Below: The top center image of Parka (Parks Canada’s Beaver Mascot) hugging the boy has been used a few times before. It appears again inside this years visitors guide.

Below: This Greenwich boardwalk shoot was a fun production to be part of. For the photo on the left page, I’m perched up on an 8 foot tall ladder relying fully on the guy supporting the ladder below on this floating boardwalk. The photo on the right has me hanging over the side to get the angle looking back in from over the water.

note: These examples are all scans of the actual guide so excuse the distracting textures picked up from the papers.

Below: Inside the main 2013 Prince Edward Island Vistors Guide, there is a double page spread from PEI 2014 and Parks Canada. Both of which are using my images.

So I type this from my bed watching the sun rise from my window knowing that I should be outside. And after reading this growing list of “can’t live without” gadget suggestions, my opinion strengthened that I (and you) don’t actually need to buy any of these – we only need the motivation and desire to get out of bed.

Today’s Image – Exposed Coral Reef on Haena Beach, Kawa’i Island

It’s so easy to delay the task of processing images. Knowing that the image files will still be there tomorrow is a great encouragement for procrastination. By accepting an invitation to share a small slideshow with the local photo clubs, I now have a hard deadline to prepare 3 weeks of images from a late 2012 visit to Hawai’i. This presentation will discuss the locations visited, the resulting images, and how some of the images were created.

If you’re local to Prince Edward Island, The PEI Photo Club meeting in Charlottetown will be May 28th and the Red Sands Photo Club meeting in Summerside will be June 10th.

However, sometimes the infringement is so obvious, you find yourself asking how anyone could think it was a good idea. I wrote about my involvement with the TinEye brand before. It’s something I’m proud of which made for an entertaining and shocking morning after reading that the TinEye robot was rebranded as a bug finder in his very own video game. Stealing an established brand/mascot/logo from a company designed to find copied images might not be the brightest idea.

It’s not my battle to fight but the game developers response will be interesting.

Focused around an invitation to an event called Persistent Vision, my trip started at a weekend seminar organized by Darwin and Sam, who brought over 100 photographers to Bragg Creek. Although admittedly super hesitant to fly across the country, I’m so glad I was pushed into going. Not only for the presentations but for allowing me to see old friends and meet new ones. Excuse me for the name dropping but here are some links and portfolios worth visiting:

It was great to finally meet Dave Brosha and John E Marriott. Two well known Canadian photographers who I have worked with in the past on design related projects but always over email. It can be a weird feeling to know someone having never met them. I also had the opportunity to meet those I had previously only known through their blogs and Facebook activity: Wayne Simpson, Ian Mcgillvrey, John Fujimagari and Lori Maloney. Plus a reunion with those I traveled to Iceland with last June. Royce Howland, Scott Dimond, and Branimir Gjetvaj. And of course David duChemin – the main speaker for Persistent Vision and someone I first met 5 years ago on a trip to Vancouver. I’m pretty sure I’ve read every blog post of his since.

May our paths cross again some day.

Today’s Image – Mount Rundle and Sulphur Mountain

On the last day of Persistent Vision, everyone piled into cars and travelled into Banff to gather at Vermillion Lakes for sunrise and sunset. The morning visibility was almost zero with the fog and snow but it nicely cleared up for the evening. It’s always interesting to see how quickly the weather can change. Created on the same day, this next image was from that morning near Bow Falls.

How do you subscribe to your favourite websites?

Facebook, Twitter, G+, Pinterest, etc, etc can all be fun, but I really do not want to depend on social networks for content subscribing. I also do not want to bookmark and visit sites daily looking for possible updates.

Email subscriptions would seem like the obvious choice (we check that daily anyway) but unfortunately, not all websites offer email subscription support.

But they could using a third party service and maybe Blogtrottr is the strong contender to fill this replacement need. With a basic account, you provide all the websites you’re interested in, and Blogtrottr will email you when new content becomes available (or on a schedule of your choosing). With the combination of email filters, this service has the potential to be great for all those lost and left out in the cold by Google. I’m still kicking the tires but will let you know how it goes. So far, so good.

Today’s Image – Ice Space Bubbles

To infinity and beyond… plus all those other deep space references. The common images coming from Abraham Lake deep in the Canadian Rockies along the North Saskatchewan River are bubbles caused by methane frozen in a crystal clear man-made lake. The prime time is January and February but as spring draws near, and the ice begins to melt and refreeze, the ice will crystallize and crack. If not covered in snow, the effect can be equally interesting.

Today’s Image – Morant’s Curve

On my first drive up the Bow Valley Parkway from Banff to Lake Louise a few years ago, I came across this vantage point overlooking some tracks. I was a little kid and wanted to see a train.

After convincing the rest of the travellers with me to sit and wait it out while not knowing how long it may take – the distant whistle was heard within an hour. I have since learned from Darwin’s How to Photograph Banff eBook, that this is called Morant’s Curve.

Today’s Image – Pyramid Lake, Jasper

Pyramid Mountain is a well known location north of downtown Jasper that is easily accessible. When I was here in the spring of 2010 for the first time, I was very much overwhelmed with this foreign-to-me landscape that simply doesn’t exist in the maritimes. It’s hard to ignore those early morning reflections. It will be fun to be back.

I have a growing book collection from some of my favourite photographers. I only have so many walls to enjoy prints, so for me, books provide an easier way to support and enjoy the images of other photographers. But this also means – that for no other reason than desire – I also want a book of my own.

Many photographers would love to be published and because only the most successful will ever get picked up by a publisher, the self-publishing market is growing and becoming easier and easier. Arguably, Blurb has become the leader. Maybe even more so now that they have embedded themselves in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.

I have several mid sized Blurb books printed between 2006 and 2012. They have been consistent and I can’t see any significant printing changes. In December of 2011, I stepped it up and took a chance by ordering four large 12×12 160 page books with the heaviest paper and all of the upgrades – for a grand total of $187.42 CND each. Definitely more pricy than anything equivalent in a bookstore.

12x12 Proline Pearl Blurb Book

I was satisfied with the results and throughout 2012, I created two alternatives of the same book but at a much smaller scale of 8×10 120 pages and 7×7 80 pages. In the end, I had a sampling of almost everything Blurb had to offer. Here is my non technical review.

So how good are they? Very good if your expectations are reasonable, but, let’s make it clear right from the start that these are not fine art prints and I don’t think Blurb intends to be either. Blurb’s print reproduction is quite good compared to the majority of books you’ll find at a bookstore but they fail in comparison to the super high quality books some artists offer – even with Blurb’s most expensive upgrades. This is an unfair comparison but it’s worth setting reasonable exceptions for the rest of this review because I do own books in my collection where each page could rival any original inkjet print.

12x12 Proline Pearl Blurb Book

Already mentioned above, this 160 page 12×12 hard cover book finished off with all the most expensive and heaviest papers came just shy of $200 per book (before discounts that are easily had). This averages $1.25 per page, which is actually half the price of ordering the same number of 8×10 individual prints from your local Walmart. If viewed this way, the price for a single book begins to sound pretty good because it can be dangerous to compare prices to similar sizes in bookstores that are priced on huge quantity discounts. The extra costs are worth the on-demand, no-inventory, no-investment printing but it will make resale look incredibly expensive.

Small vs Standard vs Large

I don’t want to make Blurb sound super expensive because pricing starts at only $12 – which will get you a 7×7 20 page soft cover book. A price that would be hard to beat anywhere.

Here are a few photos comparing three of Blurb’s book sizes.

Book Sizes from top to bottom: 7x7, 8x10, 12x12

Front to back: 7x7, 8x10, 12x12

Soft Cover vs Dust Jacket vs Image Wrap

For my purposes, I prefer the dust jackets but I found the image wrap covers did provide more contrast and saturation. And every time I order a family or vacation book, I opt for the soft cover.

Blurb Book Dust Jackets vs Image Wrap

ProLine Paper vs Premium Paper vs Standard Paper

This is where my review gets super scientific because I ordered one over everything. Standard Paper, Lustre Finish Paper, Matte Finish Paper, and ProLine Pearl Photo Paper. The problem was, that all books were shipped together and not labeled. While it’s easy to visually see and feel the difference between standard, premium and proline, I could not see the difference between lustre and matte. Maybe I made a mistake in ordering?

Blurb Paper Sizes and Weight

In the photo above, there are five 8×10 books in the middle. The three books with the standard paper and the same number of pages are noticeably thinner. For a comparison between matte premium with proline pearl, take a look at this image on flickr.

Print Quality

I’m not entirely sure what the difference was but for a select few images, the printing has an odd compression / mosaic pattern. Since I do not know what the cause is (on repeat orders and file uploads) and it only happens on a couple of images – for the purpose of this review, I’ll assume it was a bad file (they print fine elsewhere). With only these two exceptions, everything else looks good.

Blurb Print Quality - With compression pattern in the sky.

Blurb Print Banding - With a weird mosaic banding pattern.

Proofing

Edits can really be frustrating because there are none. Once you have submitted a book to the blurb store, you have 15 days to buy a copy or they will delete it. If you find an error, your only option is to upload a new book and delete the old. This will however require another purchase for the simplest spelling updates making minor mistakes very costly. On the positive side, once you buy a single copy, Blurb will archive it forever for future purchase.

Summary

Now that Adobe has married Blurb by offering book building directly from Lightroom 4, Blurb publishing is an easy choice. It’s great for one time printing of your own work or the occasional gift. For story telling, vacations or any other personal event, it is easily superior to the traditional album of small prints. For this reason, I will continue to use Blurb for all simple and quick family related albums.

Blurb Family Books

I’m also satisfied with the printing and would consider it acceptable. If however, you are looking for a super high quality fine art book, or you wish to offer it as a product for resale, I find Blurb hard to get overly excited for. I value my work but still sold the books in these photos at cost feeling any markup was just too much.

The difference in paper is weight and a noticeable thickness when turning pages. I did not see any significant increase in print quality on heavier papers.

Blurb Books

Blurb comes close but I still have my heart set on a coffee table book to call my own and at some future point – I may actually push forward and self fund my own production run of a very high quality portfolio book. For a rough comparison, I have talked with publishers and to lower prices to bookstore level (buyers expectations), an initial investment of 500 books at minimum would be required. A large up front cost that would require serious sales for a break even.

Blurb Books

Blurb is the modern day photo album. There is no need to buy plastic sleeves or order 4×6 prints when you can create a very nice hard cover book. For this, the price per book is very reasonable and recommended.

Blurb has both a Canadian Store and a US Store.

I have had this blog post half written for more than 6 months and could never pull the trigger on the publish button. The topic felt too specific for a generalized statement and because of that, something didn’t feel right to justify a blog post rant. However after an interesting discussion tonight with onOne‘s education manager Brian Matiash, it gave me that needed incentive to complete this post because I’m not the only person who judges ones brand partly based on presentation. There are companies like Brian’s and surely future clients browsing portfolios also judging you on how much consideration was applied to the website.

But first, lets be honest. Everyone is hopefully more critical and focused on the details when it comes to our own industry. Chefs with food, contractors with houses, doctors with health, etc, etc, and designers like myself with websites. We are all trained to care about different things and rely on others to fill in where we choose to focus less attention.

Two summers ago, I had a small presentation at a PPOC (Professional Photographers of Canada) seminar on web technologies to discuss the elements of a reliable website. Although much has improved since then — there is still more work to be done. Poorly implemented websites are still common and with all the photographers in the world so focused on perfecting their images, they often settle for presenting them in a substandard way.

So in a world where art, design and images are so very much subjective, here are some details to consider:

1. Use a real domain.
   Say no to any services offering http://your-name.their-name.com because free hosting services simply look bad. It is easy to claim your own property of the web and get the domain www.yourname.com for $10 per year. The use of a real domain should then carry over into email so you are not emailing clients from hotmail, etc. I was married last year and during the planning stage, I wanted to quickly write off everyone that responded with a dorky email address.
2. Where are you located?
   This one drives me insane. I struggle to understand why so many photography websites do not say where in the world they are located. The internet has made the world smaller, but not that small.
3. Who are you?
   This may sound weird, but I want to see a real life photo of the person behind the website. It may not matter but it adds a personal non-corporate touch and your first introduction.
4. The power of the about page
   A portfolio of great images could be considered common in todays industry so what makes you better than the next? I personally like to visit the about page before looking at images to learn more about the artist. This sounds silly to say but if pretty images is all I’m after – that can be found at 500px.
5. Make it easy
   When you realize less is more, writing copy for your website just got that much better. You can be creative but do not reinvent the wheel because if your site requires a manual or directions on where to click, you have already failed.
6. Flash?
   You better have a real good reason to be using flash in 2013 with the rapidly increasing mobile space who can’t see any of it. The days of full flash websites are over.
7. Resizing the browser window
   I know you want me to view your images full screen but taking control of my computer without permission is never cool.
8. Background music
   Yes, it works well in slideshows and YouTube videos when the user has an optional play button but it’s also never cool to assume I want to hear the selection of music of your choice. Especially if it begins to compete with something I’m already listening to.
9. Best link practices
   The internet is made of links so take careful consideration on how you use targeted links to open new windows. First impressions are good and 3 short visits are better than one long one. The goal is to encourage a second visit and not to create traps in an attempt to keep your site opened longer.
10. Over using the word passion
    Every photographer has a passion for photography and of those photographers, all of them have been shooting since they were 5 years old. You’re in the wrong business if passion is not a given and stating the obvious is not necessary.
11. I’m a “Pro”
    Do not include a “why hire a professional photographer” page. It’s incredibly lame and looks defensive right from the start. The term professional is self-appointed and gives you no more credibility than the person advertising on kijiji. Talk is cheap so rephrase it to “why hire me” by not comparing yourself to anyone else.
12. I own stuff and lots of it!
    If your site is not education based, why do photographers brag to clients what cameras they own right down to the serial numbers of the batteries? Do any of your clients care or even known what a x5D800e APS-C Thing-a-ma-jig is? I know it means a ton to you – maybe even emotionally – but no need to brag how much money you’ve spent.
13. Confusing a testimonial with a referral
    Have you ever read a bad testimonial? Probably not. I think testimonials are mostly marketing fluff created by a careful selection of positive reviews that may or may not be real. Referrals however, that are posted on other sites and linking back to you without financial incentives are much different.
14. Portfolio categories
    Some times too much structure does more damage than good. Are you presenting your images as organized stock for sale or are you just wanting to show your best work?
    • Does having a Favourites category mean the others are not as good?
    • Is your repeat visitors high enough to warrant a New Work category? And new since – yesterday, last week, last year? Does it mean all other categories are old and less important?
    • How do you define a travel category? What may be considered travel to you, is local to someone else, so this often feels like a catch all album from a vacation.
    • HDR as a category. Do we really need to categorize images based on Photoshop processes and tricks? The best post processing work is that of which you can’t identify.

    The list goes on but you get the point. Make your categories truly meaningful.

15. Conflicting Brands
    Are you the photography equivalent to a musician releasing a cd with a mix of country and hard rock music? This is not necessarily a bad thing but how you organize your portfolio will be even more important.

Exercise

As photographers, we spend so much time perfecting our images but then we throw them together with a poorly aligned website. In preparing this post, I took a list of popular photographers that was recommended on a forum post and I opened them all in 140 tabs. I proceeded to quickly close them – bookmarking the ones that caught my interest and taking notes on each sites presentation and structure when something grabbed my attention to stick around.

Make no mistake – strong images are a requirement because in all cases, every single one of these photographers had excellent images that would make an outstanding print porfolio. But when it comes to the web, some photographers are not doing much better than printing on wet recycled newspaper.

Presentation is important. It’s an extension of your brand.

I was recently watching an incredible time-lapse film but while admiring how perfect it may be – the film still struggled to keep my attention. How can something so beautifully done lose my interest so quickly? Perhaps it’s related to my lack of interest for video slideshows. In a slideshow, some images will surely be amazing and you’ll want to spend more time with them. Others will be less interesting that you wish to skip over. The problem I have with slideshows is that all images are weighted the same and the editor decides how quickly you should view them. With this variety, you may not willing to move forward to the next image presented in front of you because your mind is still focused on trying to process that image 4 slides ago.

But the imagery in this film spaning over multiple season got me thinking. With the advancements of digital picture frames, how cool would it be to have a single time-lapse image hanging on the wall that would simulate a full year of a single well composed scene?

Consider a 365-day time-lapse image that is shortened into playing over a 7 day loop. It would be fast enough for the constant movement of weather but for every day on the wall, the image would play 52 days worth of activity equalling a sunset every 27 minutes. This image in your living room would display a new season 4 times a week giving you a winter image every Monday and summer every Thursday.