newfoundlandphotographer.ca

As you can see, we have a newly designed Blog. Along with it is a new address…

wordpress.NewfoundlandPhotographer.ca

Pointers will remain in place at the old address for quite some time.

This new design has been integrated with the Sessions site as well, also with a new address…

sessions.NewfoundlandPhotographer.ca

Because of some nifty configuration nuances, old links to the Sessions site will continue to work as before - no redirection needed.

This sorta marks the beginning of the end for the old www.KimGoodyear.com site - meaning the old address as well as the old site.

Oh-my-gosh! Why - you may ask? Well, it all has to do with New vs. Return visits.

For most people, this is about to get very boring.

Perhaps not surprisingly, we’ve noticed a growing number of New and Return visits to the Blog. It’s chugging along quite well. At the same time, New visits to the main site are also going along fairly well, although not quite as good. All this stuff is due to a number of factors - extremely tedious stuff about robots and search phrases and ugly database tools.

The problem, it turns out, is Return visits to the main site. It’s easy to see what’s happening - why would anyone want to visit a static site and rummage around for new content when they can just regularly check a Blog (or News page) for recent updates. Looking at the stats, we can see the same thing happening at the weddings site.

Web sites are designed - put online - they get some visits - the whole thing may or may not be updated a few times - then the visits drop off. Soon after, the owner looses interest in making updates, and they decide it must be the fault of the site. So they redesign, and the process begins again. The beginning of one of these cycles is usually right about the same time that someone says…. “Hey, I know… let’s add music!”

So, what’s my point? Fresh Content = More Visits? That’s certainly no great revelation. But is redesigning a site with basically the same old crap, over and over, fooling anyone? Well, other than the person paying for it… ?

So it turns out that this has been a common problem with web sites pretty much since some guy first stuck some file on some computer on some network.

Generally then, our idea (and it’s certainly not a new idea, but we’ve come to this on our own), is to make this (what you’re looking at) the web site, and hang everything off here. Basically, The Blog will become The Site, and the archives will become The Content. Trust me - it’s all very Web 2.0ish.

Anyway, thoughts and comments on this new design are welcome. I think the whole look and feel is sorta inspired by our latest favorite new toy. We’ve still got a few problems to iron out involving photos in past posts. All the old stuff (whoops! not old stuff - Content) from the former Blog and Sessions site is still available at those new addresses.

…I told you it’d be boring.

PS. I’d like to thank Andreau and Angus for their help with this switch over. Once we decided to jump in and tear it all apart, the whole redesign took less than 3 hours. And that’s also in no small part possible because of the excellent open source software that runs the show.

Originally posted on Thursday, September 29, 2005, 04:48 AM NST.
2005? What is this?

The Dolomites are a range of mountains within the Alps that are actually a coral formation that poked up thru several thousand years ago. You can tell you’ve entered the Domomites because they appear very sharp and craggly in comparison to the large, sweeping Alps around them, as seen below…

Our base for the last two days, Cortina, is smack in the middle of the Dolomites. As you drive slowly down the mountain switch-back road (back and forth for what seems like a hundred times), all-of-a-sudden, the town is in a valley right in front of you. It was “put on the map”, or at least made reasonably reachable by land travel, in 1956 with the Winter Olympics and it’s ski hills. Lifts go in every direction. Apparently it’s a busy spot in the winter and, from what we can tell, a pretty wealthy one. In the last few decades, the area has also served as the backdrop for several movies. Despite all that, the municipality has halted further development.

We took a ride in a tramway - one of those ski-lift things, but this type holds multiple people and is enclosed - it’s route is practically vertical up to 9000 feet. Kim was “sh*tbaked!” (her words) every time I moved during the ride, but seemed fine at the top. I think the fact that she was able to take photographs while walking around up there (the glass of the car stopped her during the trip) distracted her from the situation.

We’re leaving today but still haven’t decided if Cortina is as far as we’ll go into the mountains. We’ve seen a good bit, so are considering another change of scenery and heading back west and down to the other lakes. Plus, the weather can change rapidly up here, and continuing on means heading north, further into the Alps - and entering Austria to get back out.

Randy

EDIT: Soon after this post, a closer examination of the map revealed that we could have gone north and, with a turn just shy of the border, eventually found our way back to the Adige River Valley. As will be seen in the next post though, we decided against it.

New sessions are online from the two most recent shoots - Jennifer and Valerie.

Here’s a few more from Valerie’s shoot.

Originally posted on Wednesday, September 28, 2005, 05:17 AM NST.
2005? What is this?

As can be seen below, we’ve been doing quite a bit of driving.

Note: This map actually covers the whole trip. Start in Venice then west & south. Currently going North into the mountains.

After a bit of trouble navigating our way out of Verona, we were quite happy to find the lake (Lake Garda, the first of three lakes - we’ll be visiting the other two after we leave the mountains).

Most of the pictures this time are from the east side of the lake and the river valley up to Trento. Note that there are multiple small towns on route, but we’ve only noted two on the progress map.

The next bit of the trip, from Cavalese up to Cortina, was a challenge. Before going into the mountains, it was hard to not notice the storm clouds. With the rainy weather, switch-back roads and crazy oncoming tour bus drivers we made much slower progress. Near the peak of one of the passes, the clouds parted just long enough for Kim to get a picture.

The entire area from Trento eastward seems to be in low season. Many of the businesses (including hotels and restaurants) cater to the winter sports crowd, so they’ve closed the shutters (read: been boarded up). It’s been hard to find a meal at times, and the inns that are still open seem delighted to see a visitor and immediately cut their rates in half. In Cavalese, we stayed at a place that was shutting down their last few rooms on the day we left.

As soon as you turn east off the Italian Autostrata from the Adige Valley that connects Trento to Bozen (Bolzano), the roads get very tiny, and every town has two names - the Italian one, and the Austrian-German one. The landscape, the houses, the people - everything becomes more German (or southern german - Austrian-German - the funny hats, the chocolate, the strudel). Sometimes you are spoken to in Italian, sometimes in German, sometimes in English. I can stare back at a person with a dumb look equally well, regardless of the language they’re speaking.

Randy

NOTE: Read more about the region we’re entering into at Wikipedia.

Originally posted on Tuesday, September 27, 2005, 02:10 PM NST.
2005? What is this?

Passage from our Frommer’s travel guide: “You need nerves of steel to drive in Italy”

I became a little apprehensive, but am glad to report that driving the Autostrata (Italy’s six lane super speedway) is no more difficult then navigating the TCH on a Friday evening labour day weekend - the main difference being the absence of wheel veering ruts. Our first stop on route to Florence was Verona, the city in which the story of the love struck Romeo and Juliet written by Shakespeare originated (well except for that time the Greeks wrote it a few years previous). You can go see Juliet’s balcony and visit her grave, but just as a reminder, the story was fictional.

Next up for us involves exiting the highway and travelling many twisty roads along Lake Garda and the varied vistas of the mighty Dolomites (big pointy shards of rock covered in white stuff). In a few days, you will notice a stark contrast in photos from those previously taken.

Just as a side note… I have eaten nothing but pizza, pasta and ice cream since I’ve arrived. I may need an angioplasty upon return.

Buonanotte
Kim

I’ve been reading about customs and cultural / religious traditions from other parts of the world lately - a side effect of this travel bug that I’ve caught I guess.

Specifically, while poking around Wikipedia two cultures in particular have caught my interest - Jewish and Japanese. And, perhaps for the regular visitor not surprisingly, this has lead to an original idea for a photo shoot or two.

I came across one word in particular while looking at Judaism. Shiv’ah - or bereavement - involves seven days and one hour of mourning for the recently deceased. Many aspects would be surprising to us in the west - tearing of clothing at the funeral, minimum personal hygiene (the men don’t shave for example) no wearing of adornments and the covering of mirrors (although I do vaguely recollect something about the mirrors around these parts…).

So how could such a morbid path of research lead to a modeling shoot? Well, the minion had been talking about a graveyard setting in the past, and along with my research, it all started to click… a person who has just lost someone and an unwillingness to let go.

Not your typical “looking at the camera with a pretty smile crap” to be sure. That’s not to say that those shoots are useless - I find that the more I shoot the more I’m able to produce exactly what I had envisioned going in. For example…

Unfortunate for those wanting to build portfolios, and perhaps welcomed by anyone running a photo mill, is my desire to focus less on the pretty side and more on the artistic or expressive side.

While the straight-forward modeling shoots obviously aren’t very fulfilling in this area, surprisingly, the weddings are. We’ve got some stuff coming up this year that I’m really looking forward to.

We’ve got another shoot coming up tomorrow. We’ll be shooting Valerie again - outside. It’s supposed to be cold, so I hope it goes well.

Here’s a few more shots from Thursday evening.

And in other news….

We’ve posted something over on the wedding site. Mind you, this is not work that we’ve done recently. Instead it’s a featured wedding from 2006.

Originally posted on Saturday, September 24, 2005, 09:49 AM NST.
2005? What is this?

No time for words today, just pictures.

Kim

NOTE: Read more about Piazza San Marco (or St. Mark’s Square) at Wikipedia. It’s an incredible area - all within a few minutes walk is St Mark’s Basilica, the Doge’s Palace (including the Bridge of Sighs), the Bell Tower and the square itself. This small area is, without a doubt, the most impressive place I’ve ever been.

A few shots from a modeling shoot we did yesterday evening. We’ve not shot Jennifer before - she’s very quiet. I think sometimes I scare people with my antics - I sometimes do a-little-sing-and-dance-type-thing when I get a good shot.

Originally posted on Friday, September 23, 2005, 08:25 AM NST.
2005? What is this?

Today is another fine day for weather. It was a bit overcasty this morning, but it started to clear up during sunrise. There was a number of other photographers catching the sunrise next to St. Mark’s Basilica on the waterfront at 7am.

We spent the entire day walking around the city on Thursday. We visited the Gallerie dell’ Accademia and Palazzo Ducale next to Piazza San Marco.

Just beyond this turn is the Internet Cafe we’ve been using. Randy tells me there’s no wireless anywhere.

We have allot of walking ahead of us today as well. When we leave Venice tomorrow, we rent a car… thank god.

Kim

PS. We’re not sure how easy it’s going to be to find Internet access on the road. Don’t be alarmed if you don’t hear from us on a daily basis from now till we reach Florence on October 15.