Work in progress. I recently made a significant purchase in a Cinestar 8 aerial photography / videography rig. The kit is a specialist bit of equipment, with a gyro stabilized camera rig, GPS, return to home, video down-link, live control surface feedback including battery life (with warning) a shutter release for photography as well as many features I’m yet to use.

This video is a few shots of me getting used to the system - It’s taken quite a while to get this far.

I see a lot of websites that clearly haven’t had any thought given to them. There are a lot of sites out there that aren’t built with the potential visitor in mind.

Here are some of the ground rules I believe should be considered to make a functioning, successful website:

1. Firstly you need to forget that you own your company for a second and think like a customer visiting your site for the first time, what do you need to see to feel interested and want to pick up the phone?
   
   
2. Content is very important, more so the right amount of it. Don’t give your visitors a bulk of text to read through, they need clean concise information that will encourage them to pick the phone up and call you.
   
   
3. Rich content such as video or flash can help to let the user sit back and let the site feed him/her the information. This is great because most visitors are lazy and skim-read text at most. This way, you can get the right information to the visitor in a palatable way
   
   
4. Social media embeds are helpful to give the impression that your company is alive and trading. With the new Facebook feed it’s a great way to keep the news on your site ticking over. But be warned, the if the feed isn’t maintained and updated, it will give the opposite impression that your site isn’t active.
   
   
5. If you are going to use imagery, don’t use stock imagery. People can tell when they see the cheesy posed shots found on various stock websites. Infact your priority should be to show your visitors who they would be dealing with - it’s always good to put a face to a name, it shows you’re not afraid to be heard, especially as anybody can mascaraed a website as a huge organization when it may just be 5 people in an office.

Like I say, from the get go you need to compile a list of FAQ’s that you think a visitor would need to see in order for them to turn into a customer.

If you would like me to look at your site and how it is performing, why not get in touch?

Find me at www.digibloc.com

It’s been a busy couple of weeks for me. I’ve got a nice lineup of clients who I’m working with. I’m working on video content, flash PPC adverts, Photoshop work and I’ve got something very exciting in the pipeline that I’ll reveal in a couple of months. This is going to be a good year! :)

I’ve been assisting Simplyhealth with their video content and have created various product description and how to guides for them to help sell their products in a more visual and engaging way.

I shot and edited all the video content, including creating dynamic backgrounds to go with my green-screen shots.

Visit their channel here.

This week I have completed their Feel Good Friday video, which you can see here.

www.digibloc.com

I’ve Just finished working on a piece for a publisher. I’ve been turning old WW2 black and white photography into colour photography. I’m really happy with the results on this one, looks like it was taken yesterday.

All the colours are 100% accurate and sampled from actual present day photography of the aircraft/uniform. The sky was taken from one of my own photographs and blended in to fit the scene. Very happy with the results.

www.digibloc.com

One of my favorite hobbies is photography. I’m always slinging a Canon 60D around with me whenever I’m out and about. I have an 18-200 (canon) lens for general purpose but I’ll switch out to a 50mm for close-up portrait work.

I like to do a lot of night time photography too. “Night time photography? How can you take pictures in the dark?” - that’s the usual response. Basically, you need a tripod, a decent camera and a lens with a reasonably high aperture, around 1.4.

You need to set your ISO to about 4000-6400 depending on your lens, the exposure time should be 4-8 seconds depending on the subject and keep that aperturewide open at 1.4 (depending on your lens).

Basically you’re keeping the camera stationary and for 4-8 seconds you’re sucking in all that light that our eyes can’t pick up. If you take a picture of the stars, you will see 1000’s instead of 100’s.

Here is an example of a night time photograph:

If you would like to see more of my photography, please visit my site at www.dudio.com and click on my flickr account up the top.

Hi there,

I’m Elliott Godwin, a freelance designer from the south of the UK.

I’m going to be blogging about my work and the trials and tribulations of life as a freelance designer. I’m currently working on a lot of video content for websites and YouTube.

I work in the following areas:

• Web design
• Logo and branding
• Flash (PPC, banners and websites mainly)
• I dabble in 3D work
• Video production
• Audio production
• (and soon) Areal photography :)

I will make sure I keep this blog, and subsequently my twitter account updated and hopefully I will be blogging about you and your products soon! :)

Please see www.digibloc.com for details!