Verba @ McAWilliams.com

A new website was launched yesterday by Donncha O’Caoimh from inphotos.org called Irishphotographers.org.

I was contacted to see if I would be interested in participating in the site, I was honoured to have been asked, and jumped at the chance.

In the words of Donncha “Irish Photographers . org celebrates the best of Irish Photographers online”, and I have to say from it humble start yesterday it has already grown quite a bit with some amazing photographers works being showcased, and to be involved has me all excited.

So please have a look at the site, and thank you and well done Donncha on creating a one stop shop to showcase some great talent.

This really has been the topic of the week. Will Knotts post got myself and Donncha talking in relation to commenting on Photoblogs.

As someone who has photoblogged for 3 years, I am amazed at how few comments a photoblog may receive, yet all the photoblogs I subscribe too seem to have a big subscribership. Why then the lack of comments?

Commenting as Darragh says is the lifeblood of any blog and trust me photoblogs are no different, but is it hard for the general public to comment on a photo? This was something I have mentioned on Matt Cooper when I was been interviewed about Flickr, that photoblogs seem to get comments from fellow photobloggers and not the 97% of other bloggers out there.

Other blogs have the advantage of writing something which can entice discussion, pictures can do the same, although on a very different level.

You may feel relaxed looking at an image, you may not like the focus of an image, an image can make you angry, sad, happy and any other emotion you can think of, it can bring back memories and can on some occasions tell a story that can make you feel elated or disgusted. Why not let the photographer know your feelings. We are not professional photographers (yet) and are constantly learning how to take a good picture, and its the comments that can let us know we are doing something right or wrong as the case may be.

As I mentioned photobloggers tend to comment on each others blogs, so a lot of the time they mention something about apertures, photoshop, macro lenses, depth of field etc. Is this the downfall of the commenting saga, are we putting people off? I really hope not, I comment quite a bit on blogs and even comment on blogs I know I am well out of my depth on, but at least the writer knows, he/she has made an impact on someone outside their niche area, how satisfying.

I don’t know if I speak on behalf of all the photobloggers out there, but even a comment like “really nice picture”, “where did you take this” or “I really hate this shot” would all be very very welcome here, as I say what I might think is a nice image may not be up to scratch for someone else, and I need to know this or I would continue down the slippery slope of crapness.

So please let me know what you think us photobloggers can do to make it easier for people to comment.

One thing I wanted to bring back from the second last version of the site, was for the headers to change a bit. In movabletype this was simple because each page was manually coded, with wordpress the template structure is quite different, and at last I have got the knack of how the jigsaw comes together.

So rather then have the old images for each page, I have made use of the couch and it shall be the focus point of all things to come, so far I have 6 images coming up at random, but I have ideas on how to keep developing this idea for the future.

Please let me know what you think in the comments, tell me if they annoy you, or make you smile a bit, obviously my rss readership wont get to enjoy this the way I had hoped so maybe something new and different will be coming your way, and if you are interested in doing this on your own wordpress blog let me know and I can help out with the codes needed.

I dont mean to harp on about it, but it only took 2 and a bit weeks! As I posted on the 18th of April O2 in the UK wanted to get rid of the remaining 8 gig Iphones and as such, reduced the price by £100. O2 Ireland said they had no plans to do the same.

Well guess what, as of today and up to the 25th of May you can get the 8 gig Iphone from O2 Ireland for, yes you guessed it €100 less, €299 to be exact.

The 8 gig Iphone is being phased out, hopefully to warrant the release of a 32 gig version or more likely the 3g version. I am tempted to go down there today to get myself one, but since the tarffifs have not changed I think I shall hold off for now, we are still in many ways been ripped off.

By the way those nice folk at O2 have this also on their webpage

Please note that if you purchased the 8GB iPhone between 24th April and 8th May, you will automatically receive a refund of €100. If you purchased an 8GB iPhone in store between these dates, please call Customer Care on 1909 for refund details.

Aint that nice of them!

Well after much deliberation I entered the Jelly Army Photo to the Canon - The Assignment competion. Voting has now begun so if you like this image all I ask is that you vote here.

Its worth checking some of the other photo that folk have submitted.