Portraits of Africa 2012 on Google

Time again to monitor and check the performance of our new WP based Semiomantics XO 2012 Script on search engines.

Here’s a screenshot of yesterday’s post “Portraits of Africa 2012″ on Google – have a look! Positions 1, 2, 3 and 6 ahead of 10,800,000 search returns – YEBO GOGO!

Portraits of Africa 2012 on Google

When looking up “Portraits of Africa 2012″ on Google, I also checked how the images in my article were ranked – here’s the detail of the screenshot showing the Image of a “Young African Girl” on position one, followed by the Image of a “Young African Boy” on position 4… and a small ad I created ages ago peeking at us on position 2. All of them ahead of our South African presidents… just too funny! The young generation is on the move!

Portrait of Africa Images

It becomes even more intrigueing when we look up “Portrait of Africa Images” on Google and find these young faces of Africa featuring amongst some really classy photography! And again… the random positioning is just too weird… for those who read this and understand what I mean! Welcome to the future :)

Fact is, that with the increasing importance of images and media on the Internet – and with this for our website development – … and people preferring to look at something for quick grasping of the contents rather than reading long time-consuming – and even worse: thought-provoking -  texts… that the correct tagging and classification of photos and images becomes more important. Here as with any post what counts is to be found on Google – Google Top 10 that is. Noone else looks further…

Congratulations to our young friends who’ve made it to the top ranks and find themselves in interesting and attractive company! There will be more….

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Portraits of Africa

Young African Girl from my series “Portraits of Africa 2012″.

Portraits of Africa 2012

Portraits of Africa 2012 – untouched… straight from my simple NIKON Coolpix P90 … just the magic of a Young African Girl.

Although the black & white version adds a specific note, I preferred to show the soft gold tones of the skin.

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Portraits of Africa

Within my photo series “Portraits of Africa” here is the image of a young African boy.

Portraits of Africa

I just love Black & White Photography and how it adds depth to a picture, especially portraits and expressive faces.

“Portraits of Africa” are shot on a simple NIKON Coolpix P90 with a minimum of post-editing, ideally nothing at all.

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Hakamela Conferencing

We are pleased to announce that the Conference Services website  “Hakamela Conferencing & Event Management” will soon be under construction on Semiomantics XO 2012.

Hakamela Conferencing

Hakamela Conferencing & Event Management will open its doors in Pretoria, South Africa. This high-demand Service Company  will be run by professional Conference Management Expert Lynn Sakuinje.

Web Design South Africa will be designing a simple, practical and user-friendly website that will target top 10 positions on Google under the relevant keywords and focuses on high visibility on the mobile web.

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Bianca Gubalke Mobile

Bianca Gubalke Mobile – a first pre-seminar sketch for a mobile version! The little icons stand for Social Network icons like Facebook, Twitter etc, which I would design myself to fit into the overall picture I have in mind.

Bianca Gubalke Mobile

We are living in times of rapid change and the explosion of the mobile market. People use their mobile phones to search the net, to find what they want, to compare it and – to buy it. Sales figures triggered via the mobile net are staggering – and as web designers we have to adapt – which means also to focus on new technologies and learn new languages.

Over the past years, Semiomantics has always evolved along with WordPress Developments. Remarkably, the latest WP update allows for much more creativity. While our Semiomantics based author blogs display perfectly on smartphones through integration of the right plugins and settings, there’s much more scope that we will be looking into at this weekend’s Ycademy Seminar 2012 – which is also a testing ground for the new Semiomantics XO 2012 – to be released soon.

In that sense, I am looking forward to the evolution of Bianca Gubalke Mobile!

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Web Design Trends 2012

The upcoming first Ycademy Seminar 2012 will focus on Web Design Trends 2012 in terms of what they mean for our brand-new WordPress based Semiomantics XO 2012.

Web Design Trends 2012

In order to follow and implement Web Design Trends 2012, learning new languages like CSS3 and html5 has become crucial – especially also due to the unfortunate conflicts around Flash which cannot be seen on the exploding mobile market. Accordingly, this weekend’s fully online YCADEMY Seminar will need focused attention and strong nerves! That’s the price to pay to be and remain a qualified Semiomantics expert!

MadMax is ready – are YOU?!

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Monkey Valley Resort on Mobile

I just got some screenshots directly from the iPhone in Europe to demonstrate how the new Monkey Valley Resort Website actually looks on the Mobile web – and I’m absolutely thrilled! The quality and resolution are just outstanding and I left the image big so you can appreciate it here even though the picture may take a moment to load. This is soooo sexy!

Above, you see the Frontpage of the Monkey Valley Resort Website, which features a large elegant slider displaying the various chapters and attractions of the hotel resort 30 kms out of Cape Town, South Africa. What is remarkable here is how beautifully the slider displays – all based on new technology as, sadly, Flash does not display on mobile phones and this forced us to adapt in our Semiomantics Website Development, learning new languages like CSS3 and HTML5.

Monkey Valley Resort on Mobile

Much if not most of today’s business on the Internet is piped in one way or another through the mobile web… a reason why Monkey Valley Resort had to be visible on mobile.

Here is a horizontal version (probably 1 : 1) … and of course you can zoom up text or whatever you are interested in… and get to where you want to go in a fast and user-friendly way, eg. Click and BOOK!

The Importance of Functionality

The Importance of Functionality in terms of Website Design has a lot to do with the ease and user-friendly interaction between the website and the website visitor: the website has to communicate to the visitor what it is all about in an attractive way, guiding through what it has to offer and fulfilling almost intuitively what the visitor is looking for and making it easy to follow through with the desired action – say to book a room in a hotel…, to buy, pay and even download say an ebook… or to simply offer various sights of a specific area or place that shows the visitor what he can expect, eg. in a holiday resort or when researching a new home in real estate.

Today, being visible on the mobile web is crucial to the success of any website or Internet business – and therefore one of the most important functionalities of a website or blog.

Nowhere more than on the Internet do we see such rapid and continuous change and do we have to adapt, learn new languages and keep developing our knowledge and skills on an ongoing basis as in the virtual arena. A website or blog is not built to last forever and it needs a regular allocation of funds (budget) – it’s a project in constant development, adapting to the changes, changing with the trends and always trying to offer readers and visitors something new, something modern and going the extra mile to capture the traffic that leads to business and success.

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Semiomantics XO 2012 for WordPress

The brand-new Semiomantics XO 2012 for WordPress – soon to be released – will be the central topic of the first Ycademy Seminar 2012, to be held this coming weekend.

As “Publishing for Excellence” at “Web Design with Passion” demands consistent learning, experimenting, an adaptation to trends and almost daily reassurance of the script’s leading SEO performance, the global Semiomantics Team is currently testing the new script and exploring different ways of presenting themselves or their products and services online.

Semiomantics XO 2012 for WordPress

I am very pleased with the more adventurous ways we can explore with the new Semiomantics XO 2012 for WordPress… and I know we haven’t even started! I am looking forward to creating the Wedding Website on this extraordinary WordPress based script.

Sliders are the Trend 2012

With sliders being an important part of the Trend 2012 as Website Design and “the Look” are concerned, I am currently experimenting with a fading slider – although extremely frustrating with often failing Internet connections and extremely slow lines down here… it feels like the sun flare is targeting us specifically and knocking us out completely!

Besides using sliders in the header or sidebar widgets or even blog posts and pages, we can now use them even in the background – which opens a lot more creative options and perspective.

At the Ycademy Seminar, we will work on becoming familiar with the new features of the XO 2012 and improve our knowledge of CSS3, HTML5 and jQuery so we are in a position to ‘play’ with the script, explore new avenues and, last but not least, adapt XO to our customers’ needs.

To be continued. . .

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Relevant Online Marketing Seminars like those offered by Ycademy since 2004 are in high demand by people who want to build a successful business online or bring their offline business to the Internet.

Following my article on How to do Online Marketing on Friday, here is some feedback with my personal conclusions from the first day of this astonishingly clear, quite complex yet efficient and hands-on Ycademy Workshop that provided each Seminar participant with a relevant Email Marketing setup on their WordPress based Author Blog on Semiomantics XO.

The above photo was taken at the V & A Waterfront in Cape Town, South Africa – a traditional Marketing eldorado of its kind!

Relevant Online Marketing Seminars

What emerged as a key element from the first day of this relevant Online Marketing Seminar by Ycademy was that today online marketing has to be “relevant” and “contextual”. These two words have to be remembered, specifically when focusing on Email Marketing and the integration of Emailing with Newsletters and/or Autoresponders into one’s CMS, eg. Author Blog.

With our high performing Semiomantics websites and blogs this is no easy task to start with.

It needs careful thought and weighing of what is needed versus what’s not needed and a close look at what serves our purpose best: free or paid solutions? On the surface, it looks like concessions will have to be made between the mailer and our website optimization… however, that’s obviously not what we at Ycademy will settle with!

Relevant Emailing

Relevant Emailing in a smart and contextual form is what the Ycademy Brainwave came up with despite some rather frustrating research into various unsatisfactory avenues. Relevant Email Marketing in a way that’s modern, permission-based, contextual and far beyond the batch and blast approach of the old days.

With all of us thoroughly fed up with the clutter still reaching our mail boxes despite spam filters, we need to know that this is only around 20% of the spam that actually goes out – and this still seems to serve a certain market… an indicator that even that still works.

However, for the marketing professional in today’s economic climate everything turns around customer retention – and emailing is a powerful way of keeping in touch, communicating and ensuring growth through customer retention. We all learned that it is more cost-efficient to work on retaining an existing customer than winning over a new one.

Bearing this in mind, we move away from large broadcast campaigns to more targeted engagements. However, delivering that relevance requires more sophistication and here the challenge is to invest in the analysis of response and behavior data in order to assist us in directing our marketing strategies in the most beneficial ways – beneficial for us on one hand to avoid losing our time and efforts and risking spam complaints and optouts – as well as for the customer who may well be interested in receiving hot information on the red sunlasses we offer but not the green bikinis we sell in a different chapter. This needs to be realized and attended to accordingly. This is what relevance and context in terms of reaching out to our readers and customers is all about. That we give them what they want without throwing anything else at them. Graceful Service with the right Attitude in my eyes. Just as an example.

Looking at our website publications – eg. Author Blogs – it appears that the Email channel is a natural extension to distribute and monetize content – however, it needs a customized approach and it needs a soft approach to ensure that our mails get delivered and… opened… and maybe even passed on.

Therefore, our goal as publishers must always be to deliver a relevant, contextual and personalized quality experience that our readers and customers enjoy!

How do we achieve this?

Ycademy Seminar on Online Marketing

While day 1 of the Ycademy Seminar on Online Marketing provided the conceptual understanding, the basic setup and the tools, day 2 (today) will complete this important chapter in order to not only serve our own purpose in terms of promoting our own products and services, however, for those of us who focus on customer satisfaction when it comes to Web Design and Customer Follow-up, to offer our customers a maximum of value and safety in firstly reaching out and staying in close contact with their customers with their highly search engine optimized WP based Semiomantics CMS.

I am looking forward to a highly informative Workshop at the Ycademy Seminar today.

How to do Online Marketing – or Internet Marketing – is and remains at the center of anything happening on the Internet, and while the principles remain the same if compared with traditional offline marketing – as we see here on the picture taken at the V & A Waterfront in Cape Town, South Africa – different skills need to be mastered and different tools and equipments are being used: attract, convert, monetize.

Affiliate Marketing at Ycademy Seminar

Affiliate Marketing is an excellent concept within Online Marketing and remains a good source of income to this day. Basically, people do Affiliate Marketing all day long by recommending products they like to people they know and receiving a commission on each sale. So it’s pretty easy to understand as a concept.

At the upcoming Ycademy Seminar August 2011 we will go back to Online Marketing and pursue the vast topic over the next months. Our objective will be to work in a way that we minimize our efforts, focusing on one link. That’s always the main issue… one cannot promote two links. This one link could theoretically be one’s Author Blog. It’s a personal decision to be taken, however, one could promote everything from or out of the Author Blog. All other websites are satellites in support of my main CMS.

Online Marketing

There are a few things that we need for doing Online Marketing. If we sell our own product, we need our own Product website. Alternatively, if we sell someone else’s products,  then we have affiliate links, possibly feed streams etc, however, the principle remains the same: Lead Generation, Follow-up, Conversion. As always, Lead generation depends on Traffic – and Traffic comes from Google, Facebook or people we talk to.

It has been the same since ever!

What we need is people looking at our offers, then figuring out what percentage will buy and then see what effort we need to put out to get enough people that result in enough conversion that we make a profit, ideally a living online.

Lead Generation

Lead generation is based on Traffic. To generate a so-called ‘lead’, we collect people we can talk to. From there the money is in the follow-up… as taught over years at my Ycademy Workshops on “Online Communication”.

You can go to Social Networks, eg. Facebook and find people there who might be interested in your offer. More efficiently would be to have them on a Mailing List.

Mailing List means Newsletter, means Email promotion, means Email Marketing.

Email Marketing

Email Marketing has always worked pretty well; otherwise there wouldn’t be that much spam in our mail boxes every day – unfortunately one ahs to say!

Autoresponders work very well as well… but what definitely works is Newsletters.

Newsletters

If you have people signing up with your Newsletter – giving your basically permission to send them your weekly or monthly summary of your articles on your Author Blog wrapped up as a Newsletter (obviously of the items they are interested in and nothing else), or that you have a Newsletter concept where you publish a particular Newsletter on a particular date, maybe even both online and offline, you need to have the Knowhow and the Equipment to do so.

Mailing your Newsletter is the most difficult thing to host, resulting in the fact that there is a stiff price tag attached to it. However, if you work in a smart way and try not to exaggerate, then you can with some relatively interesting means have a nice, sound lead generation follow-up system connected to your CMS.

The risk with Mailing Lists and Newsletters is: most people don’t know (or care) about spam etc… they get all excited and within two or three months they are blacklisted with their email account, meaning their IP address – and this means they get off the horizon of Google. This is the eternal problem one faces… Besides, what worked years ago is no longer possible today.

Looking at hosting costs on Webber means real money and one better knows what we do.

Ideally, we get interested people on our own mailing list and coordinate the mailing and newsletter with our Blog. It means trying to get a maximum of output with a minimum of input; it means that we have to streamline our business in such a way that whatever we do is extremely efficient.

If you post on the Author Blog in a specific category… from where it goes through the publishing network, it has to be thought-through. Having yet a different website does not make sense as we need our traffic on our own site, not the merchant’s site.

Lead generation means that we need Landing pages and Lead capture pages. As demonstrated with our Photo Blogs we have seen that we can setup any page we want on a WordPress based Semiomantics XO. Say just a header and a footer and nothing inbetween: there ‘inbetween’ where there is ‘nothing’ we can type in any html code and put in any lead capture content we want. Therefore we can create as many lead capture pages as we want even outside the WordPress content and the WordPress loop.

Then we will add software to the blog that allows us to do Mailings, where we can setup Mailing Lists per category to address individual interests of our readers and customers. Someone opting in for photography is not interested in any home business stuff – as an example – and vice versa. The focus must always be on respecting our readers’ and customers’ interests.

We can send people on our Mailing List a weekly summary of what is new on our blog, or a monthly one… or even a daily one. That depends on each individual. But the idea is always about getting people to give us double-optins to receive our news, free give-aways or whatever we wish to promote to them – and with their permission. It’s back to the real form of Marketing with Advertising pages or Lead capture pages – and all on WordPress.

This we will setup at the Ycademy Seminar August 2011. Don’t miss it!

WordPress Marketing – with a focus on Email Marketing and Affiliate Marketing – is the theme of this month’s Ycademy Seminar, starting this coming Saturday at 1 pm London and ending on Sunday, around 10 pm London. All seminar participants will learn how to turn their WordPress CMS – namely their Semiomantics Author Blog – into a powerful Marketing machine.

WordPress Marketing

Having developed our own Semiomantics Product and built – over a number of years – the Semiomantics XO Publishing Framework with its strong emphasis on SEO and high visibility on Google Top 10, it’s time to get back to Online Marketing, especially WordPress Marketing, based on our WP based and powered themes.

To this day, Email Marketing is highly efficient, but it needs the right knowhow and skills to be used in the correct form, from individual emailing to landing pages with double optins to Autoresponders, Newsletters etc … and for all of this the right tools and the right etiquette to avoid spam complaints and IP blacklisting.

Affiliate Marketing is and has always been successful and is, in my view, “… the marketing way of the net”: help me market my product and get a commission on each sale. As simple as that. However, there are important issue to be considered to ensure a safe link tracking especially when it comes to automated link promotion. As many members on the Ycademy network promote Affiliate Links – be it from Amazon or Autopart dealers – this needs to be addressed in the right way. Last but not least, we all have our own shop and products to sell – so yet another important and interesting issue to address and integrate in a smart and efficient way.

As usual, the weekend Seminar risks not having sufficient hours in the day :)

Why WordPress Semiomantics is the Best Theme

Within the context of WordPress Marketing we have always monitored the performance of our articles on search engines, especially Google, and here only Google Top 10 counts – as who has time to look any further?

As such, my screenshots serve to proove the performance of our WordPress based Semiomantics CMS and, as we see below from yesterday’s article results, it’s quite clear why WordPress Semiomantics is the best theme:

WordPress Marketing on a WP based Semiomantics CMS is the most cost-efficient way of bringing your product or service to a maximum number of peoples’ attention in terms of Website Publishing – fast and reliable. We show it every day – and so do our customers on their brand-new CMS. It’s really the smart and economic way to go!

When starting out on the Internet the question is always: which CMS should I use for my Website or Blog?

This was what Delia O’Riordan – known as Psychic Delia – asked herself when deciding to take her Psychic Consultancy Online. Getting into “blogging” and Website Publishing on a Mac had its tricky and frustrating moments, however, looking back on her very first month online Delia knows why WordPress Semiomantics is the Best theme… and that she could not have made a better and more cost-effective choice, besides saving tons of money on Google Ads!

Why WordPress Semiomantics is the Best Theme

Today, Delia O’Riordan has her own proof as to why WordPress Semiomantics is the Best Theme… seeing her own articles and posts reaching Google Top 10 positions and bringing her the Traffic she needs to build her online business and get new readers, subscribers and potential customers.

Having designed Delia’s CMS, I keep monitoring her performance on Google… not always, but just to make sure she keeps on track and everything moves forward according to concept, execution and plan. So I looked at her 3 recent posts and checked their performance on Google… and WOW! look for yourself and see the results! Amazing… and this after just a mere month!

We often hear that it’s so ‘normal’ for us who have been around since a while to get high positions on search engines… but that a beginner would barely come near that. Yes and no… it depends – and as you see, Delia O’Riordan made the right decision in terms of choosing a WordPress based Semiomantics Script with expert Custom Web Design… then she received the right guidance and instructions… a lot of help and support… and now she’s spreading her wings and flying high on the Internet highway – Congratulations Delia!

A couple of minutes ago, I published an article on “South Africa Photo Album Online” – now let’s look what that article does in terms of SEO, meaning how our Photo Album Online South Africa performs on major search engines like Google.

Photo Album Online South Africa

As we see from the screenshot above, our Photo Album Online South Africa reached Google Top 10 within a few seconds and positioned itself on rank 6 ahead of 18,000,000 search results! And not only there…

How to Sell Photos Online

So if you wonder as to how to sell Photos Online… you either go the route of Stock Photography – but it’s not an overnight income earning source for sure, you need to grow into it, work hard and always improve your photographic skills … well, that’s an ongoing process anyway for all photo freaks :)

Alternatively, be independent with your own Online Photo Album, Photo Blog or Photo website… BUT – and this is crucial – make sure you appear on Google Top 10 on your major keywords… just as you saw on the example I just demonstrated, using nothing else but a Semiomantics XO combined with Semiomantics Web Design. I publish it asap here so you see it’s 100% genuine… that’s Semiomantics!

Saves you money – makes you money online … your choice! Contact me to discuss if this sparks your interest!

Welcome to my new “South Africa Photo Album Online” under construction! As I am South African, live in South Africa, love South Africa and breath South Africa – and each of my photos reflect exactly that – I think my new Photo website deserves that title! It’s only got started… but being surrounded by the most stunning Nature on this planet, my topics are clear… and there will be those amazingly talented, beautiful and smiling people of the rainbow nation… so that’s the journey! As my personal slogan is “Web Design with Passion” and we only talk online environment, here’s something new and exciting evolving…

South Africa Photo Album Online

While being a little bit stuck on a little devilish issue on my Photo Blog HERE, but eager to start a different version for a “South Africa Photo Album Online”, I abused of one of my existing Semiomantics Web Design websites to follow through and experiment featuring a Crowned Crane Photo I took in the World of Birds in Hout Bay, South Africa as well as Insect Photography from my garden.

These are just examples. All this serves to demonstrate how to create your own Photo Album Online.

While I will show the website at a later, more evolved stage (as it’s still a play- and exercise-ground), the basics are to show a large photo – ideally a slide rotator. In fact, I also tried to do this as a sprite which also works perfectly. People clicking on this large picture – or a collection of rotating images – follow links to dedicated pages or even other Photo Websites or Photographic Blogs.

Instead of a navigation bar, I again used a sprite I had created already following an Ycademy Workshop.

The idea is that people can choose the topic of their interest on this mysteriously ‘darkened’ image menu, which illuminates once you hover over them (see lower image and compare with the top)… something we ‘baby boomers’ remember from the good old days with 35 mm slide shows and corresponding light-boxes!

Presenting Digital Photography Online

What is important when presenting Digital Photography Online is that your Photo Album or Photo Blog opens fast; you therefore have to scale the pictures down until you come to a point where you still have enough quality but the image is as light as possible, thus opening fast. It’s quite an art to get there, but crucial online – especially in countries with slow Internet connections… and then don’t forget the booming mobile market. It’s also a protection; once a picture is released onto the online circuit, it’s open for grabs… copyrighted or not … that’s just as it is, learn to live with it. That’s OK… but no professional can or would work with low resolution photos, so I think it’s not worth being that paranoid and rather enjoy to create something beautiful and enjoyable for all. In any case, living in such a beautiful natural environment I feel it’s just right to project a bit of that onto the screens for everybody to share. Never thought of that: bringing Nature into the virtual world… a rather philosophical idea… gotta think about that one!

Stock Photography is a business and a totally different ball game alltogether where you get what you pay for; we will be back with Photo Media Stock one day…

Stay tuned; I will keep you posted on further developments!

Yesterday, we presented our new Photo Blog on what we believe is the best WP Photo Blog Theme by Semiomantics… today we show the result of our post… scoring Google Top 10 on 38,200,000 search returns – rank 4 on Google to be exact!

Best WP Photo Blog Theme on Google

Photo Blogs or Online Photo Albums are meant to deliver a visual experience, it’s about the look, the black & white photography or color photos set within an elegant yet practical and user-friendly framework.

Depending on the purpose of the Photo website, however, the website optimization in terms of search engines like Google is just as important.

Let me explain:

If you set up a photo album for your family and friends and that’s more or less ‘it’ – then you are not really interested in attracting other people, strangers, people you can’t relate to. To the contrary: you want to keep this rather “within the family” – although real privacy is impossible on the Internet as we know, but we know what I mean.

If your Photo Blog is more and/or serves a commercial purpose, then you want to be found. Of course, there are always people punching in your website as they know you and appreciate your Artwork, however, you want to attract those who do not yet know you… and this is where SEO – Search Engine Optimization – comes in, meaning, that you want to be found on Google Top 10 under a specific keyword of your choice. If for instance you do the best pink flamingo photos on the planet, then you need to be found on Google Top 10 for anyone punching “pink flamingos” into Google. Once that person is on your site, you want to assure you captivate his senses and keep him as long as possible savoring your work and possibly becoming your client.

The point is that your focus must be to have a website that is optimized to compete on Google top ranking positions… and that guarantee you can expect to have with a WordPress based Semiomantics Script – ideally combined with Semiomantics Web Design.

As you see by the mere publication of this article: Semiomantics says what it sets out to achieve, then prooves that it indeed delivers – just as you see on the screenshot here! The proof is in the screenshot – it could be your’s on any keyword of your choice!

Creating a Photo Strip Sprite from a typical 35mm film strip style and some digital photos seemed easy enough… and I created an experiment with some of my Insect Photography.

Photo Strip Sprite Experiment

However, despite 100% correct measuring and maths, this Photo Strip Sprite experiment turned out to be quite a nightmare until I got it into position – from disappearing into vertical mode and complete hover refusal… No, things are not easy and there’s a reason why custom Semiomantics Web Design has its price! But we did not give up… and while we won’t go into detail now as it’s well after midnight… we will have to address this again to clarify ‘easy’ error areas.

For today: it’s done!

Welcome to the best WP Photo Blog Theme by Semiomantics – here I just added an introductory Welcome slide for everyone who’s passionate about digital photography and wants to know how to display their photos online – yet not in a social network environment but where everything is under one’s own control as it should be!

Best WP Photo Blog Theme by Semiomantics

Since its inception just 10 days ago, my Photo Blog on the Best WP Photo Blog Theme by Semiomantics shows good results on Google.

Contrary to creating a rather static Photography Website, my intention was to have something more dynamic as Digital Photography is part of my life and most definitely crucial to my Media Design in terms of Semiomantics Web Design. Accordingly, I write quite often about it – be it to accompany some exciting photos or when doing Adobe Photoshop Tutorials based on own photo material – just as an example. So let there be life!

While all photos displayed exist as high quality originals in 4000 x 3000 format as they come out of my NIKON Coolpix P90, I display them in different shades, tints and even shapes as the originals were either used in some original work that already went public, or they are in my Stock Photography Collection. I also experiment with all sorts of frames and combinations in OnOne Professional Tools that allow photos to stand out and capture peoples’ attention.

This being said, I believe that a really good photo needs absolutely nothing – just a background to stand on… black, white or grey – that’s it. Perhaps a tiny legend underneath… fine, elegant, non-intrusive.

Less is more.

But here we work with the photo tools we have at our disposal.

The purpose of this Photo Blog is to really show the beauty and versatility of Semiomantics Web Design which allows anyone to combine the look with high performance on search engines… meaning to be found. This is critically important for any photography professional – but also for anyone having something to offer, to promote or to sell.

If the concept catches your attention and resonnates, please contact me to discuss your needs and reveal the best of your creative potential online.

As we are in layer mask mode these days, I was asked as to how to fade one image into another in Adobe Photoshop as I quickly did on this orange butterfly photo taken in my garden yesterday. Yes – we are having an early spring down here in Noordhoek, South Africa. This was the first butterfly of its kind I’ve spotted since our winter… shimmering just too beautifully in the early morning sun on a stunning white raphiolepsis in full bloom. Ideal for the creation of some captivating web graphics!

If you look at the digital photo above, you see there is a part in full colors (at the top) fading perfectly into a gold-tinted part (at the bottom) – in this case featuring the same butterfly image.

How to fade one image into another

So what have I done to fade one image into another in an almost unnoticeable elegant manner?

First, I had a vision: I knew that I wanted to play with the orange of the butterfly fading into golden tones… So, what I needed was part of the image – containing the striking orange butterfly – in original colors… and the rest of the same picture tinted in golden tones.

As I had the original in colors, my second step was to do the tinting process in Adobe Photoshop (Image > Image Adjustments > Color balance and >Hue… alternatively Filter Tools). I also did black and white essays to see my values – meaning the amount of light and shadow as well as the greys inbetween in the picture… which always interest me as a lover of monochromatic photography. You can play with any color you like and that suits your purpose.

So in my layer stack I now had my original color picture and, on top of it, the golden version. That’s all… and now I went for step 3: the layer mask!

How to apply a Layer Mask

There are various ways as to how to apply a Layer Mask; I tend to keep it simple: with the top golden layer selected, I click on the “Add Layer Mask” icon at the bottom of the layer tool… I make sure that black is my foreground color… I click on the gradient tool in the toolbox to the left and, at the top, on the menu bar, I make sure that the first box is clicked for ‘linear fades’ and that, on the Gradient Editor next to it (just open it), the black-to-white gradient is selected.

Notice: the moment you click on the Layer Mask, a little white thumbnail is added to your active layer – so make sure you select the correct layer!

Here’s an important principle to remember: white makes your image opaque (keeps it non-transparent), black makes it transparent (the underlying image shines through).

So remember: I wanted to keep the top of the color original (bottom layer) and then get rid of the rest to fade into the gold image (top layer with layer mask).

In other words: I wanted the gold image not to show at the top (where I wanted the orange butterfly), yet I wanted it to become visible just beyond that. As I had the gold layer active, this principle applied to that layer: do not show the top (black, meaning transparent to reveal the underlying image layer with the butterfly) but show bottom (white, meaning there the gold picture was opaque with nothing from the color picture underneath showing).

As the next step I had to decide the amount of gradient I wanted to apply and from what direction (black to white).  This was dictated by the shape of the orange butterfly… so I basically ‘drew’ this gradient in form of a straight line with my mouse, holding it down all the way, from top left towards roughly the middle of the image… a little as on the schema below for better understanding.

The result is what you see at the top – and I think it has quite a nice vintage look to it.

Just try doing the same with an image of your’s. You can obviously work with two images – but this exercise is kept simple to show the principle. It just needs a little understanding, practice and – most importantly – knowing what effect or result you wish to achieve. But this too comes with practice – so practice is the key!

If you have a problem, just go back in the History (see under Window)… and start again until “it’s in the bag”!

Let me know if this was helpful… and enjoy!

Now that I showed you how to do a Layer Mask in Adobe Photoshop, let’s try something similar that can give you a nice effect when used in combination with letters (fonts) or shapes: here’s how to do a Clipping Mask!

How to do a Clipping Mask

To show you how to do a Clipping Mask, open your Photoshop and pull in a picture – ideally a colorful image. Why not a bunch of flowers or something similar. I used this morning’s early picture of a honey bee going for her breakfast on a white rapheolepsis in my garden… the first rays of a glorious sun were just breaking through the shadows of the trees and touching the soft edges of the blossoms.

Now think of something you wish to add. It could be a shape (using the Shape Tool) or simply a few words, like I used “BEE HAPPY”. Note that the words should be typed in big, fat letters like for instance an Impact. This is for better understanding the result as you will see in a minute.

So when you look at your layer stack in Photoshop, you have the picture layer at the bottom and a text layer on top – right?

All you do now is drag the picture layer on top of the text or shape layer. Next – and while keeping the image layer on top of the layer stack selected – go to “Layer” on the top menu and click on”Create Clipping Mask”. WOW! You see your word picking up the colors from the picture below… brilliant! Your letters have basically turned into pictures… You can even drag the image layer around to optimize the colors ‘shining through’ the letters.

If you don’t see anything, you probably have an image layer underneath the text layer, so just deactivate it and you see your word.

Bee Happy

This is exactly what I did in the above example “Bee Happy”.

Just try it yourself and find your own style. Enjoy!

There are various ways of working with masks, however, selecting “New Adjustment Layer” under “Layers” in the top menu of your Adobe Photoshop is one of the basic methods as to how to work with Masks in Photoshop… at least how to get started :)

How to work with Masks in Photoshop

Get started by selecting a photo with a central point of interest – as an example – as I did with my little friend, the bumble-bee, that I kept chasing with my digital camera in my garden for a while, shooting many close-ups that were too close as this little devil is just so fast and so hectic that it never stops for a second… or he just enjoys teasing me ! But here I finally got him on a blue flower. The original image is in full color:

When you select new Adjustment Layer, a new layer is automatically created above your existing one. Make sure the color black is on top as the background color. Now you can select a brush and basically paint out the mask with the original colors shining through from the layer below. Experiment a little until you get the hang of it and an understanding of how all this works. This is a practical matter, it needs to be done – not only ‘studied’.

When white is set as the background color, you paint in – a way of correcting things… and of course you can set the opacity levels according to your preferences.

For fine detail work zoom the picture up and work with the brush sizes most suitable for your design or choose the lasso tool. As an artist you can work very creatively… your time, patience and love for the image you want to create determine the result as with all creative work. And obviously: experience and skill will help you to quickly see what’s needed and possibly achieve beautiful effects with just a few brush strokes.

In my version above I opted for a more monochromatic overall tint first as you often see in my artistic photographic work – keeping to colors that naturally existed within the original photo. The above is just one of many versions…  After adding my mask and adapting the main object of attention, the bumble bee, I chose a basic frame in OneOneTools Professional and personalized it with Adobe Photoshop tools again.

Since a Photoshop genius discovered the ‘layer factor’ and set an end to the fear of losing one’s work, graphic design has become a never ending story. Choosing the moment to stop is a difficult one – but it’s a thrilling process!

Semiomantics Web Design

Captivating Web Graphics and Images are critically important for Semiomantics Web Design as these visuals are instrumental for firstly attracting and then keeping visitors coming to a website or blog as you also see in the website for Delia O’Riordan. What’s never been said is also the fact that having a website or blog that you love because it’s beautiful to look at and expresses what you feel or what you want to impart to others is a pleasure – like an online bouquet of your favorite flowers that never whither… that just bloom and expand bringing joy to whoever chooses to look… and find you mirrored within them.

Don’t you also love the little Google Images the monolith of search engines often comes up with? It just makes such a difference: someone took care… thought… and expressed something in joyful, humorous and apt ways that resonnates with many of us who can ‘see’ these little things! It’s about the human element within this cold technological stuff…

Just experiment and find your own creative style and enjoy exploring the artist within you!