Lilahpops

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post about my blog’s statistics for a project being run by Tibor Radványi over at photonovice.net. This project turned out to be the push I needed to sit down and analyse my web stats in detail rather than do a frantic count of page views, as is my usual way. It’s odd that I hadn’t taken the time to do this for myself because I constantly analyse web stats at work. I suppose I spend my available time writing content for my website rather than doing necessary behind-the-scenes checks on what’s working and what’s gotta go.

So, as a result of participating in this project, I discovered the direction in which this website is heading. Which has to be a good thing, right? Rather than continuing along the road in which I thought it was heading, I now know the sorts of posts people are stopping by to read.

I have to say I admire all the bloggers who set projects for their readers. I mean, you might have a good readership, but will everyone participate? I have started participating in projects but there are many that I have simply watched from the sidelines. What value can I bring? Well, you can bring a lot of value to a project just by participating! Tibor hasn’t had a huge response to his first project, so I’d like to ask if you have been analysing your stats of late please check out his project and see about submitting a late entry.

If you’d like to be involved check out the project guidelines for the next installment or contact Tibor at photonovice.net.

Here are the entries:

Now … on to the April Challenge!

A curves adjustment can dramatically change the look of your photo

I took this photo the other day on my way home from work.

This friendly fellow was hanging about with his horse pals under the tree in the background to the right. That was going to be my composition, some horses crowding into the shadows of the tree to escape the glare of the sun. But as soon as the horses saw me at the fence they decided to come over and say ‘Neigh‘.

I had the camera on auto settings, the only change I made was to set the macro. Being a lovely rural area I wanted to give it a more country feel. The result ended up looking quite ‘retro’. So, “Bring out the GIMP!” and let’s get started.

A quick word about GIMP

I have written previously about the GIMP here. GIMP is similar to Photoshop but it’s free. You can find out more about it and download your own copy at the GIMP Website and there is a manual available at GIMP Documentation. I found the following post extremely useful in downloading GIMP for Mac:

• How to install GIMP on Mac OSX

Saturate the colours

The first thing I did was a quick auto-levels adjustment at Colors -> Levels -> Auto. Then I bumped up the saturation at Colors -> Hue-Saturation and moved the saturation slider up to 50.

Now for the curves adjustment.

Go crazy with curves

I’m relatively new to curves and have recently been experimenting with the color channels. I followed the advice at Layers magazine on boosting the individual RGB color channels.

See the difference each change makes to the image:

Red color channel

Green color channel

Blue color channel

Tighten the image with a crop

A quick crop, making sure to keep the fly-away hair of the mane intact.

Almost done. The image is now too saturated so back to Colors -> Hue-Saturation and move the saturation slider down to -20. Experiment with the different saturation and curves settings for the best results.

Et voila! Click the image above to view it at a larger size in Flickr.

Save your image

I have been saving the image in the its native GIMP .xcf format and then saving a .jpg copy to load to Flickr. To save it as a .jpg or .png etc go to Image -> Flatten image and then choose File -> Save As …

Related posts

• Saturate the colors in a photo with GIMP
• How to resize an image in iPhoto
• Add special effects to your images with iPhoto
• Use the tools in iPhoto to edit your images

For your Easter reading add these articles to your list:

Learning The GIMP

If you have been learning to process your photos using GIMP, as I have, you will find this video tutorial at Photodoto interesting:

• Selecting foregrounds in the GIMP
  

Make a time-lapse movie on your DSLR

Ross Ching has written a guest post at Digital Photography School on making his awesome time-lapse movie, Eclectic 2.0, using his DSLR. He goes through the gear he used and how he put the film together. A very inspiring piece!

• How I made a time lapse movie with my DSLR
  

Look after your memory

Mangiaphoto provides some tips on looking after your memory card:

• Few tips on memory cards
  

Exposure compensation

Beyond Megapixels gives a good tip on setting your camera’s exposure manually:

• When to use exposure compensation
  

iPhoto overview

I’ve written a few tips on using iPhoto and came across this overview on PhotoWalkPro:

• Apple’s iPhoto - a review for the uninitiated

Enjoy.

Related posts

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

Tart up your blog’s feed with some Flickr photos

Do you use Feedburner for your blog’s RSS feeds? I set up a Feedburner account when I first started Lilahpops but I hadn’t spent much time learning the ins-and-outs of it. A couple of days ago I decided to check my subscriber count and have a bit of a look around. I found this neat optimisation solution which lets you splice your Flickr photostream into your blog feed.

See the screenshot of my feed below. It’s quite easy to see which ones are my website posts and what is streaming from Flickr. As the focus of my website is photography I thought this was quite a neat trick:

Wanna try it?

This is a very simple process:

• 1. Login to your Feedburner account and select your feed link under Feed Title
• 2. Select the Optimize tab

Look down the left-hand column at the items under Services. There is a tick next to each service you have applied to your feed. In my feed you’ll see I have BrowserFriendly, SmartFeed and Photo Splicer working so far:

• 3. Select the Photo Splicer option
• 4. Choose Flickr from the Photo Service (Flickr, BuzzNet or Webshots are available)
• 5. Type in your Flickr ID … don’t know it? Pop over to BigHugeLabs and do a quick search on your username
• 6. Choose how many photos you want included in your feed (mine is currently set to 5)
• 7. Click Activate

which will change to:

• 8. Click Save and your done. You can de-activate your selection at any time.

These are the settings I used:

The update to my feed didn’t change immediately but it didn’t take very long either. Now you have a nice visual treat for your subscribers!

I have to thank Iain from The West Ring for asking me how I got my Flickr photos into my blog feed and giving me the idea for this post.

Have you got any other Feedburner tips? Let me know in the comments.

Related posts

• What my blog statistics reveal about you
• My Flickr collection is now organised
• Flickr is the key to my social photography experience

This is my entry in the Blog Statistics - Search Terms project

Tibor Radványi at photonovice.net is running a new project, calling for photographers (professional, beginner, or enthusiast) who run blogs/websites to reveal the search terms that are being used to reach their websites. What weird, wonderful, or even [audible gasp] photography-related terms are being used to find your website? I can only imagine the types of search terms Tibor is receiving to have created this project!

The project does raise a few interesting questions about you guys: how do you search the web? what are you looking for? do you find what you are looking for? more specifically, do you find what you are looking for on my website? Viewing statistics can be incredibly addictive, especially when a site is new and slowly gaining traffic. But what do they really mean? I decided to dig a little deeper than usual to find out. I will, however, focus on only the search terms for the purpose of the project.

What are you looking for?

I was quite surprised to see that the search terms in my blog stats are very consistent. Most of my readers are searching for iPhoto tips and information about the vintage camera, Voigtlander Vito BL. This is a good sign because:

• a) I have a few posts on these topics;
• b) I am writing content that you are interested in;
• c) we share a common interest in photography.

I discovered many variations on the following terms (I have linked back to the relevant posts/categories):

• “vintage camera“;
• “voigtlander bl“
• “voigtlander vito manual;
• “resize image iPhoto“;
• “iPhoto editing“;
• “special effects on iPhoto“.

Over and over, variations on these themes.

Any oddities?

As I mentioned, the search terms are very consistent (can’t wait to see your results, Tibor!). Apart from the visitor who was looking for “homemade pergolas” (I did mention a pergola in one post) which is not all that photography related.

My favourite search term is in French. Again, looking for iPhoto tips: “resizer une image dans iphoto”.

Oh, there were a couple of searches on my name…no, it wasn’t me ego surfing!

How do you search?

One thing I found interesting, other than consistency of subject, is how search terms are phrased. The majority of search terms are prefaced with “how to…”, such as “how to lower resolution in iphotos for email”; “how to add colour in iPhoto”. I found this curious at first, but on reflection, I believe I search the same way. After all the usual reason we search is to find out how to do something, right?

What do these searches say about you?

Well, in regard to all the iPhoto search terms, I can see I am in the company of fellow Mac users who enjoy editing photos and sharing them. And some vintage camera hobbyists, as well. Very cool! My recent introduction to GIMP, however, doesn’t reveal what platform you use in the search terms (ie Windows or Mac) but we are interested in the same things. So, please let me know in the comments what other posts you’d like to see here at Lilahpops.

If you are interested in participating in the project the deadline is 21 March 2008.

Related posts

• Results from the Shoot Yourself photo project