Nico's posterous

Ranksborough Eventer Trial

The recent lack of rain in the East Midlands meant that the traditional end-of-summer CHPC Senior Hunter Trial had to be cancelled, replaced instead by an Eventer Trial in the polo arena at Ranksborough Polo Club. Luckily the change of venue did not dampen enthusiasm too much.
Visitors included the Belvoir Hunt Pony Club, Quorn Hunt Pony Club, Fernie Hunt Pony Club, South Notts Pony Club, South Trent Pony Club, Burghley Pony Club, Fitzwilliam Pony Club and Woodland Pytchley Hunt Pony Club.

Countryside Alliance Fashion Show

A few months ago I was asked if I would shoot a fashion show for the Countryside Alliance as a favour to a friend who helps to organise such things. Of course I said yes.

Countryside Alliance Fashion Show with Oliver Townend, Kelmarsh Hall - Images by Nico Morgan

The venue was the wonderful Kelmarsh Hall in Northamptonshire, a stunning stately home which provided the perfect surroundings to show off local fashions. A reception gave guests the opportunity to browse the tradestands which were dotted around the house; it was nice to see the like of Peachy Belts, The Really Wild Company, Dot Clowes Jewellery, Kikoy and Charlie Ruggles all there.

Oli Townend kindly took time off from Blenheim to come and compere and his cheeky was the perfect accompaniment for the show itself which was very well performed by a host of local models of all ages.

Pony Club Team Show Jumping at Burghley

This year I spent the first day of Burghley away from the arena.

Over in Ring 2 40 teams from all over the East of England were competing for a Pony Club Team Show Jumping competition.

After a multi-team ride-off it was the Burton Hunt Pony Cub who came out victorious. Congratulations to them!

Is it Autumn already?

The Summer seems to have flown by once again. Before we know it the kids are heading back to school and the last Bank Holiday of the Summer is upon us. The real start of Autumn, though, is marked by the beginning of the cubbing season.

This morning The Cottesmore had an excellent turn out at Oxey Farm and I did my best to capture the quality of light as dawn broke over post-harvest Rutland.

Cottesmore hunting photography

Zenfolio vs. Photoshelter

I have been a user of Zenfolio for over two years now and have over 24,000 photographs online. I have my niggles with it but in the past some of these have been addressed by the inclusion of new features in the incremental upgrades of their system.

When I chose Zenfolio I looked briefly at the service Photoshelter were offering and decided against it, largely on cost. I continued to read their newsletters and blog posts and over time I have become more and more interested in what it could offer me as an alternative. A week or so ago I gave in and signed up for a  Standard account so that I could directly compare them and expose my customers to the new system and see what feedback I got from them. A week has passed since I went live with the PS version of my site, having reassigned the Zf version as an archive.

So far, to be honest, the grass is pretty lush on both sides of the fence but there are distinct differences that I can see and I thought it would be a good idea to share these and, hopefully, provoke a discussion in the comments section so that both companies might gain from everyone's shared experiences.

So... here goes.

Zenfolio benefits

• user (and presumably search engine) URLs. For example:

  Zf gives us: http://archive.nicomorgan.com/polo09/assam-final/e35d87b12 as the URL for a single photo.
  PS gives us:http://pa.photoshelter.com/c/nicomorgan/gallery-img-show/Quantum-Saddles-Eventing-Grand-Prix-Hickstead/G0000zKQL.WNRaS0/?&_bqG=10&_bqH=eJxz8y8MDIkM9CsxCQvOME9OD_H1z08tTw13sci3MjQ0tjI0MLCyco_3dLF1NwCCKu9AH71wv6DEYAO1AJComrtnvLujj49rUCQ2RQBSxhuP&I_ID=I0000bDcddxMCrmU. Yes really.
  

• Nested galleries. With Zf I can nest galleries within groups, within groups ad nauseam. With PS I can have Gallery Collections which contain galleries and that is as far as it goes. With PS I can't for example, set up a folder for Polo named Polo09 and have within that another folder for a specific tournament and then galleries within that for each game in that tournament. Frustrating for the customer.
• A proper CNAME setup so that my domain can be used and seen throughout my Zenfolio pages. Note the two URLs above. Zf has kept my archive.nicomorgan.com CNAME whereas PS has dropped it for some reason.
• A European print provider, albeit the rather unreliable Photobox. This doesn't bother me as I set up my own products and self-fulfil anyway but for others it might be a deal-breaker.
• Very friendly backend which is pretty self-explanatory and easy-to use.
• Cheap!
  

• Incredibly good user-support and tuition when setting up your account.
• fully-customisable themes which allow a user with decent knowledge of CSS to make their site look amazing.
• Lots of advice on SEO and how to improve it. Having said this, I'm not convinced the site is any better at exploiting it than Zf, given the friendly URLs described above.
• A neater shopping cart which is more user-friendly (according to my customers!) and...
• Fotoquote inclusion means that any photographer can sell rights-managed work to all-comers and know what to charge. That's the theory anyway but unfortunately the system is far from complete and many of my clients have ended up resorting to the phone anyway - no advantage over Zf there then perhaps.
• More technical facilities such as the abilty to FTP on to your clients directly from PS.
• Upload any file format you like (well all the ones most photographer use). ZF is much more limited.
• No individual file size limit, unlike Zf (20Mb I believe).

It's back but it's different

This is weird.

Almost exactly ten years after My 2p, my original blog, was born into the primeval soup of the blogosphere, I'm at it again.

But it's different.

Now it has focus. Pun intended. Sorry.