Part 6 of my Online Print Services Review has just been posted. I’ve taken a look today at Jessops, assessing delivery time, packaging, price and print quality, then awarding an overall rating.

Online Print Services Review - Part 6 - Jessops

As a reminder, in this new 7 part Review, I’m taking a look at some online print services that operate in the United Kingdom and letting you know what I think about the service and print quality that I’ve received from each one.

I will post samples from the Espson Stylus 890 inkjet printer and the overall conclusion of the Review during the wekend.

Part 5 of my Online Print Services Review has just been posted. I’ve taken a look today at Bonusprint, assessing delivery time, packaging, price and print quality, then awarding an overall rating.

Online Print Services Review - Part 5 - Bonusprint

As a reminder, in this new 7 part Review, I’m taking a look at some online print services that operate in the United Kingdom and letting you know what I think about the service and print quality that I’ve received from each one. I’ll be posting further updates to this Review throughout this week, so stay tuned.

Part 4 of my Online Print Services Review has just been posted. I’ve taken a look today at Fotango, assessing delivery time, packaging, price and print quality, then awarding an overall rating.

Online Print Services Review - Part 4 - Fotango

As a reminder, in this new 7 part Review, I’m taking a look at some online print services that operate in the United Kingdom and letting you know what I think about the service and print quality that I’ve received from each one. I’ll be posting further updates to this Review throughout this week, so stay tuned.

Part 3 of my Online Print Services Review has just been posted. I’ve taken a look at Peak Imaging, assessing delivery time, packaging, price and print quality, then awarding an overall rating.

Online Print Services Review - Part 3 - Peak Imaging

As a reminder, in this new 7 part Review, I’m taking a look at some online print services that operate in the United Kingdom and letting you know what I think about the service and print quality that I’ve received from each one. I’ll be posting further updates to this Review throughout this week, so stay tuned.

Part 2 of my Online Print Services Review has just been posted. I’ve taken a look at PhotoBox, assessing delivery time, packaging, price and print quality, then awarding an overall rating.

Online Print Services Review - Part 2 - PhotoBox

As a reminder, in this new 7 part Review, I’m taking a look at some online print services that operate in the United Kingdom and letting you know what I think about the service and print quality that I’ve received from each one. I’ll be posting further updates to this Review throughout this week, so stay tuned.

I’ve posted a new PhotographyBLOG article called “Wolfgang Tillmans: Artist, Photographer, or neither?”, in which I explore my reponse to the Wolfgang Tillmans exhibition currently being held at Tate Britain in London.

“It seemed to me that Tillmans has somehow managed to forge a lucrative career out of taking snaps of his normal, everyday life…I can’t help feeling that this lack of photographic competence may have contributed to Tillmans being considered to be an artist, rather than a photographer.”

PhotographyBLOG Article: “Wolfgang Tillmans: Artist, Photographer, or neither?”

I’ve just added 9 new wallpapers and 1 new screensaver to the Members section of PhotographyBLOG.

There are now 18 wallpapers and 2 Windows screensavers in total which feature photographs that have been posted on PhotographyBLOG. There is a choice of 2 different screen resolutions for each wallpaper and screensaver; 800x600 and 1024x768.

They are now available to download for FREE by all PhotographyBLOG members.

PhotographyBLOG Screensavers

PhotographyBLOG Wallpapers

I’ve just posted my review of “Photos on CD & DVD 2.0 DeLuxe”, a software package from FastTrak Software that allows you to incorporate your photos into professional-looking slideshows.

“Photos on CD & DVD 2.0 DeLuxe is the ideal software package to create professionally produced slide shows with ease. Packed with a number of new features it is the perfect partner to your digital camera. Just read in your photos, add 3D crossfades, music, commentary and text and burn slide shows onto all leading disk formats (VCD, SVCD, DVD, Mini-DVD, CD-ROM) to watch them comfortably on your TV or PC).”

Website: Read the Full Review of Photos on CD & DVD 2.0 DeLuxe

I’ve been hard at work recently preparing some new Reviews for you - expect to see the following software, hardware and print service reviews during the next week or so:

- Online Print Services
In this new 7 part Review, I’m going to take a look at some online print services that operate in the United Kingdom. I’ll let you know what I think about the service and print quality that I receive from each one. Part 1 has just been posted.

*COMING SOON*
- Vosonic X-Drive
Storage is often a problem for digital photographers. Memory cards quickly fill up and are relatively expensive to buy. Find out why I bought an X-Drive and what I think about this portable storage solution.

- Photos on CD and DVD 2.0 DeLuxe
I’ve taken a look at this software package from FastTrak Software that enables you to create slide shows and burn them onto CD or DVD.

PhotographyBLOG Reviews

It’s a quiet News day today (Fridays always are), so I’ve posted a new PhotographyBLOG article called “My First Photograph”, in which I share with you the image that first sparked my interest in photography.

“My First Photograph”
“I’m a relatively late-starter in the world of photography. I’m 28 years old and have only been interested in this wonderful hobby for about the last 2-3 years. So what made me become interested in photography?”

Now I want to know about you; what do you consider to be your first successful photograph, and how did you get interested in photography? After reading the article, I’d like you all to go and find the first image that you still fondly remember, scan it in, email it to me along with a brief story, and I’ll post them all on PhotographyBLOG.

I’ve introduced several more new features to the site during the last couple of days. Here’s a summary of what’s been improved and enhanced:

- Members Only
There’s a new Members Only section of the site which currently contains two sub-sections, Screensavers and Wallpapers. You need to be a registered member and logged into your account to access these pages, where you can download free, errmm, screensavers and wallpapers :-) I’ll be adding some more free downloads in the very near future…

- Blabber Board
This new feature is on the right-hand side of every page. It allows you to instantly post quick messages and, if there are enough people online, to chat to other PhotographyBLOG visitors.

- Support PhotographyBLOG
There is now a “Support PhotographyBLOG” link in the Members navigation bar at the top of every page. You can voluntarily choose to help out PhotographyBLOG and support its future development by purchasing Prints or Stock Images from my personal photography website, markgoldstein.co.uk.

If you have any comments about these new features, or suggestions of your own, then send an email to [email protected].

Mark

I’ve been spending the last day of my holiday leave (go back to work on Monday - sigh!) adding several new features to PhotographyBLOG. Here’s a summary of what’s been improved and enhanced:

- Updated Forums
The PhotographyBLOG forums have been upgraded to a new, improved version. If you find any bugs or have any comments about the new forums then please let me know.

- Visitors Currently Online
You will find this new feature at the top of each page. It shows how many Guests, Members and total number of visitors are currently browsing this website, the date on which the most people visited ever, and the names of the visiting Members with links to their online profiles.

- RSS Syndication
The number of RSS Syndication feeds has been increased from 1 to 4. PhotographyBLOG now supports the following RSS versions: 0.91, 0.92, 1.0 and 2.0.

If you have any comments about these new features, or suggestions of your own, then send an email to [email protected].

Mark

I don’t know, I go on holiday for a week and somebody decides to attack the server that my website is running on! Apparently there were security issues with the old version of the pMachine software that this website uses, and my web host immediately pulled the plug on my account when someone tried to access their server through my site. Unfortunately I wasn’t around to sort everything out (I was sitting on a beach in Greece at the time…!).

I think this happened on Sunday 6th July, which means that PhotographyBLOG has been offline for the last 4 days. I’ve spent this morning upgrading to the latest version of pMachine, which includes “several general security improvements”, so fingers crossed that will fix everything.

Apparently a PhotographyBLOG visitor contacted my web host provider to offer to pay any outstanding debts on my account, in order to get the site back up and running! Thanks to whoever made that very kind offer! :-) But this time it wasn’t a simple bandwidth issue…

So things should be up and running now as they were. Please email me and let me know if you encounter any issues/problems using the site - they may be caused by the pMachine upgrade.

Thanks,
Mark

It seems that the bandwidth limit of 5Gb on my hosting account was reached yesterday, causing PhotographyBLOG and my other 2 websites (www.markgoldstein.co.uk and www.designauthor.com) to temporarily disappear off the face of the Internet. The situation wasn’t helped by the fact that I went away for the weekend and wasn’t around to sort everything out. Anway, thanks to the helpful folks at Flump.net (cheers Andy!), the bandwidth limit has been raised and everything’s back online.

In an attempt to break the endless stream of news about the Olympus E-1, I’ve taken the drastic step of adding a completely new section to PhotographyBLOG. The Articles section will contain all of my hopefully coherent personal ramblings that won’t fit into a normal everyday posting. My first ever article explores a well-worn theme; the advantages and disadvantages of digital photography…

Website: Digital: A Personal Perspective - Part 1

Many thanks to the website “Blog of the Day” for making PhotographyBLOG, well, their blog of the day for June 24th 2003! It’s always nice to receive an email that contains an award… :-)

Website: Blog of the Day

Thanks to Gary Busey, I’ve found out that PhotographyBLOG has made it into the UK national press! This site was nominated as the “Best for News” website by Web User magazine (Issue 58), in an article looking at digital photography websites. Appearing in print still has a certain something that the Internet can’t quite match, which probably explains why I buy so many photography magazines each month (that’s my story and I’m sticking to it…). Site traffic does seem to have risen, so welcome to all the new visitors who read Web User magazine :-)

Website: Web User magazine

Congratulations to Eugene on becoming the 100th member of PhotographyBLOG! Sadly there are no prizes to win…

You may or may not have noticed that I’ve added a new feature to PhotographyBLOG. Underneath the Calendar in the right-hand menu is the Recent Comments section, which shows the latest comments that have been made and who made them. At the moment, somewhat bizarrely, two threads about tuna casserole are featured…

Many thanks to Lynda at Digital Woe for this pMachine add-on script; her website has a number of very useful and completely free add-ons and hacks for pMachine users.

Website: DigitalWoe - pMachine

Despite being ill earlier in the week, I have managed to get out and about in the Spring sunshine and taken a couple of rolls of film. If you’ve taken some fantastic Spring shots, email them to me at [email protected], and I’ll post a selection of them on the site.