by Miserere
Dear Readers,
Thank you to everyone who has voted for EtL in the first Annual Golden Retrevo Awards. I just wanted to let you know that the voting has been extended an extra 10 days until January 25, 2010, so please keep on voting! Remember that each person can vote once each day. Just click on the badge on the top-right of the main blog page, on the badge below, or simply click here to vote right now.
by Miserere
Dear readers, I need your help. I’ve had the good fortune of being nominated for the first annual Golden Retrevo Award in the category of Photo & Video, for blogs covering digital cameras, photography, and video camcorders. Quoting CrunchBase.com: Retrevo is a shopping site focused solely on consumer electronics. The site, which is now one of the largest consumer electronics shopping and review sites online, aggregates product information, reviews and articles from blogs, forums, websites and manufacturers to provide shoppers with accurate, up-to-date shopping advice. Retrevo does their best to provide unadulterated product reviews by filtering out ads, eBay pages and online electronic stores like Best Buy and Amazon.
But being nominated is just the start…winning is the end, and to win, I need votes. Your votes!
If you want to help EtL win in the Photo & Video category, you need to vote once a day, and convince all your friends to do the same 🙂
How do you do that? Just click on the badge below to vote directly for EtL. I’ve also placed the badge at the top of the right-hand column in the blog. Voting ends on January 15 January 25, so hurry up! And because each person can vote once every day, the old adage of vote early, vote often, is especially true this time.
You can also click on the link below (clicking on it will immediately cast a vote for EtL)…and send it to your friends via e-mail if you want (wink wink, nudge nudge).
http://www.retrevo.com/search/vote.jsp?q=GRA57
Of course, if you think EtL sucks, then feel free not to vote. Just don’t expect me to give you a lift to B&H next time your car breaks down 😛
Oh, and if you’re wondering what EtL would win if you guys vote enough times: Recipients of the Golden Retrevo Award will be invited to have their work showcased with Retrevo’s network of over five million monthly visitors. Cool…
by Miserere
Oh…how time flies…they grow up so quickly… Yes, gang, EtL is 1 year old today!
The statistics on blogs are not very optimistic, with some sources stating that 60-80% of blogs are abandoned within the first month. Looks like I beat the odds—and that always feels good.
During this year we’ve published 152 posts and received over 156,000 visits, with readers leaving 1,065 comments (OK, I’ll admit, some of those are mine). I’ve written some comedy, conducted interviews, philosophised about Photography and given you my opinion on interesting technology being introduced; I also pointed you towards interesting blogs and photographers I chanced upon during my web travels. Of course, I showcased some of my own Photography every now and then, lest you think I’m all talk and no click. Peter Zack wrote some great tutorials and thinking pieces for us all, and Sean Leahy took us behind the scenes at Grand Central Terminal.
Our busiest day, with 3,784 visits, was Thursday, September 10, 2009. Curiously, no article was published that week. The most viewed post was Peter Zack’s The Most Important Images of the Last 100 Years, with almost 11,000 visits, followed by my Canon S90 review, Part 1, with some 8,500 visits.
In this coming year I would like to interview more photographers—I think we can all learn much from them. I want Peter to share more of his knowledge with us. After Sean’s contribution, I would like to publish other people’s adventures with Photography, so if you have a story to tell, please e-mail me and we’ll see if it can get published.
But most of all, I hope that you guys keep coming back to enjoy what we have to offer at EtL. If you have requests, let me know! I’m all ears (or eyes, if you write me).
So here’s to another year full of ideas, Photography and laughter.
Cheers!
–Miserere
PS: If you’re wondering what my first (real) post was, see here. And the very first post of all time, the introduction, can be found here.
by Miserere
Featured Blog of the Month: Urban Creative
Most photographers I know, myself included, spend too much time obsessing over lens sharpness, chromatic aberrations, interpolation methods, and myriad other things that don’t make our photography any better. Then there are those, like Kappii, who delight in the process of taking pictures and draw joy from experimenting with film developing.
Have you ever thought of throwing leaves or plastic cling wrap on your negative? How about nail varnish? Random double exposure, maybe? If it sounds weird or downright barmy, Kappii has done it. It ain’t called Urban Creative fer nuttin’.
Whereas you or I may think a $3,000 DSLR is the only camera capable of producing adequate photos, Kappii goes out into the city with a toy camera that costs less than your lens cap.
What I love about her blog, apart from her pictures, is her contagious enthusiasm for Photography, with a capital P. Not the equipment, not the sharpness of the image or other superfluous aspects, but the act of taking, developing, and making photographs. Whenever I need some inspiration for my own photography, I go check Kappii’s blog to see what she’s up to and what crazy stunt she’s pulled on her negatives this time.
All photos: ©Kappii Do Photography.
by Miserere
Featured Blog of the Month: PhotoCritic
When he’s not riding around Europe on his self-painted yellow motorbike, or setting up his own editorial consulting business, Haje runs PhotoCritic, his blog. And when he has free time, I believe he takes some photographs. That’s what he claims, anyway.
His blog has been up since 2005, so if nothing else the guy is persistent. He writes about whatever tickles his photographic fancy, and also features articles by other photographers. Did you know he wrote a book about macro photography? Well now you do. He’s also edited a few photography books in his other free time (c’mon, the guy must have at least two sets of free times!).
The following portrait caught my attention months ago, so much so that I went fishing in his Flickr stream and eventually found it. Anybody agree with me on it?
Apparently, “Haje” means “dances with sheep” in Dutch (Haje was born in Holland), which explains the following photo from a wedding shoot.
Something that doesn’t come across on the internet is just how nice Haje actually is. For example, when a friend needed someone to photograph her fashion designs, Haje immediately stopped everything he was doing and gave up his (third set?) of free time to shoot his friend’s clothes. It is not every photographer who would have done this! (See right –>)
I’m showing the last photo for a number of reasons. 1) It turns out that Haje has time (we’re no longer surprised) to shoot concerts, and he keeps a site on it, 3Songs.org; 2) I love B&W concert photography (see here!); 3) It’s a cool photo; and 4) I happen to like the Norwegian band Tristania. The photo shows their previous singer, Vibeke Stene.
All photos: ©Haje Jan Kamps.
by Miserere
Featured Blog of the Month: Gaping Void
While not dealing with Photography, I find Gaping Void such an inspiration that I decided to name it this month’s F-BoM. Is it chewing gum for the soul? Ketchup for a fried brain? Maybe it’s Zen on a ticker, or Web 2.0’s fortune cookie. Describe them as you will, but Hugh MacLeod’s witty cartoons drawn on the back of business cards are not your standard internet gimmickry. Sometimes harsh, sometimes touching, but always thought-provoking, Hugh’s short messages resonate with today’s 140 character culture; add to that some unique “squiggly drawings” and you have yourself the perfect conversation starter for the 3rd Millenium. Although now they’re called Cube Grenades (get with the program already!).
Don’t let his Gaping Void cartoons lead you to think that Hugh is only capable of single sentences. On June 11 he will be releasing his book Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys to Creativity. This is a compilation of ideas from his blog (which he must’ve started shortly after the Industrial Revolution) and which was originally published in an unpolished form as How To Be Creative back in 2004. It was reading this tome some months ago that turned me on to Hugh’s thinking and style.
Shortly after Ignore Everybody is released I will be giving away a copy of the book to one lucky blog reader. I’m still not sure how I will decide who gets it, so if you have any ideas, let me know!
Until then, tune in to Hugh’s mental frequency and heed his order: Create or Die. As an artist, you have no other option.
by Miserere
Featured Blog of the Month: Pixelated Image
Some people like writing, some prefer taking photographs. Some like both. Vancouver based David duChemin is one of the latter. From his e-soapbox at Pixelated Image he talks (writes!) about Passion, Vision, Dreams, Hope and, every now and again, Photography.
With passport stamps from countries in 5 different continents, travel photographer just doesn’t do him justice. It would be like saying Ayrton Senna was a pretty good chauffeur. David doesn’t travel to take photos—I believe he travels to see…and taking photos is his way of making us see with him.
David is also a teacher, offering workshops in places as far flung as Ladakh (which is in Northern India, in case you’re wondering). But if you ask him, I think he would tell you he’s a humanitarian photographer, which is not a term you hear often. I was attracted to his work for World Vision, a charity organisation that my wife introduced me to as she has been sponsoring children through them for almost a decade. I have leafed through many of their brochures, never knowing that some of the touching, respectful photographs I was seeing had been shot by David. I’d like to think he appreciates this serendipity.
Make sure you check out his website too.
My interview with David duChemin.
All photos: ©David duChemin.
Enticing the Light 