Searching for photo opportunities around midnight in Washington DC I came across this fantastic angle in the Lincoln Memorial to capture the unique ceiling.

Working full time can put a damper on any photographers day time photos but I was determined to get a show of the cherry blossom festival and had no choice but to take one at night. Granted the Jefferson Memorial is the main focus of this photo I think the cherry blossoms add some nice framing. With the amount I had to zoom on this photo it added the effect of making the Jefferson Memorial look much closer than it is.

Camera

Canon 6D w/ EF24-105mm kit lens (~$2400) - I went with a Canon 6D because I wanted to shoot on a full frame camera and save a few bucks. The Canon 5Dmk3 is a better camera but for almost a grand more I couldn’t bring myself to buy it, especially since I don’t do sports or action photography because the 5Dmk3 has more auto focus points. The 6D also lets me do more than 3 exposures in a bracketed shot which is a nice feature when you want to capture 9 images over a lot of exposures for an HDR. Some of my older shots are from a Canon T1i (the newer version is also very nice) which I highly recommend also for starting out, especially if you don’t want to spend too much money.

DSPTCH Camera Strap (~$50) – I’m not a fan of Canon’s basic strap since it makes it hard to wear like a satchel. The DSPTCH gives me extra length in the strap and a great quick release button to disconnect the strap from my camera quickly.

I’m also currently planning on buying the Canon 16-35mm to capture landscapes in a wider form.

Tripod

Manfrotto 055cxpro3 Carbon Fiber 3 section Tripod (~$350) - To capture stunning landscapes or cityscapes a very stable tripod is essential. After shooting in windy situations with a cheap aluminum tripod and not getting the results I wanted I upgraded to the Manfrotto carbon fiber tripod and I’m happy with the results. The carbon fiber makes it light enough to carry all day but sturdy enough for all of my shots.

Giottos MH1000-652 Large Ball Head (~$100) – With heavier camera equipment comes a heavy duty tripod head and with a 22 pound limit this ball head handles all of my gear. I’m also a huge fan of ball heads with a quick release which this offers, it makes it very easy to take your camera off and on of your tripod. (note this suggestion was from Trey Ratcliff)

Software

Lightroom (~$100) – I use Lightroom to organize all of my photos and I highly recommend it. It makes it super easy to pull your photos off your SD card and organize them. It also provides some very powerful editing options which I’m a huge fan of.

Photomatix (~$100) – When processing all of my HDR photos I use Photomatix, for around $100 I think this program is worth it, especially after you figure out what all the options and sliders do.

My Photos

If you are unfamiliar with my photography here are some photos from my portfolio. Most of these effects are products from taking multiple exposures and merging them together with Photomatix creating a photo with high dynamic ranges.

See more of my photos on flickr

The “EPISHOCK” is a very solidly built speaker with a plastic body that uses (mostly) large flat surfaces such as tables and windows to transmit audio. This unique speaker uses a sticky adhesive at the bottom of the speaker to vibrate music into surfaces. Since it turns almost anything into a speaker it’s great for adding bass to your music but at higher volumes the treble starts to sound terrible. I also wish it had an option to use bluetooth instead of the short (included) 3.5mm audio wire, granted that would raise the cost significantly.

If you’re a fan of high quality audio the Epicshock is a novelty but the Epishock is a great addition to your travel bag for an enhanced mobile listening experience.

Let your Tests Run Long Enough

Within minutes of letting your test run you might see huge gains in some of your variations. Don’t celebrate or panic, most likely a few conversions can throw off your results early on. Depending on what you are measuring, time required can vary. Luckily VisualWebsiteOptimizer made a handy test duration calculator.

Make BIG Changes

Why settle for a tiny gain in conversion when you could push the envelope and push your business to the next level? Things like colors, testing below the fold, and slight page modifications can only alter your conversion slightly. Doing smaller changes may be easy but alternate designs and testing big elements can lead to a huge gain – but does come along with more work.

Don’t Assume

No matter how silly an idea may sound, everything is worth testing and can always lead to surprises. A great article on the Plenty of Fish blog shows an example of this, testing a professionally made ad versus an ad made in MS Paint. Surprisingly the MS Paint ad had a nearly double click through rate. It just shows that unexpected things can happen from trying unconventional ideas, and you’ll learn something every step of the way.

Make it a Real A/B Test

Running a variation of a page for a week, then running a new variation of that page is not a true way of running an A/B test. If you don’t run all variations of your page at the same time to a random selection of users you are getting skewed data.

Keep at it

The most important thing about testing is to keep testing even after having failing results.Learning about your customer and demographic can eventually lead to huge gains. There are plenty of resources for finding testing ideas, including the KISSmetrics blog and Unbounce blog.

The key tool I use in running A/B tests is VisualWebsiteOptimizer, after having countless problems with Google’s Website Optimizer I find paying for VWO is worth it.

What tools and resources do you use in your tests? Let us know in the comments

The code below will define the animation needed for our effect.

@-webkit-keyframes pop-in {
0% { opacity: 0;-moz-transform: scale(0.5);-webkit-transform: scale(0.5); }
100% { opacity: 1;-moz-transform: scale(1);-webkit-transform: scale(1); }
}
@-moz-keyframes pop-in {
0% { opacity: 0;-moz-transform: scale(0.5);-webkit-transform: scale(0.5); }
100% { opacity: 1;-moz-transform: scale(1);-webkit-transform: scale(1); }
}
@-ms-keyframes pop-in {
0% { opacity: 0;-moz-transform: scale(0.5);-webkit-transform: scale(0.5); }
100% { opacity: 1;-moz-transform: scale(1);-webkit-transform: scale(1); }
}

As you can tell the custom keyframe code has huge potential for lots of effects happening all at once, for more detail check out CSS-Trick’s Article.

Now that our animation has been defined we have to apply it to a class. This can be done by adding the following code below to any style.

-webkit-animation:pop-in 0.5s;
-moz-animation:pop-in 0.5s;
-ms-animation:pop-in 0.5s;

These are the bare essentials needed for a pop-in animation, feel free to experiment with different effects, transition timing, and styles.

Feel free to leave an example of a pop-in effect in the comments

Pingdom – Pingdom is a great tool for finding bottle necks and testing the general speed of your pages

Kraken – This amazing tool will compress any images/css/js you have to smaller sizes to optimize your site’s speed

Sprite Cow – If you’re building CSS sprites for your site you need this tool, it will give you the css for each image you select in your sprite

Subtle Patterns – This site is full of subtle patterns which are amazing for any web or graphic design projects

Premium Pixels – An excellent resource of quality PSDs from Orman Clark

Smashing Magazine - If you’re in the web profession you should be reading this blog

Line 25 – A great blog by Chris Spooner with a new article in web design weekly, including tutorials and inspiration

zscreen – This Windows program will allow you to screenshot anything on your computer and instantly upload it to any image host

What tools do you use in your daily web adventures?

Here are a few buttons including default, hover and active states. These are great if you need an eye catching call to action.

The font used was Nevis which you can get for free here.

Here’s a simple contact box made in Photoshop for any project requiring a sleek contact form.

Here’s a fabulous shopping cart quick view dropdown which is great for any eCommerce project you’re working on.

This Freebie was inspired by Orman Clark on PremiumPixels.com