Pinhole Photography: Take a Journey Back in Time

"Who would believe that so small a space could contain the image of all the universe? O mighty process! What talent can avail to penetrate a nature such as these? What tongue will it be that can unfold so great a wonder? Verily, none! This it is that guides the human discourse to the considering of divine things. Here the figures, here the colors, here all the images of every part of the universe are contracted to a point. O what a point is so marvelous!"

- Leonardo da Vinci

Pinhole photography is an method that has been around since the 1800's and still today proves to not only be fun, but a test of skill. When you set out to take photographs for the simple joy of photographing something, the experience outweighs the outcome. Pinhole photography is a great way to experience the art of taking pictures. From the planning stages to making your pinhole camera to the photo journal that you produce, pinhole photography is a fantastic voyage into history and creativity.

Pinhole cameras are usually handmade by the photographer for a particular purpose. In its simplest form, the photographic pinhole camera consists of a light-tight box with a pinhole in one end, and a piece of film or photographic paper wedged or taped into the other end. A flap of cardboard with a tape hinge can be used as a shutter. The pinhole is usually punched or drilled using a sewing needle or small diameter bit through a piece of tinfoil or thin aluminum or brass sheet. This piece is then taped to the inside of the light tight box behind a hole cut through the box. An oatmeal box can be made into an excellent pinhole camera.

And The Award Goes To...

We all would like to be "rewarded" for a job well-done, but how would you feel about getting an "award"? Awards are given high achievers and top performers in almost every industry, including web design. If you have an outstanding design or work that you would love to showcase, here is a peek of the top web design awards and how to enter:

The American Design Awards was founded in the year 2000 by design educator Brandon McKay, as well as graphic design professionals Kevin and Art Javid in San Diego, California. Their mission - to provide a fair and ethical platform for graphic and web designers with varying experience levels and disciplines to compete on, while providing them a global audience to showcase their talents to. The American Design Awards holds two (2) Semi-Annual Design Contests, an ongoing Monthly Design Contest, and a Student Design Contest, providing various avenues for graphic and web designers to get involved and get noticed.

The Interactive Media Awards™ recognize the highest standards of excellence in website design and development and honor individuals and organizations for their outstanding achievement. Created by the Interactive Media Council, Inc. (IMC), a nonprofit organization of leading web designers, developers, programmers, advertisers and other web-related professionals, the competition is designed to elevate the standards of excellence on the Internet and offer winners a boost in marketing and exposure. IMC serves as the primary sponsor and governing body of the Interactive Media Awards, establishes the judging system and provides the judges for the competition.

Established in May 2005, Website Design Awards (or WDA) has been awarding and showcasing the creative and technical talents of the online industry around the world. With over 12,000 submissions and counting WDA showcases only the most progressive cutting edge online projects across a range of industries and personal endeavors. They showcase both Flash and CSS websites within our gallery. Their main criteria for selection is that the website demonstrates strong visual and interaction design, an innovative interface and a powerful and original creative concept, all coming together to create an absorbing user experience.

It is estimated that there are at least 500,000 new sites born each month - and with that astronomical growth rate, being recognized on the Internet is getting tougher and tougher. If you have a Web masterpiece that demonstrates design, innovation and creativity then you owe it to yourself to submit it to one of these award agencies...who knows, you just might win!!

Best of luck to you!!

Looking for a professional web designer? Check out Mandarich.com today!!

Is Your Online Marketing Strategy Working For You?

If you answered "I don't know" or "I think so", then its time to learn how to effectively test your online marketing efforts.

Testing the effectiveness of your email marketing or PPC campaigns can be extremely accurate by employing multivariate testing modalities, such as “A/B Split Testing” or the “Taguchi Method”.

A/B split testing is exactly what it sounds like, testing the difference in the return between advertisement “A” and advertisement “B”. Basically you create two landing pages that are almost identical; almost, meaning that you make just one change between the two versions or your advertisement or landing page. The outcome of A/B split testing is pretty straightforward. You launch both ads, determine the length of time of data collection and then wait to collect enough data. Simple and accurate!!

The Taguchi method is a system where, with any of your online direct response promotions (including ppc, email marketing, etc.), you test not one but many variables; you can use just about any element of the page, from graphics to font, colors to background images, ordering of bullet list items, the possibilities are essentially endless. The method itself may seem extremely complicated and technical, but it is really focused on helping you test a variety of different elements simultaneously, so you can ascertain the best possible combination in the shortest possible time.

Multivariate testing goes far beyond just one campaign; it should be incorporated in your marketing strategy as an ongoing practice. What you learn from the likes and dislikes of your target audience could greatly enhance the success of your future marketing endeavors and in the end, the overall success of your business.

Need more info about online marketing? Visit Mandarich.com today!

The Perfect Montage

Putting a montage (or slideshow) together can be a lot of fun, but here are a few simple steps to ensure that your movie will meet the needs of your customer.

1. Know Your Audience: Make sure you fully understand whom your client is reaching out to with this video. Its important for the target audience to relate to the video; but keep in mind, whether the audience is business men or sports enthusiasts, keeping them entertained will keep them interested.

2. Plan Your Project: With any project, a well laid out plan is far easier to execute. Make sure you have every detail of the project outlined, before you get started. This will make production much easier and faster, and will eliminate unwanted surprises along the way.

3. Length of Your Montage: The average attention span of an adult is approximately 20 minutes; and the average decision-maker, makes up his mind in about seven minutes. Keep your movie short and sweet and the most important elements should be in the first 10 minutes of your video.

4. Photograph/Video Quality: It goes without saying, the better the quality of the original picture or video the better your montage will be. If you have to scan a photo, it’s best to use 150 to 300 dpi. Even with the advances in technology, old and graining pictures can be improved but only to a certain degree.

5. Don’t Be Redundant: Use a good mix of photos…remember most people today have a ton of things on their minds and their attention span is very short; using the same photo or scene will bore them.

6. Background Music: Though you want to retain your audience, your choice of music should be relevant to the subject. Showing hockey clips with Yanni playing in the background probably won’t hold your viewer’s attention. Just as Marilyn Manson as background music for a wedding would most likely be inappropriate!

7. Video Effects: Video effects can be fun and add quite a bit of character to your montage, but don't overdo it!! Too much can lose an audience very quickly!! The rule here, "less is best". Stay on track with your subject and only use effects to spice up a video, not overtake it.

8. Testing, 1…2…3: And last but not least, you and your co-workers should watch the montage a few times before presenting it to your client. If you are the creator, it’s easy to miss the “little” mistakes or mishaps if you’ve seen it over and over again. A fresh pair of eyes could catch glitches that you could easily overlook.

And most importantly, have fun putting making your montage; chances are your client will feel your positive energy in the final production.

For more video and photography tips, visit MandarichPhotography.com.
And enjoy the montage below produced by Mandarich Models!

Research is the 'Name of the Game' in Competitive SEO

Keyword research is probably the most important and most competitive practice that search engine optimization professionals use in their efforts to increase page ranking. Most savvy optimizers conduct in-depth keyword searches to find and research actual search terms Internet users plug into the search engines when conducting a search; however, being successful in this highly competitive digital age cannot stop with the initial keyword search.

Constant updates to algorithms by the search engines makes the job of SEO's and webmasters neverending. Whether the search engine [change] is in the results pages, position, page rank, or inbound links it, this constant fluctuation requires SEO pros to be on their toes.

And being on your toes not only requires solid keyword research skills, but it requires keeping an eye on your competition. Competitive research is just as critical! When you are attempting to get a good position in a search engine you have to know everything about your competition...believe me when I say, they know already know everything about you!!! Take a look at who is number one (and likely beating you out of that spot) and see what relevant keywords they are employing.

Along with research, conducting web statistics tracking and continually to monitoring your position in the search engines will help you understand your entire optimization landscape.

Constant research is the key to the kingdom, so to speak and the best way to gain that competitive edge.

Need help with your SEO strategy? Contact Mandarich.com for a new direction this New Year!!

Ring in The New Year With Mandarich Models...

Whether you are an amateur photographer or professional, photography workshops give you the opportunity to engage with a professional photographer. To give your photography career head start in 2009, Char and Tony Mandarich, give you an in-depth look at their edgy, creative style, shooting techniques & protocol, and troubleshooting methods.

Mandarich Models presents an exciting one-day glamour photography workshop. You will not only learn valuable shooting and post production techniques, but also how to work with makeup artists and models.

The workshop is scheduled for Saturday, January 17, 2009, from 10 am to 6pm at the Markow Southwest Studio in sunny downtown Phoenix, AZ. Registration is only $400 (includes lunch) and you can reserve your spot by calling (480) 277.7888, but hurry seating is limited!!

Call today and learn from the pros in a supportive learning environment.

Mandarich Media Gets a Makeover!!

Arizona's premier site designers, Mandarich Media Group just unveiled their own newly redesigned site this week; the site not only has a new look, but many new features that are right in line with the way site design and SEO are heading.

The look and feel of your website is the first impression potential customers have of your business, and Mandarich Media Group has put this philosophy into action with the all new Mandarich.com.

Along with Mandarich's new look, they've added new service offerings as well. An appropriate and compelling site design is just the beginning of the website development services that they offer. An effective Internet presence requires much more that just an impressive looking site. Even the most beautiful site is rendered ineffective if it doesn't appear on the first page of search results when potential clients are looking for your business.

So take some time getting to know the new Mandarich.com site ... you'll find something there for every aspect of Internet marketing, from website development to PPC services.

Enjoy!!!!

Banner Ads for Effective SEO

Remember back in the olden days when it didn’t matter what website you went to, annoying banner ads would scroll across your screen or pop-ups wouldn’t allow you to maneuver through the site until you made it go away?

Well, they’re back…and they have not only taken on a new look, but a new mindset for effective advertising. As SEO and SEM technologies advance, marketers find new ways to get their point across, and they have found a way to make the old ways more effective.

With successful SEO practices, relevance is the name of the game; and now the same goes for today’s banner ads. Instead of randomly advertising throughout the Internet, online marketers have learned that WWW audiences are quite intellectual and aren’t falling for the same tricks. Promoting your website with a banner ad on a high-traffic website that has content related to whatever you sell is the new practice of optimization.

For instance, if you sell environmentally safe products, you would run your banner ads on high traffic sites where people would visit to learn more about conservation. If people are to visit that site because they have an interest in conservation, no doubt that they would be interested in your products.

Banner ads aren’t the most successful advertising tool on the Internet, but when used with the consumer in mind, it is still effective…and still an inexpensive form of advertising.

Need a new a SEO strategy? Contact Mandarich.com today!!

Are You Twittering? Why Not?!?

Social bookmarking was intended as a method for Internet users to store, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web pages on the Internet with the help of metadata.

But social bookmarking isn't just for personal organization; the way this form of social media works is that as you add web pages to your social bookmarking system, they become public, and can be shared with other people or groups. Most social bookmark services encourage users to organize their bookmarks with tags, which enables viewing other bookmarks associated with a chosen tag, and includes information about the number of users who have bookmarked them.

Social bookmarking has also taken on other characteristics and professional site optimizers have been using this form of social media in their SEO efforts. Social networking sites have a huge number of regular users and new members are added every day, which means that these sites get an amazing amount of traffic. Information shared between the millions of users gets more noticed; more visibility and better ranking. Added to these, your site also gains good number of backlinks, which are valued search engines, and again, higher page rank.

SBMs are rising at a great pace over the internet. They greatly help in indexing you websites, articles, blogs and videos on the search engines. As social bookmarking services have matured and grown more popular, they have added extra features such as ratings and comments on bookmarks, the ability to import and export bookmarks from browsers, emailing of bookmarks, web annotation, and groups or other social network features.

Want to increase your site's visibility? Contact Mandarich.com for more details.

Holiday Photo Gifts Ideas Under $50

It’s no secret that photography is an expensive hobby – for both amateurs and pros alike! This holiday season, even Santa is operating on a tight budget!! Don’t worry…you can still fill those stockings with great and inexpensive gifts:

Shoe Mount Multiclamp ($17) & Westcott 750 Photo Basics 7.5-Foot Light Stand ($30).
Want to get your speedlight off of the camera? This combination of clamp and stand totals less than $50 and opens up a world of new possiblilities. Adding an umbrella doesn’t push us over the target price by very much, either.



Opteka 55mm Close-Up Set (+1, +2, and +4) with 10x Macro Lens ($25).
The Close-Up lens, which is simply mounted in the front of our normal taking lens, permits the taking of close-ups and also makes possible the photography of details, which would be quite impossible without using the Close-Up lens. These lenses enable you to get much closer than the minimum focus of the standard camera lens - as close as 4 inches from the subject.



Westinghouse 7-Inch Wide LCD Digital Photo Frame (49.99).
Show off your memories with this exciting new 7?LCD wide screen Digital Photo Frame. This frame features our patent pending MosaicView technology, 128 MB of internal memory and automatic plug and play with most memory cards. Designed for ease and convenience you can save and delete images without the use of a PC and this digital frame makes a great gift when preloaded with images.

CSS or Tables...Which Way is Web Design Turning?

The ongoing debate…cascading style sheets or tables? Is it really preference based or is a there strong technical argument for which is best?

Tables and CSS do many of the same things, but each can also accomplish different things at different levels. Both sides are able to make a strong case because both sides have valid points. Web design optimization weighs heavily on consistency, page-loading times, and what is best for the consumer; and whether the audience is for web surfing for entertainment purposes or business, most developers have end users in mind.

As many know, tables were originally included in to better organize a web page and were used for both information and style. Then came CSS, which easily handles formatting, to allow HTML to remain focused on conveying information, without having to worry about the styling of a page.

Tables are extremely easy to manage - they work just like a table in a spreadsheet, employing rows and columns to organize data. CSS, on the other hand, is based on more conceptual coding, such as padding, margins, and positioning.

So which is the best to use? Well, modern day technology leans towards the use of CSS, as it meets the new standard of web design especially as it relates to advanced browser options. The use of tables will probably never be obsolete, as there are plenty of users still running old browsers, some as old as Netscape 4, or similar versions of Internet Explorer. But if you haven’t introduced yourself to CSS yet, now’s the time as old technologies will eventually become obsolete…and CSS is definitely here to stay.

Looking for a professional web designer?
Visit Mandarich.com for additional articles and tutorials.

Ethical Marketing Begins with Permission!

Last week we posted “Tips for Successful Email Marketing” and just casually mentioned permissions and non-spamming activities. This has been on my mind for the entire week and the subject actually warrants its own post…Permission Marketing.

As in any type of on-line marketing venture, there are rules and guidelines to abide by and you need to be aware of the dangers, especially when you are mass marketing. One of the biggest dangers of email marketing is spam mail.

It is extremely important that you do not include anyone on your mailing list (even friends, family, colleagues etc.) without his or her permission. Make people work to sign up for your newsletter by requiring them to email a certain address with a "subscribe" instruction, or by providing a newsletter sign-up box on your site for them to add their address to your list. Records are also extremely important; keep a backup with full contact details (telephone, fax, email and snail-mail) for your ISP and web hosting company. Always keep a copy of all your outgoing email, especially the newsletter itself.

Permission Marketing is an approach to selling goods and services in which the recipient agrees in advance, or chooses to receive your advertisements, newsletters, or other marketing information. Anyone with an email address suffers from information overload, automated telemarketing, and spam, that most people welcome the idea of permission marketing.

Internet marketing pioneer, Seth Godin states, "Permission marketing turns strangers into friends and friends into loyal customers. It's not just about entertainment - it's about education."

As long as there is the Internet, spamming will always exist. Its economically viable to spammers because they have no operating costs beyond the management of their mailing lists, and it is difficult to hold senders accountable for their mass mailings. Because it is virtually impossible to monitor every unsolicited email sent to every email address, spammers are numerous, and the volume of unsolicited mail has become very high.

But for those who send out unsolicited advertisements that actually get reported and caught, the penalty is just as high. If you are labeled a “spammer”, many destructive consequences can happen to you, whether temporary or permanent. Worst-case scenario, your ISP (Internet service provider) will deny you access to your account pending an investigation; your web hosting company may shut down your site; and finally, you will be blacklisted.

Permission Marketing isn’t just ethical marketing, it also shows respect for your own business, industry and most of all, your valued customer.

Need help with your online marketing strategy? Visit Mandarich.com today!!!

Your Demo is Your Resume!

Whether you are preparing a video demo tape to boost your clientele or secure your dream job, the most important thing to realize is that your demo is not who you are, it showcases what you do…think of it as you would your resume, or application for the job! The second most important thing is that your demo be compelling and unique; make sure you stand out from the rest. Also keep in mind that one demo probably won’t do the trick; you’ll need to produce several to demonstrate your versatile talents.

Video is emotional, and is judged not only on the visual aspects, but how it makes us feel.If you are applying for a position, creating a short, compelling story with your demo and keeping the viewer engaged, (instead of compiling bits of b-roll or footage) will not only show your potential employer that you have talent, but also that you take pride in what you do.

If it is a client that you are trying to win over, being client-centered is extremely important. In this case, the demo should have nothing to do with you or your services, just a sampling of a video for a similar client or industry.

Another important factor in winning that big client or landing the job of your dreams is whether or not people can find you online easily. Having a presence on social video sharing sites such as, YouTube, Flickr, Dailymotion, Metacafe and Google Video will increase your credibility and make it easy for people to spread the word about you.

MicroBlogging: Evolution of Communication...or Just a Little Tease?

Its amazing how SOCIAL MEDIA has become the new medium for marketing and advertising. Daily, new technologies, methodologies and trends are born - its a wonder how we are all keeping up!!

Along comes "microblogging", a relatively new form of communication in which users can write updates and post their current whereabouts in short posts. Microblogging was introduced about a year ago and is another form of multimedia blogging that allows you to send short text updates, in 150 words or less. These messages can be submitted by a variety of means, including text messaging, instant messaging, emailing, etc.

The content of a microblog differs from a traditional blog simply because it is shorter in content and smaller file size; however, it is the same in that people utilize it for both business and individual reasons. Many microblogs provide a short commentary on a person-to-person level, or share news about a company's products and services.

Probably the most well-known site for microblogging is Twitter; originally built so you can post and receive updates (or "tweets") via SMS text message. Because it was designed to be used on mobile devies, the distinguishing feature of Twitter is its 140 character limit on each message. Other popular microblogging sites include Plurk, Jaiku, Facebook, and Tumblr.

Aggressive SEO professionals include the use of microblogging in their strategies to boost site traffic; and if you are an active blogger, creating a microblog to announce updates or teasers to your full-length blog, along with embedded links that will take readers directly to your site, will not only boost both traffic and but also assist in increasing your search engine ranking.

For complete Internet solutions, visit Mandarich.com.

Photo Blogging...Next Step For Professional Photographers

Social Media has taken the Internet by storm and everyone seems to be blogging about everything these days. And its not just for socializing - businesses and professionals have joined the masses; and it just makes good business sense that professional photographers follow suit.

If you are building a name for yourself in this extremely competitive industry, you want to make it easy for people to find you and see your work, and most importantly, share it with others. Creating multiple photoblogs will not only get your name out there, but will showcase your work.

A photoblog is another form of publishing and photo sharing, but in the format of a blog; with a photoblog, emphasis is placed on your photos instead of text. Photoblogging gained its popularity in the early 2000s with the advent of cameraphones and has quickly become the forum for both professional photographers and amateurs alike.

Networking is essential to success of any business, and social networking has made it easier to reach thousands of people in seconds. Setting up a blog is almost always free, simple and fun...you might want to start with Google Blogger, Wordpress or Livejournal and grow from there. You'll find that one blog probably won't be enough, so spend some time researching other sites.

In addition to setting up your own photoblog, contributing to other blogs will help build your online credibility as an expert and will also market your photo business virally.

Happy Blogging!!

Looking for a professional photographer in Arizona? Visit Mandarich Photography online!!