How To Be Seen: Part Two

The Photography is going really well! I borrowed my friend’s Nikon and her external lens so that my pictures would look extra fancy and clear. I’m conscious of the fact that i haven’t posted any of my photo’s up so i thought i’d give you guys a sneak peek of what i hope to have in my portfolio.

Artwork in my Garden

This week we explored how we Could use Social Media to optimise our sites. Unfortunately because i was sick i was unable to attend the lecture but i’ve read up on the notes and i have a pretty good understanding of what was discussed. I currently actively use Twitter,Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, Snapchat, Soundcloud and Vine. I occasionally use LinkedIn, Keek, StumbleUpon, Google+ and Goodreads. All of these being for personal use and not to promote a site or my own personal brand so it was interesting to hear how to optimise these platforms for corporate use. My least favourite site of all of them is Facebook because of it’s corporate nature which is ironic. Youtube which is my favourite social media site is shifting towards a more corporate model and unlike Facebook i think these changes are positive alter the user viewer dynamic in a productive way.
The tips on how to build a successful Social Media campaign are tips i’m going to use next semester as i have a number of events i want to promote to UCD Students.

My focus now is on the photography brief and polishing up this blog, wish me luck.

How To Be Seen: Part One

When starting this blog my target audience was my peers, i never imagined that other people might want to view my content. This week we learned how to optimise our language and our blog to increase our visibility and be seen when searched on search engines.

I used Google Adwords to figure out the things that people would search for if they got my blog as a search result.

I also used WebMaster to analyse my blog

I had no idea that half of these tools existed so it’s been interesting to know that people are using these sites to draw you in. As i won’t be continuing this blog on for long i don’t desire to know more about it. However if i continue to blog in the future or if i create a website for a future business i will definitely take advantage of these analytic tools.

©

This week we focused on Copyright and a few aspects of Information Protection, an area i am highly interested in. IT & IP law is an emerging field i’m considering getting into so it was brilliant to dip my toes into some aspects of it.

One thing that particularly interested me that i did more research on was the Tragedy of the Commons, the idea that we use things freely but bare little cost towards it. The idea implies that we are mass consumers and that if we don’t avail of a resource it someone else will which leads us to reap the majority of the benefits before our peers do. The solution to this is said to be Privatisation or a shift towards Government ownership. The positive side of public ownership is that all the population technically has a right to the resource. However the people who maintain the upkeep of these resources don’t receive any real benefits and if they misuse the resource they aren’t penalised enough. Private ownership solves this issue, maintainers reap the benefits and suffer the losses of their decisions. However this seems flawed to me because if the intent of the user is negative then there is no way to save the resource from exploitation. e.g. Companies over extracting precious gems from countries.

The Free Music Archive which we stumbled upon back a few weeks ago was brought up again in the lectures. I was excited to see it again and to discuss the copyright mechanics behind it. Free Music Archive is an example of a website that uses Creative Common Licenses. These licenses allow the content creators to control how other people use and modify their content as well as if they can benefit financially from them. I think it’s great that websites like this exist because it gives credit where it’s due and it gives the power back to the original creator.

One thing i’m definitely going to do now that i know all of this information is i’m going to go back on all of my blog posts and make sure that credit was given to all the photographers whose pictures i’ve reposted.

It’s Go Time

I can’t believe it’s week 9 already, 12 weeks is just not enough time D: Anyway my Presentation is up if anyone wants to take a look at it. It actually went pretty well, i’m happy with it.

So this week we had our final photography lecture! It was all about file types, image hosting and  image meta data! I finally learned how to make a gif and i’m certain my Tumblr followers will dwindle now that i now how to do this. I’m really beginning to love photography, i love finding new photographers and analysing what makes them really good at what they do. However it’s not my turn to step up to the plate and try it out for myself.

Fortunately thanks to a flashcard I’ve kept in my wallet for weeks, i finally understand all of the photography related lingo. I think my theme for the brief will be Power; The power of nature, learning, the body, a vote etc. I think it’s perfect since voter registration for the next referendum is in UCD next week and I have plenty of time to get the other shots. I found this amazing Photography hack video on you tube, i may or may not use the second arty hack. Stayed tuned to find out.

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Pretty cool huh, that’s what i do with half of these blogposts! Image by Tyler Haywood at angulargeometry.tumblr.com