it's what I do...

This post is wonderful. Small, concise and to the point.

7 Signs of SEO Scams: "As a Search Engine Optimizer (SEO), my job is to make use of a number of methods in order to help a site rank higher in the search engines (Google, Yahoo!, MSN, etc.).

I’ll save you some of the boring parts, but SEO is a pretty important aspect of any serious business venture with an online component. However, my business is also a pretty strange one. It requires a lot of experience, research, and patience to effectively get a website to rank highly. Because of this, a lot of what I do is still a mystery, even to clients I’ve had for over a year.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of “SEOs” out there taking advantage of the unknowing site owner, leaving a bad taste in their mouth about what SEO is and how it can help. With this post, I would like to give you a few signs that someone is trying to rip you off. These are seven signs of SEO scams.

1. We can rank your site in 48 hours!
Boy, I wish this was possible. ...

There's more... read it all.

... and be dumb as a bag of rocks at the same time?

Hmmmmm....?

Then blame everyone else for their shortcomings and utter cluelessness.

Sheesh.

And it makes no difference what school or what program. Most of the crap that the Universities teach doesn't help anyone but the University... to keep the money flowin... Idiotarianism at it's finest form.

Students Fail -- and Professor Loses Job :: Inside Higher Ed :: Higher Education's Source for News, and Views and Jobs: "One reason that this does not happen (outside Aird’s classes) is that many professors at Norfolk State say that there is a clear expectation from administrators — in particular from Dean Sandra J. DeLoatch, the dean whose recommendation turned the tide against Aird’s tenure bid — that 70 percent of students should pass.

Aird said that figure was repeatedly made clear to him and he resisted it. Others back his claim privately. For the record, Joseph C. Hall, a chemistry professor at president of the Faculty Senate, said that DeLoatch “encouraged” professors to pass at least 70 percent of students in each course, regardless of performance. Hall said that there is never a direct order given, but that one isn’t really needed.

“When you are in a meeting and an administrator says our goal is to try to get above 70 percent, then that indirectly says that’s what you are going to try to do,” he said. (Hoggard, the university spokeswoman, said that it was untrue that there was any quota for passing students.)"

From the Blog:

foto8 - What's up at DUMBO?: "For more than 150 years, photographers have engaged with the question: 'Is photography art?', championing what in each era photographers felt to be the unique or defining characteristics of the medium. As times change these characteristics fall away into the categories of photo and art history, from pictorialism to modernism to surrealism to every other -ism. These categories as they have congealed make sense of how the past was made sense of in it's own time. Some photographers have disavowed art; others have insisted on it.

Abiding throughout all these permutations, however, has been the notion that a photograph derives some important part of its effect from its insistence that something happened before the camera, and that despite the idiosyncrasies and patterns of technologies and style and the categories of visual knowledge and information, something was there before the camera.

Photojournalism and documentary photography have taken many forms but at their heart of all witnessing is this nugget. Despite all of the forms that photography can take that can be called 'documentary', if there is a claim to the real then that indexed moment is given enormous respect. Concerned photography celebrates human accomplishment and decries injustice by bearing witness through authorial eyes. The 'decisive moment' celebrates the intuitive alignment of composition, information"

Paul shot Malisha against the old car on the streets of Sunnyvale at yesterday's workshop. there are two strobes placed one on her face and one on her legs. The exposure is so carefully balanced that it doesn't look strobe lit. Very cinematic look - and that is what Paul loves.

Learning to control the light to make it what you want it to be is the most important thing to learn about lighting a photograph.

We could literally see the sun moving toward the surface and we were desperately looking for a parking place.

Alex knew what he wanted and when the sun got to this position, he placed Precilla exactly where he wanted her and then lit her with a very nicely placed flash. The result is stunning on many levels.

There was a lot of stuff going on and lots of intense angling for the shooters, but when you have a plan and a shot in your head, the intensity becomes more of a catalyst instead of a hinderance. Very cool shot, Alex.

I was spotting the waves for Jerry as he would dip his camera down so low, that the small surf would have washed over it. It was scary and intense... but he would drop down and get the shot between waves... no more than a few inches off the ever-changing surface of the water.

Was it worth the risk... ?

Oh, hell yeah!

Sometimes you see a shot and just know you gotta get it. Problem is that it may be somewhere that other folks have reasons, some valid some not, for you not to get that shot.

I understand the dilemma. Do you get the shot as quietly as possible without bothering anyone or do you just go get the shot anyway you can. Only options I can think of.

Evan and Alex and Jasmine decided the roof of the Cabana would make a great shot. they were right, but climbing on the roof is a no-no (and we wont do it again, Loren... sorry) but it kept calling to them. As security is approaching, they kept shooting quickly and ended up getting this shot before being removed from the roof.

Great shot. Those two guys work really well together, and Jasmine... well, you can't really take a bad picture of her.

APE looks at what decision making process as an over-riding fundamentals of choosing a shooter. Interesting. And not in the order that you may think.

A Photo Editor - Finding the Right Photographer: "Finding the Right Photographer

There are only 4 things to consider when looking to hire a photographer.

1. Genre
2. Style
3. Location
4. Price

Ok, there’s actually a fifth that’s like a recommendation or an impression we have of you and informs us what it will be like to work with you but I’m leaving that out of this discussion."

This will be the first time I have gone to Mexico in over 30 years. A traumatic experience there was enough to swear me off for quite a while. However, I have been coaxed down to do a workshop there and we have some wonderful models and a fantastic MUA so it may be part of the beginnings of my new portfolio, maybe a part of a new life free of emotional attachments that go only one way, and a more internally focused effort to produce the portfolio of my life.

Christina is absolutely beautiful and I love Jasmine's fresh ethnic look. I haven't shot Lexi before, but she looks like a cross between little girl and woman... And Jim is bringing a model who is a body builder so we have the opportunity to do some images that push the creative and the emotion.

If you want to join the 'new work portfolio challenge', let me know. I'll key you in.

An interesting post on the listening habits of designers. In my studio, there is a ton of audio equipment cause I love music. All kinds of music. You will hear Pavarotti and Wynonna and Beethoven and Coltrane. Lots of Coltrane. It makes the day go so smoothly.

Design Observer: writings about design & culture: "Today, the headphone-clad designer locked into his or her own audio bubble is a familiar sight. Graphic designers it seems like music and abhor silence. But is it possible to claim that music contributes more to the creative output of a studio than, say, comfortable chairs and a good coffee machine? There is no shortage of theories about the way music influences behaviour. It began with Pythagoras and his discovery of the music of the spheres, and can be found today in such disparate musicological thinking as Brian Eno’s theories of ambient music, and in the way institutions are using classical music to reduce violent behaviour in public places. Music’s ability to act as a sedative has long been know to medical science, as are the mesmeric effects of music as a means of inducing heightened states of emotion.

For me, I need music pretty much constantly. Having given up studio life in favour of working on my own, I gravitate towards introspective, trance-like music. This can be anything from Morton Feldman to Harold Budd. From late-period Coltrane to the latest backwoods drone rock. From Nordic electronica to exotic soundtracks. My only stipulation is that it has to be music without words: lyrics distract. Other than that, anything goes."