More Content

First article is done, more to come

Pat David — September 30^th, 2014

I’ve pretty much finished up the first article mentioned in the previous post. There is still a long way to go.

As much as I’d like to believe that “If you build it, they will come”, the reality is that nobody is coming until there is something worth coming for. So I’m working hard on getting good content in place.

I’m also acutely aware that nobody will stay unless good content continues to be published, but that’s for another post.

Next Up

I am thinking the next article that I’ll update/port will be either Luminosity Masks or Skin Retouching. I am also thinking that a port of my older color curves tutorials might be nice as well (particularly using sample points).

That should get me to four good tutorials to start the site with. At that point I can start queueing up the next few asap.

I also wanted to do more than straight single tutorials, though, which brings me to a question.

Types of Content

What types of content would those of you reading this be interested in?

At the moment I’m thinking of 3 main types of articles, with a possible (probable?) fourth:

Tutorials
Workflows
Showcase
Getting the Shot

A small explanation on what I’m thinking may help here.

Tutorials

These would be similar to the Digital B&W article I’ve already ported. If you’ve read most of my tutorials on my blog, then you’re already familiar with what I’m thinking for these.

These are straight tutorials looking at a single (usually) effect and how to achieve it. The primary focus is on the steps and tools to produce the desired result.

Workflows

I am envisioning a workflow article to be more of a look at the creative process to achieve a final resulting image. This is more along the lines of another previous set of posts I had written about: The Open Source Portrait and the Open Source Headshot.

These articles would focus on all of the steps and tools to arrive at a resulting image. The difference from a tutorial article is that if a tutorial article might explore how to use Wavelet Decompose for skin retouching, a workflow article might include using that technique (among others) to realize a final vision.

Showcase

Showcasing some of the amazing work I see occasionally is important as well, I think. One, the artists doing this great work really do deserve to be talked about and exposed to a wider audience.

Second, great work by F/OSS using artists act as ambassadors for what is possible using these tools. Too often the low opinion of many concerning F/OSS tools is framed by sub-standard work being shown. There are some amazing photographers working with these tools, and my hope is that they can stand as examples to not only showcase F/OSS but also as a bar for others to aim for (and hopefully smash through).

Getting the Shot?

I’m not 100% sure on this yet, but I think I was originally viewing this as a complete workflow from start to finish, including actually shooting. This is more focused on the photographic process in general and things to keep in mind while capturing the shots for processing later.

HDR, lighting, models, clothes, make-up, landscape scouting, locations, etc…

Quick Tips?

I’m not at all sure about this, but the idea is there. Possibly posts that are very short and targeted at a very specific task or function. Something that might not really warrant a long-form article but could still be quickly useful for others.

I am reminded of this due to an old video of mine that I had done quickly for someone on G+ about how to add a watermark over an image.

You can tell why making videos is best left to folks like Rolf…

Forum and Comments

Thanks to darix (once again) over in irc on #darktable for setting up a Discourse instance for me to play with. I have used it previously on boingboing.net, and I rather like what I’ve seen. It also appears that there may be a way to embed thread posts as well, which would be a nice solution for commenting.