Tag Archives: Wild Eye

Connect

Hi everybody,

You may have noticed that over the last few weeks I have not been uploading an awful lot of my own work to this site and the related FaceBook page. And there is a reason for that. Apalled by the self centredness of many pages and accounts in the hunt for likes and follows, … I decided to contribute more to other sites and to share some more of other people’s work. One of these contributions was my contribution to Wild Eye’s weekly behind the frame post, which by the way generated a perfect example as per how not to provide feedback (yet more about that soon).  As I mentioned before, it’s all about giving and taking, a post that created some nice exchange in the recent past, coincidentally (or maybe not) with Marcelle Robbins whom also contributed to last week’s behind the frame post. Which brings me to another aspect, which has been raised many times before: it’s not about the amount of connections you have, yet about the quality of your connections, since those are the connections that give you the boost to keep on going.

Point is of course that all these interactions take time and that you have to weigh your time investment properly. For that reason it is important to have your social media linked. A great way of doing this from your FaceBook account is with Tradablebits. You may have noticed the new Twitter link and the RSS blog feed at the top of my FB page, great stuff and all for free, or at least, there are 4 aps you can install for free, well worth checking out.

I’ve also been creating a Google+ account, have contributed to several G+ themes (FYI today is African Tuesday and the shot in this post was my first contribution to that theme) and created a theme myself: Wild Kenya a visual ode to Kenya, it’s wildlife, landscapes and people and a way of sharing great shots from Kenya. More about Google+ in one of my next blog posts. All going well, the next one going live will be a guest post.

Canon 350D, 55mm, f/5.6, 1/800 ISO 200

And all that being said, in the near future I will keep on uploading stuff here, yet I will also work on trying to get some return on time investment, by adding an online shop to the site, creating a shutterstock account, trying to get some work to the newspapers (you may have noticed my cheetah shots in the Daily Mail), getting some nice business cards, …

And guess what: without it being the goal, giving back to the community by commenting on people’s posts and by sharing their work has actually earned me more likes and follows than I would have ever reached by just focusing on my own work, … think about it!

Warm regards,

Guy

 

Getting into the judges’ minds

Dear all,

If you follow Pics from the wild on FB, you will have noticed that I have been giving it a serious shot to guess the April Wild Eye Nature photography competition winner. You also may have noticed that I ‘failed’ miserably. Only 1 of my guesses was in the top 10 and none of them was in the top 3. I must say that I have seriously considered 5 of the other highly commended images, yet that the remaining 4 would, despite being great shots, never ever be in my top 10 (check out the winning images here). Does this mean the judges have it wrong, NO, does it mean my photographic eye is off, could be, yet I think not, does it mean the other entries sucked, not at all (check out all the April entries here), … It does mean though that your mood and personal experiences influence what you like at a certain point in time. Something that also goes for the judges, again portraying the difficulty in actually knowing what will catch their eye, since after all, that is what a competition is about. And that brings me back to an issue I’ve raised before, when entering shots into a competition, don’t stick to your own opinion, yet dare to go out of your comfort zone and ask for feedback from others, and dare to enter shots you’re not sure abot yourself!

Here’s one of my entries for this month, a potential winner? No idea, personally I like the shot, since I know hyraxes as being prone to disappearing in between the rocks, yet to somebody who has a rock outcrop in the back of his/her garden, inhabited by this species, this might not be special at all, … the only way to find out is by entering it 😉

Canon 350D, Canon 75-300 @ 130 mm, f/5.6, 1/1600, ISO 200

Finally and most importatly, I absolutely enjoyed going throught the images and analyzing what I liked and why. On top of that, I’ve been sharing some great images, and that in itself is what it is all about! That being said, if you have some spare time and you are prepared to be inspired, check the work of two clear front runners in the competition so far, and for obvious reasons: Isak Pretorious and Mark Dumbleton whom if I’m not mistaken both havn’t been absent from the top 10 since January.

Have a great week,

Guy