ZaZa Gallery canvas

First off, up front, a full disclosure:

I discovered ZaZa through twitter, where they were advertising a promotion. In exchange for a 16x20 canvas of one of my own images, they asked that I place a link to their site (see the link list on the right) and that I write a review of the canvas that they sent me.

I sent Hugh an email and offered to participate. I had the image below blown up and printed 16x20.

This morning, my canvas arrived on my doorstep. In total, the turnaround was 8 days for them to print and ship my image. A little slower than I'd like, but then again, I didn't pay for it.

It arrived in a box.

Fairly well packaged - though I will point out that MPIX (the company I get my paper prints done with) does a much better job of packaging their material.

The canvas itself is gorgeous. The colors are perfect, the texture is amazing, and there must be a zillion staples holding it in place.

It now has a well-deserved place on my wall

For what it's worth, MPIX also offers gallery canvas wraps. Though a fair bit more expensive, their canvases show up ready to hang, and will also come with better packaging. To be fair, I don't think the packaging really matters all that much, especially since my print from ZaZa wasn't damaged in any way.

The moral of the story is: when I need canvas prints done in the future, I'll go to ZaZa. They reached out to the photography community and offered this opportunity. Their prints are less expensive, and they get the job done well. Communication was personal and practically instant whether via email or Twitter. I recommend ZaZa Gallery to anyone looking for great canvas prints of their images, and I'd still recommend them if I had paid for my print.

Google analytics

I suspect that many of my readers have their own websites.

There are a lot of ways to keep track of how many people are visiting your site. I recently switched to Google Analytics, and I'm sticking with it.

My blog is hosted by Google (they own Blogger), so it just made sense to add analysis tools to the list of services that Google provides to me for free.

I don't get a bazillion hits every day, so it matters to me where every visit comes from, how long they stay, and what they view while on my sites. Google Analytics shows me everything, and much much more.

Above is your typical statistics page. It shows how many visits/pageviews I get on the Vault Blog. It shows where my visitors are coming from (google, facebook, twitter, etc) and it shows which pages get the most views. For me, that's the landing page of the blog.

This shows me which browsers my readers are using. This is important because some browsers are much more competent than others, and my site needs to be accommodating to whichever browser the majority of my readers are using. In this case, that is Firefox. Of course, if Firefox isn't the most widely used browser out there, it soon will be. This chart also shows me the connection speeds of my users. If I was posting huge videos and all my readers where on dialup connections, I would have a problem. Knowing how fast your users can load what you are posting is important.

This chart shows me how loyal my readers are. It looks like I have 11 people that check in every day, regardless of whether I post anything or not. One of those people is me, so I have 10 super-loyal readers. I don't know who they are, but to them: Thank you! 

What I hadn't realized is how many one-time visitors I have. Most of what I post here tends to assume that my readers have been around for a while. That isn't the case, so I'll be posting more internal links to previous posts, which allow my new readers to catch up and see what I've been up to recently.

Google even keeps track of which operating systems my users have, what version of flash they are running, their screen resolution and whether they have java support enabled.

Not surprisingly, most of my readers are running an Apple operating system of some kind. OSX and IOS together make up about 55% of my readership. The rest of my users are running either Windows or Android.

Going deeper, I discovered that Google Analytics keeps track of where my users live! Unsurprisingly, most of my views come from Colorado and Arizona, where nearly all my friends and family live. I also get a healthy amount of traffic from 17 other states (really light green) including Utah, New York (thanks Simon Hucko) Texas, Florida and Missouri, among others.

I haven't even begun to explore all the power of the analytics system that Google has to offer. There is much more to be discovered and utilized. I encourage anyone running a website of any kind to add Google Analytics to your arsenal. Like all of Google's services, it is free and very simple to set up.

Thanks to the users who gave suggestions in response to my call for post suggestions.

If you missed it, I posted a call for participants late last night - check it out!

A random post from back in the day: DIY Pizza box Softbox

dreamTrip - Call for participants

Last week, I started officially planning the adventure I'm calling dreamTrip 2011.

I haven't decided on very many things, but I have hammered out a few basic concepts.

1) We are going to be on the road for 7 days. March 12-19, 2011. 
2) Starting from Flagstaff, AZ we will caravan approximately 475 miles to Death Valley, CA
3) As much as possible, we will avoid freeways. Traveling through small towns, eating at local eateries and meeting local people is a big part of the experience
4) Anywhere that any person on the trip wants to stop, we will stop. We will shoot in the forest, the desert, in hotels and cars... basically anywhere that strikes our fancy.

In addition to a whole bunch of awesome still images, I expect to produce (in collaboration with others) a final video showing the highlights, behind the scenes and of course, bloopers. Maybe we'll get enough material to do one video of each. Andrew Paffrath of lanternCity Media and Fotography has already signed up to be our key video shooter.

Noelle Wells has also signed on as a shooter and transportation master.

Of course I'll be along, representing Vault Photography, as will my girlfriend, Dahlia Stack (she doesn't have a website. Shame on her!)

In order to make this trip a success:

We need more people! Models! Photographers! Videographers!

Everyone will pitch for fuel costs and for the sketchy cheap-o motels/hostels we stay in. Overall, I don't expect it to be insanely expensive for any individual. We will do our best to photograph places for free, rather than paying entry fees or going on tours or whatever.

If you're interested in coming along, please drop me an email or a comment below. It is going to be an awesome creative experience. Lots of collaboration, making new friends, learning a LOT and basically having a crazy awesome adventure.

Sound good?

A call for posts...

Dear readers,

What do you want me to blog about? Over the last year or two, I've posted nearly 550 times. Maybe three of those posts were due to requests from readers or friends. Everything else comes off the top of my head.

My current ongoing project, in addition to the headless portraiture series, is the planning an execution of the dreamTrip, which is starting to come along quite nicely. In fact, I'll be posting on it later this week. I'm curious though - is there anything you'd like me to touch on? Are there any topics I've never covered that you'd like to see covered? I'm open to any and all suggestions.

I'm starting to get back in the swing of things in terms of photography. I'm planning a personal shoot this week. I hope to execute it Thursday, though there are no guarantees.

I'll check back when I have something fun to post. In the meantime - please drop some comments on what you'd like me to write about!

Class: location photography

Shot this in my location photography class last week. Noelle Wells (who we have seen before) was kind enough to model for me.

So far I'm cautiously optimistic about my location class. I don't really care for the locations themselves, but I see it as a great opportunity to do location portraiture. Mixing ambient and strobe, things like that. I have a couple fun concepts for images I'd like to make.

Have a great Monday!

Flyby (OOF)

Another image from my walkabout with Bryan last week. It's out of focus. I think I like it in color better than black and white... but I can't quite make up my mind. Every time I look at these two pictures, I decide I like the *other* one better. Naturally.

Details of the dreamTrip are starting to come together, though quite slowly. I have a couple images from a class shoot that I have yet to post as well. Look for those Monday.

Walkabout...

The other day I went on a walk around downtown Flagstaff with my buddy Bryan of The Schlepper and Kinkade Photography. He was out with a specific goal in mind. I was not. With no goal in mind, I followed Bryan around, shooting anything that caught my eye. I saw a couple fun cars (considering I'm in Flagstaff). I don't consider these calendar material images, but I was still surprised to see a Mercedes of any kind in Flagstaff. It's been a while since I've seen a tricked out land rover too, though definitely less surprising.

Two photo shoots today, see you on the other side!