could get through barters. Just a thought.