For those of you who may start reading and think “Oh WPTouch” I know about that…  or those who prefer a different mobile plugin I’d suggest you hang around for a few minutes as I’ve added a killer hack to WPTouch (or any other mobile plugin) which will undoubtedly make the experience MUCH better for your iPhone (and other mobile device users).

So… if you have a WordPress blog … and display a lot of large images … and you’re either plagued by a pathetically slow host (yeah that would be me), or you simply want to help out the clients who pay based on bandwidth usage, and give them a much faster user experience… this post is for you.

In the remainder of this post I will presume that you will be using WPTouch but as I mention at the end you can use this with any other appropriate plugin/theme.

What you need to get

WordPress Plugin:  WPTouch – don’t let their “deliver an incredibly fast … experience” claim fool you… you’ll still want to do my hack

Install it as they recommend, configure it to your taste, and test it out either on a mobile device, or in firefox you can somewhat simulate it by getting the Firefox Plugin: User Agent Switcher and then once it’s installed under the tools menu choose iPhone 3.0 as the user agent and then browse your site.

Ok.  Once you’ve done this, you will already feel the need to add a follow link to my site (yes that would be nice if you found this useful – please link to http://www.manymanymoments.com with a link text of South Florida Wedding Photographer) …

Why is it still not perfect

Well, once you install WPtouch your blog interface will be significantly simplified and iPhone-ified in terms of it’s looks… however any images you show on your blog will be downloaded in their full multi-hundred-k size and then resized to fit your iPhone screen.

So why should YOU care?

1. Your blog load times will be much longer than they need to be.  Think about it… your viewers will be downloading 900×600 (or whatever size you size your blog images are) images but only seeing at most 300×440 or so images
2. Many mobile plans aren’t unlimited… so you’re basically costing your clients money
3. At least on the iPhone and iPod touch when some unknown magical point is reached in terms of page size and/or page load time, the browser gives up and your clients will see tiny little blue question marks.  Yeah… your glorious images, replaced by tiny question marks.

Do I have your attention yet?  If not, then maybe you didn’t read point 3 above

In an Ideal World…

When the client browses the site with their gloriously large desktop they would be served nicely sized large images to enjoy in all their glory.
When the client browses on their iPhone the site would serve much smaller images, sized appropriatelly for the user’s screen.

You would think there would be a WordPress Plugin to do this. But no. Don’t even waste your time… at least as of today there just isn’t.

Well.. kinda … I guess there is now! (ok it’s a hack on top of WPTouch ’cause I’m too lazy to write my own agent-detection code… but for all intents and purposes it’s as if there were a plugin)

How to Hack your WPtouch and be your iPhone Clients’ best friend!

Ok, the hack is a two part thing. Part one is a slight change in your workflow:

When you generate your 900×600 (or whatever) images for the blog, also generate a smaller size set using the identical filenames. I recommend a size of 300×440 meaning that you let horizontal images get no wider than 300 and the verticals no taller than 440… not saying you should use a weird 300×440 aspect ratio LOL) … experiment with your compression settings to achieve the smallest possible sizes that still look great at 100% magnification.

when you upload your images, you’ll want to upload them in two separate folders.  One folder will be Images/Full and the other Images/Mobile.

You have complete freedom in terms of how you want to structure the overall path to the folders… so for intance:

http://yourdomain.com/blog/images/full

http://yourdomain.com/blog/images/mobile

is fine

http://yourdomain.com/blog/images/2010/Weddings/JackAndJill/images/full

http://yourdomain.com/blog/images/2010/Weddings/JackAndJill/images/mobile

is fine too

The key is that you have a folder called images which has the two subfolders, full and mobile and that identically named files are in the two folders.

Then when you write your post you simply reference the images in the FULL folder without worrying about the ones in the mobile folder.

…

This all took a bunch of lines to explain… but it’s super-easy… especially if you use a decent ftp client to do your image uploading and if you use Lightroom’s Export presets to automatically generate the differently sized images and place them in appropriate folders ready for FTP upload.

Part two is a one time hack of one of the WPTouch files (ok… one time for every time you update WPTouch… the hack would most likely be removed by an update… unless we can get them to implement this as part of the plugin).

you’re going to have to find your plugin directory with your ftp client.  If you named your wordpress root folder blog then you would find it under:

blog/wp-content/plugins

ok, once in the plugins folder you’ll want to find the WPTouch/Themes/Default folder

In that folder look for a file called functions.php

Copy functions.php to your destktop and feel free to make a copy of it for safekeeping.

Open functions.php with a text editor.

Go all the way to the end of the file where it says:

?>

add the following code before that line:

function MobileImages($content) {
$content=str_ireplace(‘/images/full/’,'/images/mobile/’,$content);
return $content;
}

add_filter(‘the_content’,'MobileImages’);

And then copy this edited functions.php file back to the blog/wp-content/plugins/WPTouch/Themes/Default folder and overwrite the old one.

That’s it.  Now whenever a device is using the WPTouch plugin the function you added will look for the text “/images/full/” and replace it with “/images/mobile/” … causing the browser to load the smaller, faster to load images.

Once again… if you find this useful and think that it will indeed be a benefit for your clients I would really appreciate it if you would add a link to my site from yours.  The final function and workflow may not look like much but It took a full two days of research and work to solve this problem… often enough the work is not in the actual code, but figuring out WHAT CODE to write.  Please use the following html for the link:

Many Many Moments photography by Alessandro Di Sciascio <a href=”http://www.manymanymoments.com>South Florida Wedding Photographer</a>

if you add a link please send me a quick note at my email address so that I may thank you.

Two last things:

1. Think outside the box.

Read this page on both a desktop computer and a mobile device with WPTouch… and you’ll see what I mean

2. You don’t have to use WPTouch if you prefer a different mobile plugin/theme.  You can add the code I wrote to any other theme THAT HAS Agent Verification code built in (basically that is only served to a mobile device) and it will work without any issue… just add it to the functions.php in that plugin’s theme.

No related posts.

In a previous blog post I addressed the question of How my Clients’ Images are kept safe.  If you haven’t read it I would certainly advise you do so.  In the future I will address other “catastrophes” and how I have implemented plans to deal with them.

Before I go any further… I want to point out that I realize many people are uncomfortable with even thinking about something like My not being able to shoot their wedding (due to illness, or worse) and I understand that.  But at the same time, having put a strong plan in place (and one that I continue to improve upon as time goes by) I am actually freed from having to worry about this… and my clients are too.

Ok, so … what happens if for whatever reason I can’t shoot your wedding?  Well for one you can rest assured that if this were to happen it would mean that I’m either too ill to physically stand up and think straight, or that I’ve suffered an incapacitating injury that makes it physically impossible for me to peform as expected, or worse yet that I am no longer among you.  In any of those cases, please spend a moment to have a warm thought for my wife and children.

The key point above is that I’m very aware of the demands of the job and while I can certainly come up with scenarios that would prompt most to not feel capable to “show up for work” … I will show up for work unless what I mentioned above has happened, and let’s leave that at that.

So…  what have I put in place to mitigate the “loss” to my clients in the event of my inability to shoot the wedding?  As with everything else there is no silver bullet… however I feel fairly comfortable with the plan I have in place:

• I select second shooters whose skills I feel confident in.   While you can certainly expect me to bring along someone with limited experience on an engagement shoot, a family portrait session, or any other session where their presence isn’t really “required”, you will not see a rookie roaming your reception on your wedding day.  While they might not shoot exactly the same way I would, second shooters are familiar with my style and would most likely be able to provide you with photography you would be thrilled with.  Of course that would NOT leave you without a second shooter as I try to have a “bench” I can draw from should the need arise.  This would be the default solution if something were to happen to me during the event or immediately prior, where any thought of finding a replacement would be moot.

• I am friends with a network of professional wedding and non wedding photographers many of whom shoot in a style similar to mine – I would be able to tap this network to help you quickly find a replacement photographer if that is your preference.  Note that the netowork is actually two networks… one local and one global… so even in the event of a destination wedding I should be able to quickly find an awesome photographer that could replace me should you approve of such.

• I “charge” a set “fee” to myself against every wedding I shoot and set that money aside in a self-insurance fund.  The purpose of this money is to pay to have a higher-priced photographer come in and shoot your wedding if I can’t – having such a fund makes it so that if the situation were to arise I could truly recommend based on my perception of the other photographers’ work quality, rather than having to be significantly limited by a budget.  Of course this may not be an issue depending on the relationship I may have with the photographer

• Finally as a member of the Professional Photographers of America Association I am covered by an indemnification trust that would cover many kinds of losses, including possibly restaging the wedding for the purpose of taking the photographs.  This one is clearly not a particularly appealing solution, but it is a final safety net in the event that nothing else worked.

If you read this and think of other things I could/should do to further contain this risk, please share it with me either via email or by commenting at the bottom.

If you find this useful and think you will benefit from what you read here, I would really appreciate it if you would add a link to my site from yours.
Please use the following html for the link:

Many Many Moments photography by Alessandro Di Sciascio <a href=”http://www.manymanymoments.com>South Florida Wedding Photographer</a>

if you add a link please send me a quick note at my email address so that I may thank you.

No related posts.

I thought it would be fun to try and make some posts about children photography… as in … involving children in photography.  So let’s see how it goes

A few days ago my son was playing with his Lightning McQueen model car and I was playing with my camera… son comes over and asked me to take a photo of the car.  Sure… let’s do it together!  He was very excited (he’s two and a half, it doesn’t take much LOL).

So I gathered a few supplies:

• A Sheet of 600 grit sandpaper (the black use-wet kind) to serve as the asphalt
• a plastic dinosaur (to serve as the reflector stand)
• a sheet of paper towel (the reflector)
• my LED head light to serve as the main light

We set Lightning McQueen on the sandpaper in a position that work in terms of framing the shot, set up the dinosaur and the reflector off to camera right-back, and I placed the LED headlight on my son’s head and asked him to direct the light at the scene.  Here is the setup shot just before moving the reflector in much closer to the car (it was having zero effect where you see it in the shot)

and here is my son having fun with the LED light.

At any rate… if you want to take a photo of one of your children’s little cars the first tip here is to use the black wet-use sandpaper as faux asphalt.  It works even better than real asphalt because the texture in asphalt would look too coarse next to the little cars, making it painfully obvious that it’s a model car.  The second tip is that yeah maybe I could have gotten the lighting more techincally correct if I positioned the light myself… but how do you beat having your 2.5 year old act as a VALS (Voice Activated Light Stick)?

No related posts.

I’ve had a few clients ask about the safety of their images in the event of a Computer crash, a fire, theft, and other such events so I decided it might be a good idea to write a post about my backup/data safety strategy, so that my clients could have the answer available here whenever they want and readers could offer their feedback and maybe suggest improvements to my strategy.

I’ve identified the following risk factors:

• Camera Failure that does not affect the memory card
• Camera Theft
• Camera Bag Theft
• Camera failure that affects memory card or Memory card failure
• Computer Failure
• DVD disk failure
• Fire/Flood/Theft
• Unanticipated Data Corruption
• Forgetting to Backup

In the following section I specify how I mitigate the impact of each of these risks – and yes the correct word is mitigate… for a few of the risks factors I may feel 99.9% confident in my ability to make the risk a complete non-issue, but a few of them cannot be completely eliminated.

Camera Failure that does not affect the memory card – In the middle of your wedding my camera shuts down and stops working.  This one is extremely easy to mitigate, and frankly I find it astonishing when I hear of people passing themselves as “professional photographers” who show up with only one camera… in fact frankly even two cameras is only a bare minimum… if you don’t own three or more bodies and you’re charging customers for your services, RENT a body for the day.  As you can see I feel strongly about this.  At any wedding I bring my 5D, my 40D, 30D and even a point-and-shoot as a last resort if EVERYTHING goes wrong.

Camera Theft - Obviously losing a camera that cost thousands of dollars is not something I look forward to, but frankly what I’m more concerned about is the priceless photos on the cards.  To mitigate this risk I make sure that any camera I am shooting with is attached to my body (via my cameraslingers strap usually).  In the event that a determined thief were able to wrestle the camera away from me, every memory card I use has, as it’s first image my contact information and a plea to keep the camera but return the memory card anonymously if found

Camera Bag Theft – This is only a problem for my equipment.  I know photographers who store their memory cards (fresh and used) in their camera bag, and I always try to let them know them about the availability of inexpensive holders that you can clip onto your body and/or place in a pocket to ensure they’re with you at all times.  So this risk is a non-issue.

Camera Failure that affects the memory card or Memory Card Failure – While I’m shooting an event my camera fails corrupting the card  or my memory card fails.  I have a five step approach to mitigating this risk

1. I routinely shoot with two cameras and make it a point to constantly switch from one to the other.  I do this for artistic reasons, but a significant side-benefit is that if I were to lose a whole card I would most likely still have a lot of shots of the affected timeframe, on the card in the other camera – also for critical moments that last only an instant (for instance the first kiss) my second shooter will be there firing at the same time.
2. I use relatively small memory cards.  Rather than shooting on 32GB cards as some others do, I stick to 4GB cards max.  The difference here is that if I were to lose even a FULL 4GB card, I might lose 10-15% of the photos from a wedding.  Someone with a 32GB card would lose… the WHOLE Wedding.
3. I don’t fill up my memory cards – cards are much more likely to fail once you get them close to capacity.  I stop way before that which both means less chance of failure, but also fewer images affected BY a failure.
4. If the unthinkable happens and I do need to try and retrieve images from a corrupt card, my strong IT background means I have access to the right tools and more importantly I know WHAT NOT TO DO when you’re trying to retrieve data from a corrupt card
5. I only use top quality cards and use them for a maximum of 2 years, after which I sell them on Ebay – yes I keep track of when they were bought.

Computer (Hard Disk) Failure – So let’s say that everything went well at the event and I transferred your images onto my hard drive and started working on them… and my Hard Drive Failed.  Now what?

Here’s what I do when I copy your images onto my hard drive:

1. Copy Images from Card to Hard Drive
2. Backup Images from Hard Drive to External Hard Drive that sits on my desk
3. Backup Images from Hard Drive ot my WD Passport that I carry with me all the time
4. Synchronize my Passport with an Off-Site computer which writes the files to another external drive
5. Once Images are complete I upload the final image to Zenfolio which has it’s own data-safety procedures
6. When the whole project is done I archive it onto two sets of  DVDs.  One set is kept at my home, the other is kept at an alternate location.

So when all is said and done your images are stored in 7 different copies at 3 different locations.  I’d say I’m keeping them pretty safe

DVD disk Failure – THIS ONLY APPLIES TO CUSTOMERS WHO HAVE PURCHASED A LONG-TERM DATA STORAGE PLAN – SEE YOUR CONTRACT TO DETERMINE HOW LONG YOUR DATA WILL BE STORED BY US – DVDs aren’t forever.  They have a usable shelf-life that isn’t infinite.  I’ve read reports that suggest that 10 years is a reasonable time frame to expect the average self-burned DVD to last without developing issues.

For customers who purchase a Long-Term Data Storage plan I implement a staggered, forced 4 year rotation which works like this (Imagine we are only dealing with ONE DVD of data, but of course two copies… A and B):

1. After 2 years I copy Disk A to a new one and destroy the original, I also verify the data on disk B
2. After 4 years I Verify the data on Disk A, and I copy disk B to a new one, then destroy the old version of B
3. After 6 years I copy Disk A to a new one and destroy the original, I also verify the data on disk B
4. After 8 years I Verify the data on Disk A, and I copy disk B to a new one, then destroy the old version of B
5. and the cycle continues…

Fire/Flood/Theft – The same combination of off-site solutions that protects your data from a Hard Disk Failure (see above) protects it in case of a fire.

Unanticipated Data Corruption – My synchronization software is set up to use “Versioning.” What this means is that whenever it copies a new version of a file to backup, it keeps the previous version as well for a configurable length of time.  So if a file were to become corrupt it would probably propagate through my backup system but the previously good version would be there as well, ready to replace the corrupt files.

Forgetting to Backup – It’s all automated… your images don’t rely on my brain to remember stuff

I hope you found this helpful.  If you want to use the same PC synchronization software I use it’s SyncbackSE

If you find this useful and think you will benefit from what you read here, I would really appreciate it if you would add a link to my site from yours.
Please use the following html for the link:

Many Many Moments photography by Alessandro Di Sciascio <a href=”http://www.manymanymoments.com>South Florida Wedding Photographer</a>

if you add a link please send me a quick note at my email address so that I may thank you.

If you’re interested in finding out how my Clients are protected if I can’t shoot their wedding follow the link.

No related posts.

I’ve researched this extensively and already had a post that suggested using attachment-extender and another post that offered what amounts to a wordpress hack to help solve this problem.

Today I have two new solutions (which are the ones I’m currently using).  I don’t have a specific preference of one over the other because I’m a Windows user.  Someone who isn’t a Windows user will only be able to go with my first suggestion.

WordPress Plugin Solution – works on all platforms

The plugin I’m using these days, which has replaced the previous ones I wrote about is Faster Image Insert.  It offers a number of features (many of which I don’t even use) including making it ridiculously easy to add many images in one fell swoop.  What the plugin does is add a panel to the New Post scren in WordPress, which gives you direct access to uploading images from your PC, from a URL, as well as your media library.  Once you have the images loaded into the media library you can see them right here on the same page as the post, check off the ones you want inserted (one at a time, or many at once) and click Insert Selected Images.

Simple as that.  And portable because it lives in your wordpress

Microsoft Live Writer Solution – works only in windows

The plugin above would make it seem that using a blog-writing tool would be pointless, but sometime you’re so lazy you don’t even want to deal with having to search for your images to upload, and would rather just drag them into a post.

Microsoft Live Writer lets you do just this.  It’s very customizeable, easy to use, free.  And you can drag/drop as many images as you want, compose your post offline and then publish it on WordPress.

It gets a big thumb up from me.

Let me know what you think, in the comments.

If you find this useful and think you will benefit from what you read here, I would really appreciate it if you would add a link to my site from yours.
Please use the following html for the link:

Many Many Moments photography by Alessandro Di Sciascio <a href=”http://www.manymanymoments.com>South Florida Wedding Photographer</a>

if you add a link please send me a quick note at my email address so that I may thank you.

Related posts:

1. Inserting Multiple Images in WordPress at once – if you’re less adventurous
2. Inserting Multiple Images into WordPress at once

Let’s say you read my other post on this subject, but for some reason decided that backing up and then replacing a core php file in your installation isn’t something you’d like to do.

There’s a plugin that you might want to try, called attachment-extender.

Since it’s a standard plugin you just upload it into your plugins folder then enable the plugin from the dashboard.

Here’s how you use it:

• Start writing your new post
• when you’re ready to insert images click the “Add an Image” button
• Click “Select Files” and then browse for the files on your computer
• Select the multiple files you want to insert
• Wait for the files to upload.
• Now click the last tab on the “Add an image” dialog box, which should read “Media Library”
• You will see your whole media library.  The last files you just uploaded should be at the top.
• Check off each file you want to insert in your post
• Click “Insert All Checked”
• Done.

Benefits of this solution:

• It’s not a hack, but a plugin… should survive version upgrades (until the dude at the wheel wakes up and makes this a standard feature)

Drawbacks:

• Compared to the media.php change there are a couple of extra steps, especially clicking the boxes to select the images, and possibly paging to the next page of the gallery if you’re uploading quite a few images.

Of course it’s still tons better than the default of having to go to each image, and imho much better also than the upload then point with links by hand option.

If you find this useful and think you will benefit from what you read here, I would really appreciate it if you would add a link to my site from yours.
Please use the following html for the link:

Many Many Moments photography by Alessandro Di Sciascio <a href=”http://www.manymanymoments.com>South Florida Wedding Photographer</a>

if you add a link please send me a quick note at my email address so that I may thank you.

Related posts:

1. Inserting Multiple Images into WordPress at once
2. Inserting Multiple Images into WordPress at once – Two even Better ways

There is a lot to love about WordPress.  Image uploading is NOT one of those things
One thing that is very frustrating especially for photographers, is the inability to natively import a large number of images and insert them straight into a blog post.
Yes there are gallery options, and yes you could use Microsoft’s Live Writer to insert images into your post (if you’re using Windows).

But you really should be able to do this straight inside WordPress.

I searched all over with little luck, but eventually found a gem (unfortunately I do not have a link to the place where I found it) … someone, somewhere, sometime edited the \wp-admin\includes\media.php file to provide a button that allows you to insert all the images you just uploaded.

The way it works is as follows:

• start writing your new post
• when you’re ready to insert images click the “Add an Image” button
• Click “Select Files” and then browse for the files on your computer
• Select the multiple files you want to insert
• Wait for the files to upload, they will have a checkbox next to them which is selected by default
• Click “Insert Selected”
• Done.

The only problem is that the file does not work in the latest version of WordPress (2.8.2 as of this writing).
So I took my photographer hat off and set it on the table, and put my coder hat on.  After a few hours of comparing/inspecting/searching, I was able to isolate the changes that allow for this great functionality.  Unless huge changes are made by the codex developers I think I should be able to provide an updated version when wordpress is updated.  In fact please note that anytime you upgrade wordpress you’ll probably have to reapply this.

You can download the version that works with WordPress 2.7.x here.

You can download the version that works with WordPress 2.8.x here.

Be sure to follow the very straightforward instructions included in the readme file… backup your media.php before replacing it!

Let me know if this helped you out, in the comments.

If this solution is not for you, check out this alternative.

If you find this useful and think you will benefit from what you read here, I would really appreciate it if you would add a link to my site from yours.
Please use the following html for the link:

Many Many Moments photography by Alessandro Di Sciascio <a href=”http://www.manymanymoments.com>South Florida Wedding Photographer</a>

if you add a link please send me a quick note at my email address so that I may thank you.

Related posts:

1. Inserting Multiple Images in WordPress at once – if you’re less adventurous
2. Inserting Multiple Images into WordPress at once – Two even Better ways