First Post

Hi - it's me.  I've been kicking around the idea of consolidating my multiple presence(s) on the web into a more or less singular entity, or source if that works better.  I've basically decided to go whole hog with services (free) that google provides.  They've got mail, apps, voice, g+ for photo sharing, etc ....  and now I discover (although I had already suspected) that they have blogging too.

I'm also entertaining some cost cutting.  I have my own domain (jdanvers.com) which is hosted via Bluehost and while that is fine and dandy - it costs me money every year or two and .... I don't know if what I'm spending on it is being justified in what I'm actually seeing in return.  I may keep the domain name as it is nice in a vanity license plate kind of way . . .   we'll see.

When I first started shooting again a few years ago, I was directed to flickr by a friend.  Flickr was (and still is) a great resource and I learned a lot the first few years via the forums that they have in there.  The forums in Flickr are, in my opinion, one of the best kept secrets about that setup.  There are a number of really skilled shooters that post images there obviously, but there are also a good number of surprisingly knowledgeable people who readily share expertise on a wide range of photography subjects.  The photo's that many people post are quite a source of learning themselves in that exif data is available for many of them.  "How'd he shoot that?  What settings did he use"  Look at the exif data - it's all there.  Great stuff.  I've been a "Pro" member of the flickr community for the last 3 or 4 years - it was worth it and relatively inexpensive at $20-$25 bucks a year.  ( I forget exactly how much it was - but not much really) Essentially unlimited file storage, and again, a really great resource in those forums.  Sometime during the last year or so though they (Yahoo / Flickr) changed up their setup though where now *everyone* apparently gets upwards of a terabyte of storage - for free!   Thats great - I don't even come close to that...  why am I spending $25 then?  I've opted to let my flickr account die - I just downloaded nearly 900 images that I had out there via a very handy little utility called "MyFlickrBackup" (google it) and I'm going to start making use of the galleries available on G+ / Picasa.

More later ...