Photography, as a vision within a dream seems to captivate us with endless visual possibilities A World of inspiration awaits and stands still with but a click of a button Enabling a special moment in time to be preserved Eloquently rendered for posterity within its own special canvas
The Art that is Photography has been with us for many a year now Every new picture has not One scene not altogether like another Each somehow special Each it's own treasure
From a personal point of view one of my goals with this web site is to connect some dots linking to and from various other web sites I have found to be especially helpful or otherwise interesting as relates to photography. There are of course a multitude of them and I'm sure the list grows daily. I'm an over the road driver and beginning early '06 decided to incorporate my interest in nature and photography and from this merger have looked for various interesting ways to share some of what I take while out on the road, including some that can be profitable,such as creating gift items using your own photo's. Click here if you wish to view that section now.
My original over the road photographic effort's began with a fairly simple Intel web cam. The year was '03. In '06 and after having formed a collection of very scenic photographs I decided to acquire a much better camera. That was to be a Konica MInolta Dimage Z6. The zoom ability alone made the purchase worthwhile. The over all clarity and even brightness this camera achieved amazes me still to this day. As photo related areas of the web have progressed and photo software has become more readily available, so too has my interest in working with photography. In January of '08 I moved up another notch and currently use a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ50. In considering a higher level camera, with more mega pixels being the prime goal I relied on reviews from other users of the camera written at Amazon.com. I have made many purchases with these folks and have always found online shopping there to be straightforward and very reliable. The many reviews there for this camera have easily proved themselves out in my opinion. Have a look at my Panasonic section below and click either camera displayed there to read all the camera details and reviews at Amazon.com. I have listed certain favorite cameras and equipment at my Amazon.com store. Click this link to view photography related items I have listed there.
Early onI decided to look for a good photography group to join only to encounter more stipulations concerning posts and image requirements than I was prepared to oblige myself to. As I was already a member of Yahoo at the time I decided to start an Amateur Photography Group there and it's membership continues to grow. New members are always welcome, so feel free to check it out by following this link. Another website I have joined and have found to be interesting in the Gaia community. This web site is huge and offers something for everyone. Their primary focus is to allow you a kind of maximum freedom of expression at your own area and in any number of groups you may decide to join in later as well. You have a lot of posting options there and can allow comments on any blogs you create there and in your personal photo albums as well. For anyone wishing for a little more control of their online experience Gaia.com may be your ticket. Visit my page there by clicking here.
So where has your camera taken you lately? As for me ... I'm finding photo opportunities very often, at home, nearby communities and rural areas and sometimes post them at my online Gift Gallery at Zazzle.com as well as the Amateur Photography group
Managing to capture some rare enchanting scene is it's own reward and sharing your photographic adventures with family and friends helps to enhance each memory, even further. But have you examined your pictures closely? Close enough that if they were scrambled into pieces such as a Jig saw puzzle you could piece them back together. Well hopefully you will never need to. Still if you enjoy solving Jig saw puzzles you may want to try putting some of the pictures I have taken in various parts of the Country back together again. Just for fun! Using the services of The Jig zone, a Jig saw players online paradise. I have currently uploaded 101 photographs that can be played on your computer for free. Visit my Jig saw players page by clicking here to view an example puzzle and learn more about the Zig zone.
You may also wish to visit my Web masters page for information concerning various software programs I used to build this website.
Use of images found on this web site are my personal property, however certain images may be used for personal use. Please follow this link for details.
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If I were asked to suggest a good user friendly photo related online contest to my best friend my suggestion would be the same to them as it is to you.
Competico offers free membership and a personal profile area so you can share some of what interest you. From the main page all on going competitions are easily viewable, making choosing one to enter a simple task. With every visit I have made there, their have always been more than 5 separate competitions currently on going. Often several more. Clicking on the current contest Title name will bring up a special screen showing the entries for that particular contest. At a glance you can have a look at the other entries. Competico also accepts suggestions from members for competitions. Follow any of the links just below and experience the best online photography contest.
Informative Camera tips and techniques as offered from various Professionals and Amateur Photographers. Various Photography videos are viewable in the YouTube viewer shown below. Click the Menu button to locate additional videos and click any of those shown to view that particular video.
Of the various possibilities for doing something interesting with your photos and or personal artwork one more of these is surely in creating assorted items, such as mouse pads, posters, various cards, steins, mugs, T-shirt's and much more and being able to offer these for sale via a web site. Zazzle.com offers such a possibility and makes it fairly easy to do with plenty of help available in the associate area and in other help sections via their web site. You do not need to have a professional photographers skills to sign up, acquire your own Zazzle Gallery and begin creating. Have a look at my Gallery for examples from various items I have made so far by following thislink to my Gallery at Zazzle.com. For a quick overview of Zazzle.com products visit this page.
if you have comtemplated going beyond the usual with your photographic interest and are looking for ideas,you may find plenty at a website such asWaymarking.com. Their welcome message may put it best. "Waymarking.com will provide you with the tools to share and discover unique and interesting locations on the planet." If you have reached a point where you want to get out and about with camera in hand but have already photographed the local park, zoo and lake several times over, then looking through thecategories at Waymarking.com can offer a lot of photographic ideas for various subjects others are having an interest in from around the world. Presently there are 718 user-created waymark categories in the directory.
There are several ways to get started in using this web site for interesting photo ideas. For instance, having looked through the categories, let's say you wish to do a search for Waymakrks in your area. You can easily do such a search from the Home page, the Category page or from the Waymarks page as well. All have a search box, but you will need to select Waymark search on the search box control panel, as opposed to doing a category search, first and input a zip code or complete address. Doing so will bring up all, already established listings that have been posted. These can be from any or all of the categories already establised at the site. You don't need a membership to use this search feature. Once you have entered a zip code the search result page will show those Waymarks for that zip code and with-in a given mileage range. Look for Filter and you can change the milage range. The default appears to be one hundred miles of the center of the zip code entered. Should you decided to visit any of these Waymarks, you can with a free membership indicate on the web site, your visit there along with any photographs you may wish to post. On your profile page, each and every Waymark you visit and post on shows up as a running total. As an example of this, click this search I did for zip code # 67212. This zipcode represent's a section of Wichita Kansas and the search shows all listed Waymarks with-in a one hundred mile range.
Thus far what has been mentioned here has to do with getting ideas of what others consider to be of interest both in finding and often photographing as well and possibly following up with a visit yourself. In order to post a visit to an already established Waymark, several things are needed. One having a membership, (free) and longitude and latitude coordinates are often required to go along with your visit information. No problem if you have chossen a Waymark from those already listed as these will have the coordinates posted along with the other information. That information you can freely borrow from and add to your visit posting. Click here and visit a Waymark I posted as an example called the 1885 Frisco Wooden Water Tower. You will see where I have posted the coordinates as follows: N 37° 39.314 W 096° 31.953 That will work for posting purposes.
Assuming that you don't have a GPS unit and wish to visit a posted place you will of course need an address to head for based on the longitude and latitude coordinates offered. Taking the coordinates and entering them into a system to obtain an address is what's needed at this point. This is usually referred to as reverse Geo-coding. An excellent web site for this purpose is iTouchMap.com Of the several web sites I have had a look at iTouchMap.com makes this all fairly straightfoward and a breeze to do. Once you bring up the iTouchMap page scroll down the page and look on the right hand side where it says: Show Point from Latitude and Longitude. There are two sections here. Since coordinates tend to be more accurate when using Degrees Minutes Seconds I suggest placing any Way mark coordinates in the lowest entry box in that section. As an example for conversion purposes my numbers for the Frisco Wooden Tower as posted are as follows: N 37° 39.314 W 096° 31.953 To use the Degrees Minutes Seconds entry search box they would be entered in this manner:
Degrees Minutes Seconds Latitude: +37 39 3.14
Longitude: -096 31 9.53
Keys things to note are: Be sure the last 3 digits of both coordinates are entered with a period after the first number. Also replace N with a + sign and W with a - sign in front of the leading number. It took some trial and error on my part to get this figured out, but it works.
Where things become a bit more difficult is when you want to log something you have found that isn't already listed and you don't have a GPS unit to give you the longitude and latitude coordinates. Here is an example search I did for Ghost Towns using my zip code to see if anyone had found any in my area. I had to increase the search radius to 200 hundred miles to find 3. If I were to do a search for Ghost Towns using a web site such as Ghosttowns.com and more specifically for those in Kansas and found one, I might have a hard time getting good coordinates for posting purposes without some sort of GPS unit and therefore couldn't post about my unique discovery. Now I am not going to be trying to sell you a GPS unit here, but rather simply suggest that while considering the above mentioned categories can be fun and great for new photo ideas and interesting places to visit however making full use of the Waymarking web site for all your interest may not be a possibility without one.
In an attempt to offer a solution for some of those discoveries where you are able to get an actual address of the place you visit I offer a link to a web site called :GPS Visualizer.com. That link takes you to a specific page with-in the web site where you can Geocode an address. For those who have never tried this service look for the Geocode an address search box and place an address in it. Pressing the "Go" button brings up a page where you select the mapping system you wish your search to display on. Before pressing onward by using the select a Map function however, have a look at the information panel on the left hand side. There you will find actual longitude and latitude coordinates and confirmation of the address you already typed into the search box and other related information as well. Having noted these coordinates for posting purposes you are as set and ready as anyone with a GPS unit. To bring up a Map of your address simply make a map choice from among several and press that button once again. Here are some of the choices: Google Maps, Google Earth and Yahoo to name a few. I generally begin with Google Map and pressing the button brings up a Maped out page and is zoomable.
Have a look atWikipedia.com for a List of additional resources for obtaining geographic coordinates.
Of the many categories available at Waymarking.com one of the first that stood out to me was that of locating Murals, often painted on the side of buildings. They can be found in many other places as well. Occasionally when I photograph these I will upload my photographs and my written impression of the artwork involved. Care to have a look at my area at Waymarking.com, great just followthis link to my profile page there orclick here to go straight to a list of those Waymarks I have posted so far.
Let your imagination soar a little, you never know what else you may discover as your heading to a potential waymark site that may end up being that picture with a thousand words.
A simple web search for online photo contest should bring up plenty of photography contest. It does for me and from time to time I consider entering one. Often I find these to be somehow restricted in how you enter or it may be that hundred's of contestant's in a single contest make the idea of winning seem unlikely. Basically a contest web site in my opinion should convey a feeing of fun, even while reading the details. At this time one web site stand's out to me as having the best elements for an online contest and I believe offers a genuine possibility that you and I have a real chance to win one every now and again. Check them out and see if you don't also agree.
This site always appears to be active with a new contest beginning even as some about to close. Single photo entry fees may vary for individual contest. Of the many things I like about this web site is that they allow you a personal profile area. Another is the ability to suggest the theme of new contest. They also make it easy to find the latest Open Competitions. It's entirely possible to view other entries in the category you have chosen, which can help you know just what the competition looks like. It's one more way to have fun taking those photos.
In the area I plan to link to other web sites that offer something that may be of interest for those who are looking for something cool to do with photographs.
1) Myshot at the National Geographic web site. This is a special section of the NGC web site where they are allowing a free membership and with it the user may have their own web page. There you can create and share albums, puzzles, and games based on photos you upload. Two photos are selected for publication each month in the National Geographic magazine and 12 are published daily at ngm.com. Once you upload a photo, you can create a My Shot page. Check it out to learn more about what you can do with your photographs there.
The Photo Gallery link just below this Gallery information panel contains images taken beginning in '06. A Konica Minolta Dimage Z6 was used until January of '08. At that time I I upgraded my camera to a Panasonic DMC-FZ50.
All images in the Gallery were taken using the Panasonic DMC-FZ50 , other than those show in the Konica MInolta section, found from the Gallery Home page.
Some scenes that have several photos of the same area are grouped together and most of the rest are randomly added.
Many of the images in the Gallery are available as large size, high quality prints, viewable at my online Zazzle Gallery.
A few helpful hints on using the photo gallery. 1) While viewing any image clicking at the top on the name Photo Gallery will take you back to the gallery start page. 2) You can navigate from one image to another by either clicking any thumbnail image or by clicking either the left side or right side of any image you may be viewing.
Have a look at buttons near the top right. They can also click you forward and back as will clicking the various numbers representing images, however there is also a slide show capability available for viewing as many as you wish. Pressing the slide show button once activates the slide show and pressing once again stops it.
