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Testing Embedded Slideshows

TPP — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 14:36:27 +0000

The vagaries of the beloved WordPress, and forcing what is really a word/text based publishing platform to do stuff for photographs and photography is always a bit of a test, to be honest. This morning’s self-imposed task was a) to upgrade to version 2.8.6; b) to upgrade 4 Plugins (all manually); and c) to teach myself to create embedded slide shows, integrating with Lightroom.

This embedding lark is really for the portfolio site at brendaburrell.co.uk, after watching my German hosts struggling to see the portfolio site’s slideshows through the clickable link in the leading photos. But of course it’s all going to be useful here too.

After some heavy Googling, I found the Kimili Flash Embed Plugin and pretty much followed the guidelines set out here by Marco Ryan. It seems you need to upload two copies of your Lightroom slideshow from the web module, one with the index file, and another with it removed. You do this via an ftp client of course, although in this case, the original ‘/Cornwall’ gallery was already online. So one’s called one ‘/Cornwall’ and the other ‘/Cornwallembed’. There may be a more sophisticated way of doing this, but at the moment I’m not sure what the Dickens that might be.

The path to the one without the index file goes in the html of the page, right here. Took me several tries to realise that we don’t have a /loader in our (UK?) version: it’s called /viewer, but with that blinding realisation, the path is therefore ‘/Cornwallembed/viewer.swf’. Bingo!

Of course the size and shape of the slideshow, and the sheer quantity of photos in this Cornwall slideshow isn’t right for this particular template, but yes, I’m rather happy with it. And thought my lovely readers might like a glimpse of those warm summer days back in 2008.

So that’s a) and b) completed manually. The next thing is to try and work out how to get WordPress and its Plugins to do that much-loved two-click upgrade. Have removed a strangely named file index.php.wpau.bak (?) from outside WordPress that may have had something to do with recent failures, but also, may not. Any suggestions there would be very gratefully received, as always.

Task c) is almost there. Some tweaking yet, but what do you think?Similar Posts:

The Cardboard Cutout of War

TPP — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 02:10:25 +0000

Compare…

..and contrast:

And there’s also this:

So, which is the photoshop disaster?

The integrity of the documentary nature of the photograph is sacrosanct, isn’t it? Do we always believe what we see when it’s a map, a trainspotter, a mobile phone picture? When is a photograph a true record? Is a satellite scanning the earth at however many frames a second a true photograph? What about if the frames overlap, or are allowed to overlap?

Is the first photograph an example of an overlapped image? What are we seeing?Similar Posts:

WordPress to Drupal?

TPP — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 23:32:39 +0000

Until recently, I adored WordPress. I’ve been teaching groups of artists and photographers to make websites and blogs using the free and easy WordPress.com package, which are so much the best offering out there to get going quickly. Magically easy, most of the templates are rather beautiful, and there’s enough customisation to make every site look different.

Then the first WordCamp UK came along, and in with the planning came enough cartoony controlling behaviours to begin a slow turnaround. Where were we women? Other halves, someone to do today’s equivalent of making the tea. As experts in our own fields, as co-workers in the big open source adventure? No. Ideas and suggestions were ignored, forum posts were skipped, and then fell under a welter of geek-talk and micro-chat. In the end, it proved impossible to go to the actual event, and probably that was a good thing, on balance.

But apart from a newly burgeoning UK community that seems to want autocratic geek hierachies, obsess about ways to increase traffic and the dreaded and ghastly monetisation, is WordPress itself broken?

In a matter of weeks since a major overhaul resulting in 2.5, version 2.6 has come out, and it seems that 2.5 is no longer being supported. Version 2.5 is okay, it mostly works, but the back end isn’t better organised or clearer than 2.3, and the image uploader is much worse. It hardly ever uploads a photo to a post first time, and often usually the code has to be typed in by hand. The much touted Gallery function, which would be marvellous on this site, doesn’t work properly either, looks ugly when it’s typed in, and the default links are all wrong, again with no way to change them except by typing.

The one function that is better in 2.5 over 2.3 is the ability to upload more than one image at a time. Is there anything else that’s better, really? If you can think of anything the Romans did for us WordPress does better in 2.5 or in 2.6, than in 2.3, please post it in the comments here. I’d love to know.

It takes some time to upgrade: all the plugins need switching off, backups need making and then it all needs putting back together afterwards. And there is always a plugin or an add-on that doesn’t work afterwards, since WordPress isn’t giving its developer community enough time to catch up. I have two blogs or three still on 2.3 which unfortunately have been dropped because there just isn’t time to upgrade them all.

And people are complaining about the feeds sometimes not working, and the templates are just well, not being produced for 2.5 or 2.6. A clean 3 column with plenty of width in the main area is getting hard to find unless CSS faffing is in order, and that’s hardly the point of using a no-coding system.

But why Drupal?

Three years ago (a long time in blogland) me and one Mr Lunatic Fringe aka Phil Ackley from Anchorage, had a blog called Things That Moved. It documented visually and in writing, a host of broken down farm machinery, planes, and dead motor cars, interspersed with the occasional corpse. Beautiful rusting heaps and shiny disintegrating chrome, with smatterings of gore. Things That Moved was built on Drupal.

A long time ago WordPress was simpler, and Drupal was much more complicated. Daunting, even. Now, it just looks very beautiful so perhaps it’s time to give it another try.

And of course there’s Angie.Similar Posts:

Why Does Your Website Come up Higher Than Mine in Google?

TPP — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 09:43:03 +0000

One of a series of AskMe questions this week, this one a lot simpler to answer than the dreaded “film or digital?” – one for another day! The question in full is:

“How come when I google my name the Northern Exposure site comes up before my co.uk one? I added a meta tag in my code with lots of words.”

A series of robots (and humans) do the somewhat hefty job of indexing the whole of the internet so that the search engines (Google, Yahoo, AOL etc) can find us on the world wide web. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the combination of methods used by content management and web authors to try and ensure that their site has the correct ranking. The higher the better, obviously.

The WWW is indexed using text – words alone. For photography websites, and especially for static brochure-type sites based mostly or wholly around photographs, SEO is difficult to manage because there is simply not enough data (words) for the robots to catch.

Things you can do to improve your site’s search ranking:

1. Name your photographs in several places. The file name SaltburnPier01 is far better than IMG00356, and do make use of captions, titles and alt=”" tags. The more words associated with your photographs the easier they are to find.

2. Write about the work. Descriptions, explanatory pieces of prose, critique or even appropriate poetry, anything (See 1). Doesn’t have to be on the same page, but the more text the better.

3. Link to lots of other sites. Traffic is vital for SEO. Visitors in and through your site will automatically add to your ranking. Success definitely breeds success. If you have no visitors, you’ll get no visitors.

4. Keep your links relevant. For photographers, that means linking to other photography sites, and not to a general mashup of your other interests, unless they’re part of your context or genre, or they’re one of your clients.

5. Put your domain name (URL) into your signature on all your emails, and attach to any posts you make in photography forums, and in comments on other blogs. In other words, promote your own site. All the time.

6. Use Web2 social media like Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Deviant Art, Lomography, whatever is current, fashionable, and is where the people you want to see your work are hanging out. If you’re not active on these sites, take a couple of days to get around as many of them as you can and register with a name unique to you that will help you stand out or create the feel or buzz you’re seeking to create around your work If you can engage properly in the ‘community’ on any of these sites, do so. Creating a sense of community around one’s work has never been easier, but like most things of any value, takes time to cultivate.

7. Use metatags. They won’t help much on their own, but put them in anyway.

8. Use a proprietory Content Management System (CMS) which is well known as an instant provider of good SEO. Currently WordPress is streets ahead in this game. If you want to make your own static website using something like Dreamweaver, make sure you do all of the above and keep your content regularly updated and changing.

9. WordPress is great for photographers, but there are a whole host of other content management systems for photographs out there. Look also at Drupal, Expression Engine and Moveable Type, and album and gallery systems like JAlbum, Banana Album, Simple Viewer, PixelPost and so on. Specifically look for sites made with any of these and see how high they rank by Googling their keywords or titles.

10. If you can’t manage much or all of the above, or still feel you need a static word-free site just for just photographs, like an extended business card, then do supplement your website with a weblog. A how-to of blogging for photographers is overdue here, but is on its way in the next week or so. The most basic key to successful blogging is very simple though: do it and just keep on doing it.

As ever, anyone with additional hints or tips, please do follow up in the comments section.Similar Posts:

Co-working Call!

TPP — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 02:17:08 +0000

There are a whole host of reasons and for this post, and it’s less about giving information, than asking who’s out there and who’s up for what. It’s a call-out!

Photography, the business of, is a lonesome affair, solo by its very nature, although not necessarily lonely. The same conditions that much freelance work exhibits are true for most of us, and the advent of Web2 and portable access to contacts and so on, makes the tools available to create much more of a um, community around the work, and through the working day.

Blogging makes it possible to create and promote a real conversation about one’s photographic preoccupations, research ideas, daily activities. But there are extra possibilities. Crowd sourcing, to find people whom you know who might be nearby, or timeshifting opportunities to collaborate. In this seemingly endless dynamic of open possibilities, what is functional? What will work, in real time, for me and my inspirers, my (in)valuable business contacts, the people on whom the work will thrive and ultimately depend?

So this is how to contact me, to crowd-source me, if you like. I will respond and am most likely to engage if the following:

• you have a blog which you keep updated, where I can see more-or-less how you think and feel about your work.
You may or may not also have a professional website. Just having your photos or art on one of the popular sites wouldn’t work on its own in this context, but it might be a start, or an adjunct. Only having one of those and nothing else as your web presence would be a turn-off.

• you are local
Crowd-sourcing depends on the conceptual possibility of immediate or soon. If you’re in Newcastle, Darlington, Durham, Middlesbrough, or any of the surrounding county areas, that’s good. If you also blog and/or would like to, that’s even better. If you’re in the business as a professional communicator, agent, commissioning editor, image sourcer, writer, or anything similar, it would be great to hear from you.

• you are looking for or can supply ongoing mentoring
People who can listen and give willingly are more empathetic, and are on the whole more useful to each other. There will be a need in coming months for listeners. People who can talk about their own work will be needing other people who are interested in them. Both sides.

• practical collaborating
Studio equipment and sets, gallery space, critique and portfolio sessions, library and location resource building. If you have skills, if you know how to make sets, or mend things, or need space or ideas or feedback, rare skills like lith printing, or stuff that almost anyone can do like gallery making, painting, developing film.

• enthusiasm.
Vital. Two years in education has torn the enthusiasm from my work and a hollow husk of inertia remains, built from battling the twin crimes of resource denial and daily xenophobia. It’ll return, no doubt. In the meantime, situation vacant, photographer/s and allies wanted.

Any one of the above is good. More than say two, and there could definitely be possibilities. More than two? Please get in touch. Urgently

Initially the best ways are Twitter and/or Photophlow for a brief conversation, or where you can send links to your own site/s. Longer conversations about co-work can then begin properly in real life.

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London or Here? Here or London?

TPP — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 23:40:39 +0000

Uppermost in the minds of several of these newly graduating photographers is where to go next, literally. Several are already working in local portrait studios, some are going on to do a third, BA Hons year. But the early career photographers who’re looking for a clear direction seem to be thinking of heading south.

Charlotte Mendelson © Adrian Lourie

Big fish in small pond, or tiddler in a billowing melee? There’s no-one better to consult than Adrian Lourie, who was top of the Class of 2007, so TPP dropped him a line and this is his reply.

“Things here are going well. I’ve been working for freelance editorial photographer Graham Jepson for 4 months assisting him in photographing the great and the good. A varied mix of people from Gordon Ramsey to John Prescott and Ray Winstone to Geri Halliwell! All good and a fascinating insight into the madness of celebrity.

Graham also has a picture agency called writerpictures.com which specialises in author photos and I have recently started photographing authors as a contributor. I recently photographed several of the Orange Prize for Fiction 2008 short-listers as well as covering the event itself at the Royal Festival Hall earlier this week.

I’m also finding time to pursue my portrait photography with a view to approaching some magazines. I’m also submitting some stock photography to Alamy and recently sold still life images which have appeared in the Guardian.

Chris John © Adrian Lourie

After an initial period of false starts, doubts, knocks and knock backs as well as the continuing financial struggle, things are starting to work for me down here and I’m confident of my future careeer progression.”

No regrets then Adrian?

“No regrets but there has been self doubt…inevitable I suppose.”

“I’ll be interested to know how Dan Aziz is faring and Dan Prince seems like a nice guy. I do firmly believe though that it’s still all about London if you want to make it (rightly or wrongly). There are most definitely more opportunities here for those who are willing to stick it, bug the living daylights out of people and work bloody hard for little or no money. There is obviously a great deal of competition but also massive amounts of work out there. Did I say that 75 people applied for my current job?!?!”

No you didn’t! You knew you’d crack it though, didn’t you? Five years hard graft and you’ll be where you want to be, no question.

“I’m hoping to do it in 4 years!!!!!”

“Love the Northern Exposure website btw.”

So do we.

It’s certain that Adrian will drop in to answer people’s specific questions, or you can mail him via his own website linked here. Ask away! Thanks Ade.

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Which Famous Photographer Are You?

TPP — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 00:01:41 +0000

Joel Peter Witkin, which is grand.
Known for photographing human spectacles including hermaphrodites, dwarfs, amputees, androgynes, carcasses, people with odd physical capabilities & fetishists. “When I produce a photograph that totally satisfies, a part of me actually dies. And I think that death is an aspect of myself being burned away or dissolved, because that part of what I had to work out is taken care of.”

It’s the Raft of George Bush, modelled on the Raft of The Medusa, that first grabbed me. David LaChapelle has a version on his homepage too.

Thanks to Mark Page of The Manchester Blog who is Ansel Adams, allegedly.

Tagging: Public Energy, Rob, Wackylabs, Emma, Elena, Monaxle, Panchromatica, Steve, F:Lux and Murdoch. Go on, you know you want to.

Hope to see some of you tomorrow!Similar Posts:

When was this photo taken?

TPP — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 19:28:03 +0000

Today, last week, last year? Twenty years ago, thirty?Similar Posts:

Northeast Rights-grab Photo Competition!

TPP — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 01:33:43 +0000

Pro-imaging has just launched a campaign against these pernicious contests. You know, when a couple of pretty kewl-sounding prizes are offered, and the small print says all ur photos are belong to us? Preying on the naif and the desperate, these scams competitions are a jolly clever way of getting hold of a large bank of images for very little money. Targeting students seems a particularly low blow, especially when said students are coerced told encouraged by their tutors to enter.

The Challenge

Its FAQ

The Terms & Conditions

This One North-East rights grab has slipped through Pro-imaging’s net so far, and it looks to have been widely promoted in the region’s colleges, who of course like it for their own publicity if a student wins. So that’s a double whammy, isn’t it?

Spread the word:

“All photographers, both professional and amateur, should be aware that they have the same rights, and that they need to protect them.

Too many competition sponsors are stealing your pictures, stealing your creativity, stealing your skills, stealing your unique vision. Such things are worth infinitely more than any competition prize.

Tell your friends and colleagues, your associations, your forums, your political representatives, and your local and national news outlets about this. Refer them to this article.”

Via the mighty EPUK

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Geek Request: an Upcoming-style Events Widget?

TPP — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 18:34:02 +0000

Anyone have any ideas?

Getting more requests for suggestions of shows and exhibitions to see, things to do in the north-east photography-wise, and Yahoo’s Upcoming service as used in the middle bar here, often slows the pageload, and is cumbersome and laborious to enter info. It’s okay if there’s a community of people adding events, but in the north-east, there just isn’t.

One possibility is a list using deli.cio.us links, but does anyone have any better suggestions, maybe a plugin or an easy-to-use feed mashup that doesn’t require writing CSS?Similar Posts: