With the earth as our witness

Dear all,

The year’s end is always a busy time, reviewing, reporting, planning, … On top of that I’ve just been out for a week of non photography related work to Zambia, hence the fact I’ve not been in a position to stick to my intention to come up with a post per week.

That doesn’t mean I havn’t been busy with my photography, on the contrary. I sold off my old and trusted 350D (now that my second hand 5D arrived, the 350 became superfluous, more about the 5D in one of my next posts). I’ve been uploading pictures to the Wild Eye gallery, where 2 shots are doing really well, and some others following closely. I’ve been exchanging a bit about the site and based on that I decided to minimize the number of categories in the portolio’s to allow for more easy viewing of our pictures, after all, that is what this site is all about. I’ve also been developing my 500px portfolio in an attempt to create some more visibility for my work.

Talking about 500px, I started to upload some pictures now 3 weeks ago. At first I thought you would get traffic and votes for your pictures straight away, yet that is not at all the case. Didn’t get how the others actually managed to get so much traffic. What I learned from it is that you should actually not start with your best pictures, yet first you should put some of your work up, enough to create interest, then you have to start commenting on people’s work and start following some of the people whose work you like. By doing so, people will also watch your work and start following you, and that is what you need. Once you have some followers, you can add more work, your followers will then see your pictures as soon as you post them, and if they like them, your picture will make it to the upcoming and favorite category. Quick votes, shortly after your upload are key in the 500px scoring algorithm, explained here.

Here’s my most appreciated picture from 500px.

Canon 350D, Canon 75-300 @ 150mm, 1/100, f/5.6, ISO 1600

And that actually brings me to what I originally wanted to write about, this stunning place, Mt Nyiragongo, on the rim of which I proposed Sietske to marry me, with Mother Earth as our witness, … yet that will now become another story.

Canon 350D, Canon 18-55 @ 18mm, 1/250, f/10, ISO 400

And before I forget, most importantly, last WE, Sietske’s mom was visiting and we were out along Lake Naivasha and in Lake Nakuru NP. Pictures will follow soon.

All the best,

Guy