Break

May 10, 2022

I give up for the time being. I always kept thinking that I would try to add a post every few weeks or so, but that is not happening. I think I need to admit that blogging is not something that is high on my priority list at this point.

I really haven’t even been doing a lot of serious photography either. I do the occasional “photo-shoot” out the back when the birds are active at the feeder, but that is about it.

For the time being, my two highest priorities are going to be to continue to clean up my Lightroom mess and really learn how to use SmugMug. As far as Lightroom goes, I just have way too many photos. I am slowly going through them and getting rid of a lot of “duplicates” which is more like 20 of the same thing when I had the camera on high speed shutter. That is going to take me forever. Ugh!

I signed up with SmugMug about a year ago but didn’t get beyond the basic setup. I started going through a few tutorials on YouTube that SmugMug had put up on their YouTube channel. Their SmugMug Live episodes are great but there are about 119 of them. I have a lot of catching up to do. I also came across a new video for beginners and then a follow-on one. They seem to be good, and I am learning a lot from them. It is going to be a slow process, but well worth it in the long run. I may actually figure out how to use SmugMug to blog.

I will continue to post to Instagram and maybe a little to Flickr as I continue to work on my website.

Thanks for stopping by,

Art

Adobe issue or Canon issue?

September 25, 2021

Well, as usual, I haven’t seemed to have the time to work on the blog recently. We were traveling in Maine for a few days and there have been a number of other things going on that have limited the time I have had available to work on my photography and this blog.

One of the interesting things that I have run into recently (as 0f 9/15) is that when I look at my photos a lot of them seem to have a weird edge around them. I have been tearing my hair out trying to figure out what the problem is – camera, software, or who knows. I finally spent some extra time this morning looking around the web and trying a few different things.

From what I can tell, it may be an issue with Adobe Lightroom Classic v10.4. I am not sure at this point, so I decided to try using the Adobe Forum to see if I could get some help. It turns out that there may have been a similar problem with a Canon camera back in 2017 and it turned out to be an Adobe issue. I will be curious to see what info I get back from the Adobe community.

I will post any info that I get from the Adobe community here when I receive it.

10/12/2021:

Well, it turns out that it is an Adobe issue. They updated the lens profile for the Canon RF24-240mm lens and V2 is not correct. John Rellis, who is a very knowlegeble member from the Adobe Community Forum, pointed me in the right direction. The description of the issue is stated as “..The update introduced, and set as default, a version 2 lens correction profile for the Canon RF24-240 lens which causes the Raw image to display incorrectly by showing an area outside that of the matching camera Jpeg which is  blurred and distorted (I have only found this for images shot at zooms of 38mm upwards).  This region can of course be cropped out as it is not part of the intended image.  Reversion to the previous profile removes the problem….”

I now understand the problem and can move on. Yippee!!!!

Thanks for stopping by.

Art

Another frustrating glitch

September 8, 2021

I haven’t spent a lot of time working on my website or photos lately. Just too many other things going on.

However, I decided to spend today working on my SmugMug website and things didn’t go as I planned. My primary goal was to get some more photos loaded onto the site and maybe make a few changes to the format of some of the pages.

When I first started, I noticed an icon that referenced loading directly from Lightroom Classic to SmugMug. I had played around with the Flickr plug-in a long time ago and had also used the PhotoShelter plug-in when I was using PhotoShelter so I figured, what the heck, I’ll give it a try. It didn’t go well. Following the directions in Lightroom got me no where. It kept telling me to login to SmugMug through Lightroom, but it would not accept my login info. I went out to the web and finally found out that apparently, during a Lr update, Adobe had broken the interface to the plugin. A lot of folks were very unhappy.

I checked out some other blogs and the SmugMug website and found directions to manually install the plug-in. That seems to have worked, but it took a lot longer than it should have. As one person commented ” I am a photographer, not a nerd.” In some ways I would have to agree with that comment. I tried to develop my own website using WordPress with multiple plug-ins and that was just too much of a challenge for this older brain. After reading a lot of reviews, I decided on SmugMug. While it is not quite as easy as I had hoped, I think it will all work out in the end.

One last comment before I call it quits for the night – there are times when you are just given too many options. 😦

It is getting late and my brain is starting to shut down for the night.

Thanks for stopping by.

Art

Figuring out what I will do next

August 17, 2021
Photo taken from a rest stop on Route 22 in Clemons, NY. Overlooking the Poultney River which is the state line between New York and Vermont.

I have spent the last couple of weeks trying to figure out how I will pull everything together. I have so many odds and ends – SmugMug for my galleries, WordPress.com for my blog, WordPress.org for my website, Instagram, Twitter, Flickr, and Facebook.

I have pretty much decided, for now, that I will use SmugMug for my website and galleries, and keep WordPress.com for my blog and the other sites will be accessed through a page on SmugMug via links. I am sure if anyone that reads this is an expert at blogging or website development they are going to be getting a good laugh out of what I am doing. I can only guess at how many mistakes I will make along the way. I hope that over time I will pull things together in a better fashion, but I want to have some time for doing actual photography.

Going forward, I hope to post a weekly summary of my trials and tribulations. No promises, but we will see what happens.

Thanks for stopping by.

Art

Another Attempt

August 6, 2021

Well, it has been a very long time since I have posted anything. It actually looks like it has been 4 years. I am not sure where this is going to go. I may close it down all together in the future, or I may decide to keep it going this time.

I have been spending a lot of time using Instagram over the last several years which has been another learning experience. I have met a lot of nice folks out there from all over the world. It has been a lot of fun.

The CEO of Instagram made an announcement a number of weeks ago and one of the comments he made was that Instagram was no longer a photo sharing app. I am not sure what that really means and have been watching multiple videos on YouTube from many different folks with their interpretations of his comments. In the meantime, I will continue to use it, but I am also looking at Twitter which I know almost nothing about.

I have also decided to start up my website again. I will be using SmugMug this time. It won’t be active for a while. That is going to be another long term learning experience. It looks like I am going to be exercising this old brain some more. LOL

Thanks for stopping by.

Art



What’s Next?

March 31, 2017

I managed to migrate from HostGator to SiteGround.  It actually went smoother than I expected.  There were a couple of hiccups, but the SiteGround support team was able to sort things out.  They were really great.

I have tweaked my website a little bit, but not a lot. I spent quite a lot of time trying to figure out if there was a gallery plugin for WordPress that I could use which would let me eliminate my PhotoShelter account.  After a lot of digging, I decided that it made more sense to stick with PhotoShelter.  The format that I have used and modified on Photoshelter works for me for now, so why should I change things.

I’m still debating about moving this blog over to my website.  I need a very clear and uncluttered mind before I will attempt that.  Right now my mind is not very clear and definitely not uncluttered due to a number of non-photography things going on.  It will all come in time.

I had posted a note on my Facebook page about my exhibit at the Hampstead Public Library in New Hampshire.  A number of folks had commented that they wished they lived closer so they could go see it.  What I decided to do was set up a gallery on my website with the photos from the exhibit so they could see them.  Here is the link.

I guess this is it for now.  I really need to spend some more time going through my photos from our last few day trips.  Hopefully I will be adding a lot more photos to my website.

Here we go!!

February 11, 2017

bluebirds-20170210_mg_1719I have a tendency, at times, not to like a lot of change, but sometimes change is good.  I finally decided that I am going to go with SiteGround and started the process last night.

I spent the better part of last week looking at online reviews for the primary hosting services and narrowed it down to a few.  At the end of the day, SiteGround seemed to make the most sense for me.  Looking at their access times, they were close to the top of the list.  Their support team is really good.  I called them a few times to ask questions and I never had to wait for someone to pick up the phone. I also got very good, straight answers.  Their overall pricing is also very reasonable.

After I figured out the authorization (EPP) code and privacy settings, which was  a little bit of a challenge, I submitted all the “paperwork” and it looks like it will take about 5 days or so for the website/domain name transfer to be complete.  SiteGround support will do the website transfer for me, free of charge, which is a nice benefit.  Hopefully there will not be any surprises.

If I decide to include this blog as part of my website, I can do it myself using a plugin or I can have SiteGround do it for a small fee. I think it will depend on how adventuresome I decide to be. It might be worth the cost to have it done quickly rather than taking weeks to sort through all the information on how to do it.  We will see how I feel next week.

Well, I think that is about all for today.  It looks like we have another snowstorm coming in tomorrow, so I hope I will be able to get some decent snow pictures to add to my gallery.

My Ramblings for the week

February 3, 2017

sunset-at-parker-river-nwr-20170113_mg_0814True to form, my brain is spinning.  I keep wondering what the heck have I done this week.  I guess maybe I should just summarize here so I will force my brain to slow down a little.

Creating a WordPress Website course:

I finished up the Creating a WordPress Website course from ed2go last weekend.  I did manage to get a 97% on the final. Not too shabby if I do say so myself.  Now the trick will be implementing everything that I learned over the last six weeks.

Should I stay with my current hosting service?

When I took the course, they offered free use of SiteGround hosting service.  My original thought was it would not make sense to try to switch hosting services at the same time I am trying to build a new website and combine the blog and my photos into the same place – just too confusing.  I tried to contact HostGator this afternoon to get clarification on moving stuff from a subdomain to the primary and I got nowhere. I was on hold for 15 minutes and finally gave up.  I called SiteOrigin and was talking with someone within a minute. I also talked with a friend that is using Dreamhost so that is another one I will look at.  Hopefully I will make a decision by the end of next week,

Putting it all together:

Once I decide which hosting service I will go with the real “fun” will begin.  I am most likely going to build a new website on a subdomain which will include everything – blog, photos, etc.  When I am happy with it, I will move the whole thing up to the primary domain.  I have no clue how long that will take me.  It appears that most hosting services have an app available to move a subdomain up to the primary. That is going to take a lot of hand-holding.

Custom framing is the way I am going:

I have spent a lot of time over the last several months trying to decide if I wanted to have someone mount my photos, purchase standard frames and then just put my photos in, or go the DIY custom framing way. I finally decided to go the DIY route.  A lot of this decision was based on conversations with Nick Johnson and Kelli Costa at GALLERY SEVEN in Maynard, MA.  They have been a wonderful help.  They have many, many years of gallery experience and Nick is an accomplished fine art photographer and also teaches at the New England School of Photography in Boston.

Exhibit coming up in March / April.

I have an exhibit coming up at the Hampstead Public Library in NH starting on March 4th.  I hope to have about 20 photos hanging in their meeting room through late April. This is where the DIY framing will come in handy. I have ordered all the material and it will hopefully arrive in the next two weeks.

Enough for now:

I think I have rambled enough for now.  We will see what happens in the next couple of weeks.

Continue reading “My Ramblings for the week”

Need to Prioritze

January 7, 2017

new-years-eve-fireworks-20161231-0002Happy New Year!!  Well, where to start?  I am now half way through my Creating WordPress Websites course and my mind is spinning. So many ideas and information. Talk about information overload!

I guess I didn’t read the syllabus as thoroughly as I should have. Not only is the course covering the technical aspects of web developement, it is also getting into the thought process of who would visit the site, what they would be looking for, the best way to set up the navigation on the site, etc., etc. Don’t get me wrong, this is all great information, but it is overloading this particular brain.

I also seem to have gotten side-tracked a number of times. Should I try to update my current site? Should I build a new site in a sub-domain of my current hosting service vendor? Should I start building a new site with the hosting service vendor that is supporting the course that I am taking? What are the cost implications going forward if I switch vendors? How do I transfer my Domain Name to the other hosting service vendor if I switch? And, I am sure there will be a million more questions very soon.

I ended up experimenting with my current site, a new site on a sub-domain of my current hosting service, and a sub-domain of the class supported hosting service vendor.  Each one has to have its own installation of WordPress which means separate user names and passwords.  Oh, and I also have this blog which is another user name and password for WordPress. Talking about getting very confusing. I almost lost my access to this blog earlier today.

I am beginning to think I should just focus on the course and write down all the other questions as they come up and deal with them later.  That is something that I have always found difficult to do.

Oh well.  I will figure it all out eventually.

 

 

 

A Little Detour

December 15, 2016

It looks like I need to take a detour for a bit.  As I mentioned in my “Ugh” post, I have been getting very frustrated at not really being able to tie things together very well. Things have just gotten too complicated when I try to make changes to the format of what I have been working on with the self hosted version.  I have finally decided it is time to actually take a course on WordPress.  I started it yesterday and it goes for six weeks.  Hopefully by the time I am done I will be up to speed with WordPress and be able to do exactly what I want to do. I may even end up changing my hosting service if the one we are using in class works out.

The second little detour is that I have decided to work with a local gallery (Gallery Seven) and learn the ins-and-outs of framing my own prints.  I have an exhibit coming up in April and rather than having someone frame them, it would be a lot less expensive if I did it myself.  That would also give me some flexibility in how I might “sign” them.

It looks like it is going to be a busy few months.