Feedburner

I'm not sure, but I think I successfully changes my feed in Feedburner.....but I'm not sure if subscribers to this blog will get the new feed. If you are one of the subscribers and you have (or have not) gotten the feed could you please go to the comments section and say if you have or haven't received it. If someone has commented already that they have, no need to add more. If someone has said they haven't and you have, please say so as it just might have been too early for the first person to have received it.

Thanks.

We've Moved

As I suggested in my prior post, I moved my blog today in order to integrate it into my website and new posts will be continued in that location. I am still trying to sort out issues such as Feedburner to the new site, RSS for the site and making some cosmetic changes to the WordPress template. I would appreciate it if you could bear with me until I get this sorted out and get new feeds going. Also, if you happen to have this blog listed in your blogroll (if you are a blogger as well) I would appreciate your updating the link to my new URL as I have lost all the old links and Google ranking. The new URL is http://blog.howardgrill.com

I will be adding all the blogs in my old blogroll to my new one as soon as I figure out how to use the widget, which should be soon. Plus, you still have the links from this old blog!

Thanks for bearing with me during this change!

Migration And Integration

In my last post, I mentioned that I wanted to integrate this blog into my new website. I have been looking into the various ways to do this, which boils down to either sticking with Blogger (which carries the benefit of being able to maintain my Google rankings) or going with WordPress. The benefit of WordPress is that it seems far easier to integrate into a website subdomain. I have seen many posts about the woes of trying to transfer Blogger to a private website subdomain......... and that is from people who actually understand how to do it. Reading the Blogger directions has me dizzy and not sure where to even start (ANAMES, CNAMES....yikes).

My inclination is to go with a new integrated WordPress blog (they actually have a function that supposedly allows you to import all the old Blogger blog content into your new WordPress blog). Yes, I will lose my Google page rank but I am still inclined to go that route, unless someone reading this can give me a good reason not to switch over and/or a reference to step by step instructions as to how to make the Blogger transfer to a private subdomain relatively foolproof.

So, this post is an announcement of the migration of this blog away from Blogger and to my website. I am planning to try the transfer on Friday, so I don't know what the status of this blog will be from Friday on. In essence, I am not sure if when I migrate the contents over it will still remain here too (I hope it does) or how difficult the migration will be.

I would certainly appreciate it if anyone who reads this regularly could hang on over the inevitable bump or two with the migration, and look for new posts on my website, hopefully just by clicking the blog tab on my site navigation bar. It may take a few days to sort out how to get Feedburner going again etc, but I am also hoping the almost 1100 subscribers here will be interested in resubscribing at my new location.

I hope things go smoothly and that my next post topic can be back to some pictures and a discussion of photographic subjects!!!!

Thanks.

Gone Live

I have posted a few times in the past month or two about my plans to code a new website using Dreamweaver, and my reasons for doing so. Though my original self-imposed deadline was April, I have managed to already complete enough of the project to put the site up.....IT'S LIVE! And it is HERE at www.howardgrill.com

Well, it isn't totally 100% the way I would like it to be yet, but it is well along. I do have several more articles from my old site to convert to .pdf format and post. In addition, one of the big things I have left to do is to get this blog integrated into the website either by a) integrating the current Blogger structure into the new site with a subdomain or b) ditching Blogger and going with WordPress, which is apparently far easier to integrate into a website and has a function that allows you to migrate old Blogger posts into the new Wordpress site (yikes, 4 years worth of posts....will that really work correctly and without a hitch?), though doing that apparently leads to a loss of Google ranking and SEO gains that have occurred over the years.

Anytime one undertakes a project such as this, there is a huge amount of consideration given to the viewer experience. However, it is sometimes easy to be surprised at the fact that viewers don't necessarily agree with your opinion, and in the end it is only the viewer/visitors opinion that counts. People with different backgrounds and interests will surely have different ways of looking at a site.

With that in mind I would like to invite any readers over to my new site to have a look. It would REALLY be appreciated if you could make helpful and constructive comments about it on the blog or e-mail me directly. Nice comments are good but constructive criticism is even better.

Some of the questions I had in mind were:

1)Is the navigation bar and site navigation in general easy and intuitive?

2) Are the images to big to comfortably view/enjoy?

3) Does the color scheme seem too bland or does it need to be spiced up in some way?

4) Are the gallery slideshows taking too long to load and are they of a good size for viewing? Are the instructions for the slideshow buttons clear? Is using and viewing the slideshows intuitive?

5) I put a fair amount of effort into making "Story Behind The Image" pages for each image that viewers can get to by clicking on any picture in the slideshow. Once one of these "Story" pages are pulled up, you can either return to the slideshow or navigate the gallery from these pages. Is that clear from the website? Are these pages easy to get to? Are the "Story" pages worthwhile?

6) Given that a webmaster, graphics non-professional (me) coded it, does the site have a generally professional feel to it.....or does it scream amateur? (I still have the old site available if folks feel the current site is lacking).

7) Any comments or experiences to relay on achieving blog integration within a website?

I know I still have some further proofing to do for spelling etc, but I did want to get it up live and get some feedback. I am hoping it will be a good starting point to function as a site that I can personalize and grow, with continued new offerings, artwork, articles, media etc

While you are there, if you have an interest in signing up for the Newsletter I am planning for two or three times a year you can sign up from the site directly at this page.

As an aside, when one is ready to make a website live there is always the question of what company should host it. After some research, I chose HostGator and couldn't be happier thus far. Their tech support has been superlative with rapid and knowledgeable responses that helped me both get the site up properly and also get my contact and newsletter forms working correctly (getting website forms to function correctly can sometimes be a bit tricky!)

Interpretation

I find it interesting to hear how people interpret pictures. Of course, many, and perhaps most, images are not necessarily open to a tremendous amount of interpretation. For example, a great landscape image will elicit emotion in the viewer, but I think the pure aspect of interpretation is more limited. There may arise interpretive issues such as what the photographer wants the viewer to think (ie is this image urging us to support conservation, protect wild land or wildlife etc) but there are less likely to be issues regarding what the 'deep meaning' of such an image is.

Even though I didn't set out to imbue my Dreamscape series with hidden meaning, I am intrigued by the fact that people have offered to me interpretations of the pictures that are quite disparate from what I thought most people would think .

For example, take the following image, Dreamscapes #3. I 'set up' this self-portrait with the idea of trying to convey a nightmare. I tried to personify the unknown coming out of a blinding light to pull you away. I didn't guess that there was any other way for someone to think about this photo.

Dreamscapes #3
Copyright Howard Grill

But I was wrong. I have had people give me several different interpretations. The most interesting was told to me by someone that purchased the photograph and said that to them it illustrated the idea of "a young person going off to undergo his rite of passage"


And this one, Dreamscapes #6. When I post-processed the image, I was intrigued by the light ghostlike shadow of the smaller child at the right of the photo which was generated by the child's motion during a long exposure. I realized that this left the image open to some interpretation and was intrigued when a friend interpreted it as transmitting a sense of serenity after the loss of a child because, no matter what, the spirit of the child would still be there.

Dreamscapes #6
Copyright Howard Grill

For someone whose photographic 'focus' has been primarily nature and landscapes, it can be difficult to make images such as these. But I find that I enjoy hearing what people think these type of images mean and find it interesting that the interpretations can be very varied and not at all what I had thought about when making the photograph.

Photo -Eye Best Books Of 2010

Having just undergone a bit of minor surgery (I'm just fine, thanks) I am still a bit sore and so, though it is time for a new post, I am going to make it a rather short one. By the next post, things should be back to usual.

Photo-Eye just came out with its always interesting list of the best new photography books of the year. The 2010 list can be found here.....enjoy!

Quick Quotes: Timothy Allen

It can be a trap of the photographer to think that his or her best pictures were the ones that were hardest to get.


Timothy Allen

Timothy Allen should certainly know about this, given that he photographs around the world for Human Planet.

We often think that if we could just go to this or that exotic location we would come back with exceptional images that people would fawn over. In fact, most people don't care where a photograph was taken or how easy or hard it was to get there. They only care if it resonates with them.

This quote gets me thinking about the fact that the strongest and most well crafted images are probably the ones that are of 'ordinary things' and 'ordinary places' that, nonetheless, carry strong emotional content.