Code|Beta

Natalie posted on Digital Photography School or DPS the last post on the three part series to get the DPS community or anyone else that’s interested blogging to show off their photography work. On this last post she asked a couple of the professional photographers about their blogs and where they host them, I guess her e-mail asking me about it got lost in all the spam…no I’m just kidding

You can find her article on the Digital Photography School website and you can go to her blog as well and link from there.

As far as what I do is pretty simple…well at least for me…I bought a hosting plan with DreamHost which is pretty cheap compared to other options I’ve seen out there and has really nice specs as far as the package they offer. I installed Wordpress using their one click install system and upgrade the blog through there as well. The theme I use on Wordpress is K2 which I love and have done a couple of modifications to it so that it does what I need.

For my photos I actually upload them to Flickr, I got the pro account after I hit the 200 photo limit that they have established, and then I installed a plugin called FAlbum on Wordpress so that the visitors to my site can see my photos directly from my blog and not have to go to Flickr, though they can still go to Flickr and comment on the photos there and also download bigger versions of the photos if they wanted to.

My e-mail is actually administered by Google. I got an account on their Google Apps service and they provide the e-mail system which is the same one they use for gmail so I can even chat with my friends who use google talk. I love this option though the free version allows me to have up to 25 e-mail addresses but it’s ok since I really have my girlfriend and myself using it

I will often just blog directly from Flickr, what I like about this is that it will organize the photo on the top right hand corner and wrap the text around the photo, or sometimes I will blog from Wordpress and add the medium sized photo to the post and clicking on it will take you to the Flickr page though I might change it in the future so that it stays on my blog and doesn’t go directly to Flickr.

The monitor calibration can turn out to be a problem and I’ve noticed this since I’ve seen the photos from my desktop at home, which I’ve attempted to calibrate my monitor as best as possible, from my work computer, which has not been calibrated at all, and from my mom’s computer which I had to play a little with the color correction on the nVidia control panel in order to get the images to look like they should though I’m still not completely happy with that.

I guess the biggest issue for digital photography is the monitor calibration and this is a big factor that affects the way others see our photos. As of right now I’m really happy with the setup I have and find it quite affordable for my budget. I have even done a similar setup for my sister, she’s no photographer, but she likes to draw and would like to show off her work as well so I’ve set it up and you can check it out on her blog that I made…I still have to teach her to upload to Flickr.

What would I change? Well so far not much really…though I’d like to add a drop shadow to the photos on the FAlbum that works well with the current theme I have set and that would be pretty much about it right now.

Pascal Wowak said that he believes that watermarks on the images ruin the images and I have to agree with him up to certain level. There are people who simply don’t want anyone else to use their work so they put this huge watermark across the photo which it sure protects it and also ruins the photo a lot. Then there are people who make a very good looking watermark, like Melissa Jill, which looks so artistic. The watermark I use is a simple small black line on the bottom of my photos and the idea I took from my friend ocnarfid

I also like the idea of having a border added to the image which basically has the signature like the one from Jasmine Star since it’s non-intrusive on the photo but I find it that, at least for myself, it would add a lot of work.

I also just post the finished work and not some raw photo which I haven’t even taken a look at. I like to do little to no retouch to the photo unless I consider that it would really come out great with certain effects applied. Most of the time I’ll just make the photo into a black and white photo or just leave it in color.

-LM