Alberta Photobloggers

For those of you that use film and live in the Edmonton area, I have a question regarding developing and scanning.  I generally take my slide and black and white film to Carousel for developing and scanning to disc.  Lately I have had problems with them messing up my order (i.e. not scanning) and with hairs and dust on my scanned images.  Needless to say, I am feeling frustrated given the price and time involved.  My question is, do any of you use Carousel and if so, any similar problems or am I cursed.  Secondly, is there any where else in town that does this sort of thing onsite or is my only recourse to continue with the frustration or send out of town.  sigh.

We plan on investing in a dedicated neg scanner in the fairly recent future but in the meantime ... I am at a loss ...

any advice on the matter would be greatly appreciated ...

Posted by daisies at 05:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

This week I decided to get something to clean the lens on my camera (I noticed it was looking spotty - we'd had the camera since December of the past year).  For our older camera, a far less expensive camera I was content to dust it off with a 'MicroClair lens cloth', which I have to admit, I did buy for the purpose of cleaning some pricey sunglasses I bought some years back.  The new cameras' cost made me put more thought into what I'd use to clean the lens.

After looking around on the web a bit I decided I'd get a lens cleaning kit, the microfiber cloth, cleaning liquid and a blower brush.  At our local PhotoMagic store I didn't find exactly what I was expecting, the store attendent aided me, and in the end I got this nifty gadget, "Lenspen". 

I'm curious as to what you all use to clean your lenses, how often? I have read that 'less is more'... in other words to not clean too often, small dust particles make no big impact.  Do any of you PhotoBloggers have any testimonials for the Lenspen (or other cleaning systems)?

Posted by Desiree at 09:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

I have found a way to post photos on the right side - see all the lovely photos thanks to flickr.  Want to see your photos on the side bar?  Well you have to put your photos in the alberta photobloggers group pool.  Most of you have joined (it is free!) and if you need help, some instruction can be found here.  With the flickr zeitgeist on the left hand side, photos are pulled from your actual own flickr page whereas the side photos on the right are pulled directly from what is added to the alberta photobloggers group pool.  I think it is wonderful to have a running stream of our photos on the side.  Though I think there are problems when flickr is down - so I'll see if that turns out to be a problem as I can always try and do this with rss digest if flickr proves to be too unstable (I heart flickr).

Posted by daisies at 03:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I've been re-designing my Photoblog in hopes that it will be ready to launch for the May 1st Reboot Project (should be, fingers crossed.)  However, with the construction of such things comes many questions...  One of which is who am I catering the website for and why those people?

Since there's no exact way of determining who your traffic is or where it's coming from, I simply assume that a large majority of it comes from other Photobloggers as this is where my site tends to be linked.  Naturally I want to cater to those people and because of that I usually post large(r) images on my site, recently they've been around 900x600px.  As I've said before, there's no real way to tell who your users are exactly which has me thinking...  Am I turning away regular traffic because my site is simply too large??

Obviously my number one goal in posting photos daily is to have my work seen by as many people as possible.  I also realize that not all web users have the priveledge of using large monitors and big screen resolutions, so is there a magical photo size that can appease all my viewers??  I enjoy posting my photos large simply because of the detail they can retain, but the last thing I want to do is turn someone away because they've gotten bored scrolling across the page and back to see the entire shot.

So I'm wondering if any of you have an opinion on this...  It a certain photo size "too big"?  Or does it really matter at all?  Can photos be "too small"?  I'm also curious to know if anyone has any personal site statistics on the screen resolutions of viewers coming to their site.  Unfortunately the only thing my host doesn't track is screen resolution but I know most hosts do keep track of this data and any help would be greatly appreciated. =)

Anyways, just something to think about. ;-)

Posted by Seuss at 10:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I'm not sure if you've all see this yet or not but I thought I'd post it here just in case.  If you have any desire to develop your own black and white film, but aren't sure how to go about it, you should check out this recent page on Verba (Chromogenic's word blog) for a short primer on developing black and white film in your very own bathroom.  Also very helpful, are the many comments left by others who have read the entry.  This is in no way to be considered the de-facto treatise on the subject... merely a good starting place to get you up and running.  Special thanks to Justin for compiling such a great tutorial.

Edit: He has added on additonal notes for even more information.

Posted by Duke at 05:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Want to see your photos displayed on the right column? All you have to do is open a flickr account (if you don't already have one). Upload your photos and add the tag abphotobloggers.

Also, do put your photos into the abphotobloggers group pool at alberta photobloggers flickr pool.

Have questions? Need help? Please feel free to email at alberta.photobloggers@gmail.com.

Posted by Darlene at 11:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Hi Everyone!  I put up a flickr zeitgeist on the right column in an attempt to find a way to display some of the group's photography.  I used flickr because it is free, easy and they do some cool things like the zeitgeist.  I figured out a way to include all of our photos without to much work involved.  If you want to take part in the zeitgeist (I really like saying zeitgeist .. zeitgeist), here is what you have to do:

1.  If you are not a member of flickr, do go to flickr and sign up - it is free and easy.

2.  If you are a member of flickr or once you become a member of flickr go to alberta photobloggers group.  This is a group that I have set up, sign up for this group and I will then add you as a contact in flickr.

3.  Upload some of your photos to your new flickr site, add some to the alberta phototobloggers group if you wish, join other groups, do as little as much as you want but know that as soon as you upload some photos - Voila, they will become a part of the zeitgeist on this site : )

added bonus:  there are a lot of alberta people on flickr - so we can raise awareness of photoblogging while sharing our photos ... all good things!

note: if you click on the little zeitgeist (had to say it one more time) photos, you will be transported to the larger images on flickr.  all good clean zeitgeist fun.

Posted by daisies at 03:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)