Google Drama and Site Change

Well the unexpected drama appears to be over for now. When Google unexpectedly stopped serving ads to my photo site a couple of weeks ago, claiming that this page is pornographic, I panicked. Within 24 hours I removed all AdSense add from pages with nudity on them, as requested, but was denied appeal to get the ads reinstated.

So what I did instead was to split my camera subsite out into its own full website, and crosslinked it with the photo page. It would have gone smoother except that a BBEdit global search and replace went badly and required me to hand-update about 300 pages with new footers. Doh! The next step, of course, is to convert the entire site to Wordpress, as soon as I can either figure out how to get domain masking activated with Bravenet or (ugh) change hosting.

If you, dear reader, could do me a favor and go click around mattsclassiccameras.com to help get those pages back into Google's search index it would be greatly appreciated! Also - any static links you have to the old pages will need to be updated. Thanks for all your support!

Matt

Restored

My faith in the youth of America has been restored, even while Kodak slips into obscurity. Today near Kezar Stadium, instead of the usual skate rat & digital movie cam crew was a 20something man setting up his Hasselblad to take shots of skaters on the entryway steps. The Hassy had a Planar and a Polaroid back for test shots before shooting on slide film. He had three remote-trigger strobes, one of which was the legendary Vivitar 285. Sigh. Play on.

Developments

Just developed my first roll of b/w film in... years?! Yes, the bug has bitten me again. So I took stock of my chemicals the other day and found that most were dated 2008, and one was dated 2004. Not good! (As a rule, I put masking tape on my bottles with the month and year of mixing it, or write it on the label if it's pre-mixed. It doesn't last forever, especially the developer. Fixer lasts a little longer.)

Luckily I did have one packet each left of Kodak fixer, developer and hypo clear in the drawer, and made all new batches after cleaning out the bottles. Then I developed the roll of film I had from my Konica T-3 that I finished shooting last fall -- I had found it with film in it from I'm not sure when! All shot with my very cool Konica mount Sigma 35mm lens. We'll see how it turns out when I scan the negs.

my notes - yikes!

While refreshing my chemicals and prepping the darkroom I found my well-used development notes, the ones I pieced together from various sources and modified through trial and error like any good recipe. Decided I'd type them up and print them so I can actually read them this time around!

Was surprised that I remembered how to load the developing tank reel in the dark -- guess I've had more practice at that than I thought. Again, the important thing is knowing where everything is (bottle opener, scissors, tank) so you're not fumbling in the dark. It wasn't all quite like riding a bicycle, but it came back pretty quickly, especially the smell of the chemicals. You develop a fondness for them, somehow. So to speak.

This time around I'll be scanning the negs instead of printing them, and uploading them to flickr after flipping them in Photoshop. Coming soon!

Twittering!

Yes, late to the party as usual. Don't know how many photographers or potential followers are on Twitter, but I think the microblogging format will help keep me in the game:

http://www.twitter.com/mattdentonphoto

When I eventually convert the site to Wordpress it'll just be there, all widgetized. Awright.

The Best Photographer You've Never Heard of

Vivian Maier's work was discovered at auction in Chicago after her death in 2009. She was a nanny who was also a prolific street photographer, and as you'll see, was a talent on par with Weegee, Weston, and Imogen Cunningham. Amazing photos. Two links to her work:

http://www.cracktwo.com/2011/04/amazing-mystery-photographer-comes-to_28.html

http://www.vivianmaier.blogspot.com/

I hope there's a traveling exhibit someday. Wonder how many others there were out there?

Email Update and Update Update

Turns out that catching up on a year and a half's worth of email (!!) hasn't taken as long as I thought, it just took some sitting down and powering through. Went from 350 emails in my inbox down to 50!

Sadly I've missed some opportunities and probably some connections but at least from now on keeping current will be much easier. Funny - in researching some of the answers I've found that I can't lay hands on a few of my cameras, but I ran across some I didn't even know I had! Guess I've got some more pages to put up...

On that note, I'm seriously considering moving my site from static html pages to a Wordpress-based site now that I'm familiar with WP, but not sure how to get from point a to point b without losing the clean design of my site. Does anyone have a Wordpress theme recommendation for me?

And for those of you wondering how did I get so far behind in the first place? What the heck have I been so busy doing for the last few years you ask?

I've been busy doing this: http://www.mojosarmy.com

Email Catchup (Ketchup?)

Spending some time this quiet Easter Sunday catching up on some long overdue email from, well, you all!

Often I'll be at work, far from my cameras, and get these great questions I can't answer off the top of my head, and then by the time I get home don't have a chance to find the camera and investigate the answer. Of course, if I do know the answer to a question I'll generally get back right away.

Keep shooting and keep the questions and comments coming!

Matt