Tips and news

New Pictures

Sun, 7 Nov 2010 11:31:55 -0800

We just came back from Yellowstone where we took pictures and we wanted to share them with you.
Here are some albums we just updated:

➡ Yellowstone
➡ Wildlife
➡ Abstracts
➡ Triptych
➡ Other Panorama

With these new pictures we are having more than 300 pictures display on this website.

Enjoy,
Thanks.

Dotty
Dotty@wesdotphotography.com
Wesdotphotography.com

Awards & Recognition

Wed, 8 Sep 2010 17:39:49 -0700

Besides taking photographs, we have found that it can be just as enjoyable talking with other photographers. There are usually local photography clubs that one can join and be amongst other photographers who, yes you could bet on it, will be talking photography. We found one such club in Portland, Oregon called Portland Photographic Society. We are always looking for new members, so if you are in the Portland area look us up: http://www.portlandphotographicsociety.org

It is also a thrill to see your images in contests or being published. Over the years we have entered contests and these images in the new album called Awards & Recognition display these. Hopefully as time goes by we will have more images to share with you in this album.

Thanks for visiting and come back again soon as we add new images.

Dotty
Dotty@wesdotphotography.com
Wesdotphotography.com

New Pictures

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 18:29:01 -0800

As promise few weeks ago we just added new pictures from our trip to California. You will find three new albums where you can view and order pictures. With this pictures we come to a total of 253 pictures we offer on this site. Please find links to the album below:

➡ Death Valley and Yosemite
➡ California
➡ Panoramas

Enjoy,
Thanks.

Dotty
Dotty@wesdotphotography.com
Wesdotphotography.com

Japanese Gardens

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 12:15:15 -0800

I have just become a Photography Member of the Japanese Gardens. This will be a new and exciting venture for 2010. It will allow me to post a photo to the Japanese Gardens website gallery with a link to our website that includes other photos taken at the Gardens which I can now post and sell. I will also be able to submit a photo to be considered for their calendar next year. And being allowed in the Gardens prior to the public opening plus attending photo workshops. Always have to strive to become a better photographer!
Have a great & safe New Year.
Thanks.

Dotty
Dotty@wesdotphotography.com
Wesdotphotography.com

One Year already?!

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 10:18:25 -0700

One year already?

Here are some statistics I would like to share:

➡ In the past year we had over 5,200 visitors to our site from 85 countries, thanks to all of the new and returning visitors.

➡ You viewed more than 31,300 pages from more than 50 languages.

➡ The most visits in one day happened on September 22nd 2009 with 52 visitors.

➡ 65% of the visitors were new to our site. They use Safari browser 55% of the time, Firefox 27% and IE 14%, the rest is used by 10 other browsers.

➡ 47% were direct traffic (like typing our site address or using a bookmark), 46% from links from other websites and 7% from search engine results, as you can see we have to progress in the search engine field.

➡ Finally our most visited page is our Home page (no surprise here), our second is our Contact page and third our About Us page.

We want to thank again all our visitors and our customers for their patronage.

I wanted to finish this blog entry by sharing with you some of my favorite pictures:

Portland at Night
Multnomah Falls Christmas
Antelope Canyon
Montmartre after dark
Flamingo at rest
Just call me trouble

One year already!

I hope you enjoyed your visit to our site, please feel free to leave a message on our Comment page.

Thanks
Thierry
Webmaster@wesdotphotography.com
Wesdotphotography

PS: Stay tune we have over 100 new pictures to come soon. You can have a preview by visiting our Travels Album where you will find a new Death Valley & Yosemite Album and a California Album. Enjoy.

How to Apply the Orton Effect Using Photoshop

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 22:45:35 -0700

Here is the step by step procedure to give your photos the painterly look that you see on this sample. I use Photoshop CS3 so these instructions may need to be adjusted a bit according to your system.

1. Make a duplicate image of the photo you would like to apply this technique on by clicking on ‘Image’ then ‘Duplicate’ from the drop downs.

1. This will give you a duplicate image which changes the name to add copy to end. You can now close the original image.

1. Click on ‘Image’ and select ‘Apply Image’. In the dialogue box that will appear change the blending to ‘Screen’ and opacity at 100%. This gives you an overexposed image which you really do want even though it looks pretty washed out. Click on ‘OK’.

1. Click on ‘Image’ and select ‘Duplicate’. Clicking on ‘OK’ will create another copy named copy 2.

1. Click on ‘Filter’ and select ‘Blur’. From the fly out box select ‘Gaussian Blur’. In the dialogue box that will appear use a radius setting of between 15 - 50. For this image I used a setting of 38 but you will need to experiment with each image to see what fits the best. A tip here is the higher the pixel setting the more ‘painterly’ the image will appear. When satisfied click ‘OK’.

1. You will need to have both images visible for this next step. Click on the ‘Move’ tool and while holding the ‘Shift’ button click on the blurred image (copy 2) and drag it onto the copy. Make sure to release your finger on the mouse before you release the shift button or the images will not precisely line up.

1. Open up the ‘Layers’ palette found under ‘Window’. You will see the background layer and ‘Layer 1’. Layer 1 will be highlighted making it active. Change the blending mode to ‘Multiply’ This will give you the final result.

1. Flatten the layers by clicking on ‘Layer’ and selecting ‘Flatten Image’

This artsy touch doesn’t seem to be something for every image but works really well with scenery and some nature shots. It certainly can make some stunning images even more stunning. Enjoy.

Thanks
Dotty
Wesdotphotography.com team.

Picture before the Orton Effect is applied

Picture after the Orton Effect is applied.

California Trip

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 21:05:31 -0700

Death Valley, Yosemite & Mono Lake in One Vacation is possible!

Seeing these three beautiful places in California in our 2-week vacation was the goal. But what time of the year seemed to be most favorable to us? We settled on the first 2 weeks in April. Here are some of the things we considered during our planning:
If we went later than April, Death Valley will be very hot. So we made this our 1st destination and even with that the temperature peaked at 97° in Badwater. Bonus for going in early April is that the spring flowers can be spectacular with some luck and the right weather conditions being on your side.
To include Mono Lake into this trip we drove up Hwy 395 from Death Valley to Lee Vining which is the nearest town to Mono Lake. We had one snowstorm overnight but by mid morning it had melted. We had to eliminate a visit to the great ghost town of Bodie as the Ranger had not deemed the road passable yet. And the road over Tioga Pass into Yosemite Valley which is only 77 miles does not open until mid May. This causes a detour to a pass that is open, meaning about a 6 hour drive.
This was our route:
1. Drive North on Hwy 395 to Minden Nevada.
2. Take Carson Pass (Hwy 88) to Jackson California
3. Then take Hwy 49 South to Big Oak Flat
4. Hwy 120 which will then take you into Yosemite.

If we went earlier than April, Yosemite would still be quite frozen. Even in mid April we had two overnight lows of 15° and 19° and one snowstorm overnight which melted by early morning. This time of the year also means we escaped the summertime crowds and saw the waterfalls flowing throughout the valley.
Overall it was a fabulous trip even with the long drive to get from Mono Lake to Yosemite. It just gave us more places to see and photograph. We also had just the right mix of springtime sun and a few brief storms that make for wonderful photos opportunities.

Thanks
Dotty
Wesdotphotography.com team.

Rating Our Pictures

Sun, 19 Apr 2009 14:54:12 -0700

We would love to receive your opinion about our pictures. Please feel free to rate them by using our rating stars (see above for an example). You will find this feature in all our pictures in this site. You can see the best rated pictures in our navigator. We also welcome your comments in our forum.

Thanks
Wesdotphotography.com team.

New Pictures

Thu, 2 Apr 2009 14:47:25 -0700

We have been busy taking pictures the last few weeks, here are some of our news pics as well as some older one that we decided to put in our website. There is over 42 new pictures, enjoy.
Wes and Dotty

Picture taken in Arizona in 2006 Picture taken in France in 2008

Picture taken at Ridgefield Nature Reserve Picture taken in Oregon in 2007

Create Paypal ADD TO CART Button

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 15:22:05 -0700

One of our visitors was wondering how we created this “add to cart” button that appears in our web-pages. I will try in this blog entry to explain how to create a Paypal button.

Introduction:
First you must create a Paypal account. As a business you should create a “Premier” account to be able to create and use Paypal buttons.
The “Premier” account is free to join but you will be charged fees every time one of your customers make a purchase.

Chapter 1:
When you have created your account go to “profile” and select “My Saved Buttons” under the “Selling Preferences” column (as a new business this feature may be called “create buttons”, I’m not sure); or go here directly.

Chapter 2:
Follow the instructions on the picture below to change the design of your button.

If you have one article that has many sizes use the “Add drop-down menu” to add the choices (see picture below). Here are my choices for the Tiger button.

You must make sure you create a different button for your different articles (each button has a different ID number and you do not want to use the same button for several different products).

Chapter 3:

There are other options you can use (or not), we use in this site “shipping options” as well as customize landing page for successful orders or cancel orders. You will find them here:

Shipping Options:

Landing page Options:

Also do not forget to create special pages in your website for these landing pages; if you want to see an example of our landing page feel free to make an order ☺.

Chapter 4:

When you are happy with the results click on the “create button” on the bottom of the page to create the html code (see below) and copy the code to insert it in your website using and html snippet (in IWeb 08) for example.

Use the save button function to create similar buttons for your site.

This code will give you a button with a black writing above the button (perfect for website with white or light color background). But what about webmaster like me who created website with dark background? You must incorporate a small string of code to solve your problem. This code must replace the <td> just before the <input type...> section of your code. Here is the code “<td align=center><font color="#FFFFFF">” without the hyphens.

Conclusion:
Paypal is very friendly to create buttons, I really like it and I recommend that you check their website for a more detailed explanation on how to use shipping options.
I hope you find this explanation easy to follow and do not hesitate to contact me if you have more questions regarding this blog entry.

Enjoy
Thierry
webmaster@wesdotphotography.com or Contact Us Form.

How To Add Watermarks Using Photoshop CS3

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 20:08:33 -0800

I've had a few questions from our website as to how I've put a watermark & copyright info on our images. So I thought I would do a 'step by step how I do it from Photoshop©. I have CS3 but I believe most of the Photoshop© programs would also work with maybe some minor differences. This is also instructions for a PC.

Step One: Open your image that you want to add the copyright to. From the Toolbox, select the Custom Shape tool. It's the tool that looks like a weird shaped star.

Step Two: After selecting this Custom Shape tool go up to the top of your screen to the Options Bar. Click on the Fill Pixels (this would be the 3rd icon after the weird shaped star). Next click on the drop down arrow next to the word 'Shape'. This will open up the different shapes available. Click the copyright symbol (the C inside a circle).

Step Three: Open your layers (click on Windows and choose layers). Click on the 'Create a New Layer' icon on the bottom of the layers panel. From the Toolbox, click on the Foreground color swatch which will bring up the Color Picker. Choose a light gray and click ok. Holding down the shift key (this keeps the symbol in proportion), click above the center slightly to the left of the image. Still holding the shift key drag to the lower right to resize the shape. Then release the mouse then the shift key. Once the shape is drawn click on the Add a Layer Style icon (found at the bottom of the layers panel). Select Bevel and Emboss.

Step Four: Select the Type tool from the Toolbar and make sure the Foreground color is still the same light gray you used for the copyright symbol. Type the word 'Copyright, the year and your name. Select the move tool to reposition the type so it fits below the Copyright symbol and is centered appropriately. Also change the font size if you need to. Once the type is in place click on the Add a Layer Style icon and select Bevel and Emboss.

Step Five: While holding down the Ctrl key select both the Copyright and the Text layers (this will select both layers). Now press Ctrl and E (this will merge the layers). With this layer still selected change the layer blend mode which currently will read 'Normal' to 'Hard Light'. This layer blend mode is located at the top of the layers panel. Then lower the Opacity (also located at the top of the layers panel) so it is still visible but doesn't ruin the look of the image.

Hope this helps.
Dotty.