Author: David

Moore Consulting Santa Fe and New Mexico

Redesigned site for the Santa Fe International Folk Art Market

Post author By David
Post date August 8, 2012

I’ve been working with the Santa Fe International Folk Art Market for five years now — designing, building and maintaining their website, writing blog posts and photographing artists and their great work.

Their site for the last three markets had worked well, but it was built on an older content management system and needed some freshening of the design and more functionality before this year’s Market in mid-July.

Stronger images, easier to update

I worked with the Market on a new design, aiming for a cleaner look and a wider main column for displaying larger photographs. The Market has a deep library of excellent images that show the real people around the world that are helped by the Market (I’ve taken some of these images — that’s one of mine used on the bottom-left of the homepage — but there’s a talented pool of other photographers who also contribute images). Being able to display photographs in a wide main column gives them more impact, and also gives more flexibility in wrapping text around images, especially for blog posts.

Another aim was that the site be easier to update. While I’ve written nearly all the blog posts in some years, this time round most were written by Clare Hertel Communications — the PR firm that’s also worked with the Market for many years. Making the blog section of the site full-featured but also easy to use was very important.

Going custom

Once the new design was approved, I planned the move to WordPress from the older CMS — a job that was more involved than for a more straightforward site.

The Market sites includes a blog, a news section and a section containing hundreds of artists’ profiles categorized by the countries they’re from, and the years they’ve attended the Market. WordPress by default only supports two types of content — regular site pages and blog posts, so I devised an architecture based around using custom post types and custom taxonomies to cater for all the different types of content and classifications required.

This means that adding an artist lets you specify a country and years attended when you’re adding the content, and then displays the content in the right place on the site. I also implemented WordPress’ ‘featured image’ functionality to automatically generate thumbnails and associate them with blog posts, news releases and artists. So adding a new blog post for example, automatically places its title and thumbnail on the site’s homepage without any direct editing of the homepage.

Then we moved all the existing content to the new site, and then tested the new version prior to launch.

The WordPress framework for the site now makes it easier for the Market to updated the content themselves, and also allows us to use some of the wide range of plug-ins available to add extra functionality. This is seen in the front page slider which displays revolving selection of banners. It’s also search-engine friendly and easy to add updates and patches as the WordPress core is constantly updated.

The blog area now supports captions for images, embedding maps into posts, and auto-generated slideshows.

Good-looking and built to last

The result is a site that has a contemporary look, a solid custom-designed infrastructure and a framework that supports the range of content uses the Market needs.

The work was completed in time for the busy build-up to the Market, and the site made it much easier than in previous years to add this year’s new artists, blog posts, news releases and other content. It also held up well to the large amount of traffic it receives around the Market weekend — peaking this year at over 4000 visits and 15,000 page views a day.

As the Folk Art Market moves into its tenth year in 2013, their site is a key asset in good shape, and it’s ready to support new endeavours and requirements in the future. I’m proud to have been involved with such a great Santa Fe non-profit organization for the last few years, and look forward to continuing my work with them.

Children's portraits Santa Fe

Sunday Morning with Evan and Lane – a Santa Fe children’s photo session

Post author By David
Post date July 13, 2012

Children’s photography to me is something that’s important but not pressing. It’s not like there’s a leak in the bathroom and you have to call the plumber right away, but in the end you’ll be very glad you’ve got the images when the kids are all grown and you’ve moved house.

So I was very happy that I got a call from Evan and Lane’s mother to set up a shoot. My daughter had been in pre-school with the boys, and we’d been meaning to schedule a session for a long time.

Arriving at their Santa Fe house on a bright Sunday morning, I was greeted with a mimosa. This was going to be a tough gig.

Moore Consulting Photography Santa Fe and New Mexico

In the MIX — photographing a great evening event

Post author By David
Post date July 3, 2012

The nice people at MIX Santa Fe — the networking and micro-finance group I like to think of as the hip offshoot of the local Chamber of Commerce — asked me to shoot their most recent event, and I was very happy to help out.

It was a party and awards presentation held at the Santa Fe Art Institute, in one the lovely courtyards of Riccardo Legoretta’s landmark building. Often evening events are held in dark hotel meeting rooms where you’re fighting with low light and loud carpets, but this was a joy.

With a bar staffed by the Cowgirl, serving drinks featuring Santa Fe Spirits’ fine local liquors, the party brought out an eclectic creative crowd. Santa Fe seems small, and you’re often running into the same people again and again, but this group refreshingly seemed to transcend a lot of the normal cliques.

Music was from DJ ‘jaro, and eats from La Cocina Doña Clara. Folks were friendly and the space gave me some chances to get some shots you wouldn’t normally associate with event shooting.

Thanks to MIX for the opportunity, and if you’ve got an event you need professional coverage of, don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Mirrorless cameras

The Fuji X-Pro 1 at the Rodeo

Post author By David
Post date June 21, 2012
2 Comments on The Fuji X-Pro 1 at the Rodeo

I’ve had my Fujifilm X-Pro 1 for about a month now, having rented one previously, and it’s proving to be a frustrating and lovable thing.

At times I’ll want to throw it across the room when it stumbles over a simple focus or is busy thinking to itself when my subject’s face assumes a perfect (and fleeting) expression.

But then I’ll look at the images it produces and declare it to be the best thing ever.

We went to the Rodeo de Santa Fe last night, and the X-Pro1 was its usual Jekyll and Hyde self. While I was shooting, especially fast-moving horses I was pretty sure I wasn’t getting anything.

When I got home, however, it made me love it again.

Tips/Tutorials

Using a Neutral Density Graduated Filter – not just for landscapes

Post author By David
Post date June 7, 2012

Normally thought of as a tool for landscape photographers, neutral density graduated filters (or ND grad filters) do a simple thing well. They reduce the amount of light hitting the sensor from one part of the image, their shading fading gradually to letting all the light in to the rest of the filter.

This gradation normally means the top-half is filtered and the bottom half not (but there are lots funky ways of adjusting this using filter holders and stuff I won’t go into here.

The classic usage is to darken the skies to keep detail there while getting a good exposure on the mountains in a landscape shot.

Moore Consulting Photography Santa Fe and New Mexico

Dogs in the Office — design dogs

Post author By David
Post date June 6, 2012

My dogs in the office personal project has started nicely. I’ve done three shoots now (more photos to follow), and it’s great to have some reason to shoot for myself that’s not just walking around seeing what I get. I’m a documentary photographer, so it’s the stories and moments that I respond to best, and with the dogs in the office, there are plenty of those.

Here are images from the session I shot with Radius Books and Trey Jordan Architecture. They share a lovely space in the same building as my office, and I’ve known Trey and David Chickey from Radius for a long while (full disclosure: I built Trey’s website).

Trey and David bring Jasper and Lola, while Jenni brings Terry, and Thomas brings Eames (what else would an architect name their dog). There’s art on the walls, lots of great space and a very hip kitchen stocked with dog treats (and some nice things for the humans, too).

For the gearheads among you, these were all shot with the Fuji X-Pro1, using 18mm f/2, and 35mm f/1.4 lenses.

Eames being shy.

Taking part in an impromptu meeting

Jasper appreciates the art.

Terry helps out

Time for a bit of affection

Mirrorless cameras Reviews

Fuji X-Pro 1 Review – Good goods come in small packages

Post author By David
Post date May 24, 2012
3 Comments on Fuji X-Pro 1 Review – Good goods come in small packages

You can tell a lot by the camera you choose for a job. Late last week I had a shoot to do, and although my DSLR kit was sitting beside me, I reached for the Fujifilm X-Pro 1. I’m that impressed with the hip black slab.

So what is it about this camera that only sports an APS-C sized sensor, only has 3 lenses available and costs $1700 that makes it so endearing? This review breaks down my experiences with it, and shows some sample images. As with all my reviews, there’s no photographs of brick walls, no ISO tests with wine bottle labels or collections of kitchen items – just my impressions of using the thing in real-world situations, to shoot the real world.

All the images here were taken with the X-Pro 1. Most received minor contrast and definition adjustments to the JPGs in Aperture, and sharpening for the web. Except where stated, black and white conversions were done in Aperture. You can click on any of the image for a larger (1024px) version.

(This is a long review – you might want to eat it in chunks. Like an elephant.)

Moore Consulting Photography

Big in Rotterdam — one of my images ends up working in a Dutch kitchen

Post author By David
Post date May 3, 2012

I recently got an enquiry from a company in the Netherlands, looking to license one of my images to use in their new office kitchen.

As I mostly do commissions (for small businesses, non-profits and families) and some assignment work (for publications), stock enquiries like this are rare, and most of my images aren’t suitable for stock use.

But I have a few images posted, and they’d come across one of mine that they liked. Since they’re based in Rotterdam (one of the largest container ports in the world) and focus on trade with Asia, they were looking for an image of containers on an Evergreen shipping lines vessel.

A quick Google image search later, they’d found one of my images in my small stock library hosted as a quiet part of one of my sites.

They found it because I’d captioned and tagged the images accurately (and because there aren’t that many good Evergreen container ship images around apparently), and they got in touch and asked about fees to license the image.

We sorted out a price and I worked with them on a new version of the image that fit the exact proportion and size they needed.

They printed the file locally, and as you can see the image now adorns their hip-looking kitchen (thanks to Richard Vredenburg for the image).

I’m chuffed that there’s one of my images on the wall in an office in Rotterdam, and it’s amazing that this digitally-connected world allowed this small miracle to happen. Twenty years ago there is no way an image I took at the start of a family cruise could have ended up being looked by Dutch people making coffee, and now we take it for granted.

Here’s the original image (in its custom Rotterdam crop version):

Children's portraits Santa Fe

All Grown Up – a family session with older kids

Post author By David
Post date May 2, 2012

Most of the work I do for families involves young children, often between the ages of three and ten. But I also really like photographing older kids, so I was happy when Sonia from Sacramento contacted me and asked me about a session while her family were visiting Santa Fe.

Sonia’s son is already away at college, and her daughter is in high school. The last time they’d had family portraits taken was over ten years ago, and since it wouldn’t be too long before their daughter would leave the house, Sonia and husband Ken thought their trip would be a good opportunity to get some new images.

Moore Consulting Photography

Editorial Portrait Assignment for PracticeLink Magazine

Post author By David
Post date April 15, 2012

National medical magazine PracticeLink has just published a photo assignment I shot for them in February.

The job was to shoot an editorial portrait of Dr James Melisi, a surgeon who had recently moved to Santa Fe from the Washington DC area.

The article the photo would accompany was about his move and how he’s enjoying the history and landscape of northern New Mexico. An amateur photographer, the good doctor has already had a show of his work in a local cafe.

The brief was to photograph him in a distinctive historical Santa Fe, and including his camera to show the new enthusiasm he’s found for photography.

I gave them a good range of images and as you can see from the tear sheet above, they used one full-page to accompany the piece.