Web Site Design Plans

I have made my website into a catch all place for people to see what creative projects I have been working on. I originally wanted one site under my SquareSpace website. But SquareSpace has some limitations, such as adding video, but we can add audio with no problem. With video, you can only have a place card in its position and a link for the video. So I added a YouTube site under my name.

I also started a podcast that interviews normal everyday people and have them talk about their career and life. On SquareSpace it’s pretty easy to have an audio blog, but it’s a lot of work, setting up each post. I went with Anchor a website to host my audio podcast which has worked out wonderfully. Anchor has a connection with Wordpress to start a blog about my podcast.

Wordpress lets me set up a blog that is more automatic than Squarespace. It will post the podcast with a paltry amount of work. What I didn’t want is for people to go around the internet to find everything from me. After several attempts at coding and erasing, I think I found out how to link up both websites, my main website and my podcast blog. I asked the software engineers at Wordpress and they sent me instructions on how to do it. I plan to do work on that in the next few days.

Finally, my website for client based photography, like event photography, is with Zenfolio (VorlagoPhoto.Zenfolio.com) and it lets me take jobs, say a social party, post the photos on the web and then sell them to the people at the party. So far I’m thrilled with the setup, now I just need more clients and events to photograph.

Is it the best situation, where I have all things under one basket, but it all looks like it from the same person or company. My website presence is getting there, helping me to get closer to my goal of what to do after I retire from the FBI.

The great debate has ended, for me that is.

Today in photography, besides deciding what brand of camera maker you will follow, the question has been, DSLR or Mirrorless. My brand of choice has always been Nikon. I have been a Nikon fanboy since my high school days, over forty years ago. It’s not that Canon or Sony and the other camera brands are bad cameras they all take wonderful photos. 

I believe the reason for me to use Nikon my entire life was from visiting a photography studio as a teenager. This commercial studio was a Nikon and Hasselblad house with large format cameras mixed in. 

This place was a dream for me. Their name was Guild Photographers, a working studio out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. During my first two years in college, I started as a part-time intern the first year and hired as a photographer the next year.  My intern pay was zip, not heard of these days, and minimum wage the second year.  I learned a lot from that group of photographers.

Now, let’s step to the future and photographic technology has changed to a reliable digital camera system based on the DSLR camera model. For me, the camera choice was the D850 series, nice but heavy.

I used it for architecture photography, still life, landscape, and just about any subject I could think of.  With Nikon, you can still use any of the lenses that you purchased over the years. I had maybe a dozen lenses, nothing longer than 200mm.  I wasn’t shooting sports or even thinking of photographing animals since my high school days.

Today, depending on your opinion and taste, digital is great.  Digital photography has advanced to where you’re combining computer techniques to enhance your image that you could never do with just analog photography.  It has reached more people and turned them into photographic artists.

So, I sold my old lenses and camera bodies and purchased the Z 7ii camera body to go with the Z 6 body that I had already for a backup.  I’m keeping the lenses that will continue to work with my Z camera bodies from my collection.

One issue I have so far is that the accessories that work with my DSLRs’ will not work with my Zs’.  Cable releases won’t attach to my new bodies.  My Nikon 10mm shaved lens I was using to photograph spherical images won’t work with Nikon’s FTZ adapter as normal.

I had to research and then purchased a Chinese-made lens adapter that permitted Nikon G-type F mount lenses to mount to a Z mount camera body.  This is the closest I can get to full functionality with the lens: I’m losing auto aperture camera control and can only operate the aperture manually from the lens.

So, has this been the right choice?  Will Nikon continue to support the DSLR camera systems? What changes to my photography procedures do I have to do?

As I explore the changes between the two systems, I will update you on what I find.

Nikon Z 7ii mirrorless camera with 24 to 70 F/4 lense

Always need to practice your craft

There’s always need to continue to practice your craft.