This is unlikely to actually occur, but along the way I come across all types of work. Good, bad… everything in between and it shocks me how high the percentage is of good work being shown at the F Stop Magazine. They find all types of photographers and display their work to the world. I am not sure what their readership is like, but any one that isnt watching them should be.

Here is a link to the most recent article they have posted. Check it out if you get a chance and don’t forget to bookmark their RSS.

I went with Elinchrom for a lot of reason’s, and so far I am not disappointed.

The BX500Ri monolight is considered one of Elinchrom’s “Entry Pro Compacts”. The biggest differences are variance and build. I didn’t need a particularly wide power range for these lights since I only intend to use them when I need more power than a speedlight or in combination with a 2400 pack. If I ever need less power out of a head for any reason, I keep ND’s with me on location anyway, and paper towels work if I forget to bring ND’s.

My biggest concern with these particular heads was build quality. I had read a few reviews complaining about the handle and the mounting hardware. After using them for the past few months though, I would have to say that they are pretty durable. If you treat your gear with ANY respect you shouldn’t have to worry about the casings, they are pretty tough.

The bulbs however scare me. There is no option to put a protective dome over the flash tube and modeling light. So every time you change modifiers you risk hitting and breaking the tube. This is a pretty big risk, but if I had to do it over I would still go with these lights.

The interface is incredibly easy. The power is adjusted with the push of a button. Your power level is displayed digitally and can be controlled in 1/10th of a stop increments. The increment can be adjusted to your needs and the same control is applied to the modeling light settings, push button on/off and power control.

The system comes with Elinchrom’s amazing Skyport system built in or accepts a mono jack sync cord. If you don’t have the Skyport system and run out of wireless receivers, each head has a built in optical slave that is far more consistent than any other optic I have worked with.

The ready chirps can be turned off easily or adjusted to be less annoying. Each head goes up to 500ws and can be adjusted as low as 31ws. This is a problem for some, 31ws just isn’t low enough in a small working space, but two sheets of .9 ND and the power is dropped below 8ws. Of course you could just use a speedlight if you need to drop that low.

Overall I am very happy with these lights. If I had it to do over I would make the same choice and I guess that says enough.

Old "Mug Shot"

New and Improved

I will post later today about how that shoot goes and from now on I will try to post something every week day.

For now though, check out John Harrington’s Blog, Photo Business News & Forum, for some info on the release of his latest edition to his book “Best Business Practices for Photographers”.

Making a living $0.40 at a time just seems like a failing business model, but when your selling 2000 images a day, I guess you can push through it. After seeing this post on the Strobist I checked out Yuri’s blog and I was pretty impressed with that as well. Check it out here

Very well spoken and clearly on top of his game. I don’t think it’s for me but I will definitely look at stock differently from now on.

The videos are great and the concept of making stock work just captured my attention. Hope you like it.

    For starters, I have changed all of my page titles. This is what appears at the top of the window to tell you which page it is as well as what shows up in the header for the search results. My pages were previously titled “MWynne.com Photography – Page” (Page being Home, About, etc.) This made my ranking jump for people that search for “mwynne” or “mwynne photography” but for all the people out there that don’t already know who I am… it wasn’t doing much good. Now my titles are “MWynne.com Photography | Page | Architectural, Editorial and Lifestyle Boston Photographer”. Basicly I have just thrown in some more keywords for the crawlers to find.

    Next, I created second copies of all my pages and eliminated the dynamic photos to be replaced by good old fashioned text.

    Here is a cutout of my webpage dynamically, using photos with the text fonts and styles that I like:

    Now this is using text for SEO:

    The differences are subtle, it is only in the appearance of the text but, for a photographer, appearances are everything. Now I jut have two versions of my website, one for everyone to view and one just for search engines and mobile users.

    I did the same thing with my galleries. I like the look of an embedded flash gallery, but search engines can’t see what is going on. So now I have a gallery the way I like it and a copy for search engines and mobile devices.

    This is the flash version:

    And this is the HTML version:

    HTML isn’t as pretty but now search engines can see the content as well as mobile users(iphone requires yet another gallery version). All this to climb the ranks on search engines and I am sure that there is still more that will have to be done later. My biggest concern right now is that google is seeing more of my site than I thought and now I am going to get hit for repeat content.

    One last thing, incoming links are huge for search engines, and the text in the line is just as important. I try to comment on other peoples blogs as much as I can with Boston Photographer as my nickname. To see how it is working just do a search for Boston Photographer