I was speaking to a bloke today about photography. He challenged me to choose a camera, focal length and to take a photo a day for a month. Not only self portraits, but any photo, daily surroundings but push the boundaries.
I choose 16mm and my Sony a7R Mk2
This is the start of that journey, just because it's late and I'm not going outside in the rain.
Sixteen : Day One | Thursday September 15th, 2016
A quick look how to best place your images in your SquareSPace website. Using a 3x3 gallery with a particular crop, in this case 1x1 / square, you need to be able to choose the viewable area of your cropped thumb to make the most impact - the video shows you how to adjust your images, it'd dead easy - drag the little circle to where you think is best, click apply, relax. Hi Ted!
2009 - Old gig I photographed, http://www.noisettes.co.uk/ || #Noisettes #BringTheNoise #MakeContact
This one's for you, Laviotette!
A quick pack up of the thinkTankPhoto TurnStyle 10 with my Yashicaflex 635, Zeiss Ikon, Sony RX100Mk4, MindShift memory card wallet and my regular wallet (Bellroy) to show it opened and closed.
The thinkTank TurnStyle 10 with the Yashicaflex 635 and Zeiss Ikon inside.
For sizing, I've stuck a Zeiss 16-35 f/4.0 on the left, Zeiss Ikon, Yashicaflex 635 as well as Sony RX100Mk4 / Memory Card Wallet (MindShiftGear) and my own wallet in the front.
Hope this helps some of you that want to pack light with a larger style / format camera and extra bits and pieces.
It was fun to go along to my lovely cousin's 40th last night and see some relatives I don't see often! I had a thought in the afternoon "Maybe I should take a camera?" and i emailed to ask if that would be OK. OK indeed it was and, so I thought - no worries, a7RMk2 in a holster / maybe a Retrospective 5, just keep it simple, you know...
3LeggedThing Tripod & MindShiftGear MultiMount Holster w/ Sony a7RMk2 + Zeiss 35mm f/1.4
That's always the plan, go light, go simple... So, The gear I ended up taking (In a new camera bag I'm using that I can't tell you about) was as follows...
Yeah, see, managed to travel light! Anyways, it was for the fun of it, the backdrop was tooooo small, but there were some fun pictures and a great evening - Happy Birthday Jo!
I manage social media for brands that exist inside and outside of my timezone. I don't stay up 24 hours a day, though sometimes it certainly feels like it - my choice. What can I say, I like the night sky.
Yes, that's my photo above - Taken on the 7th of May in Warburton East, 15 second exposure at f/1.4 and no, I'm not very good at it, but yes I'm learning. #GotMilk
So, rather than stay up late and click 'publish' when you want a post to go live (we talked roughly about timing last post) you can use many many tools to schedule posts, from ones that are built right into Facebook, to ones that you pay a bit for... I'm not going to cover them all, I'm going to cover the ones I use and have used for some time - that way, if you have questions, you're welcome to ask them in the comments and I can answer them.
I'm not going into detail about each platform, they do the same things, but they do them in very different ways - one stream v many streams - try them both (Sprout and Hootsuite) they're good platforms.
Facebook Native...
The first and most easy option if you're running a Facebook page for your business is to use the 'schedule' function on Facebook, you simply fill in your post as you normally would, an image or video or text / link and then hit the down facing arrow to the right of the "publish" button and choose schedule...
Remember what we said about TIMING and then get a few posts scheduled in to save yourself being online all the time. WARNING : Just because you CAN schedule, doesn't mean you can just set & forget! You gotta talk to those people / interact with those people that give your content the time of day... Like / Reply / Whatever / Block.
Hootsuite... Click the pic below to check it out.
Hootsuite is a great tool for monitoring and posting content, both real time and scheduled. They offer a free account that allows you to manage up to three profiles, get some basic analytics and schedule your content, and, based on the photo below, is it any wonder I want to go work there?
Sprout Social... (click HERE to check them out)
Sprout Social are a bit more user friendly when it comes to reporting, though Hootsuite has recently upped their game. Sprout Social are also more expensive than my Hootsuite Pro plan, but if you're managing multiple Instagram accounts (you can't fully schedule Instagram, folks) I find Sprout Social a notch above.
With both Hootsuite and Sprout you get some handy interfaces to see your scheduled content - Here's a screenshot of Sprout Social in "curated content" mode.
And this is the Hootsuite version of the scheduled content...
The main point of this post being that there are no excuses for not posting at the right time, and though it can take a couple of weeks to dial in, it's not hard to do - vary your publish times, see how your audience react / what works best and continue to work at it - often.
Get to work.
Meanwhile, please check out this new #podcast that I'm one half of, it's tech / photo / semi-amusic / quite daft, but fun and gives my good mate Stu and I a chance to rattle on for half an hour every other week. CLICKY
Leave a comment, ask a question, or don't - that's OK, too.
