Learning new things

There is a reason to my absence for the past few weeks. I have been busy learning about Social Media (Facebook and LinkedIn) I had attended a short introductory workshop with the intention to find out about ways I could get the word out about my book, “Essence:contemplations in image and word”.

BE careful what you ask for :-). Since my daughter is in an MBA program, much more information on marketing came my way. As I am working through all of that, there is obviously the question of how to implement all of the answers to the questions I am now asking. “Who are your clients?” seems a straightforward question. The answer that came intuitively – people, who decorate a (space in a) home – showed me not only how unfocused my inventory is, but also how many more possibilities I have to sell my images. The impact of just this one answer is big:

• change the galleries on my web site
• get a second site that serves as a stock image site
• get on Flickr
• begin to “work” LinkedIn, i.e participate in the discussions and build relationships.

Then, I just got the new releases of Photoshop and Lightroom. Now I need to figure out which new features in CS5 will serve my way of working with images and learn them. I am much more familiar with Lightroom, so the upgrade will not take too much time to figure out.

Between all the Art Fairs, it feels sometimes overwhelming, yet I am enjoying it. Now, that enjoyment may not be so much the case with having to thoroughly keyword and caption all the images I plan on pulling up on Flickr. There have been times when I was not consistent with keywords and there are hardly any captions. I look at it that it is better to start now than in another year when there will be even more images. 🙂

As you can see, my days are full and exciting. I will post some images to keep you appraised of my progress. I invite your comments and ideas.

Since for the next 2 – 3 month I can not get into an area where i had been photographing, I was faced with the question what to do instead. I decided to experiment and therefore learn more about multiple exposures and images where one moves the camera during the shot. Many factors play into getting a great photo using these techniques and I want to have a feel for it instead of just getting lucky every once in a while. As I progress, I will post some some images so you can see my journey.

I invite your comments and ideas. After upgrading the software, I made sure the settings are such that you can post a question and pull up an image to go along with it.

Have fun shooting!