WHOIS

Last year I acquired a domain name. I also took out the WHOIS option so that my name and address would be protected.

A word of warning to anybody doing the same thing. The initial price was £5.00 per annum. I have just had the renewal notice and the price has gone up by 49.6%. With the effect of the VAT increase on top of this it amounts to a whopping 52.7% increase.

I have been in an email conversation with them about it and the long and the short of it is that they tell me that in their terms and conditions they have the right to increase the cost and that the price they quote on the website is only for new customers.

I understand that they are entitled to increase their prices but in my opinion 50% is excessive. I also don’t think that the website states that the price quoted is only for new customers therefore I believe that they are misleading customers.

They have offered me 13 months for the price of 12.

I’m considering my options.

Design for Exhibition Flyers

I've been playing around with some ideas for our exhibition poster and flyers. I've already seen some designs done by others in the group and they are all really good. The design will keep changing as we add everyone’s final images.

The main things that I wanted to achieve were:

1. To show an example of everyone’s work therefore it needs to include 12 photographs.
2. The information about venue, dates, times needs to be clear but not overwhelming.
3. Somehow to make it obvious that it is an exhibition of photography without stating the obvious.

I love Chris' idea about only showing a slice of the image but his designs are so good I knew anything along the same line would just be a sad imitation.

Here are my first attempts.

I started off only inverting the colours on the images that were my own but I liked the effect so I decided to invert all of the images. I know that the contact strip is a bit of a cliché so I’m still thinking about alternatives.

Nadiv Kandar

How do we really know where an idea comes from?

I thought the evolution from my flesh coloured alien hands to green ones and then to the cloth doll was inspired by the fact that I was calling the project Alien Body Parts and that I saw the piece of coloured tissue paper lying around. However, over the last week or so I have been looking at a number of photographer’s websites including Nadiv Kandar www.nadavkander.com

My outdoor night-time shots were definitely inspired by his Colour Fields project, but perhaps his work has been playing on my subconscious more than I realised.

Test Shoots

Yesterday I was shooting for another project. I was shooting hands against a softbox and deliberately overexposing so that the light wrapped around the fingers to made them look sort of alien. I saw a piece of green tissue paper lying around so I decided to cover the softbox with it to make the hands look even more alien.

I liked the result so when I had finished I decided to try the same effect for this project. I used a cloth and wood doll which I hung over the softbox. I could turn the photo so that the doll is the right way up but I prefer it upside down.

At night I decided to try the green light outside. There is a piece of rough ground between our house and a railway so I took some of the shots when a train was passing. The lighting didn’t quite wok out as I wanted, but the results are quite interesting and it was fun. I think I’ll explore this further.

I’m continuing my journey ‘Into the Unknown’.

Good and Bad Websites

We have been asked to comment on a website that we think it particularly good and a website that we think is not so good.

I have spent a lot of time over that past week or so looking at websites. Most of them have been photographers websites and a lot of them a pretty similar. They include images in category folders, a biography, contact details and a list of books and exhibitions if the photographer is in print or exhibiting. They are normally on a black or a white background. There isn’t much between them except for the images.

The website that I like best is Google http://www.google.co.uk/. I’m sure you could argue that it’s a search engine and not a website but it has a website address. It is clear and easy to use. It answers practically every question that you ask it, and offers web, images, videos, maps, news, shopping, mail and more! They frequently change the graphics to commemorate a special occasion and it has got to be the site I refer to most!

The websites that I like least are the shopping websites that look fussy, are slow to load, don’t give you information about delivery times or whether an item is in stock or not and don’t give you a telephone number that you can call. There are hundreds of them around but the first one I came across was www.gardenfurniture4u.co.uk  This one does have a quick search facility that seems to work.

Photo Project

I’ve been thinking a lot about the subject for this photo assignment. I’ve decided to leave the projects about family eating habits and the night shot / screen light project for the moment. I think that to do them justice I would like more time than I have for this assignment. I know from my Women of the 21^st Century project that it takes a lot of time to arrange convenient dates when you want to shoot lots of different people.

I have an idea for a still life project that I think will be fun. I’m going to try a few shots and see how it works out.