40 Ways to Deliver Killer Blog Content | chrisbrogan.com

40 Ways to Deliver Killer Blog Content | chrisbrogan.com

always a good idea to write and shoot killer stuff, right?

Fog lights

I like those shots that come unexpectedly, when it’s hit-and-mostly-miss to capture the essence of the scene. And then I like discovering there was more there than it seemed. So, here, a foggy night at the town wharf and a camera sitting in a puddle because that was the flattest surface.

Ebb tide

The tide has turned and is no longer flinging water over the wharf although people still drive out to check boats or just to get a little closer to the pounding surf.

There's quite a difference between this night shot and the last at the full moon. Perhaps I should take one shot a day for a year and put them on a new blog called A Deck a Day, or maybe What the Deck?

Autumn gale

It's blowing hard here and fishing boats sheltered behind the wharf are frequently inspected by fishermen who drive out to see whether the lines are holding.

Getting the 'feel' took a shutter closed down to f20 and an ISO of 50. Time was 1.6 seconds

October full moon

Since I've been remiss lately about adding photos to this blog, here's a shot from last week's full moon. It snuck up on me and was suddenly shining through my window, but the camera was handy.

Elms in the early morning

The tall elms seem to lose their leaves early in the fall, their flatter tops bare above the town tree canopy. This photo is for students in Indiana...oops, apologies, that's Idaho..who were wondering about trees in Nova Scotia, particularly Dutch elms.

(Gotta get those abbreviations straight)

Clouds high…and low

The fog you can see climbing the hillside in the distance now is lying thick over the area, but the sun was out for a brief while an hour ago revealing billowing clouds over the surrounding hills.

But colour or black and white?

Day's last light

Yesterday was as hot and muggy as it gets hereabouts—and that means someone misplaced the Gulf of Mexico weather. As uncomfortable as the high humidity was, it did contribute to massive cloud formations that were still catching daylight as the earth below settled into night.

39 Steps

No, not the Hitchcock movie. Just one step for every year. Did you notice that it's 39 years ago today that Neil Armstrong took that "first small step"?

What's that in dog years, howling at the moon-wise?

An end to obesity

The Conference Board of Canada issued an interim report yesterday that provided a report card on the nation and the grade for health has slipped a bit, mostly because of the growing incidence of obesity. The board's point is that today's young people are the first generation in some time that are likely to be less healthy than their parents.

I'd debate that if only because I haven't been young for some time and outweigh my father by far too much. The generational thing happened some time ago, I'd say.

However, it occurs to me that this design, if printed on a plate, might discourage me from cleaning it off at every meal and thereby reduce my caloric intake. Can a plate be considered a health device?

This poster comes from the 'inspiration series' on Veerle's Blog

Keeping my hand in

Down on Digby's wharf this morning I thought about just taking one or two photos and letting the digital recorder give three or four minutes of ambient sound. But sometimes interesting stuff happens. Did you know those electric chair scooters can go to Point Prim and back from Digby (I do expect you to know Point Prim)

Creative juices

Dunno yet whether this will open a window here, but perhaps if you press down hard on your screen? No, not that hard!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgYwTELj-fs

well, damn, it didn't even create a link at first, but there that's got it, the apple's on the tree now and all that agricultural babble. ;^)

Soundslide look at BBC visit to Weymouth Consolidated

Louise Stewart visited the penpal class Monday at WCS. Here are a few highlights:

White birches, yellow fence

A day of sprinkles and insipid showers, rain that couldn't quite justify the term. These trees and the fence benefit nicely from the diffuse light

So You Want To Be An Editor

"The trick in editing lies in willingness to raise obvious, simple-minded questions."

It occurs to me that my simple mind should have brought me to even more rarified heights of editing. Obviously, there must be more to the job, and for that I turn to John McIntyre of the Baltimore Sun. "Click here"

For those who wonder how I wound up in the job, despite my frequent inability to spot either the obvious or the poorly hung participle, I can only surmise that I was 'volunteered' to get me out of the ranks of lazy reporters.

'Click here'

I know I'll forget this advice if it isn't written down and it occurs to me that this is a good place to do that. Simply put, if you want readers to follow a link, the thing to do is tell them precisely what they need to do. So click here becomes the best approach. On Blogger, it's as easy as highlighting the two words and clicking on the link symbol, whereupon a drop-down box asks for the URL. I know it won't be that obvious on the company website, but I live in hope (although not Hope, B.C., which apparently is in the lush Fraser Valley).

Colour or not?

So, it was the subtle colours of dawn this morning that made me try to capture them. That never seems entirely successful, so I actually get to be a little phrustrated this morning.

But then I had to go and try a black and white version.

Radio 4 newsreader Charlotte Green gets the giggles on air | Media | guardian.co.uk

Radio 4 newsreader Charlotte Green gets the giggles on air | Media | guardian.co.uk

I hope the Guardian keeps this clip live for some time. Hearing Green get the giggles--reading an obituary at that--is a nice moment in the day

Ba Ba bye-bye

I've come out of the gastronomic closet and fessed up that I really don't like lamb. I might be partly Irish at heart, and willing to spread the gospel of Guinness being good for you, but I passed this season of St. Patrick when stew with lamb was on the menu. May the saints preserve me.

http://www.novanewsnow.com/pages/blog_sujet.php?noBlog=859

Telling a story

I really enjoy a good story. Who doesn't? Yet for all our interest in a compelling narrative, damn few of us seem capable of telling one, writing one, or combining any of the multimedia tools to create something to hold our attention. Never mind the 'spellbound' word, just hold a person's attention while the story unwinds. Can we do that?

Most of my adult life has been spent telling stories, the legitimate kind. I tried the other ones to get through childhood.

Along the way, I told a few good stories. If there's a celestial scorekeeper, I probably have a low batting average. I recognize a good story and rate highly anyone who excels. Perhaps that's why Mindy McAdams blog entry today resonates. She points out the one skill we need to develop to communicate, no matter which way we spread our message.

And she left me wondering what the ending was to the story about severed limbs.

Pen Pals

I've managed to post a Soundslides movie (in QuickTime format) on the NNN website, and cribbed my way through the roundabout procedure for posting here. If the title link works, it should take you (or me) to the story. There's nothing dramatic about the story or the photos, but the kids were enthusiastic about the whole thing and I learned a few more things. On the whole, I think audio slideshows might offer more than regular video on a newspaper website,

Any thoughts on that?

A vantage point for Digby area history

This column is a repeat from one on the paper's website, but I want to see why the HTML link failed there. Trying it again here.

When I started at the Courier in 1994, one of the first things I did was discover where I could find old copies of the newspaper. The Courier has been published since the mid-1870s, but it is the last five or six decades that I was interested in especially.

The Through the Pages column has told me a great deal about the community—its people and events—that I couldn’t have found as readily elsewhere.

For example, the fire that destroyed Weymouth Industries Ltd. and the efforts to encourage it rebirth are a story that is coming to life again.

The other day, Ben Prince stopped me in Tim Horton’s to say people were ribbing him about the dry cleaning business he was newly involved with 50 years ago. If he looks this week, he’ll see his name as a goal scorer in a game against Clementsport a few years back as well.

Through the Pages as much as possible is a names column, and I try to include all I can, knowing that many people from 35, 50 or 60 years are still living here in town, and others will be remembered.

There’s a lot of news that seems familiar, too. Old problems get that way by hanging around. This week’s column, which I’ll post very soon, mentions that people at Joggin Bridge and Smith’s Cove wanted a safer turnoff from Hwy. 101, and there was even a suggestion of an overpass. That was 35 years ago—and the overpass has got the over part completed, even if the turnoff element is still lacking.

One thing that caught my eye was the decision by local communities 50 years ago to sell the power generating station on the Sissiboo. The dam and the generating equipment was the property of the municipally owned Digby County Power Board. The quarter-million dollar sale to Nova Scotia Power Commission spelled the end of a locally owned power board, but that was inevitable because the demand for electricity was growing beyond the capacity of the local board, which had been buying extra power from NSP.

We forget just how little electricity was needed before 1958; even television was still new for most people in the area, and clothes hung on lines to take advantage of solar and wind power.

Karla Kelly sent me this photo from the Sissiboo dam earlier today. The facility still generates power, but it also produces a vantage point for some great images of winter. It’s nice, too, to have a little back story on the dam and the old copies of the Courier, available at the library on microfiche, are a great source of local history.

Momentary embarrassment

There I was at the scene of a traffic accident. A fuel delivery truck had rolled in a ditch and there were all the regular emergency personnel standing about. The truck driver had been whisked off to hospital, the hazardous material crew was just arriving from Yarmouth, and I was standing around having taken shots of everything that moved, talked or threatened to leak gasoline.

Here's the embarrassing thing: I was still thinking like a print journalist, albeit one who figured to write up a story back at the office, process some of the hundred photos or so, and then post it on the newspaper's website.

What about my cell phone?

Yes, I have a cell phone capable of taking a photo and uploading it to an email address. Okay, I did think of it in the end and took a few shots that were difficult to see (phones are worse than cameras for that), and sent one back to my office after phoning in a story. Photo and story were online in minutes and I felt like I'd discovered a new world.

Mind you, not having a zoom function proved something of a liability since firemen were keeping every electrical item away from the gas fumes. I wonder if I can get a 300mm f/2.8 lens for this Samsung?

I stumble along, learning the occasional new trick and that seems to keep me going. Things could be worse.

Health and Money, American-style

I dislike just posting a link without offering some reason to follow, so let me say that nothing is perfect, but those who suggest we need to follow the American style of health care should read this (and that should discourage them).

Having got the not-quite-a-polemic out of the way, let me add that this is an exceptional story, skillfully told by a fellow, Chez, who is too talented a writer to deserve a job at CNN.

Newspapers killing the goose

Newspapers are gradually realizing their future is tied to the Web, yet they still are cutting staff to save costs. Some day they'll realize that all they have to offer on the Web is better quality journalism--more accurate, more trustworthy--than the majority of blogs.

But having decimated their newsrooms, will the newspapers be able to supply their only valuable commodity?

Man, umbrella, camera

There's something about this shot that reminds me of tourist shots from 1960s Europe. Perhaps it is simply that the man resembles a Czechoslovak who married a cousin of mine and who became a long-time family friend?

The emotional attachment created by that connection makes judging the photo more subjective, but compositionally I think it is sound enough. That's part of the objective analysis.

Blind Leading the Blind

Yes, this is another non-photographic entry, but if this isn’t as visual a short story as you’ve read today, I’ll gnaw through a hockey stick (my choice of woods).

This story comes from Heading East, a blog by Raul Gutierrez, who grew up in hot and dry Texas, moved to NYC and likes snow, and big cities in the rain.

On 7th Avenue at 18th Street today I ran into a group of 7 or 8 blind men teaching two blind teenagers, a boy who looked to be about 14 and a girl who was little older, to navigate the city.

The men walked in a huddle around the kids, explaining their navigation techniques step by step. It was late afternoon and all the men and canes made long shadows. Most of the men wore dark glasses.

Both the boy and the girl were newly blind and moved awkwardly. The girl's face was burned; the boy's eyes were clouded. They reached out for steadying hands every few steps, but the men kept saying, 'Nobody is going to hold your hand out here, you have to see with your ears and your stick."

The sidewalks were full of obstacles—construction, uneven concrete, street vendors, and of course people in a hurry. Every few steps brought a new crisis. The boy got turned around. The girl stumbled. A dog on a long leash got caught up in the group. But everyone kept moving.

Near the corner of 19th Street one of the older men detected a construction barrier with his cane. He stopped and waited, listening to hear if his charges would navigate it, but both slammed straight in. The girl fell again this time in a muddy puddle. The man helped her up, took her hand and demonstrated how she had missed the sawhorse. He repeated this with the boy.

The girl was on the verge of tears. She was silent, but you could see all the frustration and fear well up on her face. Somehow the boy knew what was happening. He took her hand, "You'll get it, don't worry you're already better than me." The men in the protective circle moved in a bit tighter. Everyone patted the kids on the back murmuring encouragement; one squeezed the girl's shoulders and you could see her relax. "I'm ok. It's ok. Let's go." Then they all continued moving ever so slowly down the avenue.

What a monumental day in the lives of some people we’ll never know…even if we somehow caught a sense of their lives.

Technology that needs no batteries, never crashes, is always on

A friend candidly admits he hasn’t read a book since high school. Since he normally gets passed the ‘You-know-you’re-middle-aged-when’ mug if he drops in for coffee, that’s quite a few years without his cracking a book.

There was a time I would have found that incomprehensible.

Books line the shelves in two rooms at home, lie in small piles on the floor and even sit on the couch beside me. Their pages just don’t seem to be turned any more. There never seems to be time now to curl up for a quiet wander through a novel or even to open a cookbook to a favourite recipe.

Everything is online, and computers have information, photos and graphics that can keep Web pages flashing past. Links lead to exploration and onto other sites. RSS feeds provide constant updates on areas of interest, social sites like Facebook link friends across the province or the nation.

Despite the foregoing, I was somewhat shocked last month when Apple boss Steve Jobs said reading is pretty well dead. His statistic was that 40 per cent of Americans last year read one book or less.

My shock wasn’t about the 40 per cent of Americans. It was the realization I might be falling into that category.

I read all the time. It’s my job as well as my avocation. But I no longer am reading books. It seems the thirst for the written word can be slaked at the electronic trough as readily as the volumes that line my shelves. I won’t give them up, even if I have to dust them occasionally, but I worry that a choice has been made almost unconsciously.

This brings up a question about the future of public libraries.

Libraries themselves are millennia old, but public lending libraries we know now are a fairly recent development. They got a big boost in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when Scottish-American businessman Andrew Carnegie donated the money for building thousands of libraries in English-speaking countries.

At the moment, libraries are facing major difficulties finding funds to buy books. At the same time, libraries have to wonder whether they’ll have any patrons to read those books in a decade or two. Politicians are in charge of the taxpayer-funded purse and they are as aware as Jobs that too few people read books.

But politicians should know that it is much too early to give up on books, one of the world’s most reader-friendly packages for conveying information and illuminating minds. Forget Jobs’ comment. It can be tipped on its head to read that 60 per cent of Americans (and Canadians, by extension) do read books.

Yes, many people have turned away from books and magazines paper for most of their daily reading, but try reading an electronic novel on a computer. When it comes to such books, new technology has yet to supplant the tried-and-true.

For comfortable reading, you need something that can be held in both hands, is easily transportable, offers easy scrolling by the eyes without constantly needing to hit a ‘page down’ button, and smells fresh when it is opened.

If it was also the size and weight and shape of a book, required no batteries, never crashed, and was always ‘on’, that is remarkably durable technology, and its lifetime is nowhere near over yet.

Now, I just have to close this laptop and put a book on my lap instead.

Monday morning moon

Looking the opposite direction of 'Sunday stroll'--and a few hours later.

Sunday stroll

I've been remiss about posting this week, with most of my time spent working or trying to get the Soundslides audio slide project off the ground at the company website. I was looking for a different view of town today and wound up shooting along the waterfront with a 420mm lens combo (300mm and 1.4 extender), which--just to confuse matters--is equivalent to 546mm since the 1D models use a sensor somewhat smaller than 35mm film.

All the math is a way of extending this post, I admit, but it's late and I want to go to bed. Farewell and adieu, adios and goodnight. I can see by office window, by the way, and the tide is definitely out.

New Soundslides project

The town's new policy advisory committee met tonight and I wanted to see how long it would take to create a Soundslides project with audio more or less synched; that seems to be the tough part. Click on captions for slide info, and I'd say it took about two and a half hours from start to finish. Wow, now I've three copies, but only the top counts since I was fixing cutlines

About the Soundslides project

You'll note a Soundslides project below, Irish Summer, based in shots from June, 2005. I do like the photos from Ireland and really, really got tired of hearing my voice over and over as I learned how to edit a track. I'm enjoying the process all the same and now am pondering opportunities to use such audio slide projects at work. There I can at least use the company servers, rather than find my own online host. For anyone wanting to post video or Soundslide projects to Blogger, WebNG.com is a great resource. It will host up to 350MB at no charge.

Leap, then look

There's a new web community that might offer a good deal in learning/absorbing this wired journalism world:


View my page on Wired Journalists


So now I just have to see where it leads

MediaShift . Digging Deeper::Your Guide to Blogging | PBS

MediaShift . Digging Deeper::Your Guide to Blogging | PBS

Dramatic skies

There's something about the 4/3 format that annoys me. I still think 8 X 10 is a proper size for prints, so I wind up cropping once in the viewfinder and once again for prints. But leaving that aside, i'd like to print one of these for a presentation shot. Any suggestions? Anyone?

Obsessions and overexposure

"I do think that the quality which makes a man want to write and be read is essentially a desire for self-exposure and is masochistic. Like one of those guys who has a compulsion to take his thing out and show it on the street." - James Jones

Okay, but now J.J., how do we explain women writers, as well as the photographers of both sexes? Hmm....

Enough is never enough

Not content to spend thousands on still cameras, I've decided to learn what I can about shooting video. There's an otherwise laughable point-and-shoot camera at the office that will shoot adequate video for the web--but the problem has been the audio. There's a tiny and inadequate mike in the camera, but that means the sounds that are recorded may have no connection to what's being filmed (can I still call it that?).

So, I’ve put off making video while I found a reasonable digital recorder and I picked up this Olympus WS-100 today. It's PC-only because it uses Windows Media Audio and that is next to useless to me on my Macs. Cutting the story short, however, I found there are a number of audio file conversion programs available on line, so I wound up with one, 'Switch' from Australia, and the necessary plug-in, 'Flip4Mac'.

Now I can convert .wma to mp3 or .wav or a myriad of other formats, and import audio into iMovie HD where there seems to be three audio tracks. I've been fooling tonight with two and I expect that'll be enough--most of the time.

The funny thing about technology is that there is never enough 'all of the time.'

When I get a little ahead in this, I’ll post a video of small town Nova Scotia.

Seiner from the snows

Well, as I was finishing the previous post one of the herring seiners drifted in from the snowswept Bay of Fundy, and the camera was sitting on the floor just begging to be used. Mind you, I had to change the settings from the hockey game; I don't need an ISO setting of 1000 today, and I guess I'd better reset the file to RAW. I'll shoot sports in medium or large-size jpegs, but almost everything else benefits from being shot in RAW.

I'm back. Let the bells ring out! The banners fly!

Okay, I'm back after something of a small absence. While I was gone, it appears Blogger has become part of the Google Empire, but I'm not objecting. Yet.

Although I've been away, that doesn't mean I haven't been writing—and photographing. I even have another blog, one on the company's website. This past year has been a pretty intensive period of learning new equipment and new programs, and the future doesn't appear to offer less of that. That’s something to look forward to; I don't ever want to get to the stage where I give up on learning something new.

I don't know yet whether I want to link to my other blog. This one may become a little less specific although with a name like 'frustrated fotog' how far astray can I wander. I think what I might like to do is post photos (my own) that appeal at the time. Few photos seem to have the kind of longevity that I found years ago with my drawings and paintings, but it may just be that I take thousands of photos, and there's always something new to capture the eye. That's undoubtedly part of the frustration of photography.

As I type this I’m looking around at some of the options available, and I see icons for adding photos and video. The latter is my next field of study because I’d like to see what I can do with the equipment I have available, and what I might find for audio. If I can reasonably master iMovie, I can do two audio tracks by the look of it. Now the question is, if I post a video in this blog, who is hosting it? Google? Me?

Technologically, I’m either a babe or a dodderer. I keep plugging away and hope that all—or a substantial apart thereof—will someday become clear.