I went out to Camps Bay today and took some images with my D200.
Now, the clouds are moving in again.
To view bigger versions of the images, please go here.
It is winter in Cape Town, South Africa. We had a good share of heavy rain for the whole week. Yesterday, we were able to see blue sky again and today, I haven’t experienced any rain yet.
I took this image, after my training in the gym today. It shows the clouds over Cape Town from a southern view of the mountain. Taken with my Nikon D70s, f/11, 1/500
Over the last couple of months, I was focusing on my day to day activities of my business and did not have much time for adding content to this blog. I am still alive and working as photographer. In the meantime I discontinued working with iWeb to improve my websites. Rapidweaver 4 is so much more superior for my purposes that I decided to move all my sites to Rapidweaver. The only one remaining is my wedding site, which I will transfer in the next 2 months. I generally like the look of that site, but want to integrate it into t
he more unified look of my other sites. If you are considering using Rapidweaver, you really can tap into it’s capacities by adding components from yourhead software. I am pleased with the results and optimization for SEO is far easier than with iWeb. Having said that, I still like iWeb and find it’s useful to quickly setup a website with a certain level of sophistication. I just outgrew it. As much as I love working with the software that I u
se to create my websites, image editing, word processing and the choice of operating system, you need to understand that these are tools with its own limitations and advantages. A hammer is not better than a screwdriver. They work differently. You will find some focus on this in the future, as I am getting more and more tired of discussions, which camera is better: Canon vs. Nikon vs. Leica vs xyz.
It does not matter, what you use to take your pictures. It matters, how you create the images in your mind. A camera is only an extension of your mind. You express yourself with it. Many great photographs were not technially perfect. Look at famous images by Alfred Eisenstaedt, Ernst Haas, Henri Cartier Bresson etc and you will see that not all were perfectly in focus for example. These images are perfect in their composition and how they challenge you in your view of your world. Nikon brought out some really decent cameras over the last few months and of course, I am fascinated by the opportunities that these cameras offer. Will I be a better photographer by owning them? No! Will I be a better photographer, if I am able to express with these cameras something, I wasn’t in the past? Probably, as it will force me to think out of the box and go into new territory. On the other hand, I went back to Ken Rockwell’s page to read some of his technical articles. Ken Rockwell produces some really great images. What I like about his approach is that he puts the picture first. He has all the nice toys, but also emphasizes that one of his favourite cameras is a Nikon D40 (clearly an entry level camera). Have a look at his site and see, what he pulls off with that camera. He challenged me in my preference of my D200 over my D70. I decided on the following:
- I will work over the next month primarily with the D70.
- Whereever I go, I will have this camera with me. You can only take a picture, when you have a camera with you.
- I will evaluate, if I limit myself by working mostly with jpg against raw.
The last point is a real challenge for me. I believed that shooting raw brings better results. I read Ken’s article on that and did my own tests. The results were promising and straight from the camera I got the results faster, I was looking for. Not only was no raw conversion necessary, but also I did not need to do any manual adjustments other than maybe some sharpening to get the results, I was trying to achieve. There will be several blog entries coming during the next weeks.
Finally, I got a few questions in the comments, which I will respond to as well.
iWeb offers you 27 templates out of the box. All of these themes are pleasant for the eye and some are well suited for photo web sites. The themes White, Black, Modern Frame could be used as they are for your site. If you are happy with that, just upload your content and you are done.
If you want to present yourself differently and want Google to find your page, you need to put a bit more work in. There is nothing complicated about it. Let us start with your site by choosing the theme White and the template Blank.
Start SEO friendly
You will see your page with the navigation menu and a box called Text. Open the inspector and choose the Page tab. Un-tick both Include Page in Navigation Menu and Display Navigation Menu.
Why? Once you are finished your web site, you want to submit a sitemap to Google. Unfortunately, iWeb uses JavaScript to produce the navigation menu, which cannot be translated into a sitemap format. Google needs the sitemap in order to spider your website.
You have to build your own navigation menu, which might sound daunting, but luckily, iWeb makes this easy for you.
Build your own navigation menu
Build your navigation menu, after you finished building your site. Take out a sheet of paper and write down your structure. Let us say, you work with a basic structure like this:
- Home
- Gallery
- Contact
Once you finished all pages of your site, you will build your navigation menu with text links. You use text links in order to make the menu readable for Google. Avoid fancy fonts, as iWeb transforms these into images, which cannot be read by Google.
Open a new Text box and write Home Gallery Contact next to each other or alternatively, you could choose a different Text Box for each. Highlight the text for Home and open the inspector and go to the Link tab. Tick Enable as Hyperlink and choose in the dropdown menu Link to: One of My Pages and select your Home page in the drop down menu below. Make sure to un-tick Make hyperlinks active as this will avoid accidentally opening a link, while you are working on your site. Do not worry. Even if you leave it unchecked, when you publish your site, the links will work in your browser.
Tomorrow, I will show you how to design your navigation menu and give you an alternative to the built in slideshow of iWeb.
Over the last three days, I had an outage on my blog. There were some technical problems from my side, which are rectified now.
Normal posting will continue tomorrow.
Thanks for your understanding.