Jessica Lee .ca

Happy Chinese New Year 新年快樂

祝大家福虎生風，虎年行大運！

 

Happy Thanksgiving Long Weekend

Technical Support:

Friday night, Chris was not in the house when I came home from a facial appointment.  Our dogs were loose in the living room and the front door was not locked.  It was very strange.  It turned out that he got summoned to be tech support for the old Chinese ladies next door - setting up their laptop on the Internet.  Our neighbour was on the phone with tech support, but she didn't know enough about computers to understand what he was telling her to do... so she told the tech support guy that she'd get her neighbour to help... and came over.  She had a sense of urgency, so he went straight over.  Once Chris was on the phone with tech support, the guy said he was looking at Google Street View to see how far away this neighbour was while he waited.  :-) 

Our neighbour came over again this afternoon asking for help with her computer/Internet.  She said "You have time now? Come." It was kind of funny - because I was still in my pj's.  She didn't remember how to log in to her new laptop - she typed in the user name and password but didn't know what to do next.  I pretty much just pressed the "Enter" key for her and I was a hero!  Then, she thought since I was there, I could show her how to log into her Gmail account and how to reply to e-mail messages.  Her home page was Google and she'd enter Gmail.com in the search box, but she didn't know how to click the link.  I changed her home page to Gmail.  After 30 minutes or so, I think she got it.  She was taking notes, so I hope her notes will help later.  She's also taking a class.

Technology and the Internet bring people closer for sure - we had hardly ever talked to them in the past 10 years or so.  We usually just wave hi/bye when we see each other as we leave/enter the garage.  Now, we are sure that we are their favourite neighbours on this block!  ;-) 

Turkey Dinner:

We had a big Thanksgiving dinner last night!  Chris spent Saturday night and Sunday cooking - he cooked a juicy 16 lb. turkey, garlic mashed potatoes, Brussels sprouts, fresh cranberry sauce, and crème brûlée with vanilla beans!  6 of us couldn't finish the food.  Where was I when Chris was cooking?  I was watching Vampire Diaries on the PVR. I still prefer Twilight. :-)

After sparkling wine and Bailey's Irish Cream (mint chocolate flavour Bailey's on the rocks with chocolate shavings on top), somehow, we ended up looking up addresses on Google Street View (hooked my laptop to the big screen TV).  Hahaha... strange, eh?  ;-)  It guess it was because Calgary just went on Street View in the middle of last week.  When we looked at our guests' house, it looked like there was somebody in their front window!  We were trying to figure out who it was.  Too bad we don't have CSI-type photo enhancement capabilities.  The party ended past 1 a.m. today.

Photo Shoot:

We had some fun this afternoon.  The Traveling Woofburys - Stella (American/vocal) & Harry (British/guitarist/vocal) - totally rocked the house!

 

Happy Halloween!

Photoshop.com Mobile Review

Adobe’s Photoshop app for the iPhone (Photoshop.com Mobile) launched today and I downloaded it right away!

Quick Review:

• It has very intuitive basic photo editing abilities
• I can edit photos from my iphone or stored in the Photoshop.com account.  
• Editing is reversible and non-destructive, with the output saving to your iPhone Photos collection and optionally to your online account.  
• It would be nicer if it has more sharing functionalities like posting to FB or Twitter.

It's very easy to use.

Collection of editing tools and effects:

• Crop
• Rotate
• Flip
• Exposure
• Saturation
• Tint adjustments
• Easy to apply filters including black and white, sketch, soft focus, pop, border, vignette blur, warm vintage, rainbow, soft black and white and white glow.  
• Options to cancel, undo or redo an edit, and save the image. 
• Save and Exit: Simply saves the new pic to your iPhone Photos collection
• Save and Upload: it will also send a copy to your online storage. If you don’t already have a Photoshop.com account, the app will prompt you to create one the first time you try to upload an image. The account is free and offers up to 2 GB of storage, expandable of course with an annual paid storage plan.

This is definately one of my new favorites. Have you had a chance to play with PS Mobile yet? What are your thoughts? Are there other worthwhile or better alternatives out there for iPhone image editing?

My New Snaptote

One side features Harry's happy face and the other side shows my pretty puppies sitting nicely side by side. I love this bag!

Puppy-sitting Jag

Jag and I had a relaxing day today. :-)

Basic Astrophotography

Tonight's Calgary Photographic Society meeting had a speaker from the Calgary Centre of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada.  The topic was "Basic Astrophotography" - pretty interesting. 

Basic Equiptment: 

• a camera that: 

has removable/interchangeable lenses (most any SLR will meet this requirement)

allows the shutter to be operated in all modes (time exposure mode especially) even with the battery removed!

has the ability to do long time exposures (usually the "B" setting)

has the ability to accept a remote shutter release cable

has a tripod mount threaded hole on the bottom  

• A tripod -should be able to hold the camera steady 
• A remote release - e.g. Canon TC-80N3 Programmable Remote ReleaseThe TC-80N3 comes with an 80cm / 2.6 foot cord. It is a self timer, interval timer and long-exposure timer. The timer can be set from anywhere between 1 second and 99 hours, 59 minutes 59 seconds. You can take up to 99 frames, with any time interval between frames, all completely unattended. It also has a light for the LCD control panel so you can see it in the dark.

Different ways to take astrophotos:

1. Afocal - through the eyepiece with adapter
2. Piggyback – camera, with telephoto lens, piggyback on a motorized telescope 
3. Prime focus- camera looking through telescope - focus is very tough - tip: use live view or PC to see the image live
4. Eyepiece projection - easily blur but gets most zoom -  it may be the only way to shoot Saturn or Jupiter

Some sites the speaker mentioned:

http://www.calgary.rasc.ca

http://www.astronomycalgary.com/ -list of events

http://www.heavens-above.com

Fundraising Photo Shoot for the Cochrane & Area Humane Society

I was busy this weekend! I took pet photos for the Calgary Small & Toy Breed Play Group on Sat - it's for the Cochrane & Area Humane Society fundraising. We raised $423 with photo shoot and raffle! I'm so happy that we can contribute some help to those pets at the crowded shelter.

Here are the cute dogs' photos:

SEO Tips for Promoting Your Photography Business

Besides taking photos, I manage a team of Internet Marketing professionals.  I normally do not publish any tips, nor advise on my blog; but, I was browsing some great photographers' websites and realize that most of them are unaware that simply publishing photos to portfolio website is hardly a part of strong online business strategy.   

I'd like to share some basic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tips that would increase your chances of increasing the visibility of your website on the popular search engines:  

• Use a unique, keyword focused Title tag on every page of your site.
  Put your company name at the end if you want to include it in the page title. It offers little or no search value unless you are a major brand name.
• Select good meta tag keywords that describe the site, more specifically your specialties.  The keyword ‘photography’ is extremely broad – more than 376 million references on Google alone. Think about your strengths, try to be more specific to your niche.  For instance, "abstract photography" search results in 170,000 references, "abstract tree photography" only has 7 results. The more specific you are, the better. For more keyword help, you may try the free tools at KeyWordDiscovery or SEOBook.
• Avoid ‘click to enter’ or ‘splash pages’ as the top level site page.  Also, avoid the website designs depending on HTML frames.   Splash pages are the main entry page with large graphic image or link that instructs visitors to enter the online site or flash animation with links to skip animation, and also a redirect to the new web page after the completion of the animation. You would really like the top level page to act as table of contents for remaining site. Splash pages lack anchor text and keyword rich text apart that search engines use to index your page.
• Never publish a website which says that site is under construction.  You don't want search engines to index your under construction site and lead people there.
• Several photographers have either no copy or little copy on their pages. Always design your site with the help of words that target audience types into the search queries.  You may want to keep the gallery and photo sections away from top level pages.  Search engine robots cannot tell what type of a photographer you are based on the images.  They need text.  Use captions with your images - place keyword rich captions with your images.  
• Use the words “image” or “picture” in your photo ALT descriptions and captions. A lot of searches are for a keyword plus one of those words.  Images are, after all, the product. You have to pay attention to the text associated with the images to ensure that they too get indexed properly.  
• Always avoid Flash for the above mentioned reasons. Though you may have typed loads about yourself in the Flash based site, search engines would hardly be able to observe a single word of it. If it is a movie, the search engines cannot even retrieve the words from movies also.  I know this is a trade off for some people who use Flash instead of image files to try to protect their images from being copied. 
• Always have a check on the linked referrals – a link from the other page to your own website - it's best to have keywords which are in line with the anchor text of link. Google search engine always weights the Search Engine results pages towards anchor text of links to the page. For example, if your target is “blue bird photo” then link to “blue bird photo” instead of a “Click here” link.  
• Submit your URL to search engines – you could either do this manually or with the help of a free submitter service such as Submit Express or even seek help from a paid service firm.
• High page rank indicates high trust. Links (especially deep links) from a high PageRank site would carry more weight.  Improve page rank by exchanging links with other reputable websites, directories and bloggers in your specialty photography area.  Search engine giants like Google favor relevant and meaningful anchor text while indexing on websites. In general, the more websites on which the URL appears, the better.  However, quality matters - one good, authoritative link can do a lot more for you than a dozen poor quality links!
• Focus on search phrases, not single keywords, and put your location in your text (“our Calgary store” not “our store”) to help you get found in local searches.

Just remember this formula:

Strong SEO = Text + Links + Popularity + Reputation

Choosing Photography Backdrops

After a year of service, the big sheet of white paper backdrop (which was gaffer-taped from the wall to the floor) went into the recycle bin.

White paper background was cheap and great in my home studio but it is not portable and not cleanable.  So, I was thinking what I should get next. 

I evaluated a few different options:

• Canvas backdrops - Canvas backdrops are not long enough to shoot head to toe, since they do not sweep onto the floor. They are mainly for business portraits and senior head-shots in a studio. 
• Vinyl backdrops -Vinyl backdrops are smooth, easy to clean, durable and long lasting - great for pet and kids photos.  I can even add sheer backdrop cloths with vinyl for a softer look on portraits.  I was very interested in getting it.  But, Vinyl backdrops are heavy and not foldable and thus it is not portable.
• Collapsible backdrops - Collapsible, folding backdrops are easy to transport for photography on location. I am not sure how to clean it with the frame.  I'd guess you just spot clean it as needed. 
• Muslin fabric backdrops - Portable and great in the permanent studio. They fold easily for transportation.  They can be hang on a rail system in the studio or can be set-up on location with the portable background stands.  However, Muslin wrinkles and drapes with folds.
• Paper backdrops - initially it's cheap and it has a variety of colors.  However, it is not easily portable.

At the end, I got a 1.8m x 2.15m (6’ x 7’) lastolite collapsible (black and white with train) backdrop with train  for my home studio and those on-site photo shoots.  :-)  Note: I confirmed with Lastolite's sales that only the black and white with trains are removable and washable!  All of the other colours are fixed to the frame and therefore cannot be washed in the machine.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Harry is ready for St. Patrick's Day! ;-)  

Harry was born in England but he was living & showing in Ireland for a while before he came to Canada. 

Someday, I'll visit Ireland and have Guinness beer there to see if it tastes better at the source.

Photo Shooting Day

I went shooting with Cher and Tom last Saturday.  They were super models!  Tom was a great fashion shoot director too!

I'm sure you'll see more photos of them in the future.  I love shooting photos of them.  We had a blast!  FUN! FUN! FUN!  :-D

Happy Chinese New Year from CoCo

CoCo - Happy Chinese New Year
Originally uploaded by malteserus

The Chinese year 4706 begins on Feb. 7, 2008. February 7, 2008 to January 25, 2009 is the year of the "Earth Rat" (element + year).

Here's CoCo, with his signature puppy face, wishing you a Happy Chinese New Year!

CoCo with Yellow Ribbon

This afternoon, Chris set up the background and I took a photo of CoCo with the yellow ribbon.
CoCo with Yellow Ribbon
Originally uploaded by malteserus

CoCo supports our troops!