While attending the PhotoProExpo 2012 last week, we took some time to go out and take some photos of the Cincinnati skyline.

Pictured above if the picturesque bridge which connects Cincinnati with Covington, Ky.

If you want to see more please go here:

http://www.dabourphotography.com/Landscapes/Cincinnati-OH/

I took a few days off and headed out to PhotoProExpo 2012. Readers of my blog know that I believe in continuing education.

It was a great conference. Many great nationally known speakers. Each day was VERY full and long. They even had a model shoot-out. I’ll post some pictures of that soon. The host, David Ziser @digitalprotalk was fantastic and very enthusiastic as always. David also had a demo of Lightroom 4 beta.

So now its time to regroup and go through my notes and choose one or two items. per speaker, to start implementing for 2012!

It was a cold morning (10 degrees!). As I greeted my rental car, it had a nice wintertime display on all the windows courtesy of Jack Frost.

OK here’s the hard part. As I started driving, I noticed one of the frosty snowflakes on the windshield started spinning! I can assure you I was awake and not hallucinating! As I picked up speed, the spinning flake flew off the windshield. It was so young!

As I drove across PA and into Ohio, below are some of the images from the road showing the recent snow and ice that was on the roadside trees.

I had the opportunity to take some publicity photos for SKIT’s upcoming performance of “Aladdin Jr”. Look for some of these photos in local newspapers in the next week or so.

The show will run January 27-29, 2012 at Voorhees High School. Tickets are still available at www.showkids.org.

For the rest of the photo album please visit: http://www.dabourphotography.com/SKIT-Photos/Aladdin-Jr/PR-Photos/20887027_BXthXw

http://static.animoto.com/swf/w.swf?w=swf/vp1&e=1326146205&f=SvkeQKGCN0fjqvZToKZyIA&d=150&m=a&r=360p&volume=100&start_res=360p&i=m&options=

For tickets or additional information please go to www.showkids.org.

Show dates are January 27- 29, 2012

Three area fire companies (Stewartsville, Alpha and Huntington) performed a walk-thru of the new Wal-Mart last night. This is necessary so the fire fighters can be familiar with the facilities in the event a fire call occurs there in the future. They look for hazards as well as automated sprinkler systems and fire department connections to name a few.

I wish I could show you more photos but Wal-Mart asked me not to post them due to corporate policy.

Word on the street is the store is scheduled to open near the end of the month.

Below are some of the pictures from the hike. Enjoy!

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  Low 50′s and southerly winds.
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  At the Delaware Canal State Park just south of Easton
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  Shooting into a kids playground mirror all scratched up…
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  Hikers go!
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  First view of the Delaware River Canal south of Easton
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  56 miles to Bristol(?) the end of the tow path
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  Due to past flooding
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  One of many mid river islands showing the power of flooded waters of the recent past
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I thought it would be nice to bundle up the photos I’ve taken for them this past year and present it in a slide show. I started out doing this the old fashioned way and it turned into a big project. I then remember that SmugMug, the hosting provider I use for all my Pro Photography, has a feature called “Smart Galleries.” This allows you to create a gallery and have it contain photos from other existing galleries based on rules or conditions. This was exactly what I needed and turned out to be a great time saver.

For my project I set the following rules:

Include My Photos from 1/1/11 to 12/31/11 AND include My Photos with keyword “sfd” AND Exclude Keyword “art”.

All of that might sound self explanatory except for the last part. When I first created the gallery some additional photo showed up. After one particular call during the year I continued on and took some landscape photos nearby. I forgot to go in and tag these as different. So all I had to do was go into keyword settings for multiple photos on SmugMug and add the word “art” (it could have been any keyword that I wanted to use) and exclude those photos by that keyword.

Obviously for this to work you have to apply keywords to your photos. Years ago I never bothered doing this but I started doing so a few years ago. Even though it adds a few steps to your photo processing workflow, it’s very much worth it. Not only to do what I did above, but also for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) also know as “Google Juice” so your website gets picked up by Google and other search engines faster.

In case you’re interested here’s the link to the gallery I created in slideshow format: http://www.dabourphotography.com/photos/swfpopup.mg?AlbumID=20825132&AlbumKey=4dFSgt

Would you like to give SmugMug a try and save $5 on a subscription? Simply enter my email address (dabour at att.net) or use coupon code 2mLQw7wT0DzPU in the Coupon field at the end of your trial. Or you can click on this link: signup.mg-Coupon=2mLQw7wT0DzPU

Thanks for reading!

Dave

I hope everyone has a happy, safe and healthy new year!