The Magic Hour, or as it is sometimes called, the Golden Hour, in photography is the time of day when the natural  ambient light is said to be at its ideal.  Although the time may not be an hour by the clock it is generally the hour (or so) following sunrise and preceding sunset.  At these times of day the hue of the lighting is warmer (more towards the orange and reds of the color wheel) and it is less harsh overall.  In contrast, mid-day lighting can be overly harsh causing deep and dark shadows and highlights that are too bright.  These conditions can often lead to an over exposed image.  The softer light of the magic hour will give you a much better lit image and fewer dark shadows.

Lighting, whether ambient or added in, plays a critical role in the end result of the image.  Paying attention to the position of the sun and the time of day can make a significant difference and is worth taking into consideration before snapping the shutter.

With the recent death of Jim Marshall, a highly regarded photographer who documented much of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, interest in the photography of that era has been on the rise.  Photography played a significant role in documenting the Civil Rights struggle and bringing it to the forefront of America’s consciousness.   The New York Times recently published Civil Rights Battles, in Black and White by David Gonzalez on their blog Lens as a tribute to the photography of the era and its role in the movement.  Well worth checking out.

On of my favorite places to photograph nature and wildlife, birds in particular, is the Riparian Preserve in Gilbert, Arizona.  I have spent quite a few early mornings there with camera in hand.  The Preserve is supported by the Riparian Institute which has the mission to:

To promote awareness and appreciation of Arizona’s ecology and natural history, particularly desert and riparian environments, through:
–  education and recreation programs for a diversity of visitors, and
–  research and development of strategies to reserve and protect these unique environments

As with most organizations such as this fund raising to support the mission is critical.  The Riparian Institute is no different and they are holding a Feathered Friends Festival to raise both funds and awareness as well as provide a day of fun for the community.  The festival is on Saturday, March 27th and starts with bird walks at 8 am and runs through 2 pm.  Along with exhibits, activities for kids and live music they will be holding a fund raising raffle.  Which is where I come in.  One of my prints taken in the Preserve will be part of the raffle to support this great cause.  So be sure to head out to Gilbert, at Guadalupe and Greenfield on Saturday to support the Riparian Institute  and the environment it protects.

First for a disclaimer; I am in no way condoning taking photographs in places where you see one of these signs.  However, as we see more and more stories in the news (or at least in photography news) about photographer’s rights it is interesting to see the photography of those who do defy the signs.

Strictly No Photography is a collection of photographs taken in places such as museum, churches, concerts and government facilities where photography is forbidden by signs such as this.  They state their mission as: “To organize the world’s forbidden visual information and make it universally accessible and useful.”  As a bit of further defiance, there is also a gallery of “no photography” signs.

I have stacks of Popular Photography and it is by far one of the best photography magazines around.  Even if you do not read it cover-to-cover it is a great resource to keep on hand and refer back to for tips and tricks as well as a buying guide.  Now you can get a full year’s subscription or renew your current subscription for only $4.00.   At the risk of sounding like an infomercial; “that is only 33 cents an issue!”  But wait, there’s more!  Add on a second year for only $4.00 more!  this great deal is through discountmags.com when you use the coupon code 6976.  I’m not sure how long this deal is going to last so make sure you take advantage before it expires.

UPDATE: This promo code has expired.  But the code J20 will get you 20% off your order.  Not quite a $4 per year subscription, but still a good deal for Popular Photography.

How to Implement Search Engine Optimization for Photography Blogs

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of enhancing your web site with the goal of driving more traffic to it.  This is usually associated with moving your site closer to the top of the first page of search engine results so that more people find it and visit it.  Most SEO tips and tricks revolve around optimizing written content for keywords.  For most photo based blogs that presents a bit of a challenge given the minimal written content and focus on the visual.  But there are still several things that you can do to help your photo blog SEO efforts and bring your site closer to the top of the search engine results for keywords that are relevant to your site.

Before  you start to implement any of these Search Engine Optimization tips you will want to have an idea of the keywords that are most important to your site and that you want people to use to find you.  Take some time to figure out what a searcher might be typing into Google or Bing that would be relevant to your site.  Keep in mind that the broader the term the more competition and less likely you are to show up on page one.  For example, photography is a very broad term that could lead to millions of sites.  But Phoenix Arizona architecture photography is much more specific and therefore more likely to work for a site that is focused on this particular type of photography in this region.

Here are five SEO tips for photo blogs that are easy to implement with each post.

1. Page Title Tags – The title tag is the wording that appears at the top of the search engine page.  It is an important determinant to the search engines as to the content of the site.  Make sure it is descriptive and has one of those keywords you are going after.  But don’t ramble, keep it to about a dozen words give or take a few.
2. Alt Image Tags – One thing a search engine spider cannot do when crawling a site to determine its content is decipher images.  This can be a problem to a photography blog that is heavy on the images.  But there is a way around this, alt image tags.  This is search engine readable text that describes the photograph in words.  If you are html savvy it can be added as part of the html code or most blogging programs have a way to add alt image tags when uploading images to a post.  The same rules apply to alt image tags as page title tags, make it descriptive and use one of your keywords.
3. Written Content – Your blog is all about your photography and you don’t want to clutter it up with words.  But written content, to some degree, can be vital to improving your ranking in the search engines.  It is this written content that allow the search engines to crawl your site and figure out what you are about and if you are relevant enough to show for a given search query.  That doesn’t mean you need page after page of babbling text.  But some good, concise, keyword optimized (not keyword stuffed) content describing the images can be very helpful.  Do not shy away from the written word.
4. Emphasize It – Don’t go crazy with this one, but formatting that makes something stand out to a human eye also makes it stand out to the search engine crawlers.  Bold text and italicized text say “pay attention – this part is important.”  Used correctly it can guide the search engine to the details of a page that are of particular importance to its overall theme.
5. Inbound Links – The content on your site is important but so is who else thinks your site is important.  The search engines determine this by looking at who is linking back to you.  High quality sites that link to your site can be gold.  You have to do some leg work and more than just comment on other blogs with a link to your site.  Get your web site out there.  Do guest posts, use Twitter, Facebook and other social media, discuss on forums, befriend other bloggers.  Get people talking about and linking to your site.

Bonus – Meta Descriptions – Although most search engines no longer use meta descriptions as a factor in determining the relevance and rank of a website they can still be a useful tool.  They are often used as the site description on the search engine results page (SERP) which means you can control those few lines of text that searchers see as the description of what your site is about when your page comes up in the search engines.  If you tie in some of those keywords that you are trying to rank for and it is one of the words the searcher used they get bolded.  That means you site could stand out a bit more as being the one that is relevant to what your searcher is looking for.

I have taken 1000s of photographs over the last few years but I have had very few of them printed.  Most are displayed digitally on this blog or Flickr or Facebook or stored on my external hard drives.  For the most part I just never think to have my photographs printed.  I suppose if I had done a lot of film photography before getting into digital photography I would place more significance on the printed image.

However, I was recently awed by a print of one of my images enough that I may have to rethink my whole view of having my photographs printed.  It started with being followed by and and following @photocanvas on Twitter, aka ZaZa Gallery.  They were offering free 16 x 20 canvas prints in exchange for a review of the finished product.  Free is a price I can get into and was happy to oblige.

The hardest part of the process was deciding which image to have printed.  Not having had any canvas prints done before I was not sure how it would turn out or what image would look good in this format.  I decided on one of my favorite images (on the right) of the Barrio Historico in Tucson, AZ.  I love the pops of color on the three doors and the clear blue sky above the adobe building.  So I sent the image off with no idea what to expect in return.

The result was amazing.  I got a 16 x 20 canvas print with a mirror wrap (that means the image is “mirrored” or repeated as the canvas wraps around the edges of the frame) and was blown away.  The colors were true to, if not better than, my original.  Every detail of the image is crystal clear and vibrant. The construction is very solid using archival canvas.  All I can say is “wow.”  This particular print runs $68.  I have never price shopped canvas prints so I have no idea of this is high, low or right in the middle.  But for the quality of the final product i got it is well worth it.

My friend over at Awesome Toy Blog forwarded me an article from the British Journal of Photography about photographer’s rights in the UK.  There has been a lot of buzz in photography news lately about the rights of both amateur photographers as well as photojournalists in the UK being impeded upon by the police.  Although you hear similar stories of “harassment” from the police of photographers here in the US, the British seem to have taken it to a whole new level.  All in the name of anti-terrorism.

New laws that recently went into effect in the UK  could result in jail for photographing police. The laws:

allow for the arrest – and imprisonment – of anyone who takes pictures of officers ‘likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism’.

This seems to leave a lot of room for interpretation by the police while limiting the rights of the photographer even further.  There have been stories of everyone from press photographers to wedding photographers being stopped, questioned and even detained for what the police determine to be “suspicious” photography behavior.  I would hope this would be no more than a minor inconvenience for the truly innocent but at the same time it seems to be taking things too far.  Especially when images of more and more public spaces are readily available to anyone on the web via Google maps and live web cams that record more and more of our everyday lives.  Are the terrorists really the ones standing in front of Parliament with their Canon DSLR snapping photographs?

I have done a few posts on the rules of photography such as how various composition methods from leading lines to framing an image are designed to make a more visually pleasing image.  One key point I believe is important with all the rules of photography is that you have to know how and when to break them.

I am participating in a 365 Photo Project hosted by Faded and Blurred.  One of my recent images was taken under tungsten lighting and I did not adjust the white balance settings in the camera to compensate for the yellowish/orange glow that is omitted by normal household bulbs.  Nor did I do any post processing work to make it “right.”  This elicited some comments that the white balance was “not right.”  From a purely technical standpoint I totally agree with the commenter.  This image is not “correct” according to the rules of white balance.  However, as photographers, amateur or professional, we have the benefit of “artistic license.”

Artistic License – the freedom to create an artwork, musical work, or piece of writing based on the artist’s interpretation and mainly for effect.

I intentionally left the orange glow given off by the tungsten lighting of the room because I felt it resulted in the image that I was looking to create.  It sets a mood and more accurately reflects the true setting of the scene.

The constructive criticism that you get from fellow photographers when sharing your photographs on sites such as Flickr is a huge benefit.  So I do not object to one of my images being interpreted as being “not right.”  But I stand behind my  belief that as long as I know and can follow the rules of photography I am free to break those rules to interpret a scene or subject and create an image with my creativity added.  But you do have to have a base understanding of what you are doing before you are free to deviate.

In our post-9/11 world photography news has been filled with stories of the rights of photographers, amateur and professional alike, being questioned and tested.  Security guards and police officers stopping photographers everywhere from shopping malls to train stations claiming photography is banned is nothing new.  If you know your rights as a photographer and have the ability to remain calm and polite these incidents are usually no more than an uninformed “officer” and an inconvenience.

However, there are some legitimate bans on photography.  The latest comes from Washington DC and the National Archives.  Effective February 24th tourists will no longer be able to take photographs inside the National Archives, the home of the US Constitution and other historically and politically priceless documents.

This has some photographers up in arms as their right to photograph and even document these documents is being squashed.  But according to the National Archives, the reasons for the ban are not “terrorist” related as is often cited by as the reason for stopping photographers in other public places.  Being hundreds of years old, the documents housed in the Archives are obviously in a fragile state to say the least.  Up until recently they were housed behind filtered glass to protect them from the building lights and the unknowing or delinquent tourist who ignored the “no flash photography” signs.  But the filters made the documents have a greenish hue which, again according to the Archives, diminished the tourist experience.  So they removed the filtered glass, placed the filters on the lights themselves and banned all photography.  Easier than policing the few tourists who could not or would not comply with the rules I suppose.

In the case of this photography ban, we have the point-and-shoot, sock-and-sandal tourist who does not understand they are part of the bigger world and their actions impact others to blame.  I understand that the National Archives are doing their job to protect America’s priceless historical documents.  Unfortunately the amateur photography is a casualty.  For professionals and the media arrangements can still be made to photograph within the Archives.  The rest of us can grab one of the free pre-printed photos of the constitution and make mental pictures.