In a nutshell the difference between SEO and spam is who the site is aimed at and whether the site shows the same information to users and search engines.
If your SEO strategy focuses on delivering a good user experience as well as helping the search engines find your page and the information it contains you should be safe.
If you only focus on the search engines at the expense of your users then you're venturing into spam territory.
One of the biggest challenges in optimising a photography website for google (or any other search engine) comes in creating quality on page content that search engines can read. Unlike you and I google's spiders don't see the internet with the human eye. They read it the same way that a computer reads it, as a set of instructions.
Unfortunately this means that google doesn't read your photo of a beautiful sunset as a photo of a beautiful sunset. Instead it reads the name of the file that contains the beautiful sunset, the written information on the rest of the page, and any other code that is built into your website. As such if you want your photography website to be found on google it isn't enough to load your page up with plenty of lovely photos, you must also load it up with plenty of words describing those lovely photos.
Filenames/Image Titles
At the simplest (and most overlooked level) you can rename your photo files (the .jpegs, .pngs or whatever you're using) to reflect their content. Instead of having a file called DSC00042.jpg use a file called Sunset.jpg. You can use underscores or dashes to break-up the words in your image file titles as well. For example you might like to call your file Auckland-Sunset.jpg if your photo shows a sunset in Auckland.
Alt Tags
The next level is the alt tag. the Alt tag is what is displayed to the user if the image cannot be displayed. Here you can include a description of what the photo is of. For example you might like to say something like "A golden sunset in Auckland New Zealand". As a side note this is also what will be read out to vision impaired people who visit your website.
Image Captions and On page text
With those out of the way we break into what people typically think of when you say on page content: image captions and on page text. Captions are spatially linked to images and this can be reflected in certain coding languages. It is likely that google will use image captions to identify what an image might be of for indexing in image search. As such image captions should describe the content of the image they are closest to. You may like to reword your alt tag and use it here.
On page text is less directly related to individual images. It is the written content on the page and often provides information related to some underlying theme between the photos on the page. For example if I post a gallery of property photography images like this one I include information about the property itself while mentioning that I am available for real estate photography in Auckland. In that body of text I signal to google and other search engines that the content on that page relates to property photography in Auckland increasing the odds of getting listed in google search for relevant search queries.
You may also notice that there are a few keywords on those pages. Those keywords are there because those are the words that I am interested in ranking for (property photography, real estate photography, and Auckland). You may also notice that those words are mentioned as naturally as possible. While they may be repeated from time to time I am not trying to ram them down google's throat. Why not? If google wants words and I know which ones I want to feed it surely more relevant food would be better right?
Wrong.
Remember that google is trying to simulate human search using computer algorithms. In order to do this they pay a lot of very clever people a lot of money to teach google to read like people do. If you stuff your page too full of keywords google will pick up on this now or in the future. Watch the Matt Cutts Google Webmaster Help video below for a clearer explanation.
Comments
The final option is comments. One of the key benefits of comments are that they can be generated by other people. As such you are essentially outsourcing your SEO work. One of the key downsides is that they are generated by other people and can actually do nothing for or damage your SEO if implemented and moderated incorrectly.
Recall that google can only read what is written on the page itself. This is important if you are using an external method of generating and collecting comments. The Facebook comment box being the clearest example. If google is unable to see the comments they might as well not exist for SEO purposes.
Now also recall that google does read what is on the page and uses it to decide what your page is about. If you end up collecting a lot of comments that don't add to your page's content or accurately reflect or describe what is on the page they might as well not be there. To make matters worse if you get a lot of irrelevant comments than can lead google to believe that your page is less about what it would have thought your site was about than if the comments weren't there. For this reason it is good to be able to moderate your comments. This allows you to control the quality of the content that users are supplying and also helps stop any spam getting through.
The Standard on Page SEO tips
Beyond this the standard on-page SEO tips still hold true. Use page titles and headings sensibly. Use them to highlight your keywords but avoid using them for spam. Use the meta description to suggest a relevant snippet to google. While google might not use it many other search engines will and google will check it out in the same way that it looks at your page content, page titles, headings etc. Meta Keywords on the other hand are less useful for google but may still be useful for other search engines.
Quality Content
Finally (but arguably most importantly) focus on producing quality content. If you produce content that people will find useful they are likely to share it. If they share it they are likely to do so by linking to it. If they link to it someone has just created a backlink for you and backlinks are what will really bring google's spiders to your site. In terms of quality content for photography you may like to consider the following options
How to articles
Reviews
Descriptive galleries of your personal work
Blog posts detailing some aspect of your business (blogging of images from individual weddings is a popular example)
Clear information for your clients (such as details around pricing - an often overlooked element)
If you aim for qaulity content the keywords should come fairly naturally meaning you won't need to worry about sending your content into spam land.
The Next Step
The next step is off page SEO. This revolves primarily around link building and can apply to different pages on your own website as well as pages built by other people. In most cases you will get the most bang for your buck by targetting inbound links from other people's pages. Off page SEO will be covered in more detail in a future post.
Digital Art is the art of creating photos that cannot be taken with a camera - the creation of impossible photos.
Erik Johannsen is interested in what you can do with a photograph after the shutter button is pressed. He felt that traditional photography was limited to essentially being in the right place at the right time. He felt that anyone could do that and he wanted to do more (arguably though anyone can do what he does as well, it will just involve more work in post than 'simply' taking a photograph).
So why not abandon photography completely and pick up a paintbrush instead? Photography portrays a level of realism that other mediums do not offer, or at least do not offer as readily. It is the subversion and manipulation of this realism that Johannsen enjoys and requires in his art.
Successful subversion primarily requires planning - knowing what you want the end product to look like before you begin so that you can collect the pieces necessary to complete the puzzle. Key considerations include perspective, lighting, colour, contrast, brightness, and how you will make the end product appear as a seamless solitary image despite the fact that it's made of many different images.
Nikon D800 In the Studio with Rob Van Petten from Rob Van Petten on Vimeo.
The Job of a fashion photographer is usually to sell apparel or personal care or jewellery or accessories BUT you're selling an item.
So, to sell an item, you have to engage an audience.
You usually flip a page in a magazine and you come upon a fashion photograph and that has to last a long time. You have to capture the audience's attention so to do that you create a scenario.
You have the suggestion of something going on. some action outside of the frame or some play of pressure on the model or the actor or the actress and you could create the sensation of other activities, and you just happen to catch one slice of it.
So there is motion involved and there is action and there is mood.
When a fashion photograph totally works it's because of the mood created by the lighting merges with the moment of the action and that creates a believable moment. The motion releases emotion that the audience can relate to. That makes a successful photograph.
The D800 really applies in beauty shooting and that is where there has been a challenge from medium format cameras. In a studio where people expect to have cosmetic details or close-ups on hair or faces in personal care shots. That's where sometimes there's a question of whether or not a dSLR is going to be a high enough quality camera. This camera (the Nikon D800) will definitely satisfy those expectations.
What's different about being a fashion photographer is that it's more about your own fantasies.
You shoot tests and you shoot your own concepts and you work up ideas on your own and then people begin to buy that style from you.
Your inspirations become part of their planning and vision for the future.
You are sort of a trend forecaster for a company.
You really lead your clients to a new vision of what their company can offer for the next season.
I think most photographers want to be identified as a brand.
You develop a look that's really from your own fantasy and your own heart.
It's your own personal style.
Mine just happened to be this light driven, high-tech, very saturated colour, near future style.
That became my identity.
I shoot that on my own and much of that gets bought as concepts for advertising work and fashion work
After a long wait the successor to the D700 (in name at least) has introduced itself. When it arrives in the hands of photographers in late March (or early April for the D800e) the camera will boast 36MP living up to its tagline "I am the big picture".
Interestingly the D800 is competing in a different area to that which the D700 targetted at its release. While the D700 shone in low light situations and was the first affordable full frame dSLR the D800 has added broadcast quality video to the equation while blowing the megapixel count of existing Nikon dSLRs out of the water.
The enhanced MP count has been a cause for concern for some people who have been paying attention to the rumour mill. The overall feeling is that the increase in MP will come at the cost of image quality through increased noise and the ability of the camera's sensor to out resolve lenses that are placed in front of it. There is also concern over the size of the RAW files that such a sensor would be likely to generate.
While we will need to await testing to determine whether or not these issues have materialised it is my belief that the concerns around noise have been blown out of proportion. While the D800 will have a higher pixel density leading to more opportunities for noise to break through if the same image were captured on the D800 and a D700 and both images were produced at 12MP it is likely that the D800 would produce the better file. Always remember that Noise Nazis are Pixel Peepers. Their concerns occur at the smallest visible level of the file. What we should care about with noise is the smallest visible level of the print.
Skip to 9:00 for the most practical/applicable part of the video.
If you know everything about a person's external environment you can only predict 10% of their happiness
The absence of disease is not health
Happiness doesn't come from success, success can come from happiness.
When you are happy all business outcomes improve.
