Ok, so I’ve not written in my blog for a couple days. As some of my regular readers will know, I’ve been bitten by the “shutter bug” (as I like to call it and have taken a keen interest in photography. It will probably never be more than a hobby, but I am definitely interested in learning more about how to use my camera and taking photographs, beyond the standard point and click.

I started a blog at Shutterchance, since it was a photo community and I could get some constructive criticism on the pictures that I posted there. What I found out the other night, though was that non-paying members of the site could only have 30 pictures on the site at any time. As soon as you uploaded a 31st, it automatically deleted your oldest picture. That left me in a dilemma. With the exchange rate so high, I was not very keen to become a paying member.

So, I had to come up with another plan. My first thought was to register my own domain and combine my photo blog, this blog as well as my Flickr gallery in one new website. The problem with that was (1) how easy would it be to set up, (2) how many hits would I get, compared to what I’m getting now, and (3) how easy would the site be to maintain. I know that there is the WordPress.org software which I can upload and install (on my new domain) which would in the end give me a site that was easy to maintain like the one I’m using now – basically a WordPress blog where I was the administrator (if I understand the concept of the software correctly). But I’m lazy and don’t want to go through the PT of setting up yet another new site (already set up and abandoned 2 over the years).

So, I had a discussion with a few friends, and Marc, hashing out my options. Obviously, I did not want to give up this site as it’s so well known already with family and friends and it’s so easy to use. My only real problem with this site was that it was set up so that only registered WP users could leave messages. Try as I might, I could not figure out how to enable it so that everyone could messages. Finally, today, with the help of chiskop on myADSL, we worked it out. Now everyone can leave comments. But don’t be surpised if they are not immediately visible. They still need to be approved.

After more thinking, I have decided to stick with this blog. Since the comment issue has been sorted, it’s only a matter of upgrading the account when I run out of free space. For R150 per year (for 1GB of storage space), I definitely will not complain. And, if I ever run out of space, I can upgrade even further.

My plan now is to post my favourite pictures that I have on my SC blog over here. And then, once I’m up to date, I will post the same picture on both blogs and maybe copy comment in my next blog entry on the most notable comments received on my SC site. That way, I get the best of both worlds and still be able to learn about photography from the experienced users of Shutterchance.

The picture that I have posted with this entry is not one that I was able to post on Shutterchance because it was of a low quality. But it is one that I really like and have been really wanting to share. It is one of Marc and Fayth, taken very early in our relationship. 2003, if I’m not mistaken. We were still in Port Elizabeth and Marc used to do a lot of paramedic work. He would often provide medical standby (if you want to call it that) for school rugby. Fayth and I often went with, since we went out to other places before or after his work was done.

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