Category: Blogging

Phew, I finally got my nominations in! Took me ages because I kept getting distracted reading posts that caught my eye. Damien reports that over 700 blogs have been nominated! That’s crazy, I’m amazed our little nation has that many blogs?! The first week of March has been declared Irish Blog Week and there are loads of get togethers planned. I plan on being at the Photo Meet being organised by Redmum and the Ladies Tea Party organised by Ina and Sabrina (who designed the cool graphics). I don’t know if I’ll make the Foodies Brunch but I’ll do my best.

Anyway, if you were hoping to nominate your own favourites you’d better get going as voting closes tonight. The nomination form is here.

Paige was mourning how some of her (and my) favourite blogs have gone a bit quiet of late and I spotted a familiar name in her comments. Colm and Cahony of the late, great InFactAh are blogging once more, this time they’re calling themselves Modern Cadence (very posh indeed!), there’s even talk of a podcast. It’s good to have you back with us lads, you’ve been missed!

Canon 10D, 28mm, f2, 1/3000, ISO 100

I’ve been thinking it’s time to call in the decorators again and give the blog a bit of a sprucing up. I want less clutter overall, something a bit more streamlined and I’d like to have the space to post larger photographs. I launched into it at midnight last night (why is it always at that time of night when I get these great ideas?) and of course proceeded to erase my entire blogroll. Well, it’s back up again now but I still want to change a few things around so if the site goes a bit funny over the next few days you’ll know why. Hopefully I won’t mess things up too much!

Update: Whew! I think I’ve managed to get through it without any major mishaps (knock on wood). So, other than the obvious changes like font, colour, header, etc. I’ve now got loads more space for larger photos (which means I’m going to have to start taking more care with my sharpness!). I’ve tidied away my out-of-control Blogroll and Archives to their own pages. There’s also an About Me page explaining a little bit about how I got into photography and answering some frequently-asked questions. You can find the links to those pages as well as to my other websites over to the right on the sidebar. I thought it would be fun to put a little “In My Bag” section over there too since I know I love to hear what other photographers have in their camera bags. If you’re having trouble viewing this page or if the header hasn’t changed you might have to clear out your cache so that the changes show up in your browser.

So those are the main things. If you find any bugs please let me know and I hope you like the changes!

There’s a piece in today’s Irish Independent about using online applications for business featuring Annette Clancy, Krishna De, Jason Fried and me! When Marie Boran, the journalist who wrote the piece, got in touch with me I had to sit for a minute and think about whether I use many applications at all. I suppose I never made a conscious decision to conduct my business this way, it came along gradually. As problems presented themselves I went looking for solutions. As Annette says in the piece, I have to see an obvious use for something or else I won’t take it on either. I think Marie did a really good job of summarising some of the applications that are out there for small businesses but there were a few others specific to me that weren’t mentioned but that someone might find useful:

Flickr was the first obvious solution to the problem of hosting and showing photographs. I was already using it to show personal shots so it was a natural progression to set up different accounts to upload photographs for large events. If I am hired to photograph a seminar or workshop where many people need to see the photographs and download them I set up a dedicated Flickr account. To upload four days worth of photographs to my own site would soon eat up my bandwidth so Flickr is great for this. It’s not perfect…I can’t password protect it…it’s either public or can just be seen by those who join and become my “friends” which isn’t practical. However, while I’m on the lookout for other options, Flickr is a godsend.

Blueface solved the problems we had when Eircom didn’t seem to want us to have a landline. In the article it says that I use Skype which I do, but for most of my business these days I have Blueface. The reasons I don’t really use Skype for this is that we wanted an Irish landline number which Blueface gives us. Also for a flat fee of about €15 a month I get free UK and Ireland phonecalls and don’t have to pay any line rental! Our mobile phone bill is about half what it used to be.

And then of course there’s blogging. I was surprised to see no mention of it in the article although perhaps it might not be seen as an application in the same way as the other tools are. However the free WordPress software has given me a website where before I wouldn’t have had a clue how to get myself online, all I’ve had to pay for is the hosting cost and the domain name. I’m also experimenting with using blogging software to run my photography site, this means I can run a hacked photoblog template while I teach myself CSS.

So, I guess I do use quite a few online applications and I’m always on the lookout for others. As long as they help me to save time rather than waste it!