A week or two ago (yeah yeah I’m way late to report this) I received some mail that stayed on my kitchen counter for a few days before I picked it up again. While going through some old mail I noticed a particular envelope from some company called, Serbin Communications. I assumed it was just junk mail and was about to trash it but at the last second I decided to open it just in case.

To my surprise it was notification of the fact that one of my photographs is a finalist in Photographer’s Forum Magazine’s 28th Annual Spring Photography Contest. I suppose it was a good thing I opened the envelope after all.

I had actually entirely forgotten about this contest I entered sometime before April of this year. Of 11 photographs I entered, the following has been picked as a finalist.



The contest’s web site states the actual winner’s and honorable mentions will be notified by August 15, a few days away. Although I have doubts my photo will earn 1st prize, it would be nice to have the distiction as well as a new camera. I’m happy with honorable mention at this point in my career.

More to come soon...

A couple of weeks ago I sold my Canon 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L lens on eBay. I believe I got around $1100 for it which was what I was hoping I’d get for it. When I decided to sell the lens I thought I could use the money to buy the Canon 180mm macro lens, a lens I’ve been wanting for a while now, or buy some lighting gear and other miscellaneous things. In the end I decided to buy some lighting gear.

Last week I received a couple of collpsable softboxes from Alien Bees. They are 24x36” which should be plenty for portraits and still lifes. I also bought another Dell LCD display as my 21” Apple monitor saw its last days a few months ago. And I’ve grown accustomed to using two monitors.

At the moment I’m not sure what to do with the remaining money. I’m thinking of getting two pocket wizards so I can control my Alien Bees strobes and get rid of the 20 or 30 foot sync cord. I have 2 already but I ‘d like to have one for each Alien Bee and one for my Canon speedlight in case I want to use all 3 together.

Anyway, here is a few photos I took with the new softboxes.


I wanted to two highlights on the apple with the smaller being narrow and next to a spot of black. I used a sheet of black foam core to block one of the softboxes, which gives the small band highlight in the upper right hand side of the apple, and provides the dark shadow next to the small highlight. The background is a sheet of diffusion plastic from a lighting tent. The sheet and apple are on top of a cheap tv stand. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the table’s fake wood grain is seen through the diffusion sheet. Something I didn’t want but later thought it added some color and mood to the background (bright shiney apple on top of a white-brown background).


Self portrait. Taking self portraits is interesting as it requires some luck in compenstion but it allows me to keep trying depending if I feel up to it. But I don’t have to deal with others being impatient or losing interest.


Close up of my hollow body Ibanez electric guitar.


Another close up of my hollow body Ibanez electric guitar.

Tags: softbox, lighting, gear

I have an upcoming group gallery showing of 4 of my photographs in the month of June. The name of the gallery is Infusion Gallery of LA. Visit them at www.infusiongallery.com

Here's the dates:

Show: June 1-25, 2008
Opening Reception: June 12, 2008

I hope to be there the evening of the opening reception. Although not my first gallery show, my first with 4 photographs and my first actually being there seeing them on a wall for all to see (I plan on attending the evening of the 12th).

So when I heard the gallery was interested in my work of course I was pretty excited. A few days ago I suddenly realized that my work isn't finished. Its an accomplishment to get my work in a gallery but I still need to convince people to buy the prints. That then leads to me to figuring out how to advertise and convince people to come to a group show, not a solo show. I don't know many people living in or around LA. How do I convince either complete strangers to show up or people I do know living in the Bay Area to drive several hours just to see 4 photographs? Hopefully the gallery itself will be far more successful.

Tags: gallery, fine art, exhibit

I don't have much to report at the moment as I've been rather busy with my day job.

I mailed my print to The Center of Fine Art Photography for the upcoming group exhibit this morning. And I have been invited to participate in another group show (should have 4-5 photos in this one) which will be in the Spring or Summer of this year. I'll have more details of the show hopefully soon.

I just stumbled on an interesting web site earlier today that allows users of Lightroom to modify which metadata fields are shown, how they are displayed, etc. Visit this blog entry on Jeffrey Friedl's Blog for more info.

Tags: software, Lightroom

Happy New Year to all.

Due to a bug in RapidWeaver 3.6.4, I have a few pages on this site that won't load. Not sure why but it seems to be a problem with TIFFs converted to JPEG using Photoshop CS3. If I export those same TIFFs to JPEG using Lightroom 1.3.1, I don't see the problem. Anyway, hopefully someone at Realmac Software will help me out with it soon.

A few nights ago I decided to create 2 sets of goals for my photography. One set is devoted to the actual photography and the other set is devoted to promotion and the business side of things. I think 10 goals per is a good start. And the idea is to accomplish each goal by the end of 2008. I hope to settle on a finalized listing by the weekend.

Speaking of weekends, I plan on finishing up all my requirements for my upcoming group exhibition by the end of the weekend. Also I hope to have my office / studio organized and unpacked by then as well.

For those who visit regularly you'll probably notice some changes to the site. The biggest change is I've actually removed some prints and added a few others. When I removed some of the prints I actually reduced the print count on the site to 25. The reason I made a reduction is I noticed that 1. I had too many similar photographs being sold and 2. not every photograph was fantastic. I assume the average visitor will have problems deciding which photograph to buy a print of when there are too many choices of photographs that look so similar. Not exactly good for business, ya know. And I need to have any photograph I make available for sale to be a great photograph, not just good, as it will help to build my reputation, my "brand" or name, etc.

The other changes include: I added the official link to my portfolio (see the sidebar to the right). I still provide a HTML and a FLASH version for those that care. Also, I tried to design the site for a 1024 x 768 monitor res on a 17" monitor. At that size and res, I think the previous images where just too big. I want the average visitor to view all of the image at once. I think it sucks to have to scroll to see my photographs. The drawback is the person with a huge 21" or larger monitor, 1600x1200 or greater won't have the greatest viewing experience. It won't be horrible but they may loose out on seeing some fine details in the photographs. But for the past year or so Google Analytics is telling me most of my visitors have their monitor set to 1024 x 768 and I assumed the monitor to be 15-17". In order to make the site in general more viewable for my smaller monitor visitors I made the banner narrower, the site itself 680 pixels wide (it was 800 px), made the photographs smaller, and modified the photograph pages so that the photograph was first then all the text, navigation, and buy now buttons are at the bottom (the idea being the photograph is number one, thus show it first).

Also, I have taken Rapidweaver back. I bought the 3.6 upgrade and redesigned the site using it. Eh, I'm not sure if its the greatest solution but its one at this point I'm willing to handle. But I still would love if Realmac would incorporate some Applescript support. Automating page creation would be great. I may some day learn how to make web pages using Lightroom which would help with easy page creation for each photograph I sell.

And finally, I added black and white borders around each photos. The white border is thin whereas the black border is very thick. I think the borders help with viewing the photo by helping the viewer visualize a frame around the photo which hopefully will aid the viewer in a purchasing decision.

So I finally got around to emailing the order of Skreened.com how I can get better color and if they had color profiles for their printer.

His reply was no profiles are available and he claims they they get so many low quality images uploaded they do their best to improve them and sometimes colors get weird. I replied back asking if it was possible for them not to tweak my designs. If they can NOT do that, I'll try again and see if their is any improvement (I thought it may be possible their tweaking is ruining my colors). I'm currently awaiting his reply.

If in the end I don't get what I want I may just scrap all my t-shirts or maybe go elsewhere. I don't want to come off as saying I think their service sucks because it doesn't. They offer one off t-shirt printing a pretty low prices, that's pretty cool. I'm just not happy with the color reproduction of their printing.

Tags: printing, t-shirt

I recently received a t-shirt I designed in the mail. The print quality actually seemed really good. I was pleasantly surprised in that respect. However, the color seemed too dark. The design is of a heavily scratched Seirra Nevada beer bottle cap and I wanted it to keep its distanctive green color but the t-shirt turned out way too dark. I plan on talking to the owner of the print company and asking him how I can help ensure I get accurate colors.

Tags: printing, t-shirt

So after a long long search on how to turn my images into cool looking designs to place on t-shirts, I have created a few. They, a current grand total of 6 to be exact, are available at skreened.com/jclphoto

Why don't I just place my photos directly on a shirt?
In my opinion, most if not all photos look amateurish on a t-shirt. It'll look like DIY iron ons. Not exactly what I want. So it has to be modified to look "cool".

What method did you come up with?
For some reason the idea of converting photos into light art just dawn on me one evening. So I then went searching on the net for "turn photos into light art". The techniques I came up with involve using Photoshop to apply particular filters: Cutout, Find Edges, and Smart Blur. Granted that's a fairly simplistic explanation, but you as anyone else can perform the search on the net for more information (however if you want to know how I do it, let me know and maybe I'll write a full on article and post it here).

How do I purchase the shirts?
Go to www.skreened.com/jclphoto My t-shirt store front is on their web site because you are actually ordering from them, they print them on demand, and ship direct to the customer. That's you. All questions, comments, suggestions, etc on the designs themselves can be directed to me at john at johnlarsonphoto.com.

Can I get a particular shirt in a particular color?
It depends what particular color you want. Assuming Skreened has the color, you can get it. As a matter of fact they use American Apparel shirts using 8 styles of shirts and a decent selection of colors to choose from.

Why don't you place your name or URL on the shirt?
Excellent question. At the moment, Skreened doesn't allow to design a shirt so that there is printing on the front and back. I know they can do it, I just have to contact and make a special request. I'm too lazy to do that for so many shirts (I'd do it for one shirt, but if my selection grows, that seems like a lot of work). Maybe I should find a way to do it on the front of the shirt.

Can I see the designs?
Sure can. Although I haven't actually asked for permission from the company that prints the shirts, I can not imagine them being upset with me posting images of their shirts with my designs on them. Seems like a win-win situation for all as it is basically advertising for them, I'm helping to promote my work, and they get more money,

Here goes...

Scratched Sierra

This is my first design. I didn't use any of the Photoshop filters I mentioned earlier. What I did do was go to a nearby park with my girlfriend and a couple of her friends. We brought some beer and I scratched the cap of one of the bottles. I thought it looked kinda cool so I told myself I'd make a shirt out of it. I then scanned the cap using a Epson flatbed scanner. That explains why some of the cap looks kinda shinny. After I uploaded the image to Skreened.com, I realized I could have photographed the cap instead. But I think I'm happy with the "scanner" look.

SK8


CA State Parks


Lamp Post


Utility Truck


No Person Allowed

Tags: t-shirt

Sometimes I'll post images that I decided not to sell as a print for what ever reason. But who knows, maybe someone does like them so much that they'd like a print.

If you see a photo here on my blog that I'm not offering as a print, please let me know and I'll do what I can to sell a print of it. Please don't hesitate to ask, I won't bite.

So I haven't posted for over 2 months.

I haven't had much of a reason either. Although I am still taking photos I just haven't had much to say.

A week or so ago I received a new USB hard drive. This particular drive supports USB OTG (on-the-go) which allows you to transfer data between a source and itself without the use of a computer. And on top of that it has a Compact Flash reader. Very handy indeed when you have a limited about of space on CF cards. I don't want to manage a bunch of cards out in the field (which card have I used and which haven't I used?). I'll get to test it out in July when I go on my honeymoon with my soon to be wife. I hope to have a review posted after I come back. Its a Nexto CF OTG (ND-2300).

Anyway, I'm planning a few small changes to the site, add some images, maybe remove some (maybe, still thinking about it), and I'm trying to figure out new ways to sell my photography. One possible avenue which I continue to think about is stock and the other is t-shirts. I'm thinking about contacting home & garden, flower, etc type magazines and book publishers to supply them flower photos. And the other idea is to place modified photos on t-shirts. I'd basically use a photo as a guide for the final design. I'll likely start off with images that have been converted to line art and have certain elements removed to help focus on a main subject. My latest "discovery" is exploring methods to convert photos to line art. I need to start generating some money. In early March, I was asked to photograph a new family - a couple had recently given birth to a baby boy. Its a paying gig which is a start. Although I'm not much for this kind of photography, it was quite enjoyable. There are a few things that I found annoying, but I think the experience was worth the trouble.

As I said I'm getting married in July so the activity here will be very slow during the next few months. I'll be moving into a new place after the weeding, but I hope to become much more active when I return from my trip.

I tried once more to sell some prints on eBay. No such luck.

I posted around 30-35 actions. After the first 24, I reposted the auction but lowered the price. I started four of the photographs at $10.00 and no one bid.

Someone did email me through eBay asking if I could enlarge a particular photograph and if so, how much larger. I responded, answering their questions, but haven't heard from them since. At this point, I'm not exactly sure why. My account doesn't really have any activity on it and that may have something to do with it. However, I doubt its the only reason. Any suggestions are most welcome.

In other news, I didn't get selected for either of the 2 jury calls. I thought I had a very good chance in getting selected for the call that had an "Abstract" theme. If anyone has experience with jury calls, I would greatly appreciate some advice. At this point, I am seeing the errors of my ways nor what guidelines I should follow when approaching a call.

After my a few recent changes I noticed what appears to be a bug in RapidWeaver 3.5.1 (the software I use to create and maintain this site). After I placed the product pages (the pages that showcase individual photographs along with paypal buttons) under the "store" directory I started noticing that sometimes the exported or published pages have junk characters or portions of the code in the html document placed at the very end of the page after . The only thing that changed with the page was the location which leads me to believe its a bug in RW. Also, I noticed I sometimes get the problem if I export just one page over and over again which is futher evidence.

After leaving a note on Realmac Software's support forum and thinking about this awhile afterwards, I came to the conclusion that its time to drop RW as my primary app to maintain this site. I think I'm going to start using BBEdit because it was some very nice automation and html tools which should make it easier and faster for me to add more pages to this site. However, I think I will continue to use RW for its blogging feature and if I need to make large changes in the CSS files. I still like the software, however I think this site has out grown it and I need something that will allow me to add pages faster. During the day today I started going over BBEdit's user manual and trying to figure out how I can automate product and catalog page creation. It looks fairly easy, I just need to spend some time reading and practicing. Anyway, within probably 2-3 weeks this transition will be taking place. Hopefully no major problems occur with the site.

Ok, now on to far less technical stuff. Yesterday, I emailed the editors of a photography magazine a photo essay proposal. I basically proposed to include a few pages of my book, "Sandwiched Lunch" within their magazine. I also offered to send them a free hardcover copy of the book if they liked the idea and want me to include some of the images in their magazine. I'll hold off revealing the magazine's name until I get some feedback on the proposal. Anyway, I'm very excited and hopeful they'll accept.

Also, this weekend I going to be submitting more work to some upcoming "Calls For Entry" and "Jury Calls" in hopes I'll be accepted and finally have my work hung in some gallery. There are a few I think I have a decent chance out because their themes are "Abstracts".

And oh yeah....it's February 1st. Yahoooo!

As some may have noticed, I have made some changes around here. I decided to create categories and organize my photographs in that manner instead of placing them all in one big heap. The categories I chose is common names of flowers. Since I really don't document the flowers I thought the common name was the way to go and maybe better than the idea of organizing each by color. The color idea brought up too many questions. If there are more than one type of flower in the image I decided to place the photo in each category that way its found in all corresponding category.

Also, please excuse the mess I'm having. Some photo pages may appear with junk characters at the end of the page. Or, not all of the page loads as it should. I'm currently working on this. There seems to be a problem or bug in my web authoring software that for whatever reason is causing these two problems. Neither are pretty. Hopefully it doesn't drive anyone away.

Because of this as well as a few other problems I'm having with this software I keep looking to switch to something else. Something that can handle this many pages, allows me to quickly and just as easily add more, and maybe even scriptable so I can automate the repetition. Any ideas (I run Mac OS 10 and nothing else.)?

Eh, its been a while.

I need to start posting far more often. A friend of mine recently told me he actually reads this! I couldn't believe it; someone actually reads this? Perhaps others do too, which means I gotta post more often. Draw them in with content and maybe they'll buy something.

I've been busy with my day job and planning my wedding and other wedding related stuff. I've been trying to do a "picture of the day" project with others at work. I'll post all the pictures here on this site soon. I think today will be the first day I miss out. I decided to call in sick this morning which allowed me to catch up on all the pictures I've been taking for that project (mostly sorting and removing images I don't think are worth the trouble of keeping). Anyway, trying to be creative everyday for a whole month is tough. I was doing pretty good for maybe the first 20 of those days. Probably 2 of those pictures were without a doubt poor but there are maybe 10 that are worth looking at and maybe 4 that I'm proud of. All and all, I'd say its a great exercise. It helps to get you thinking creatively more often and for longer periods of time.

Ever try to clean a digital sensor on your digital camera? Not exactly fun times. On Thursday I ordered some fancy brush from Visible Dust that should arrive this Monday. Since I had the day off today, I decided to run down to my local repair shop and buy a fancy swap and solution that is suppose to clean it. However, after a very frustrating hour of what seemed to produce only me moving dust from this side and that side of the sensor I have concluded that cleaning dust off of anything with liquid is liking mopping your kitchen floor without sweeping. You only end up cleaning the dirt. I think AND hope the brush works out better. That's part of the reason why I'm skipping out on the POTD project today. If the pictures turn out great, I don't really want to spend so much time cleaning them up in Photoshop.

Recently I found out that Blurb is now allowing users to insert ISBN numbers AND allowing users to set their own prices. GREAT! Although I don't think their quality is the greatest, I'll take it. This weekend I hope to get my book up to par with their latest software, buy an ISBN number (or maybe a whole set) and start selling that book! Once its all ready, I'll put up a BUY NOW link on this site. I wonder if I use Blurb, I can get the book on Amazon. A this point I don't think so because Blurb's prices are a little too high and Amazon takes too much of a cut. Stay tuned....

My latest marketing idea is to contact interior decorators via email and by postcard informing them of my photographs for sale. One thing I'm interested in first is how most go about acquiring their stuff. My girlfriend came up with a great idea when investigating a potential decorator...look out for those that custom tailor decor. Its likely those that do will get their stuff from a variety of sources.

The other suggestion I got on this website was to separate similar images from each other instead of placing them next to each other. Potential buyers may have a more difficult time deciding on which print to buy if there are so many next to each other that look alike. Also, I want to start creating categories. So far I'm going to go with color categories OR maybe common flower names as categories. I have problems in general with this approach, however my visitors may like it more (if so, let me know. Have a better idea? Please let me know.). Say I have an image that has two or even three dominant colors. Where does that image go? Or maybe to all corresponding colors. Say the image has 3 flowers in it. Should it go in only one category? Is it a good idea to list the same image multiple time? Maybe it is. Bombard my visiter with it like so many advertisers do. After seeing the same damn image over and over again, they're bound to buy it. Ideally, I should do both. It would be nice to have a CGI script that uses keywords to dynamically build the category pages. At this point I'll just choose one or the other category ideas.

Earlier this week I found another photographer that takes interesting photos of flowers (instead of your classic documentary style shot): Barbara Bordnick. I like your flower photography quite a bit. Cool to see others taking a similar approach with flowers.

On Friday (12/29/06) I took 686 pictures of various gerbera daisies (yellow, red, pink, and orange). I picked them up in the morning hours from a nearby florist. I'm trying to find a good florist that deals with cut flowers and is able to get a decent selection. I have been using a grocery store to buy my flowers but I'd rather switch to a local florist and support the local businessman. I hope to establish some sort of business deal with the florist. Not exactly sure of what I'd try to work out; maybe a discount or have him pick out particular flowers just for me or order flowers that are on my list. After a few more visits, I'll talk to him about what he can do for me.

Anyway, John Larson Photography has gone through several changes in 2006. I submitted images to Alamy, then decided to halt stock operations and continue to focus on fine art prints. Maybe once I have several thousand flower images, I'll make another submission. No sales as of yet, but there are only 60-70 of my images in their library. On the fine art print front, I've made 2 sales last year. One person ordered two 12x18s the day before Thanksgiving and shortly after that another person ordered a 8x12. I'm pretty happy with those sales numbers especially since this is my first year in operation.

The web site itself has gone through many changes as well. I moved from stock and prints to solely prints, added greeting cards, finally published my book (still looking for a good color POD printer and distrubutor), and moved strickly to flower fine art prints. During all of those changes the site itself has gone through a few major changes. And I have to say I really enjoy the basic look and feel of today's site.

In order to increase interest and sales I started to advertise on Google.com, made up business cards, and created an anniversery promotion offer where I gave away 5 free greeting cards. I'm fairly certain that my first sale was the result of one of my ads on Google.

At the end of 2006, I have to say I'm pretty happy with the success of this web site and my business.

My goals for 2007:
1. Finally find a color POD printer / distrubutor and get the book on Amazon.com.
2. Create a sales goal of 5 prints. At this point its not important the size of the print. I'm more concerned with the actual number of prints sold.
3. Increase the frequency that I photograph. My ultimate goal would be to take at least 1 photograph per day. However, due to other demands in life that'll be very tough for me to accomplish.
4. Add framing and matting options to my photographs that I sell.
5. Try to create business connections with local florists. Perhaps ask them to sell my prints and/or greeting cards in their store. This will of course increase my exposure as well as increase my sales.
6. And last but certainly not least: Finally get my work into an art gallery.

And the following are 7 photographs I took on 12/27/06 - 12/29/06. I'm not sure if I'll offer these particular images as prints but I just wanted to give a sneak peak of what I did during that time. Enjoy and enjoy 2007!

I've made a few major changes to this web site. First of all I've add 60 new images. I decided to do it all at once along with all of the other changes. And these images have been created in the last two months.

Secondly, I've also removed some images. I have decided to concentrate solely on flower photography in regards to my fine art business. It just seemed that I was really already doing that so I might as well embrace it and run with it. So all of the photographs on this site available for sale as a print will be of flowers. The current plan is to focus in this niche and create more and post more. I'd like to build such a large library that I can pick and choose which will be available as a print and which will be licensed. But before that I need to build a library. Its probably best to start with a decent size library before going off to license them.

And finally, I've moved a few things around and added a new home page which displays my logo that I mentioned earlier in the month. There are a few more changes but I feel they are pretty minor and not worth mentioning.

Let me know what you think.

I believe I have finally created my business logo and there it is. The logo itself is just my name and the world photography using red and black font. However, the rest is what I use on any letterhead. I like how my mailing address is off center from the rest of the text. I believe its more eye catching and perhaps more reflective of a creative business. I could have just placed the contact information at the bottom of each page with a solid line but that to me appears too business like and thus boring.

Eventually, I'll incorporate it with this web site and you'll see it at the top of every page.

Here are the results of November's Promo. I offered 5 free greeting cards to the first five people to email me.

Winners
1. M.D. of Scotts Valley, CA

And that's it. Suprisingly I had several people visit the site and several actually browsed quite a bit it. I'm not sure why only one person respoonded. Perhaps some people suspuct I'll put them on a mailing list and they'd rather avoid the junk mail. My actually goal was just to increase interest and maybe generate a sale in the end. Then again maybe that very thing happened. I did get 2 sales during that month and 2,246 pageviews (the highest amount in a month all year).

The day before Thanksgiving I had a sale! Someone on the other side of the country bought two prints and they are being shipped at this very moment. I hope the receiptent enjoys it.

In other news, I made a few custom color profiles for various paper from Moab. I think they are a little better than the canned profiles from Moab (however, the Moab profiles do not seem that far off). Owning a spectometer would be very nice. My next objective is to profile my camera.

I've also been busy with printing greeting cards. I had another order during the holiday weekend and one item was a package of greeting cards.

I should receive a test frame job from Pictopia soon. They just started widening their ability to matte and frame prints. So I submitted an order with them just ot test out their service and craftmanship. I'm hoping for the best because I would like to start offering matting and framing instead of offering just prints.

And finally, the last bit of news is I submitted 3 images to a jury call at the Center of Fine Art Photography in Colorado. The results will be in the first week of December. And I plan on submitting to two other calls due at the end of next month.

Just this last friday I paid a visit to my printer (Pictopia) in Emeryville, CA. My first visit to their actual facility. The reason I went was because I needed to visually check out their selection of frames and mattes. The reason I needed to visually inspect them is because I needed to make sure I know what I'm ordering and "white" isn't always white when it comes to mattes. I got many questions answered and the trip was interesting as well as productive.

In case you haven't figured it out yet, I'm currently working with Pictopia to allow the ability for you to order prints from me matted or matted & framed. I hope to have this entire site updated with that information as well as have the ability to order prints matted or matted & framed instead of receiving it rolled up by itself in a cardboard tube before the end of this month. I'm now waiting on Pictopia to get back to me with a price quote.

Also, I talked to a rep at Pictopia a couple of days prior to driving up there about their framing service. During that discussion she asked me if I'd be interested in having their ecommerce solution integrated into my web site. WHOA! I've been wanting this ever since I chose them as my printer. The end result will allow faster order processing which means faster delivery of the finished good to my customer, probably a better and much improved interface, and they will handle the order processing as well as any credit card transactions. She stated she's trying to poll the current clients to see how many and who are interested and they will have it ready by the beginning of next year. All of which is very good news for me. I'm hoping that this will also mean that I can create web pages for each image (for new images that I create) much faster using some sort of automated process which I've been looking around for. So instead of buying into something now I think I'll wait for them to integrate themselves into my site and see if they provide that feature. I'll be sure to keep ya posted on any new developments in that area of my business.

She recommended that I contact the owner of this store in San Francisco about selling my prints in their store. The store sells nothing but photographic prints. Awesome! I sent an email on Friday night asking for more information about the store. If I like all the terms and conditions to have them re-sell my work, I'll definitely be selling some stuff there. One thing that I'm a little reserved about is I believe they only deal with limited edition works. As of now I only sell my work using open editions for various reasons. Its possible to be a little flexible on that rule of mine and tailor some work just for limited editions and other work for open editions just to get my stuff sold. Hey I gotta pay for my equipment somehow. More information after I get a reply.

Also, I am planning on submitting some of my work to 3 Jury Calls before the end of this year. One is due at the end of November and the other 2 are both due at the end of December. If all goes well and I get selected by just one Call, I think my web traffic will go up and it will increase my exposure to many more people and hopefully actual potential customers. Very excited about this as two of the 3 Calls are with The Center of Fine Art Photography in Colorado.

To help celebrate my one year anniversary and to celebrate the kickoff of my greeting cards, I'm going to give the 1st five people who email me five greeting cards absolutely free. That's five different photographs printed on five cards for free, no shipping and handling fees - you don't spend a dime. So email me quick before your chance runs out!!! Deadline: December 1, 2006.

First FIVE to email receives FIVE greeting cards for FREE! ACT NOW!!!

Here's what ya gotta do:

1. Send me an email using my email form (click here).
2. In that email include your:

• Full Name
• Email address
• Mailing address

You need to send all three pieces of info to qualify. Offer expires on December 1, 2006 - once the clock strikes 12/1/2006 PST, no more entries will be excepted. Also, each entry has to be different (name and addresses have to be different); no repeat emails from the same person will be accepted.

Once I receive five emails from five different people, I'll email you back with a congrats. I would also like to post your name and city and state on the blog to publicly congratulate you. The posting will be something like: John L. - San Jose, CA - I promise not identify you with your full name and fulling mailing address. And of course no email addresses will be posted; everyone hates SPAM. Then I'll send you your prize.

Good Luck!

Finally I have my greeting card offerings online and available for all. Currently, I have 2 packages of cards and each package contains 20 cards (10 different photographs) and mailing envelopes of course. Let me know what you think. Enjoy!

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Excerpt from the Greeting Cards page:
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These packaged set greeting cards make great gifts or if you need to keep in touch for special events, the holidays, or just to say hello.

Each package comes with a set of 20 greeting cards displaying 10 different beautiful photographs created by John C. Larson. Each and every image found in these packages are also available for purchase as a fine art print right here at John C. Larson Photography.

All greeting cards are printed on Kayenta 205 Matte by Moab Paper, a paper known for its longevity and acid-free materials. Each package currently ships with white envelopes.

Today official marks the 1st year anniversary of John C. Larson Photography. 365 days ago I went to a state office in downtown San Jose, CA to file for my state seller's license. I thought it would be cool to have my start date on Halloween.

I should do some sort of special promo just for the date. Ok maybe the hiatus isn't as long as I thought it would be. Having a couple days off of work helped out. Maybe I'll come up with something tomorrow...

I'm taking a bit of a hiatius because just this last Friday I have undergone surgery on my sinuses as well as placing tubes in my ears. Not exactly happy fun times but the goal is my quality of life and hearing will improve. For those that know what's its like to have cronic sinusitis you know what its like to wake up everyday with a sinus headache as well as frequent sinus infections throughout the year. Anyway, like I said there will be a slight pause in my updates until I can get back to normal.

When I do get back to normal, my plans are to: post more images for sale as prints, work on designing a few t-shirts, and posting 2 sets of greeting cards. And of course I hope to be taking more pictures (hopefully that goes without saying).

Bear with me and I'll be back soon....

Until then....email me! Ask me a question, give me your opinion on one of the images I offer for sale, give me a suggestion, complain or whatever. However, please keep it photography, photography business, etc related. I'm not looking for emails that inform me of the latest IPO offering or the latest drug deal coming out of Canada.

I've decided to make today the end of my Photo Blog. And I've also decided to consolidate the activity of both blogs into one. Starting today, I will only add posts to just this one blog. To strengthen the position, I've re-titled this blog to just "Blog". Yeah I've thought long and hard on the title, hopefully it pans out for the best.

In August I stumbled open an open call for artists to submit work to an art gallery located in Boston. Because it was an open call (anyone can submit) I decided to give it a try. I forget all the submission guidelines except a few. The work had to be particular dimensions and I selected 8x10" (the smallest). I'm really not a fan of 8x10 especially if I have to throw away part of the image to force it into that size (I'd rather have it 8x12, keeping the original aspect ratio). The work had to be submitted and received by the gallery by September 1st. I got my submission into the mail about 10 days early. There was no guideline that addressed a theme or something they were looking for in particular. Long story short, I was not accepted. At first I was down about it, but then I realized it has to happen. Had I been accepted, my work would have been displayed for a month along with all the other winners (or whatever) in their gallery and available for purchase. I was just happy to give it a try. Here is my submission. Each and everyone available as a fine art print here on johnlarsonphoto.com.

Anticipator


I took this image while my girlfriend and I were waiting for a train in Germany. We were on our way to Stockholm, Sweden and were about to board a night train to Copenhagen.

I enjoy the softness of this image as well as the subdued colors.

Sushi View


Another image taken during my trip to Europe. This is the view out our hostel room window; an alley and a few shops. This one and the image above, "Anticipator", are my favorites within the submission.

Danger! Danger! Danger!


I took this image at a local park. Those train tracks are very small and very close together compared to real freight train's tracks. I thought it was humorous to have railroad crossing signs, paint on the sidewalk, and even the wooden structures around the path over the tracks just for such a small and slow moving train. Safety first! I put this image into "Landscape". I really don't think it quite fits but I don't know where else to put it. Perhaps I should have just two categories; one for flowers and another for everything else.

This was taken with my 15mm fisheye lens, hence the distortion. My girlfriend told me there is some slight symmetry in the image. I agree but it is subtle.

Rijksmuseum Gates


I took this image in front of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam while my girlfriend quickly ate our lunch before walking inside. The foreground is a portion of the metal fence that goes around the place. I think they help add depth to the image and a sense of being outside looking in. Is this really urban? Well that is the category I placed it under on this web site.

Image total: 59

Well sorta. I'm still trying to figure out how I'm going to make some of the things I'm planning on selling (besides just fine art prints). One of the things I'm excited about offering is greeting cards with my photography on front. I hope to have these ready by no later than early November. I plan on printing them myself and am having a horrible time trying to figure out how to truly center printing on paper using the Epson 2200. Another item I plan on offering is postcards. Any suggestions or requests on which images I use for the cards and postcards are most welcome.

Also in other news, I called a book POD printer earlier last week and was told they really can't help much with distribution. They said they could mail orders to my customers, assuming all orders where placed with me. Not at all what I had in mind. The customer rep was very helpful and suggested I used the book publisher owned by Amazon.com. I checked their web site out and they have a 60 page maximum limit on their full color books. 60 pages?!?! Where this number came from and why it is so low is beyond me. My book currently stands at around 73 pages. However, I thought the original printer I had in mind could still print the book and I'd have them ship all orders to Amazon's distribution centers. A grand idea especially since having a book on Amazon is one of my top priorities (they being the largest bookstore in the world). A grand idea until I saw what Amazon offers to direct publishers/authors = 45% of the cover price. Let's do some math. The book printer quoted me $22 or so Canadian dollars per book at 100 books. Let's assume that is also the price for just one book. 45% of $22 = $9.90. My goal has always been to sell the book at no more than $30. $30 * 45% = $13.5. That's still too low to cover my book printing costs. $45 * 45% = $20.25. Ok, even at $45 / book as the cover price I can not cover my costs. Well that idea is dead.

After realizing the cost problem, I almost gave up on the idea. That is until I ran across http://www.fonerbooks.com/2006_09_01_archive.html The owner / author of this blog reports on the self publishing industry (he is a self publisher as well) and provides a great deal of information. To make a long story short, I think it may still be possible to get my book out the door and into only bookstores using Lightning Source, Inc. LSI prints and distributes using the big names, most notably, Ingram. And because LSI does it all, they should be able to do it at a decent price. AND they just started doing full color printing. I have no idea what the quality is but I thought I'd give them a try. Just moments ago, I emailed them and asked for a color sample of their printing. Hopefully, they give me one and I can use it to judge the work. One problem with them is they don't offer anything close to 12x8" (8" along the binding), my ideal form factor. They do do 8.5x11. I wonder if its possible to rotate it so the dimensions are 11x8.5". More on all of this later.

I have a few more images to post, check the Photo Blog later this week.

My Canon 5D arrive yesterday evening. And I've been playing with it ever since.

I hope to get some macro shot taken tomorrow and hopefully I'll have some keepers. Of course, I will post some if I do have any to keep.

My turn around time should be so much less than before. I'm excited.

Last night I finally took the plunge and purchased a Canon 5D from B&H. It should arrive some time in the middle of the up coming week.

A desicion that has been the result of several weeks thinking about buying it. I decided to quit thinking about and just bought it. I'm sure I'll enjoy it.

I have had a few more people visit this site ever since I started advertising with Google, though no sales as of yet.

As of now I don't have the exact numbers but I can see that people have clicked on my ads and have usually visited at least 7 to 10 and sometimes more pages which is good. Eventually, I think someone will come along and actually buy a print.

I'm thinking that by November I should run a sale to help boost an actual sale and maybe even more. I was thinking about having a 25% off sale on all prints during the months of November and December and cash in on the Christmas buying season. I'm also thinking about making some postcards to serve as ads (I'll probably run some ads on Google to advertise the sale as well). I'm pretty sure at least one sale will come in during November and December.

Last night I posted 4 new photographs to my photo blog and this morning I made all 4 available for you to purchase and enjoy.

1 in Abstract
2 in Urban (new category)
1 in People (new category)

I need to come up with better fitting category names. I'm not too comfortable with the current categories I'm using. I'm not sure all of the photographs in the Abstract category are really abstract. However, I have no idea how else to classify them so I stuck them into Abstract.

Drop me a note and let me know what you think of them.

Total images for sale: 54

I would really like to get a total of 100 before the year ends. And I think after the book if finished, I believe I'll be able to meet that goal. I plan on offering some of the images in the book for sale as prints.

I finally got around to switching to another web hosting company. I had enough of Powweb's horrible service (they were bought by some other company, and they went around changing stuff. And in my opinion for the sake of changing things. Thus the headache. Plus, they remove features though they claim they didn't and they change the behavior of other features. It worked great before the buy out and it was time to leave).

Now I switched over to Bluehost.com. Feature-wise, they seem better than Powweb. I believe they are the same price. And from the look and feel of their site and the CEO's blog, they seemed customer driven which is what I want. So hopefully it turns out to be a good move.

Anyway, if you are having trouble reaching particular pages, please let me know. I'm trying to make the move as fast and trouble free as I can. Again, let me know if you notice any differences or see any problems. Thanks.

I have a few exciting developments I would like to share.

First of all, the book is coming along. At the moment I'm having some software troubles but I think its just a mere bump in the road but not at all blocking the road. I came up with an interesting angle for the written purportion that I believe is interesting and hopefully humorous. And it also goes along with the subject matter of the book which is good.

Randomly surfing the Internet, I came across an art related web site and noticed a forum. I read a few posts and one of them caught me eye. The post is an open call for a juried group show at an art gallery in Boston. The requirements are very open ended and the submission deadline is September 1st. So I decided to submit some of my work. At the moment I'm trying to decide which 5 photographs I want to submit. I'll be sure to give more details as they come to me. The next stage is submission and then they pick people out of the pool. Those selected few then have their work exhibited in a show for I believe a month. And the artist collects %50 of anything sold. So hopefully I get picked. Even if I don't sale anything I still want to be exhibited as it increases my visibility and allows me to mention the exhibit in my resume or CV.

And now the 3rd thing to share. On 8/9 someone from a gallery in London, England emailed me concerning my work shown on this web site. She complemented me and invited me to post some of the work on the gallery's web site. The site doesn't sell any of the work but instead just exhibits it in order to increase exposure to emerging artists' work. So I it was a nice surprise because not only did she bother to write me and complement me but also I took the personal invite flattering. During this weekend I plan on registering and submitting some of my work for show. Once I do that, I'll post the URL to view my stuff as well as the gallery's home page.

Late Thursday night (technically in the early AM hours of Friday), I signed up to advertise on Google. I have 4 different ads running in their search results. I'm hoping to generate more traffic to this web site as it seems I get so few visitors.

At this point, I just want to see what happens after 1 month and then re-evaluate what I want to do next with Google. What is nice about advertising with them is I only pay for the ad if and only if someone clicks on it. So if the advertising campaign is a bust I haven't wasted any money which is nice.

Once the book is very close to being finished I plan on making 1 postcard that gives the recipient a percentage off the regular price of a 8x12 print to help promote the site as well as generate some sales. I also plan on making a 2nd postcard that will advertise the arrival of the book. Of course, I'll have the site's URL printed on it so in a sense it will serve as an ad for this site as well.

I'm also thinking about selling a collection of 4x6 prints for something like $20. Maybe 4 or 5 4x6 prints for $20. I'm not sure if it will be any 4 or 5 that I currently offer here or if I'll create the collection myself. $20 for a set may help promote the site and also entice others to buy something without forking over so much money. I should also print my URL and name on the back of each small print for advertising purposes.

Speaking of the book....its coming along. I'm almost finished with the clean up - about 20 or so to go. This morning Jess and I went through the rough draft and removed some images that we felt didn't belong (something like 25 images were removed). I think its for the best. I don't want images that do not contribute to the main theme nor do I want to make a long book in which most belief it to be too boring. I also worked on some of the text that I'll include in the book as well. I still believe I'll make my original deadline to be completely finished by mid / late September. I may even be able to print off test copies by mid-August.

I'm in the middle of cleaning the dust and scratches on the images for my up coming book as well as re-sizing and sharpening them. At this point, I believe I have around 150 or so images in the book. The book should be roughly 100 pages or so. I also have a rough draft completed with layout and all.

Again, I'm in the middle of cleaning each image to make sure they look their best. The color images are pretty easy as my scanning software uses Digital ICE to remove the scratches and dust from them. All is left is to ensure there is no film sprockets or borders left over (very small cropping) as well as the re-sizing and sharpening. The color images are pretty easy. I probably have about 1/3 of those finished. Just to get out of some of the repetition, I decided to switch over to the black and white image. Argh! The black and white images are a pain as Digital ICE (for whatever reason) does not work on them. Therefore, I'm left to do it my hand in Photoshop. Its very tedious to use the cloning tool and healing tool to go over each image. This is probably the 2nd most time consuming aspect of the project (1st place going to actually taking the images - about 1 year). Eventually, I'll be finished.

During my other periods of free time, I'm going over the rough draft and jotting down corrections, ideas, etc. to the text I have written out. I'm trying to figure out how much of a introduction I should have. Also I have to proofread and edit the captions for each image.

I'm using Blurb.com's BookSmart software to do the layout. I decided to use small 400 pixel (in the longest dimension) images to design the layout. I figure the smaller the better so it goes quickly. I would assume that if I used the original TIFF files the software would be soooo slow since each image is roughly 120 MB in size. A few hundred kB files seem easy to handle just to do the layout and text. Then I'll go back and replace the 400 pixel images with the real deal (Blurb makes you use JPEGs, no TIFFs, and all must be in RGB, no Grayscale images).

Also, I changed my mind about who I'll test run. Due to the page count of the book, I'm dropping SharedInk.com from my list which leaves Lulu.com and Blurb.com. At 100 pages the book will cost me around $38 from Blurb and of course Lulu will be much cheaper. However, I do plan to use SharedInk.com as I'm interested in seeing how good their quality really is; perhaps for a portfolio or something. The idea I have is to use Blurb for a 1st edition that will be limited to probably around 50 copies, assuming the quality is good. Then I'll sell them around $50 and autograph each one. Then I'll make a 2nd edition, close to the layout of the 1st edition as much as I can and use the same content, with Lulu and actually sell this edition in bookstores such as Amazon.com, Borders.com, etc. (ISBN number and all). I hope to sell the 2nd edition for around $25. From the reviews I've read on Lulu's forums from other photographers it seems like the print quality of color and black & white photographs isn't the greatest which is why I want to make two different editions / versions. However, I hope the quality isn't completely horrible but instead acceptable to most people for them to enjoy. Using the Lulu.com edition, I'll make a PDF (I have to submitted the manuscript in PDF form for them) and make a portion of it on my web site for people to preview before they buy.

This is all very exciting and I really hope both editions come out great. We'll see.

In other news I finally received the final versions of my business cards. I made two different versions. Each one has a different portion of one my images available for sale here on johnlarsonphoto.com on them. I designed them to be not only business cards but also advertisements of my work.

I worked on my project quite a bit yesterday (Sunday) while I was at work. I decided to go there as the building is air conditioned (I was actually comfortable all day...then I had to come home). I hung out there working on it from about 10am to around 7pm.

I still need to scan several more rolls of film before I have all the images I want to use. Once that is done I need to clean them up, color correct them, and then re-size them. Then I just need to put them into the templates each printing service has and I'm done. I've got most of my text already written.

Also, I've decided to do just 3 test runs. 1 each using Lulu.com, Blurb.com, and SharedInk.com. I've been told that the books from SharedInk.com costs a little more, but you get what you pay for in terms of print quality. And I thought that if Lulu.com is accepted to most people's eyes, I'll use them. The idea as it stands is to use them to print and publish a second edition as a real book (ISBN number and all) and use either Blurb.com or SharedInk.com to print a limited 1st edition (and maybe I'll sign each one) and sell them. And because the costs will be different, the price of the two editions will be set accordingly. I'll target late August, early September as my deadline to finished with each test run in my hand. Then maybe mid to late September as the target to be totally finished with the final editions in hand. Then if I do happen to get the book into bookstores, maybe mid to late October for a wider distribution. I hope to honor these dates though it would be very nice to come to each one earlier than expected.

Once I've progressed, I'll fill ya in with what I've done as well as any problems that may have risen.

I just remembered I still need to fill in and mail my state sales tax forms and they are due no later than the 31st of July. Maybe I'll have time during work this week. I can't imagine them taking too much of my time.

In case anyone was wondering why I haven't posted much lately.....it's way too hot.

The only time I turn my computer on is late at night when it cools off to the mid 70s (again too hot for the night). And believe me I would love to post more often but until the heat cools down it will be once in a great while. I wish it would cool off as I would like to scan a bunch of black and white negatives. Thankfully, there is suppose to be some relief in sight starting Monday and it will finally become comfortable by Wednesday.

In other news....I got a new computer from work which is nice as it is much faster and has more RAM. And yeah in case you didn't know I do have a day job. Anyway, I set it up Friday night and in doing so I broke a piece of plastic off a SATA hard drive so now I can't use it. Hopefully someone at work can help me at least retrieve the data. But what sucks is I just bought it and now I'll have to buy another one. However, I am enjoying the new computer as it opens Photoshop and my images so much faster. If only it wasn't so hot.

I'm in the middle of finishing a project I've been working on for about a year now. During that time I've been taking images for it and now that I have probably well over 200 to choose from I'm trying to finish it up. I want to place a chosen few into a book to show them off. For some reason making a book really appeals to me. So I'm thinking about actually getting this book published through a service such as Lulu.com or Blurb.com and then try to sell it in online bookstores as well as this site. However, I've heard mixed reviews about the color printing by Lulu and I've read they contract different printers which means inconsistent printing which scares me. Blurb.com is too new to find any reviews from other photographers. The other choice is to use photo album print services such as Shutterfly.com and SharedInk.com as I don't want to fork over an upfront cost to publish the book. I've read that SharedInk.com is wonderful in an article from a nature photographer web site. I figure that since the article appeared on such a site, its probably a pretty good service. So I think I'm going to do 4 test runs before I select one and then decide. The problem with SharedInk.com and Shutterfly is I don't believe I can have them print a book I want sold in other stores. However, one idea I have is to make my book with the ISBN number and bar code as a picture, upload it, and then have them print it. We'll see and I'll keep ya posted. Either way I would like to do a test run of each four services to evaluate which one I like. If Lulu is acceptable, would really like to go with them.

Just added my 50th photograph for sale. Its entitled, "Rusty Joints". Find it in the gallery to purchase a print or go to the photo blog for some background info.

I originally told myself that the last 2 weeks of my vacation would be devoted to my photography (which includes, shooting, scanning, editing, and posting pages on my site, etc.). And today and yesterday I told myself I'd get out and shoot a few rolls. However, each morning I talk myself into staying inside and scanning instead. I've got 21 rolls of slides to go through that I shot during my trip to Europe. I really want to get that chore out of the way before I do anything else and the more I shot before this is finished the more back logged I am. As of right now I've got all of the rolls sorted into what I want to keep and am currently scanning roll 16 of 21.

Also, I've added another photograph from archive to the photo blog as well as made it available for sale as a print (and that makes 49 total images). Enjoy.

I'm slowly working on some advertising for this site and my photography. I've got a few ideas (business cards for sure, maybe postcards, and stickers). I have found a few printers online that seem ok. So maybe before July is over I'll have some business cards and perhaps some other stuff. My girlfriend gave me an idea with the stickers that she found in a fictional book. The idea has to have been to death but it seems like a great way to get my name and URL out there.

I'm also thinking about making some promo goods to sale and/or give away to advertise my site. As of now I'm thinking about decks of poker cards, postcards, collections of 4x6 or 5x7 prints, etc. I doubt I'll be able to make much off these goods but the main point is promo/advertising.

3 more image up and available for sale. All three are also on my photo blog. And neither is a photograph of a flower. Although I enjoy taking macro shots of flowers, I'm happy to finally see other photographs up on my site.

My plan for the photo blog was to make available for sale each and every image I post on the blog. However, Sushi View will not be made for sale at this time. Instead I'm seeing I can use it for some other project. Eventually, I'll make it for sale just not at this time.

Anyway, 2 more brings the total of photographic prints available for sale to 48.

After looking at a few people's photo blogs I've decided to jump on the bandwagon.

Notice the addition to the sidebar on the right, "Photo Blog" (just under "Blog - News). The Photo Blog will contain my photographs as well my thoughts and maybe I can get others to comment on them as well which would be cool and most welcome. And Blog - News will continue as it has - just discussion on my photography in general as well as photography business related information from me.

I'm planning on adding images of mine I like on the blog. There may be a theme from time to time for a post or two but over all no real theme. This should give me a chance to show off some images of mine that I think is cool in some way but I don't feel good enough to sell as fine art or I may want to use it in a book or something. Who knows. If I get some good feedback on an image I don't feel is good enough maybe that will change my mind and I'll sell prints of it.

I removed all my subdomains (stock.johnlarsonphoto.com and fineart.johnlarsonphoto.com) because I've decided to make johnlarsonphoto.com just for fine art photography as well as photography business talk. I'll use Alamy for my stock side of my business. I did think about a separate domain just for the stock photography but then I realized that Alamy will probably do a better job of selling my images than I could. Plus it means less work and more attention devoted to other things. I got that going for me which is nice ;)

A month or two ago I took several photographs of an orchid I purchased (my first). The 7 additional photographs I just added are the result.

Please tell me what you think of them and of course enjoy.

I got back home from Europe Wednesday night. What a fun vacation.

My girlfriend never actually went to Helsinki as planned but instead went back to Amsterdam for a 2nd visit during the time we originally planned to go to Finland.

Anyway, I'm back and ready to take orders.

Check out http://dart.fine-art.com/crit/CritMessageList.asp?intArtID=102652&fromCrit=y

Someone on d'ART commented on one of my photographs ("Drive Too Fast"). Hey, feedback!

Not only did one of my photographs get noticed, but it also received favorable words.

I'm on vacation in Europe for three weeks and I will not be able to fulfill orders during this time. However, you are most welcome making an order. Once I return I will do my best to fulfill any out standing orders during my absence.

VACATION TIME: June 7 through and including June 28th.

See ya in three weeks.

Of all the annoyances of this web site for me by far is the fact that this site looks completely different across platforms and across web browsers.

The site looks pretty darn good on OS 10 using Safari. It looked almost just as good using Firefox for OS 10, except that the colors on the images were a bit off. I don't understand how that can be since each image has the same ICC color profile. I would expect it would look exactly the same if I have both browsers open on the same machine and same monitor. I like the colors on Safari as the images look the same in Safari as in Photoshop. No so in Firefox.

The other problem is IE for Windows renders the pages a little different (the colors are similar to Firefox). All of the text is smashed against each other. I believe I have this finally addressed thanks to help on Realmac Software's forums. I removed the line in my theme's styles.css file that handles letter spacing. Its very odd that letter spacing addresses IE properly handling line breaks. And because of the removal of this line in my code, the change affects all browsers and platform at the expense of ease of reading the text. However, the pages should be a little smaller which I like.

You would think these sorts of things would be addressed in standards and hopefully everyone implements the standards in their products. However, I think some are choosing to ignore some of the standard and some are interrupting the standard in their own way. I'm sure many many people have written and complained plenty on this issue way before I came along.

One project I've been trying to do is mounting a picture on the wall but with no frame. So far I have tried placing a montage (actually its several 4x6 pieces of paper that fit together to form one large black and white image) on the wall using spray adhesive and mat board. Eh, its ok. I really don't like the spray adhesive as its difficult to control and so I ended up with several images coming off the mat board on the corners and edges. This weekend I tried to fix it but I think I made matters worse.

I've come across other ideas to do with. Two are wet mounting and dry mounting. Wet mounting is what I believe is what I did with the spray adhesive and dry mounting using adhesive sheets that are pressed against a back and the print. I would have to have someone else do this and from what I've read its not cheap but you get what you pay for. This would be something I may do on a really large image (it would be so cool to have a 4 foot by 6 foot image hanging on a wall in my apartment; something I want to have some day).

Anyway, I ran across a art supply store on the net that sells adhesive sheets that do not need pressure for them to work. I think when I get back from my vacation in late June I will try this idea using a piece of thick foamcore. I'll report the results soon afterwards. The other idea is to use two pieces of mat (one as the backing and the other as the cut out front), tape the print to the backing, tape the two pieces together and hang that to the wall. This is another thing I want to try as well. However, I still think I will enjoy the frameless/matless look more. I've seen this look in movies and I really enjoy it. Also the people that process my film have several very large images on their walls in this manner.

Do you know of a cheap and easy way to do this? If so, please email me and let me know more.

Recently, I became a member of d'ART. Since then I have placed 24 of my images that are found on my web site on that site. I'm trying to make my images more visible and hopes I increase the chances of a sale (I've yet to have one).

d'ART is basically an art marketplace serving more than just photography. Visit my images at fine-art.com/jclphoto I placed most of the images at $100 (12"x18") and a few at $50 (8"x12"). I thought if someone was interested in a piece but didn't want to pay $100 they may notice that I sell others at $50 and they'd either inquire or visit my actual web site.

I'm finally finished with the majority of the changes on the site and I have 39 images up and ready. 39 images to choose from. 39 images to view and enjoy. Photographs of my new Orchid will be up soon.

I need to update my Google Base account with the new images (and update the old entries).

And on an unrelated note (a feature of RapidWeaver):

Today in History:
05/12 Pink Floyd performs the first quadrophonic concert, 1977

Have spent some considerable time not only adding more images to this site but also making some significant changes to the site itself.

Major Changes:
1. I split the site in half; stock and fine art photography. Why? Hopefully to better separate the products and thus get interested people where they want to go with the least amount of hassle. If someone is interested in my fine art, then the site will direct them accordingly and won't be bothered with licensing details as before. And if someone wants to see if I have an image that fits there needs they will directed into the stock photography part of the site. Going to www.johnlaronphoto.com will allow you to go to either. Visitors will be presented with the option of clicking entering the fine art photography site or rather the stock photography site.

Fine art => fineart.johnlarsonphoto.com
Stock Photography => stock.johnlarsonphoto.com

I did have the idea of completely separating the two in their own domains instead of just sub-domains. And I still may do this. I want to first see how the current design works first.

2. I redesigned the image pages. Why? Since I removed the stock related information from the fine art pages and moved it over to its own sub-domain, I no longer needed it with the fine art pages. Plus I really do enjoy the smaller pages; less is good. No need to read the whole long page just to find more information on the photograph.

3. I added categories to the fine art site. Why? I think it has improved navigation. If I end up with over 200 images here, I don't think people will go through all of them just to see a few here and there that they are interested in.

4. I added a small bio of myself and a small paragraphs about my fine art photography. Why? Hopefully, people will connect with my work as well as with myself more than before. People, myself included, seem to want to know more about the "behind the scenes" of stuff they enjoy or are interested in.

There are a few minor changes here and there as well but too many to mention and discuss. Check out the web site for yourself and notice the changes. And while your are at it, buy a print!

As I have mentioned in a previous post, I bought some software that will hopefully improve presenting my stock photography. Check out stock.johnlarsonphoto.com. I don't have any images up as of yet but you can take a sneak peak.

Tell me what you think of the changes. Any ideas where I can still improve? Let me know.

Some time in early April, I joined Google's Analytics service in order to see web traffic statistics, trends, etc.

It reports my web site has gotten 223 visits (91.48% have been new visitors) to my web site and 941 pageviews. Granted that doesn't seem like a huge number compared to more popular web sites but I see that has a huge boost from my previous statistics. I think the majority of the traffic came from me adding this site to Realmac Software's site showcase. Another big source (though not as large) has been google.com. That means that adding my site map and adding my images to base.google.com has payed off in traffic. The next step of course is getting people to purchase a print. I think the key word is "patience". And I do believe it will happen.

Interestingly, my web hosting's web stats show I had 329 unique visitors. I'm assuming the difference is due to the fact I didn't join Google Analytics before the month of April but some time in the early part of the month. Also, that same source claims I had 169.24 MB in traffic.

Today is a double post!!!!

I just wanted to say to anyone actually visitng *and* reading my blog that I welcome and encourage you to email me. Let me know what you think of my work, what you don't like, what I could do differently, complain, praise, or just to say hi. Whatever it may be, I would enjoy hearing from you.

Contact me by filling out my contact form and I will email you back (I promise).

Just an update of what I've been doing...

Its been amount 12 days since I added this web site to Realmac Software's RapidWeaver Showcase and this web site has gotten close to 200 hits from that source alone (by far the most the site has received from any referral site and by far the most hits the site has received in a month). At the beginning of May, I report the actual numbers.

Also, none of my auctions on eBay received any bids or sold. However, two auctions did get in someone's watch list. I'm not too discourage. I only put up 12 (probably should have put far more), I'm new; no one has really heard of me; and I'm sure some of the selling on eBay has some luck. Its cool, I'll try again some time later.

At this point, I'm thinking the web site should be either split into two basic sections (Fine Art Prints and Stock Photography) or put only fine art here and get another domain for my stock photography. I haven't decided and one way to handle this is to go with the first idea and when the business grows, use the 2nd idea.