Brides Speak Their Minds About Photographers’ Web Sites

These are some photos taken in the Lake Garden. It has always been the ideal place for wedding photographers to take photos for their clients. This reminded me of the story which appeared in PDN, what three brides had to say–good, bad, and unedited–about the web sites of five wedding photographers.

PDN recently recruited three brides-to-be to critique the web sites of five wedding photographers, and published an edited version of their comments in the April issue. Here are the posting of the brides’ unedited critiques, along with responses from the photographers.

The three brides were Emily Jendrek of Albuquerque, New Mexico;
Jennifer Saba of New York City; and Melanie Erb of Ellicott City, Maryland.

The photographers whose sites they reviewed are:

1. Charles and Jennifer Maring of New York City and Connecticut.
www.maringphoto.com
2.Ben Chrisman of San Francisco.
www.benchrisman.com
3.Frank DiMeo of Ithaca, New York.
www.frankdimeo.com
4.Dana Rossini of Los Angeles.
www.drweddings.com
5.Matt Mendelsohn of the Washington, DC area of northern Virginia.
www.mattmendelsohn.com

The project was intended to help readers understand what actual brides (read: clients) like and dislike about wedding photographers’ web sites. That’s important because web sites are primary marketing tools for wedding photographers, but content, design, and structure of their sites varies widely.

In reviewing the web sites, the brides answered a series of questions, including what they thought about the quality and quantity of the photography, whether the sites provided enough images and enough information about the photographers’ services, and whether the sites conveyed the photographers’ personalities. Read More

Related article:

# Top 10 wedding photographers

# wedding photographer Jeff Ascough

# A Malay Wedding

A bird, a tree and Canon 1D Mark III

I rented a Canon 1D Mark lll and I went to Lake Garden to test this camera.It was a cloudy afternoon and it looks like it was going to rain again.

Suddenly I saw a bird landing on top of a tree. I quickly took out the 300mm telephoto lens fixed onto the Canon 1D Mark lll camera. I set the ISO to 400 and I wanted to capture the bird resting on top of the tree. The bird is small compared with the tall tree.

When I came back and sat in front of my computer to have a closer look on the images that I had captured, I noticed that the bird land was perched on dying branches with no foliage.

The tree looks healthy except at the top. further down to the body of the tree, the skin and barks are dropping off, too. Something must be wrong with the tree.

I enlarged the images and lucky it turned out fine. I did some enhancing of the images. I enlarged one of the images with 100% cropping to compare it with the original. I think Canon 1D Mark lll has not failed my mission.

But……what happened to the tree? It must have been struck by lightning.

My father always reminded us when we were young not to stand under a tree and it is one of the most dangerous places to be in a storm. And we were too young to understand how and what it happen when the lighning strikes.

The reason is – trees protrude from the earth’s surface, making them frequent victims of direct lightning strikes. Electricity seeks the path of least resistance, and the moisture (sap and water) inside a tree is a much better conductor than air. And since water is a better electrical conductor than wood, lightning striking a tree tends to travel just underneath the bark.

The explosive expansion of the lightning’s return stroke will literally blast off the bark, and sometimes some of the wood, along the length of the lightning channel. The result is a visible scar along the trunk of the tree.

So the tree provides a preferred path for lightning to reach ground. If people are standing under the tree during raining and storm occurred, and it will damaged the tree and also will hit and kill people.

AP Photographer Bilal Hussein Goes Free

After two years and four days in US military custody, AP photojournalist Bilal Hussein was released and reunited with his family on Wednesday April 14, 2008.

Hussein’s lawyer told AP this week that the military provided no surprising evidence at Hussein’s hearing that might have explained why he was held for so long, and it’s still unclear if he was singled out for his coverage of the Iraq war. Read More

AP STATEMENT

This is from AP Corporate Communications:

After two years in detention, Bilal Hussein needs time to spend with his family, to rest and to catch up with the rest of the world. We will have no further comment at this time, but will let you know when we do.

Paul Colford
AP Director of Media Relations

Related story:

Find out the charges: Bilal Hussein’s Photos Were A Threat ???