Hi and thanks for stopping by. My blog is an assortment of information relating to my photography and various commercial, advertising and glamour shoots that I do. I will be sharing information relating to my shoots including info about gear, lighting set ups, post processing and some BTS shots. I will also look into other equipment such as computer hardware, back up systems, software and processing techniques that all contribute to achieving the final images you see at Chris Smith Photography. Feel free to make comments and contact me if you have any questions.
Canon EOS 1 Wall Winner
Monday, February 21, 2011
This post is actually related to an event from early last year however I felt that it was important for me to include it in my new website.
Every month Canon runs a competition for intermediate and professional photographers called, "EOS 1 Wall". Basically the way it works is, there is a professional photographer assigned to each month of the year who takes their turn in choosing a theme for that month. Photographers can then go out and capture an image to suit the theme and submit their entry for judging at the end of the month.
So after a trip to Mungo National Park early in 2010, I decided to submit one of my images taken at the "Walls of China", in Mungo National Park. The "Walls of China" are a range of eroded sand dunes, which create a moonlight landscape due to the various formations of the dunes. My image titled "Dancing Silhouette", consisted of one of these eroded sand formations, which had a tree that appeared to be the figure of someone dancing on top of it. To top it off I had taken the image under a star lite sky. To my delight and utter surprise, I received notification that I had been chosen as the winning entry of the "EOS 1 Wall" competition for the month of May 2010 for my entry "Dancing Silhouette".
The subject for May was the "Twilight Zone" and my image titled "Dancing Silhouette", taken at Mungo National Park received the judge’s choice as the winning image. There is also a peoples choice award, which was won by another entrant. This was the first competition I had entered and first time I had ever been recognised professionally for my photography. The prize was a large framed print of my image as well as being published in Camera Magazine however I guess the real prize for me was the satisfaction I felt from winning the competition.
New Website Is Now Live!
Wednesday, February 09, 2011
Well the day has come to finally hit the go button and launch my new website! Its been a long road to get here however I believe and hope you agree, that the site reflects a lot of hard work and endless hours that have gone into creating the site. Its almost 7 months since the initial meeting to discuss my ideas and needs for my website. To give you a bit of a run down as to where the time went and to maybe help you in your planning if you are thinking of having a website built read on...
My first meeting with meeting with my chosen design/developer, Fab Creative Solutions was to discuss the brief and what i would like to achieve with my site. At this point it is vital that you have a detailed brief of what you would like included in your site including functionality, look and feel, performance, compatibility and so on. The more detailed the better. My designer, Fabi from Fab Creative Solutions then had to go away and come back with a concept design. I guess the tricky bit here is coming up with a design that achieves the desired functionality, is practical and provides a pleasant user experience while also being a design that is technically achievable with in the budget.
Once the design, layout and functionality have been approved its off to the developers to make it happen. Once the developers have developed the first version of the site they load it to a testing server so you can begin the huge task of testing. There are so many things to test like uploading of images into galleries, links between pages, email enquiry forms and private galleries, blogs, social media integration and so the list goes on. Each time a change is made you also create a new item to test.
Another big thing to consider is the copy that is going into the site, this needs to be written in a professional manner which is going to promote and sell your services. Another big consideration is which images you want to include in the website. Important to remember that only your best images should go online as they say "you are only as good as your worst image"! Each image needs to be prepared, processed to look its best then resized for optimal reproduction on the web. This can mean editing 100's of images which takes time.
Finally before going live you need to consider your ISP and your hosting package. Does it have enough storage space, enough bandwidth and traffic, how many email accounts can you have, as well as whether or not it offers support for any databases you may run, SSL, and of course technical support.
So I hope that has given you sort of idea as to the amount of work that goes into a new website. I am very exciting to finally have my site up and running and would love to hear back from you if you have any thoughts about it.
