Lilahpops

This is my entry in the Share the Love Project

OK, it might be lame but I love my cat! In fact, I love both my cats but only one would deign to sit for a photo today.

If you follow Neil Creek’s blog you’ll know the reason for this project. If you haven’t been reading then head over and check it out.

When illness strikes at your loved ones the rest of the world (and its problems) shrinks to the size of a pea in comparison. You realise the insignificance of those petty annoyances: tele-marketers; that b@stard driver who cut in front of you; that neighbour playing loud music. Nothing matters more than those close to you.

Stress like this, however, needs a little relief and light-heartedness. I imagine Neil has picked this theme - Share the Love - for this very reason. I can only hope he and Naomi like cats!

My partner is a little camera-shy, so you’ll have to make do with Cordelia (above). She takes light-heartedness to the extreme … I mean how cool can a cat be? She is quite aloof but knows when lap-sitting is required after a long day at work.

The light was quite poor when I took this. Post-processing was only an auto levels adjustments … she really does have those golden-coloured eyes. Mesmerizing.

This is my entry in the Blog Statistics - Most Popular Project

Tibor has announced the second part of his Blog Statistics Project over at photonovice.net. He asks: what is your most popular post and why do you think it generated so much interest? did it create a lot of discussion in the comments and has it made you change the way you blog, or even how you photograph?

My website is just under a year old and although I don’t receive many comments on my posts, I am finding that web traffic is slowly but surely increasing. It’s true what they say, it won’t happen overnight.

What are my most popular posts?

The first part of the project told me a little about my readers and what you are looking for. So, I checked out my stats again. Not only do they tell me what you are looking for here at Lilahpops, but it seems you might have also found what you were looking for.

For this project I’m focusing on the Top 3 posts. Part one revealed you have been searching for vintage cameras (namely, the Voigtlander) and iPhoto tips. Two of my Top 3 posts are part of my iPhoto series:

Top 3 Posts

• 1. Add special effects to your images with iPhoto
• 2. How to resize an image in iPhoto
• 3. 8 simple steps to add your Flickr photos to your blog feed

Let’s break that down a bit more

Number 3

Not about iPhoto or vintage cameras: this post made the front page of photographyvoter.com; got stumbled; and received links from both Tibor at photonovice.net and Antoine at All Day I Dream About Photography. It got a huge spike in traffic as a result. While this post still receives visits, the interest has leveled off. However, I’ll add here that the readers who visit this page are interested in the content - each reader staying for an average 3:38 mins. It’s not a simple click-in and click-away post.

As an aside, I have to say that adding my Flickr photos to my blog feed has been insanely useful this month. I’m participating in the April Challenge, taking a photo a day and posting each one to Flickr. My feed has never seen such fresh content on a daily basis! I also have picked some extra subscribers.

Numbers 1 and 2

So, the first two posts are from my iPhoto series. The time readers spend on each page is 1:46 mins (Number 1) and 4:35 mins (Number 2) which is quite good considering the nature and speed of ’surfing the web.’

What does this mean?

I can’t say for sure, but when I first got my Mac and began using iPhoto, I didn’t find many tips and tricks out there. Possibly I wasn’t looking in the right places. So I started writing some. It seems that there was a bit of a gap in this area.

Does this change the way I blog? The consistency in my popular posts (not just the Top 3) does encourage me to write similar ones in the future and continue the iPhoto series. Does it make me change the way I photograph? No. But I do store my photos in iPhoto. And I ensure that I use it (even though GIMP is my new editor of choice) often to see what post-processing possibilities it has. And then I write about them.

What are your most popular posts? Get your entry to Tibor at photonovice.net by 9 May!

You might have seen it already but just in case: this is the latest Joe McNally video which captures his attempts at photographing the changing of the guard lightbulb atop of the Empire State Building. It’s very cool.

Duration: 7 mins 58 seconds

More great reading for you:

Do you “shoot” or “photograph”?

This one has had me thinking about how I “talk photography” over the last week or so. Jim M. Goldstein at JMG-Galleries dares you to stop saying “shoot” and instead use “photograph” or “take a photo”, something along those lines. It does make sense after all, it’s a camera, not a gun:

• Philosophy of photography: to “Shoot” or to “Photograph”?

What kind of photographer are you?

Paul Indigo at Beyond the Obvious defines two types of photographers, the observers and the controllers:

• There are two types of photographers

Rain, rain go away

Niels Henriksen at My Camera World offers hope and inspiration to all photographers facing wet weather:

• What to photograph on a rainy day

Make an HDR

Abduzeedo.com has an easy to follow tutorial to creating HDR images using Photomatix (I’ve got to get this program):

• How to create HDR Photos - HDR/Photomatix tutorial

What to buy …

And lastly, Photocritic.org has put together an excellent list on:

• The top 15 entry-level digital SLR cameras

Enjoy.

Related posts

• See other posts from the What I learned about photography this week series

Are you doing the April Challenge over at photochallenge.org?

So, we are halfway there and now I know why it’s called a challenge; yesterday I almost forgot to take a photo! There’s quite a bit of discipline involved in taking a photo a day on a specific topic. I know I’ll miss it when it’s all over, but I have to admit it’s starting to get more difficult to find something entropic to photograph that I haven’t tapped into in previous photos. Rust is looking good.

If you haven’t been following, or participating in, the April Challenge is all about Entropy. Decay, deterioration, chaos, disorder. You’d be amazed at how much is out there! If you have been following, or particpating in, I’d love to hear how you have been going in the comments.

Check out the new gallery of images that I have submitted to challenge (I’ll be updating this throughout the month of April). The photos are also available on my Flickr account - I created a set dedicated specifically to the April Challenge.

If you have been subscribing to Lilahpops through a feed reader then you would already be getting your daily dose of images already. You can subscribe here.

Make sure to check out all the entries in the April Challenge - there are some stunning photos.