Like our eyes, a camera captures reflected light. If the light source is directly behind the camera, reflections bounce back directly off the subject and give an idea of its shape but not so much of its forms, scale and dimensions. But if lit from behind or from the side, the camera captures more light reflected off the subject’s angles. There are more brighter highlights and fewer shadow tones, contrast is higher and the subject’s shape and form become more distinct.

When the light comes from behind the camera, a scene has less contrast, lighter-coloured areas stand out and shadows are filled with light and contain visible detail. But the photograph’s overall impact is often drab and flat. However, when the camera is pointing into the light, edges and shadows become much more distinct.

In a landscape, for example, the sun may shine through leaves, making them stand out, showing the different types of trees and silhouetting trunks and branches. Light also bounces brightly off water and other surfaces. This results in an image with much more of a sense of depth.

Also consider the quality of light. Strong, raking light is often better able to show the form of angular structures, but diffused light can reveal more subtle forms in faces and other softly rounded objects.

As well as the angle and quality of light, the physical composition of a subject’s edges is important for conveying its shape. This is especially important in outdoor portraits. With the sun in the subject’s face, and less contrast, the shape of the head is not clearly defined against a background lit by the same light. But with the sun behind the subject, the light is diffused by the many individual hairs and forms an attractive fringe that brings out the shape we expect to see in a portrait.

Objects with multiple angles are great for exploring shape and form, especially when they are shiny or wet. Very bright specular (mirror-like) highlights can bounce off many angles, and even on a particularly drab day, shapes with such surfaces can stand out.

Flick through our Australian photo library and have a look at our wide and interesting selection of Australian stock pictures. We pride ourselves in quality work at very reasonable prices.

Over the weekend I shot a short infomercial to promote Search Tempo SEO services. It was a lot easier than I thought and I’m very pleased with the results. The cost was free as I borrowed a video recorder and used free software to edit it.

Here’s the result:

Here’s my first attempt at a screencast using Camtasia. This is a sample lesson from the 2 day SEO training course planned for July – Dec this year.

I’ve just put the finishing touches on the SEO training courses to be held in Brisbane in July 2007. The blurb goes:

In 2007 Search Tempo will be conducting two-day training courses covering search engine optimisation and search engine marketing. The cost of these courses is $895 per person with a limit of 12 people per course. Here’s a sample lesson:

Having attended the Search Tempo SEO Training Course you will be able to:

* Key concepts of SEO

• Describe the major aim of search engine optimisation
• Explain the foundation concept of pages verses sites when it comes to SEO
• Describe recent changes in search engine ranking algorithms

* Keyword Analysis

• Explain why keyword research is the most important aspect of SEO
• Conduct keyword research using online tools to identify the most profitable key phrases for your web pages
• Use KEI analysis to identify potential keywords for a web page
• Analyse competitor SEO strategies and tactics
• Produce customised key word phrases for each page in your web site

* Meta Tag Generation

• Explain why meta tags are important and state which two tags are the most important
• Identify the most important Meta tag elements
• Describe the rules for meta tag creation
• Optimize the page TITLE Tag
• Optimize the page META Description Tag
• Optimize the page META Keywords Tag

* Site design and architecture

• Use domain names, page names, alt tags, file names, image names and manu anchor text to improve search engine rankings
• Describe the purpose of the robots.txt file
• Create a robots.txt file for your web site
• Link a robots.txt file to a web page

* SEO Copywriting

• List the five golden rules for SEO copywriting
• Write web copy that includes the correct key word ratio and the correct HTML tags
• Use online tools to calculate key word ratios
• Optimize the page text for better keyword placement

* Search Engine Submission

• Describe the search engine submission process, spidering and indexing process
• Describe a method of getting listed in Google within 1 to 2 weeks
• Create a sitemap using freely available online tools
• Link a sitemap to a web page for spidering by the search engines
• Create an automatic alerting system to tell you when Google has indexed your site
• Apply to get your web site listed in Google local search

* Getting Quality one-way and two-way links

• Describe the concept of Google PageRank
• Describe the 5 qualities of the perfect incoming link
• Draft a powerful directory listing description including key words in the anchor text
• Use blogs and forums to get one-way links
• Use blog and ping to get your new web pages indexed quickly
• Use free directories to get one-way links
• Use free software to automate the directory submission process
• Identify the important qualities of a link exchnage partner
• Describe how nofollow tags can be used to defraud link exchange partners
• Subscribe to link exchange programmes to get reciprical links

* Article Marketing

• Describe the 3 major benefits of article marketing
• Describe the standard format and structure for an article to be submitted
• Find over 50 article submission sites
• Draft a powerful article author bio/resource box including key words in the anchor text
• Use free software to automate the article submission process
• Set up automatic alarms to let you know when an article has been published or syndicated

* Black Hat SEO

• Define the term black hat SEO
• List 5 common black hat SEO methods
• Explain the concept of link cloaking and automatic content generation
• Describe techniques to minimise link cloacking detection and penalties
• Load a link clocker program with keywords and see the results

Brad Callen’s Article Submitter Software is a waste of my time. I just got an e-mail from Brad Callen of SEO elite fame. He’s promoting a piece of software called Article Submitter.

I’ve downloaded and installed it and I have found it to be a waste of my time.

The free version has 100 article directories in its database. The $67 version has over 700 directories in its database.

The only good thing I can say about this software is that it gave me the names of some high PR article sites that I wasn’t aware of. If you’ve got an hour or so to burn, give it a go.

If you truly want to automate the article submission process, get yourself a macro recorder like Hot Keyboard Pro. It’s cheaper than Article Submitter and a lot faster and you can see what’s going on and know that your article got submitted.

Note that I gain no benefit from mentioning Hot Keyborad Pro. It’s great software that I use every day for a wide variety of SEO tasks.

The trouble with the dedicated automatic article submission bits of software is they take forever to respond to what’s happening on the page. If the page changes, they get very confused.

Using Hot Keyboard Pro, I can submit an article to 3 different sites per minute without error. Here’s a screencast showing the process.

I’ve just discovered a very cool tool on the shoemoney.com site

Basically, you enter in your keyword phrase and your web url and see where you rank for that keyword phrase in the major search engines. This saves a lot of time compared to manually looking for your web site in the SERPs.

Click here to try it yourself.