Single-Serving Photo

If any of you occasionally visit The Luminous Landscape, you may have noticed that it’s not available right now (visitors are met by a 404 error on the front page; never good!)

Michael Johnston over at The Online Photographer has spoken to Michael Reichmann and informs us that the site experienced a fatal crash and is currently in the process of being restored from a backup. If they’ve crossed their Ts and dotted their Is, everything should be back up again soon.

Having gone through more than one fatal server crash, I know how nerve-racking it can be (and my site gets around 1% of the traffic of The Luminous Landscape!) Best of luck to Michael and his crew in getting things running again!

Yes, you heard me. Free as in “no charge.”

Over the course of two years, BBC-produced Wildlife Magazine published a 12-part series on photographing the locations and creatures of nature written by talented photographers and including spectacular images. Until now, you would’ve had to find the 12 specific issues of Wildlife in order to read these tips, and for the effort it probably wouldn’t have been worth it. I, for one, am a lazy person, having grown up in the age of the Internet where any and all useful information is a click away, so rummaging through magazine back-issues is right out.

Fortunately for people like me, Wildlife has released all 12 “Photo Masterclass” articles in PDF format on their website for free download. Regrettably, the PDF files are print-restricted, so you can only view them on a computer. If you have GoodReader on your iPhone or iPod Touch, however, you can take these lessons with you wherever you go. (GoodReader is how I take every single Canon and Nikon DSLR manual with me on my workshops I’ll write more about that later on).

To view and download all of the Photo Masterclass articles, visit the Photo Masterclass page on BBC Wildlife.

[Edit: It appears that they have taken down articles 11 and 12; they no longer appear on the site. Unfortunately I don’t have local copies of the articles to share with everyone, so they may be lost forever.]

The faltering economy has claimed the life of another small business today. I received an e-mail from the Editor in Chief of JPG Magazine announcing that on Monday they’re shutting their doors for good. I only got the e-mail because I have been a registered member of the site for some time and although none of my photos ever made it into the magazine it was always something I wanted to be more serious about.

I guess I missed the boat.

JPG Magazine was a publication, both electronic and print, entirely supported by user submissions. JPG would suggest a series of “themes” and users would submit images that they thought suited the subject. Through a voting process, the best-liked images floated to the top and got published in the magazine. It was a great way for any photographer to get their name out and for the magazine to spread inspiration and thus collect subscription fees.

I’m not sure what their exact business model was; I never subscribed to the print magazine. Perhaps their philosophy was too open and too philanthropic to extract the necessary payments from their members to stay afloat. That’s only conjecture.

Still, it’s a shame to see such a wonderful resource go away. I could spend hours browsing the published photos to find inspiration, and inspiration I did regularly find there.

So now what?

You can go view the published photos on JPG Magazine’s published photos page until Monday (the 5th of January), but after that, it will be gone.

Download PDFs of previous JPG Magazine issues (also until Monday). That way you’ll have all of this great stuff right there on your hard drive.

If you’re looking for inspiration, you can always browse PhotoSIG’s highest rated photos, which are basically mind-blowing 100% of the time.

Check out The Unofficial JPG Magazine Group on Flickr. There are lots of awesome images there, too.

Of course you could always view my gallery...

It has been said that a photograph isn’t truly done—that it doesn’t completely exist—until it has been printed.

Whether you believe printing to be the absolute culmination of your photographic efforts or not, you will undoubtedly have an ongoing need to print your images nonetheless, whether it be for presentation; to give as gifts; to make cards, calendars, or other products; or to wallpaper your bathroom (snap a quick photo of that if you do!)

Here are some services that may come to your aid. (more…)

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In the web development world (which I call home for about eight to ten hours a day), we have a few general “rules” we follow to make websites more usable, accessible, and effective. Photographers are a technically savvy crowd, especially since digital has gotten so popular, but they don’t always think about things the way web developers do. Here are some simple guidelines you can follow when promoting your work on the web. (more…)