“Photojournalism in the age of bytes and amateurs,” reads a sub-head for a Columbia Journalism Review article about the state and status of photojournalism

Photographer Dane Sanders releases Fasttrack Photographer, the definitive new approach to successful wedding photography [Dane, a review copy would be nice … hint … hint]

100 Strangers

Photographer Dayanita Singh wins Robert Gardner Fellowship in Photography by Harvard University’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology

Victoria Bampton is the Lightroom Queen. Now kneel and read her blog!

The band I want to listen to live the most is Nomo

Save Polaroid

Optimizing my wedding photography website for search engines has been a passion of mine. So much so that I sometimes dream about it. No jokes. I want to be on the first page of whatever search engine tickles you. Google. Yahoo! Or, the new Cuil. Being number one would be awesome, but I could settle for being on the first page, within the first six options please.

Recently I stumbled upon Washington, DC-based photographer Lara Swanson's blog. She also works at a firm full time dealing with the same SEO issues that have spurred on my REM cycles. Her article SEO for photographers was a God-send and I am already incorporating a few of the suggestions she makes there.

I went out on a limb and called her because she does offer limited number of free audits of photographer's sites. If you wanted her to actually implement the changes for you and optimize your site (why wouldn't you?), she does charge a nominal fee.

Whether you wanted to get a hold of her for a free audit or take your optimization to the next level, email her at lara@laraswansonphoto.com. Tell her I sent ya.

And, see you on page one too.

Nathan Golden has a set of images published in a new website called Vewd about street children addicted to dendrite (a form of glue) in India. The images are heart-wrenching and not easy to view.

As Nathan writes in an email, “I feel the story on their site is a difficult but necessary one to tell.” Check it out.

Ok, it's not as insidious as my post title indicates, because like any deal, there will be winners and losers. Which one would you rather be? As always, please read the fine print to anything you sign up for.

If you have a Flickr account and want to get noticed by Getty read this interview off of Photo District News.

My brother-in-law, Vinod, was in India recently visiting his folks, including his grand parents. Newly initiated into the world of digital photography, he had asked me what camera to buy. I get question a lot, as you can imagine. Fair enough. For someone starting out I think one of the best dSLRs out there is the Nikon D80. It performs fairly well using high ISO (ie. you can shoot in lower light than you think) and handles reasonably well given its data transfer is to a SD card.

So, Vinod bought a D80 and then wondered what lens to buy with it. It took me a nanosecond to recommend the Nikon 35mm f/2.0 lens. It's small, fast (uses a large aperture, again negating the need to bring out a flash) and best of all not very expensive. I eschew zoom lenses for beginners and in fact I am heading back to the land of prime lenses myself, because it greatly disciplines one in the art of composition. The zooming done in fixed focal length lenses is your feet. Move from one position to the next, to capture a different perspective of what you are seeing. Soon, moving into a scene and working a situation that is developing in front of you does become intuitive unless you are just tired or plain lazy.

Anyway, I am glad Vinod took my advice. He eventually bought a Nikon SB-600 flash unit as well, but check the image below that he created using available light. Do not doubt for a second that this was a fluke. It came from weeks of practice and persistence. And you can bet he has other amazing images like this one in his archive now. The kids (he has twins) will be so thrilled one day when they see what their parents have created for them. I can't stress enough the importance of documenting your family life in new and interesting ways. It ain't easy, but it sure ain't rocket science either.

Here Vinod's grand father cradles his great-grand daughter, Vera.