My friend Janne’ Peterson of Jannephotographics implements WordPress with total Pizzaz
Janne’ web site and blog is a wordpress theme implementation with total pizzaz. You should go take a look
http://www.jannephotographics.com/
I want to improve my web site to give it more pizzaz as well so I would like you to make a comment on what things you would like to see me do to improve my web site, perhaps after taking a a look at Jenne’s. Jeanne’ is an artist boutique studio which is rather different than me, but it is right for many clients.
Just tell me what you think. You would not know that Jenne’s site is a WordPress installation at all except that I told you so.
Last night I spend some time explaining to Janne’ the importance of adding “content” to her posts. Each post has to have a paragraph or two at minimum to provide content for Google to search. Without the words to look at Janne’ could have just stayed with a flash site and never been seen on the internet, but with added content on each post she will see ever increasing traffic to her web site. Any you can see from these beautiful portraits that there is very good reason for seniors in the Cincinnati area to make sure they visit this web site.
I explained that she can go back and start adding content like “creative senior portraits and pictures” and “bare baby toes pictures” and anything that people might use to find the photographer best for them. She can mention the schools and localities that her subject come from, their hobbies and how much the enjoyed their portrait session. For me I mention things like, outdoor location photography, horse portraits, relaxed enduring portraits, family portraits, senior portraits with horse, and so on.
I would appreciate YOUR help in making my web site better. I would like to provide the fellow that Janne’ worked with a list of changes and wants for my site. After looking at Janne’s site, please post some comments here. What would YOU change? Thank you in advance for any ideas that you send me.
Photographing the times of our lives, families, friends, birthdays, gatherings…and more
On Saturday my wife and I went to Marshallville, Ohio to visit with her brother Mike and Sister-in-law Kathy. It was Kathy’s birthday and at the same time the Marshallville “history days” or some such celibration. Patty’s dad was there, her sister Pam, and Kathy’s parents were there too. There was a hot-rod show and I caught the last tractor pull of the afternoon. It was a good day.
The portraits below started with my asking to take a portrait of Mike and Kathy, then we decided to take a portrait of the girls, then the brothers and sisters, then the family. Then Kathy asked if I would take few pictures of her mom and dad too. Kathy’s mom and dad are very old and her mom is starting to have memory issues.
Patty’s dad had fought through cancer last year (he was at death’s door) at the same time in the same hospital her mom was critically ill.
I’m telling you all this just to encourage you to pull out your camera and volunteer to take some portraits when you are with your family and friends. Tomorrow the entire situation could be completely different. And it is not always the oldest person who we loose. These portraits took a few minutes, not like the hour or so I normally spend with my photography clients, but they too will last a lifetime and have great meaning for those who choose to keep them.
Don’t forget to have the portraits printed out. Computers change. Hard drives crash. Technology changes quickly and computer media becomes corrupted or out of date as well.
PORTRAIT TIPS: Use a wider f stop to make the background more blurry (f 2.8, f4, f5.6). Shoot with a longer lens (at least 85mm) for more pleasing portraits of people. Shoot in open shade, not in the bright sun. The light will be much more even and pictures will be much nicer without having people squint and without having dark shadows in their eye sockets. Try to have your subjects brighter than the background (keep the background in the shade too). Last of all I always say, ” Now touch each other, it will make people think you like each other!” This always brings some natural smiles AND the portraits seem so much more intimate when the subject are touching.
Here are just a couple of the portraits I offered to make for a few minutes during the day we spent with Kathy and Mike to celebrate her birthday. This is Mike & Kathy.
This is Patty’s family. Left is her older sister Pam, then dad, then Patty and her brother Mike on the far right.
I took some candids of other things from the day, but I also put my camera in the trunk of my car (nearby) to socialize with everyone.
The power of a self hosted wordpress website/blog for photographers
This post is for my photographer friends.
This is also a follow up to a prior article on the same topic. In less than one year, I’ve gone from 300-500 visits per MONTH to about 300 visits per day to my self hosted wordpress website and blog (very important: this does not work like this if you go get a wordpress.com blog where “wordpress.com” is part of your URL).
As you can see, my URL does not say wordpress.com in it anywhere (www.photosbypdemott.com). That is because I have the entire wordpress program installed on my host and my website landing page is my URL, but this entire web site is a wordpress blog with blog posts and pages. It may not be as slick as some of the flash sites that are promoted in photography magazines, but those sites will never generate this level of activity unless they are heavily promoted. With wordpress each time that I post to my blog it creates more key words that appear in organic searches on Google and other search engines. Since it is a blog, Google also considers it timely information and crawls through the content quickly. When I post something, the next hour or day I have people who have visited my web site about that topic using organic searches (placing words in their google search box and clicking search). 70% of the traffic to this site is from organic searches as opposed to from links that I have placed on various free classified web listings for example.
By using a plugin called WordPress Stats I can see what words and phrases are used to arrive at my web site. When I see traffic that I want, I try to use those words in my next post. For example, as a photographer I want people interested in senior portrait sessions to visit my web site, but I have found that organic searches are many times “senior pictures” rather than “senior portraits”. Using this plugin gives me the tools to focus on the words that will give me the desired traffic to my site. I also mention cities and towns, schools and names of people to increase localized and desired traffic to my site.
Now, I am not that technical a guy. Of course when it comes to photogrpahy, I’m technical. I have a Canon 1D Mark II with a 70-200 IS USM f2.8 lens (and others) for photography. But, with regard to web sites I don’t know HTML or other languages. I don’t even know how to download wordpress and install in on my host. I let others that are very able in those areas do what they know how to do to get me started.
Larry at larry@e-3design.com is my host and web guy whenever I need some help. Larry can host, install, and design a wordpress website/blog for you or can get you started with an install and hosting if you can do the rest. If you want to start with a self hosted wordpress installation, Larry can get-r-done (but, please do not call him and waste his time. If you want him to do it for you, send him a note and tell him you are ready. He will go over his prices and you can do it or not, but don’t call him and use his valuable time with a bunch of questions so you can do it on your own. If you want to learn all that stuff unless you want to pay him, it is not fair to make Larry your teacher. There are also online tutorials about this stuff where you can learn, but personally I want to be a photographer rather than a web site designer).
Next time I will post a list of plugins that send my posts to Facebook and Twitter and provide all sorts of extra benefits.
If you found this interesting, please post a comment. I want to know if I am providing you with information that you find interesting and useful. You can send me a note at peter@photosbypdemott.com as well.
Lifestyle senior portraits in Kettering, Oakwood, Centerville, Beavercreek….and more
One thing about the internet is that you cannot tell exactly where your visitor traffic is coming from. I can see that people are interested in new ideas for their senior portrait sessions, but I cannot tell if those are students from California or New York. I can just hope that if those students are looking for senior portraits with their horse or how about a young lady who wants her senior portraits with her dad’s hotrod or senior portraits on the farm or with their best friend, then the students in my area are also interested in those things and are also visiting this web site.
So if you want a relaxed on-location senior portrait session and you live in Oakwood, Kettering, Centerville, Beavercreek, Washington Township, Springboro, Middletown, Fairborn, Miamisburg, Germantown, Huber Heights, Troy, Tipp City, or any of the many other towns and burgs surrounding the greater Dayton area, then I am hoping that you are stopping by my web site to see a different sort of senior portrait session.
My photography has an enduring quality and not too trendy. Trendy is fun, but it may not be you and trends tend to pass on by. If I can capture something special about you and your way of being and the things or people that are important to you, that can last a lifetime. I like my portraits to look nice hanging in the family homestead for many years not just while the trend is hot. I like my clients to invest in canvas wall portraits and professional quality photo books or various framed prints from their sessions.
That’s not to say that I would not be up for some urban/graffiti or other interesting stuff, but I want it to be about you, not because it is a trend. So give me a call and tell me about your ideas and lets work something out. Peter DeMott Photography at (937) 478-6222 in SW Ohio.
That little profile pic that shows up when you comment on blogs – Gravatar How to
How to get an avatar or profile pic to show up when you comment on other people’s blogs
Darned if it didn’t take me some serious searching to figure out how to get the little avatar or profile picture of me to show up in that little box when I make a comment on someone’s blog. One thing you learn in Facebook is that the blank face is not welcome. The first rule on Facebook is to show people who you are. There are probably 300 Peter DeMotts out there and there is one in New York who is no longer for this world who has hundreds of articles and links about his anti war protests in New York. When I make a comment somewhere or if someone sees me on Facebook, I want them to know that I am the Peter DeMott that is still alive and living in Germantown, Ohio and who is a portrait and equine photographer. I want them to know that I love photography and do on location senior portraits all around the greater Dayton, Ohio area. I also want them to know that I am not the anti war protester from New York.
So, I wanted to figure out how to load up that little box with MY PICTURE. I searched WordPress several times. Then I searched the word avatar and looked around. Of course I had to sift through many blogs and web news items about the block buster movie Avatar.
Finally I saw a post by a business blog about the GRAVATAR web site. Gravatar stands for Globally Recognized Avatars. To my surprise, they did not list the web site URL or any instructions about it. It was just a short news item.
Here is what I found when I got there:
Gravatar.com and WordPress.com share the same user database. It’s possible that you registered a WordPress.com account (either for a blog or for an Akismet API key,) which automatically now gives you a Gravatar.com account. If you use your WordPress.com password to log in you should experience no problems using Gravatar. If you cannot remember that password you may use the forgotten password link on the login page to reset your password.
Akismet is a great plugin that eliminates 99.999% of spam comment posts on your blog. If you don’t have that you will be sorting through junk comment posts by the hundreds every day. I had already loaded up Akismet and had gotten an API key, but I never had heard anything about Gravatars. So, once I found this site and logged in, I was able to quickly uploaded a profile pic or avatar and now, where ever I post a comment instead of the blank face avatar, it shows me (not the fellow from New York) and I have a camera in my hands. It was easy once I got my password and logged on. It took a couple of hours for the Gravatar to load up throughout the internet, but when I came back from doing some work outside… I saw some of my comments with my gravatar showing.
You would think that there would be places that explains this stuff, but there really isn’t. It’s stuff that you pick up little pieces at a time. The one business site that talked about it provided no links or instructions at all. It just explained that you could do it…..How? please. Anyway, if you are wondering where and how, hopefully this post will find you so you too can load up a Globally Recognized Avatar so you will no longer be that blank face thing staring out from your comments.
Here is the GRAVATAR web site: http://en.gravatar.com/
This is me: 
at http://www.photosbypdemott.com living in Germantown, Ohio
This is NOT me: 
at http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/02/21-5 no longer living in New York, but who has very many news stories posted throughout the internet about his anit war activities, arrest and trial, incarceration, and recent death (2009).
