New website thanks to Wix!

Well its November and I have finally finished my website and its gone live. To tell the truth its been up and running since the beginning of October but I have been working on a few things still and getting it to as close to perfect as I could.

So it is official I am www.bradlentzphotography.com creative I know but hey its who I am and it is what I am all about. I took my time designing the layout using Wix. Wix lets you design a flash based website using a simple drag and drop system you can put your own twist. There are simple to use templates or you can start with a blank canvas to create you web identity.

I started playing with a template at the beginning to get the hang of how things worked, before long I had a half dozen different layouts from a busy interactive site to a very simple artistic "here is my portfolio" site. The great thing is if I feel I need to change the way things look, I can pop onto the editing page make a few changes see how it looks. Nothing on the live site changes until you click save. So you dont have to worry about someone surfing your site and seeing a unfinished product. I really like how simple it is for me to add more photos to my gallery, update my profile and change the opening page photos. It really is just a couple of clicks!

I found Wix to be one of the best sites out there for people that really have no idea about web design, there are heaps of tutorials that walk you through creating photo albums, slide shows putting up movies and sooooo much more. I also found that for the price I could not go wrong.

There are a few different price packages, you can even opt to not pay a cent if you dont want a personal domain name and dont mind a few Wix ads on your site. But if you want to step it up and go to the next level you can get a plan for as little as $4.08 a month over a year thats just $48.96, this lets you use your own domain, run google analytics, 500mb of storage and 500mb of bandwidth. There are a three other packages you can upgrade to. The combo package which I went with is ad free, 1g of storage and bandwidth, you can use your own favicon, and it comes (for a limited time) with a voucher for $50.00 facebook advertising, $75.00 Google advertising and voucher for a free domain name. The two packages above the combo also include these vouchers. For more details on there pricing go here.

Now I know there are people out there that will say flash sites are no good especially for photographers and this is something I did think long and hard about. The reason photographers will stay away from flash sites is because it takes longer to load so people will usually leave your site before seeing it all, and the other reason is because you can not view flash sites on your ipod or ipad. I put a lot of thought into this debate and I had to bite the bullet and go with flash. I figured on my budget and time line it was better to get a site up that would best portray who I am and what I do then not have anything out there at all. I mean if worse comes to worse in a year I get something new.

I am definitely not the only photographer out there using a flash site to display there work and I know I will not be the last. Especially with more and more sites like Wix developing new and innovative ways for the average person to create a website.

So go for it get yourself out there. Whats stopping you? There really is no excuse for you not to have a website that shows off what it is you do! Be sure to check out BLP and feel free to follow me on Twitter or Facebook!

Here is another photo I made for the Canon EOS Photo5 Contest. This one we had to use incense to create a scene or tell a story in black and white!

I just could not put up a post with out a photo!

Canons little brown box makes you think outside the box

I recently received my little brown box from Canon for there EOS photo5 challenge. What am I talking about??? Well every year Canon Australia holds a contest in which you receive a box in the mail and in that box are 5 props you use to capture the most creative and imaginative photograph you can come up with.

This years box contained an eye dropper, stick of bubble gum, some incense, a package of confetti and a link to a sound. The first brief was to create a macro image using a liquid or liquids. This was a difficult task as I have never tried macro photography it really got me thinking outside my norm.

I did some research online and got some great ideas but nothing was original and I did not want to just copy someone else's idea. So I figured the best way is to just dive in and get my hands dirty and my apartment wet! I started off by putting water drops on different surfaces to see the effect, cooking tray, mirror, black plastic, lens caps...etc. I then switched liquids, water, oil, wine, juice...

I found the result I liked best was sticking with water drops and using either a black plastic surface (lens caps) or using a DVD. By placing the drops on these two surface I could see a reflection in the water. I started to brainstorm what one might or might not typically see in a drop of water. After some thinking I sketched a umbrella on a piece of tracing paper.

To create a strong reflection I needed to back light the sketch, I taped the sheet of paper to tupperware container which would act something like a soft box. I didn't have a off camera flash cord or cordless flash sink so I had to get creative here to. After setting up my camera on some books and getting the focus locked. I used the Canon RC-1 Wireless Remote Control to trigger the shutter and hand held my Canon Speedlite 430 Ex II flash manually firing it behind the tupperware using the pilot button.

I also tried the same concept but replacing the umbrella sketch with a photo I had previously taken and printed. I changed the surface from the lens cap to a DVD and found I got some really interesting differences.

I found that once I got my angles, lighting, shutter speeds and other detail worked out I could get more creative with water drop placement. Give it a try have some fun, feel free to ask any questions and share your work! For more information on the Canon EOS photo5 or to check out some of the other entries click HERE.

The finished project!