Tag Archives: nature photography

Time for some reflection

Dear all,

A quick reflection on 2011. It’s been quite a year for us, both on a professional and a personal level.

At work, I’ve been suffering from the general malaise around development aid, creating all kinds of uncertainties within the organization, yet let me not bother you with that!

On a personal level, it was a big year, Sietske and myself got married and 2012 will bring us a baby nature lover 😉 so big things coming up.

2011 has also been the year I decided to do something with my photography in general and my wildlife and nature photography in particular, since that is the type of photography that makes my heart beat faster.

It all started with this blog/site: Pics from the Wild, the reason for developing it being explained in my first post, posted on 03/08 and featuring a heavily oversharpened picture of 3 waterbucks (talking of oversharpening, check out the latest Wild-Eye post on the 10 most common processing mistakes). Since that time, the site has gotten 12500 hits, or over 2500 hits per month, or 83 hits per day, I am quite happy with that.

In the wake of the site, I also developed a FB page, a Twitter account, a 500px portfolio and added pictures to the Wilde Eye photo gallery. Traffic on the facebook page is OK, with 46 followers since 05/11, on the other hand, I am quite disappointed with the level of interaction. To give an example, I posted some questions to which nobody responded. Is it because they have been asked before, because people just don’t care, or … I would love to hear from you what I can do to make it more interesting for you. The same goes for Twitter, the least satisfying way of sharing my work, I joined Twitter on November 9th, tweeted 137 times, follow 59 people and have 19 followers, not what I would call a great succes 😉 besides one interesting contact that might lead to a future cooperation. More about that later.

Then there is 500px, which I joined mid November and which has been quite satisfying till now, with some nice words and comments received, 39 followers and over 1700 views, this one being the most liked picture: Mother Earth.

One but last but not least there is some of my work on the Wild Eye gallery, with this being the most viewed picture. Once again, a big thanks to Gerry and the Wild Eye team for their support, the guest post and the first time somebody oficially referred to me as a wildlife photographer, thanks guys.

Finally and most importantly, I want to thank Sietske for the great times out there, getting the images we are sharing through all these fora, really excited about what the future is going to bring. 2012, here we come! And that being said, let me end with 2 images by Sietske.

Canon 450D, Sigma 18-200 f/3.5-6.3 @ 18mm, 1/800, f/16, ISO 200
Canon 450D, Sigma 18-200 f/3.5-6.3 @ 72mm, 1/400, f/13, ISO 200

Warm regards,

Guy

 

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