Iceland is Live

Iceland is a country that I have wanted to visit and photograph for years (ever since I saw the incredible photographs of the Audi TT that were shot on location in Iceland).

I am very happy to announce that Heiðdís Gunnarsdóttir is our administrator for Iceland. She can be reached on email at heiddis90@gmail.com

I look forward to watching with interest the guides from this incredibly fascinating and photogenic country.

Click here to visit the Iceland Photo Site.

Brent

Canada Live!!!!

It's great to be able to announce the launch of Canada!!!!! We have a wonderful Canadian artist/photographer by the name of Kent Barrett.

So all you Canadians out there.... you have a gorgeous country... why don't you get behind Kent and share some of your beautiful locations with the rest of us.

Click here to view the guide for Canada.

Brent

South Africa Is Now Live

I'm happy to announce that we now have an administrator for South Africa and the site is live.

Please click here to visit the South African Site for Photo guides.

Brent

Seems as though word is getting out...

It's interesting watching this project start to take off... the network effect is definitely kicking in... as word of mouth spreads we are seeing a lot more of everything....

More guides...

More administrators...

More traffic.

We are at 300 visitors / day and growing fairly quickly.... Wait until we get some press about the project (Better Photography hits the Australian stands in a week or two)...

It won't be long before we break 100 guides... then on to 200!

BP

Antarctica launched

We have launched a site for Anatarctica... I don't think this will be one of our mainstream sites, but hopefully we'll get some great guides over time for this ice paradise.

Click here to view the guide for Antarctica.

BP

USA Site Launched

Well we have now launched the Photoguide Site for USA. I am temorarily administering it until I find a kind soul who would like to volunteer to be the administrator going forward.

Our first state to go live is that of California administered by a talented nocturnal photographer Mr Andy Frazer. Andy has already written three guides and is actively promoting this project to his network of photographic colleagues, so I have a feeling we will see California really take off and hopefully spread like wild fire through the other states.
Click here to visit the USA Photoguide site.

USA Site coming soon.

It is my pleasure to announce our first USA administrator - Andy Frazer who has put his hand up to be the administrator for the State of California.

Andy is a very talented photographer specialising in Night photography and long exposure work.

Watch this space, we should bring the USA live within a few days.

BP

Welcome Cyprus and Eastern Mediterranean

We have launched not just another country, but in fact a new region. It is my pleasure to announce Lisa Solonynko as our Admin for this area. While Lisa lives in Cyprus she has knowledge and photos of a number of neighboring areas such as Egypt and Israel.

Lisa has some lovely photos, you can check out her web site here.

Click here to visit the Cyprus and Eastern Mediterranean site.

Brent

Sweden is under construction

Hi folks

I'm happy to announce that the Swedish site is currently under construction and should be live shortly.

Stay tuned

BP

Contributing

If you find the promise of this project exciting... the potential of having an organised high quality guide to shooting the best photographic locations in the world... then you need to help me ensure it takes off.

The only way this project is going to get critical mass is if enough of you write guides. Writing a guide is simple, fun, and takes about 30 min of your time....

This project is not a commercial venture... it is a labour of love.

Please help this project to succeed by donating 30 min of your time to describe one of your favorite photo locations.

You don't need to be a "master" photographer.... any keen enthusiast will do.

You don't need to have any special computer skills... the simple step-by-step instructions will guide you through the process.

So please... bite the bullet and contribute to this project and the photo community.

Click Here to download the Contributor Instructions

Thankyou

UK Site is now Live

Rob has launched the UK site,

You can check it out here

BP

Becoming an Administrator... What Does This Mean

You are probably reading this message because somebody has told you about this open source collaborative project and perhaps even asked if you wouldn't mind volunteering to be an Administrator. This posting will tell you more about this project and what is involved in becoming an Admin.

First it is important to understand "the big picture". Here's how the project is constructed...

Starting from the bottom, the photo guides are written by individual contributors... these can be photo enthusiasts or professional photographers. They create their guide using Google's "Knols".. a simple tool for authoring an authoritative piece of content.

Once they h ave written their guide, they contact their State/Regional Admin and submit their guide for review and inclusion in the State/Regional directory. You can see that the State/Regional directory rolls up to a Country directory which in turn rolls up to the global directory.

The State/Regional Admin really has 3 core responsibilities

1. Promote this project amongst local photographers and get them starting to write guides
2. Review the guides to ensure quality and help the authors if they have any difficulties
3. Connect the guide in to the State/Regional director and announce the new guide via a blog posting.

Thats it. I have tried to design this project to distribute the load as much as possible. I don't anticipate that the role of State/Regional administrator will be overly labour intensive.

There is also the added benefit that as this project grows in popularity, you will start driving traffic through your directory portal and you might be able to even generate some pocket money through sponsorship and advertising.

If you would like to become a State / Regional Admin (or even a country admin if one doesn't exist), please contact your Country Admin (or the global admin).


Brent

Wait until you see what Rob is Building in Wales

Well this project is certainly lucky to have somebody like Rob Hudson as the UK and Wales site administrator. I just took a look at his first photo guide for an incredibly beautiful place in Wales called Dunraven.

The UK and Wales site should be live in a few days, but if you want to take a sneak peak, check out

Rob Hudsons gorgeous photo guide for Dunraven, Wales

Enjoy
Brent

UK is under construction

Excellent news, I have convinced Rob Hudson to join the project and launch the UK arm of the project. Rob is an excellent landscape photographer who is pretty active in the UK photography scene... I am sure that before we know it Rob will have recruited a whole bunch of County admins to get the UK going. Check out Rob's work here.

Documentation written for individual contributors

I have just written a 10 page step-by-step manual for individual contributors that wish to write guides on their favorite locations. I have given it to Tim (Flickr handle timbodon.)

I'll see if he finds the instructions intuitive... if so, I'll start taking it out to a few more photographers in a kind of Beta test to see if we can start getting some critical mass on the guides.

Welcome To My Project

Welcome, you are probably here because you are a keen landscape photographer always on the lookout for new places to explore and photograph. Well you are definitely not alone.

I have been thinking for a long time about how to harness the incredible capabilities of the internet to create a set of tools and forums for photographers to share their favorite place with their peers. I kept seeing pieces of the puzzle unfolding, but it was only recently that I came across the final piece of the jigsaw puzzle that would allow me to make this project real without investing a lot of time or money in custom development.

Google's Knols (a unit of knowledge) were designed specifically to allow an author to publish an authoritative article on a particular topic. This was the simple authoring solution that I was looking for... the fundamental building blocks.

So... welcome to my Open Source Photography Guide Project. If you would like to be part of this project... you can... in a number of ways.

1. You can spread the word and send others to http://freephotoguides.blogspot.com
2. You can write about your own favorite photography locations
3. You can collaborate with an author to improve a guide that they have already created
4. You can volunteer to be a state or country administrator (to roll-up guides from your local photographers)

I look forward to hearing what you think of this project.... please spread the word... and write your own photographic guide to your favorite location. If you need a hand getting started, just email me at brentbat@gmail.com and I'll help you get going.

Enjoy
Brent