April

Compared to March, April can only be considered a resounding success. It had five posts compared to none, and with it a lot more user interaction and attention. Admittedly none of the posts I published in April were actually shot in April, but they were all at least shot in March showing I’m not as far behind in my sharing of images as I often am.

The month started with Freddie’s First Day Out, a bunch of shots of my cats playing outside for one of the first times this year, including our new kitten Freddie’s first real explore outside. It’s a bit of a tradition now that when my kittens take their first wander into the outside world, I’m there with my camera documenting the moment. This time the weather was great for it, and I was a lot more tuned to the light that was available and how it was affecting the images of the cats – Freddie and his fur especially. I’m really happy with the results I got. The images were pretty well received, largely because they were tagged with both ‘cats’ and ‘kittens’ which seems to bring in a lot more attention where the internet is involved.

This was followed by Warehouse, the sort of short aside post I’ve often lamented not doing as much of lately. I saw a sight, grabbed my camera, shot it, and posted it a few days later. The image was shot using a wide angle lens I’ve borrowed, which annoyingly I’m seeing a fair amount of usage of, meaning I may at some point have to justify buying one. The shot was also a tripod night shot, something I’ve not done a huge amount of in the past but, with a recent acquisition of a tripod, I’m hoping to do more of.

There was then a little bit of a pause before I closed out the month with a trio of posts from Mercedes-Benz World in Brooklands. Originally, they were one post, but as I was completing it I realised it was pretty long (2,500 words and 67 images) so I decided to separate out the action shots of the AMG Mercedes display and the slightly more in-depth exploration of the McLaren F1 car into their own separate posts. I’m not normally a fan of doing this, I feel I’m milking the content a bit which I fear will alienate readers. I’m never really sure if shorter, more frequent posts is preferable than longer, less frequent ones; I’ve tried both and neither seem to have suggested any preference in terms of traffic or comments.

Mercedes-Benz World is one of my favourite sets of recent times. I haven’t posted many of its sort recently, with the most recent similar sets coming to mind being Boscastle Pottery and Borough Market, neither of which are particularly recent. As is often the case with posts I’m really pleased with, it didn’t get that many likes – only three – but did get a few comments. I also tweeted a link to the post a few days later, a tweet which was quite unexpectedly retweeted by the official Mercedes-Benz twitter account.

My images from Mercedes-Benz World are perhaps my favourite images since Boscastle Pottery. buff.ly/1ihMXFt http://t.co/239ZoNmp9p

—
Rob Howard (@CousinDirk) April 25, 2014

Despite being seen by a potential 476,000 people, it only led to 25 clickthroughs to this site, but even so it’s amazing to think that almost half a million people have seen one of my images.

A day later I posted the images of the AMG display team. This was a wholly different sort of set, with lots of action, something I often do quite well at because my thinking takes a backseat and just capturing the action becomes my sole priority. I was also able to put a lot of things I’ve learnt in past posts to use, making for some interesting shots I’m happy with. When I tweeted this set, it only got one favourite – but it was an executive at Mercedes-Benz World. Despite all this apparent exposure within the upper echelons of Mercedes I’ve not been asked to use any of the images, but I can dream (I won’t).

The final post of both the month and the trip to Mercedes-Benz World was 2007 McLaren Mercedes, a photographic exploration of one of the F1 cars on display there. This was a set primarily shot with the wide angle lens with a lot of HDR imagery, most of which turned out pretty well. There were no high-profile retweets of this one, sadly. But I liked it.

I’ve already got some posts lined up for next month, which just need writing. Which is often the most time consuming bit. But at least the photographs are ready to go.

Thanks, as always, for reading.
Rob