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Archive for June 16th, 2007

I’m wondering if some kind folks out there might be able to help me. I’m looking for a new place to go and photograph. What I really want to see is a “ghost town”, an old abandoned mining town or some old cemeteries. I really have an interest in taking some photos of old equipment, old buildings and things that have been weathered.

I’ve come across some old cemeteries on my way to Crowder’s and King’s Mountain as well as some in the town of Clover, but that was by luck and accident I came across those. I would like to know if there are more places like this I can go. I looked on the Web to find information, but the directions are far too vague to actually find these places. I guess you have to be from that area in order to know what they’re talking about.

They don’t really have to be haunted or anything (although that would be even better!), just something that looks like it could be haunted. I’m just looking for something a little different to take pictures of. If you know of something in the NC/SC area let me know! If you have some pictures you’ve taken, I’d love to see them!

There has to be some good ol’ fashioned ghost town around the place somewhere!!

I’ve been using the Zoundry client for a little bit now and I’m happy to report that it works quite well. Even through the version number is 1.0 it still lists as being in Beta, which is fine, it has enough features and is stable enough to be useful in everyday use.

Zoundry is the free client from www.zoundry.com and can connect to a variety of blog sites such as Blogger, Wordpress and Typepad. It features a built in editor and spell checking functions. I don’t actually use these; I still rely on Microsoft Word for all my compositions. I compose my entry with Word, copy to Notepad to remove all the extra junk formatting then paste it as an entry to Zoundry. Once there, I work on the formatting.

Zoundry makes it easy to create lists, insert graphics, create links, align text and other regular word processing functions. This is much easier than using the built in editor, at least from my working with Wordpress. You can work with multiple accounts and post to each one from within the same client.

Once in the editor you can also choose your topic categories (which are downloaded from the server) and tagwords from sources such as Technorati, del.icio.us, and Ice Rocket. Zoundry will also ping the Blog servers for you. You can’t add your own as you would in Wordpress, etc, but it does support Pingomatic, Google and several others.

You can save entries for later publication or send your article right up to the server. One thing I like about Zoundry is you don’t need FTP in order to publish articles. You use Wordpress’ built in upload functions to send posts. You can use FTP but it’s not required. This just means I don’t have to have FTP open on my server.

The only thing I’ve really had an issue with is, you need to make sure you press NEW and get a new post otherwise you are editing the previous post. Sometimes I have to pit New more than once in order to get a new blank post. This could just be a delay on my machine.

Zoundry is a free program, and you can sign up for their Affiliate Service where you post links to products from multiple vendors and earn a commission. I don’t have a slew of affiliate programs to work from so I don’t need this, but I can see how it would be useless.

Other features include:

• A warning if you forget to choose categories
• You can edit any previous post and resubmit it
• You can find links to online products through UI, such as YouTube, Wikipedia, Amazon, Google, MSN and Yahoo
• Post to multiple blogs
• See when a blog entry was written simply by clicking on it
• Edit the code of the message directly through the editor
• Save the entry as HTML to the local machine

There are a other clients on the market, and I have tried a few of them, but they’re either too expensive for the same features or they lack basic functionality. I tried Blogjet and Zoundry together and I found I liked using Zoundry more. There is a long way to go in this market before we have a real client (auto correct, autosave drafts, auto spell check), but I really like what this offers me so far.

One thing that did throw me a little. When you first post a new entry (at least with Wordpress) it doesn’t instantly appear. The post has to be copied over and published on the server. This makes it look like the post failed, but give it a minute or so and it will appear as expected.

Overall it’s a real help and does make writing blog entries easier. If you want to be able to create blog entries without being connected or using a Web Browser, this is a darn good place to start.

Plus, it has a great price… FREE

I’ve uploaded about 200 new images in the past two days. The rain has been threatening and the clouds have been heavy, but I grabbed some great shots from the botanical gardens over the last two days. The clouds really work well on the flowers to keep off harsh shadows and makes it easier to shoot without getting blown out highlights. The first day was cut short with the rain, but I went again the next day with clouds looming all around.

There are dozens of shots of Day Lilies which I think are really good. Very close macro shots with the flower just filling the whole frame. Let me know what you think of them!

A funny thing to note, a wedding and reception was going to happen that night. All the preparations were underway from time to time the bride would appear to have her photo taken in different parts of the garden. I have no idea who she was, but she looked great and happy, and I’m sure the pictures will be wonderful. There was color everywhere which would make a great backdrop.

I kind of wanted to follow them around for a little bit and see how they worked and what kind of shots they went for. I think it would have been pretty fun. But, it’s best not interfere with such things.

With my new addition of photos I believe I am amassing one of the largest botanical flower collections on the Internet. Ok, ok, I’m sure there are other way bigger collectionsout there, but hey, I can make all the bold and outrageous statements I want!