Ever wondered why you pay so much for Spray Mount? As part of my S’ralan Sugar “Keep Costs Down” exercise, I thought – let’s go with the £2.99 stuff from The Works. I hadn’t gone there especially to buy it, but when I saw it I thought “Why not?”

I shall now explain, pictorially why not:

And if the picture isn’t enough, my fingers are currently very gummy, and the aerosol is now sitting in the back garden gently hissing to itself as the remainder of the contents leak out.

FAIL!

First page of google? Yes I am. Or am I?

On [December 3rd], Google made the biggest change that has ever happened in search engines, and the world largely yawned. Maybe Google timed its announcement that it was personalizing everyone’s search results just right, so few would notice. Maybe no one really understood how significant the change was. Whatever the reason, it was a huge development and deserves much more attention than it has received so far.

full story here

It seems that I see my own site as the first entry because I click on it quite often. Other people don’t see it on the front page. How misleading! But what’s interesting is the number of queries coming in – that suggests that a lot of people are also seeing it on the front page (three weddings, two family portraits, one commercial and two fashion/headshot). But now we can’t be sure what anyone is seeing.

So I just have to keep up with taking good photographs, and providing a service people will come back for and hopefully recommend.

An interesting development for sure!

Wow… who’d a thought colour balancing was so involved?

There is no ‘correct’ balance of colour temperature/contrast/brightness etc, it’s a matter of taste. However, across a set of photos, there should ideally be a consistent look. I’ve been asked to produce packages of photos for the awards ceremony I shot in December. Each medal recipient receives one photo receiving their medal, one of the group shot, and one of the family portrait taken after the main proceedings.

No problem, and a great commission to take.

But oh, that colour balancing! The ceremony was shot with a speedlight bounced from the cream wall behind, the group shot with studio strobes direct for key and bounced for fill, and the portraits with a standard studio setup. Thankfully Adobe Lightroom allows me to copy and paste settings across shots, so once I have fixed one of each example, it’s a quick Ctrl+Shift+C, tick a few boxes and Ctrl+Shift+V to paste the settings across pictures taken under the same conditions. Thank-you Lightroom!

From a BBC News story:

Two ex-cabinet ministers are calling for a secret ballot on Gordon Brown’s leadership.

Patricia Hewitt and Geoff Hoon have written to Labour MPs calling for the leadership issue to be sorted out “once and for all”.

This is great news! We could have two consecutive prime ministers that the general public have not voted for.

I had a hate-hate relationship with wearing ties for many years. In fact when I left my secondary school to go to a casually-dressed sixth form, I swore I would never wear a tie again.

Now I find myself wearing them regularly.

A quote from Joe McNally’s excellent book The Moment it Clicks:

A professor I had in college used to tell me that if someone won’t listen to what you have to say because you’re not wearing a tie, then put on a tie, ’cause what you have to say is more important than not wearing a tie. He was right.

I’m inclined to agree.

How to remove a dead whale from a beach. American style. Stupid American Style. That’s not to say Americans are stupid, just the ones who decided that half a ton of dynamite would be a good way to remove a whale.

SEO is Search Engine Optimisation. I can recommend it.

I’ve been sinking long hours into fine-tuning my website to show up in Google for relevant searches. It seemed like a thankless task. However, this morning I came on and did my usual check. My site has made it to first place for some very relevant keywords, and elsewhere on the first page for others.

The payoff? Between 9am and 1pm today I’ve taken two wedding queries and a corporate query.

Worth it? You bet!

If you are a local competitor I recommend NOT doing any SEO. If not, then it’s absolutely marvellous and you should do it straight away!