Always use protection. . .

In my courses, I always stress the importance of using a filter on the front of your lens.

I am not talking about polarisers, grads or ND filters here. A simple skylight, UV, haze or protection filter is good enough.

Every couple of weeks a post pops up in my Facebook thread about whether or not to use one. The opponents argue that lens manufacturers go to great lengths to ensure that their products are optically perfect and putting another piece of glass at the front will degrade the quality. The proponents argue that with a good quality filter, you will not notice the difference and will be afforded another level of protection.

I am (and always have been) an advocate of using a filter to protect the lens for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I never use lens caps and the filter protects the front element when in my bag and when carrying it around. Secondly, I would rather wipe any dirt or water from the filter than risk smearing or scratching the front element. Thirdly, if the camera slips off your shoulder or is knocked against a hard surface, the filter will take the brunt of the damage as mine did last Tuesday. 

I returned from a photography class and had my Fujifilm x100 on my shoulder. The camera simply slid off my shoulder and fell lens first onto a marble floor. The only damage was to the filter. This was soon replaced and nothing major happened to prevent me continuing to shoot, nor did my camera have to be sent away to be fixed*.

I have always had a skylight, UV, haze or protection filter on the front of my glass. I do make sure though, that it is of good quality. How do I do this? I simply buy a well known brand (Tiffen, BW, Hoya etc)  if I don't know the brand, I will simply take a couple of pictures at varying apertures with and without the filter. They will then be enlarged to 100% to check if there are any glaring differences between them.

The picture on the wall behind me on the picture above was taken with a Canon EF 50mm f1.4 lens fitted with a Hoya skylight filter. I defy anyone to tell me that the quality would be better without a filter. the enlargements are three meters by three meters!

So my conclusion is to use protection in the form of a clear filter on the front of your lenses.

Thanks for reading.

* To add insult to injury, the lens hood which would also have protected my lens, fell off, unknown to me, on the way to the photo class!

Diversification

Technology is moving at breakneck speed. Print media is no longer king. If you don't get on-board social media you are doomed to be left behind. That is not an understatement. 

I was somewhat saddened and amused at the ignorance of a man I spoke to at a large Swiss company a year or so back. I asked him ( in his new role as head of the advertising department ), what plans he had to implement social media.

His reply? "I have no plans whatsoever to use socia media channels. They don't bring anything to the table".

Out of curiosity I Googled this gentleman (don't we all?) and found that he actually has a Twitter account, into which he has posted precisely (at the time of this post) FOUR tweets since joining in 2009. One of the Tweets concerned one of the firm's new products.

It's quite inconceivable to me to see how he is going spread the word for his company if he refuses to join the revolution. I see that none of his sixteen followers re-tweeted the product launch news from him. He seems to think that the company's website and paper based print media is the way forward.

At a recent trade fair where he was hosting a stand, I noticed that nearly every other company had a dedicated Facebook page and Twitter account. I was able to follow their activities and get details on the newest product releases etc but from his company there was nothing.

I do notice to his credit however, that he had had videos commissioned to show off the company's products but without the social media aspect to spark interest, there have been very few views.

In October 2011, I began to get interested in social media and online marketing. Statistics fascinate me and with these facts in mind, I started an anonymous blog to test out my theories. I decided from the start to make it anonymous so that the visitor count wouldn't be influenced by any of my acquaintances visiting it. I launched it without any fanfare whatsoever and studied the statistics. Using only keywords, hashtags and a few other search engine optimisation techniques I see that it has now had 61,000 hits!

 Statistics as of November 2013

So what exactly does this have to do with photography I hear you ask?
 
On my own personal website, I again played with the S.E.O. management and elevated it to number two on the Google Switzerland search results when people type in "fotografie aller art" (all types of photography) into the search field. All this without paying for Adwords or anything.

Well as the title of this post suggests, diversification is the key to surviving nowadays. Apart from photography, I am now offering website optimisation and building to several clients. I'll be helping them get a foothold in the world of social media. Also in the pipeline will be photography workshops in the new year. I'll be writing more about that in my next post.

So to reiterate. Content is king and the best way to get that content out there is to jump onboard the social media bandwagon. You'd better hurry though because it isn't slowing down!

Thanks for reading.