yep, it's like I've been away on another planet...

Metal sculpture by Erik Bang set in a world created by, and photographed by, Warren Van Nest (Dec 23, 2013) - all rights reserved.

Wishing all of my blog readers a safe and happy holiday season!

Wow, I haven't posted to my blog since October...  bad blogger, bad.  I will try to post more frequently going forward if there is interest.

The metal sculpture "5 x 10^7 Light Years Away" in my photo was created by the artist Erik Bang!!!  I won it in a recent silent auction fundraiser and immediately started pondering the possibilities of taking a photograph of the two creatures in their "native" habitat.

Last night I took over my kitchen counter to create a little "home world" set using some orange sand, a cloth backdrop, and a gelled off-camera flash to the left.  I really like the way the shot came out and how the colors provided contrast to make Erik's cool work stand out. As is the case with creatures from another world, proper atmosphere is everything!  [click picture for larger image]

One of the challenges of sharing photos is where to share them given limited time...  Personal Blog, Facebook, Smugmug, Flickr, etc, etc.  Each has a different set and number of followers.  For event photography, I find that the biggest audience of people interested in the images is on Facebook, where folks like to tag images of themselves to share with friends as well as to see and share images of events they attended.

Even a so-so quality event image that would get zero interest on my blog may get a number of comments and an even larger number of "likes" and "shares" on Facebook.  It's really quite fun and fascinating to see the differences in different social media.  But it is also sometimes a bit frustrating since to try to reach everyone that is following you, it may take posting an image in four or five different places, and that's not realistic.

Conversely, some of my favorite images may get little or no interest in the Facebook world due to the algorithms that Facebook uses to determine who sees what postings.  The same image posted on my blog may be actually seen and be of interest to folks.  What I really like about posting images on blogs is that I can tie together multiple images with text and provide more information than to which the Facebook environment lends itself.  Blogs are also off the chart better for providing relevant web links and context.   No perfect solution.  But challenges are fun.  :-)

Another difference between Facebook and Blogs is that once posted on Facebook the photo tends to quickly get "lost" over time because Facebook tends to focus on the here and now.  Blog posts tend to "keep" better and are often found by folks doing Google searches on subjects, or researching a subject, place, or event.

I'm still missing Google Reader by the way, I have yet to find a reader that I've adjusted to that presents your blogs the way I like to read blogs...  My visits to a number of my favorite blogs have been a bit hit or miss due to that, but I will be back to read your blogs, miss them!

Best wishes & Happy New Year!

-- Warren