Don’t Drive Drunk

Roadside graves have been a fascination for me all my life. When I went to Greece in 1980-something I saw elaborate structures that often held vials of oils and other mysterious things. In the U.S. too many of these markers are for kids who’ve been involved in a drunk driving accident. Around here it seems there’s at least one fatal crash of high school-age kids every year.

In a way, it is a more appropriate, and perhaps more meaningful, grave than one in a cemetery. It marks the spot where life was suddenly stopped. Mourners identify with that. The marker in this photo is on North Road in Salt Point, NY and is carefully tended. Seasons are celebrated. Birthdays, too.

Blog-o-Meter Reading April 27, 2008

Search results for Molly Ahearn:
• Google: #5-8 (#1-2 is amazon and #3-4 blackdomepress)
• Yahoo: #1
• MSN: #1

Google Page Rank for my site: 2 (out of 10)

Number of page views to this blog: 1273

Number of page views to my site: 1222

Number of email subscribers: 8

Visual Email Messages Are Cheap and Effective

The hardest thing about blogging is developing a loyal group of readers. At first, I felt like I was talking to the wall. No one was leaving comments—which I thought was a sign that no one was reading. (It was only later I learned that most people have no idea how to leave a comment!) I was sending out regular emails with the address to my blog, but realized they weren't inspiring people to leave their email program and go to my blog. I needed something catchier with pretty visuals.

Email Marketing Companies
I reviewed a half dozen companies that specialize in email marketing campaigns including constantcontact.com, icontact.com and delivra.com. Most of them are geared for mid- to large-size companies that send out lots of emails to lots of different groups of people. They typically charge by the month for service. Trouble is, I didn't want to pay their monthly rates. Then I found VerticalResponse.com. They charge by the number of emails sent, a mere $15.00 per 1,000 email addresses per email sent. For the few hundred I have on my list, it costs less than 4 bucks each time I do a mailing. Also, everyone's email address remains private. And, on the off chance someone no longer wants to be included on your email list, they can unsubscribe, so you don’t feel like an intruder or spammer.

Step-by-Step Instructions to Create a Visual Email
First thing's first. Open an account (save that password in your little black book). That part is free. If you decide not to go forward, it won't cost you a dime.

Upload your Mailing List
Create a simple database of your email contacts. I use excel for this and have 3 bits of info: first name, last name and email address. VerticalResponse needs a .csv file which you can export right from excel.

1. In the Lists menu or in the Lists box on your home page, select New List.

2. IMPORTANT: You have to read and agree to VerticalResponse's rules about spamming. You cannot use a purchased mail list. The names have to be ones you've gathered yourself.

3. Since you've made a .csv file, select the Create a new list from an external file button.

4. Name your list.

5. Browse to the list on your computer.

6. Match the title in the drop down menu at the top of each column to the categories in your file (i.e., first name lines up with the first names column, email address, etc.).

Ready-Made Designs and Templates
Once you have an account, navigate to your home page and you'll see several boxes: Emails, Reports, Postcards, Lists, Surveys, The Buzz, Quick Links and Segments. To create a visual email message, click on the New Email link in the upper righthand corner of the Emails box.

2. Enter a name for your campaign—April blog say—and then you have several layout options to choose from. The simplest method of creation is the Email Wizard. There are dozens of premade designs to choose from.

3. If you're like me and want something that matches the look of your blog and website instead of choosing the Email Wizard option, choose the second option: Email Canvas.You will see a window titled 1. HTML Content. Below that, click on the "Choose Layout" option to see various preformatted layouts. Once you select a format—I use the 1-column design—return to the first window. Now all you have to do is replace the text and images (they tell you what size to make the images). The dummy text even offers you tips of what kind of information you should include in each area. If you're daring, you can change fonts, colors and all sorts of stuff.

4. To insert an image, click on the tree icon in the menu bar. A popup window will appear. Click on 1. Select Image, and browse to the desired image on your computer. Give the image a web-friendly name.

5. To create a link, select some text or an image, click on the chain icon in the menu bar and type in the address in the popup window.

6. To personalize each email, you can insert the recipient's first name if it was in your .csv file. In other words, you can begin by saying "Hi Molly." People love to read their own name!

Launch Your Campaign
After you've designed your email and set up a mailing list, follow the next step buttons to get you all the way through to campaign launch.

Keep Track of What Your Readers Like
One of the coolest things about using an email marketing service is that you can track the results from sent emails. In other words, you know exactly how many people (not who) opened the email and what links they selected. This has helped me a lot. It's shown me that people like to look at my work, but they also enjoy reading other posts on my blog. The most popular story to date has been My Website Sucked. The most popular photos were the Desert Storm parade in lower Manhattan and Spitzer, Are You Kidding Me?.

Other Marketing Possibilities
Just this week, VerticalResponse added a survey feature. I breathed a sigh of relief, because I'll be able to use it in November to get people to vote on the photo contest on my website.

Insider’s Look: Karate 4th, May Americana Photo

July 4th is my favorite holiday. There are no presents to buy, no fancy turkey meals for dozens, no travel, no stress. I like to start the day at the Hyde Park parade on Route 9. Organizers annually decide on a theme for all the floats. They invite a nice mix of marchers—cub scouts, marching bands, fire trucks, veterans, politicians, dancers, clowns. Many throw candy to the kids lining the street. This one boy, Sonny Neville, took the responsibility of representing his karate club very seriously.

Be the first to buy a Karate 4th print online and get a 50% discount on the size of your choice.

Secret Source of Inspiration

Michael Nelson recently opened a charming gallery space in Saugerties, NY. Continually challenging me to stretch my mind, he’s full of thoughtful philosophies and energy. It’s worth a trip to his gallery just to meet him and bounce ideas around. In fact, that’s just what his photographers’ group pH7 does. One of 30 groups like it, pH7 was developed through Advertising Photographers of America. They get together every two weeks to share work, brainstorm ways to resolve professional challenges, and, of course, kvetch about stuff like work-for-hire contracts.

In 1968, Michael’s brother came home from Viet Nam with a camera. Michael was enrolled at a computer school at the time, but was so taken with his brother’s Canon FD, he transferred to Rochester Institute of Technology to study photography. Funny enough, his brother switched from his interest in photography to computer science!

Beginning May 10th at the Michael Nelson Gallery and Studio, photographers Gregor Halenda, Henrik Olund, Linn Edwards, Michael Leroy, Karineh Gurjian, David Heinlein and Michael Nelson, are having a show titled: pH7: Seven Photographers’ Perspectives.

Downtown Saugerties is full of other reasons to visit. The quaint main street is lined with red brick buildings and bustling with activity even on a cold winter Saturday. The low rental rates for many of the second and third floor spaces have attracted all kinds of creative types—it’s developing into a kind of artist’s haven. So, spend a spring afternoon getting inspired at the pH7 show (tell Michael I sent you), poking into Saugerties’ fun shops and grab a bite at one of its many good restaurants.

Where: Michael Nelson Gallery & Studio, 115 Partition Street, Saugerties, NY, phone 845 246 7101

When: Opening, Saturday, May 10, 5-8 p.m. Regular gallery hours: Friday through Sunday 12 – 5 p.m.

Web sites: www.michaeldalenelson.com & http://michaelnelsonphotographer.blogspot.com

Cool with the College Crowd

My college alumni magazine, Macalester Today, ran a fascinating article about how college students use technology. Back when I went to school, my main goal was to get as far away from home as possible. I wrote letters home from Minnesota, calling only for emergencies (Mom, it’s really freeeeeeezing here, I need a heavier coat). Today’s college kids talk to their parents—willingly—several times a day!

Cell phones are near appendages. Texting is big. One student confessed to writing 200 text messages per day. (On one of those ridiculously tiny keyboards?! What do they say to each other all day long?)

More than 90 percent of the arriving freshman class had pages on Facebook and had spent the summer checking each other out. The upper classman answered questions and otherwise sought to make the freshman feel at home before they’d ever laid eyes on the place.

All this technology has posed intriguing questions. Being in constant contact with parents and hometown friends may delay the development of independence that was a rite of passage for older generations. With their ears full of cell phones or ipod earplugs, do young people experience the bliss of an inspiration that comes on a silent walk? One student interviewed for the article talked about a camping trip where he and his friends were so anxiety-ridden when they discovered they were without cell service that they couldn’t enjoy their spectacular surroundings.

As proof that Macalester is still home to the counter culture, there’s a new movement afoot. Kids are committing “Facebook suicide”—taking down their profile pages. Some are claiming that the new cool is to be cell phone-free. Somehow, I doubt it will catch fire the way bras did in the 60s.

Sea Dreams

About this time every year I get a powerful urge to embrace the ocean. Oh,
to awaken my toes with hot trickles of sand, to suck the buttery meat out of
a fresh crab, to feel salt crusted on my skin, to watch my kid laugh at
the waves that sometimes carry him to shore, sometimes pulverize him into the
earth like nuts in a Cuisinart. When are we going?

Create Good-Looking Web Images that Work for You

1. File formats. There are 3 kinds of web-friendly file formats: jpg, gif and png. You can control compression level in a jpg file—the more compression, the lesser the quality. Images are displayed better using jpg or png formats. Gif and png files can have a transparent background, jpgs cannot. I prefer png to gif because there is greater color quality and similar file size compression. Gifs have the advantage of offering simple animation by inserting multiple frames. In order to save a file from Photoshop in any one of these formats, choose the Save for Web & Devices button from the File menu.

2. File size. Anything more than 72 dpi is a waste. Larger files just take longer to load, they do not look better. Make the dimensions of your files to 100% of the final image size. If you’re using thumbnail-size images (a good idea), don’t scale down the larger versions take the time to create smaller files.

3. Copyright protection. It’s a good idea to watermark your images or otherwise put a copyright on them. As in the real world, there are bad people on the internet who will grab your image and use it without compensating you for it. But, if you catch them and want to pursue them legally, at least you have a leg to stand on.

4. File names. Name your files something that the search engines can read and lead back to your website (ex: Molly_Ahearn_cowgirl.png). Remember to use underscore marks instead of spaces.

5. ALT tags. Don’t forget to give your images descriptive ALT tags. Dreamweaver politely asks you to create an ALT tag every time you insert an image. Another way to guide search engines to your site.

6. Relevant text content. Use photo captions or have text describing the images that is relevant to their content. This is critical for search engines like Google and Yahoo direct people to your site.

7. Quality. Make sure you review the quality of files saved for the web. Many times an image looks great at its full resolution, but needs some additional curve adjustment and sharpening after you’ve downsized it for the web.

8. Time-saving Photoshop tools. If you’ve never written an action, don’t be intimidated, it’s easy. Go to the action menu, select new action, label it, and then proceed to adjust an open image file (ex: decrease its resolution to 72 dpi and dimensions to 25% of the original size). Close the window, hit the stop button and you’re done. Now you can use the batch tool to apply that action to an entire folder of images while you’re enjoying a frosty beer!

Art Can Blow Your Mind

The Whitney Biennial pushes the envelope of what we think of as art. My sister Margaret heard it was controversial and wanted to find out why. Ryley and I went along. An installation on the first floor titled something like, “Thoreola,” set the tone. An abandoned office space, filled with upended glue jars, glued Styrofoam pebbles, oversized notes with numbered instructions, we tried to understand its meaning. I took a photo of this and one other before a guard told me photography was prohibited. (Why? I have no idea.)

James Welling took blue mesh and somehow crimped and shaped it to create highlights and shadows. By mounting the mesh against a black backdrop, the mesh took on very senusal shapes that looked like beautiful body portraits. A small room housed dripping white (concrete?) sculptures pocked with broken bottles, screws and other debris. One looked like the head of Davey Jones from The Pirates of the Caribbean. Reading the card, we learned that artist Charles Long was inspired by the droppings of great blue herons along the Los Angeles River! Ryley who is 10, decided we should vote on which floor had the craziest art.

Unfortunately, there was no guide to the art/artists in the show and I can’t find all of them on the Whitney’s site, so I can’t include all artist names and titles. One installation was an enormous, two-story laboratory sort of construction. Fish tanks full of yellow Gatorade pumped and bubbled, seemingly food for the paper white flowers grown from bulbs. Instead of dirt, the bulbs sat on yellow golf balls. One woman asked Ryley if he could make sense of it for her.

A good many of the entries were video or film. A documentary by Spike Lee addressed the hurricane/levy management policies in New Orleans. Close-up interviews of people, some officials, some residents, were interspersed with footage of hurricane Katrina, Betsy and others walloping the city. A truck sat in the middle of a raging, out-of-control street river, its windshield wipers still beating. After five minutes or so Ryley motioned me down to ask, “Mom, why is this art?”

We thoroughly enjoyed Olaf Breuning’s film of himself, his love of orange and other thoughts; his orange hair, orange shirt melting into the orange earth with his orange dog alongside. His sense of humor was infectious.

Another film we liked began with a closeup shot of a man talking to a woman whom you never see. She describes a dream she had that she’d like to make into a film. After she verbally explains it, we go from the stark room of their talk to a more produced (albeit simply) scene. She’s an empress/filmmaker with thick black-rimmed glasses who makes her subjects watch her films. Midway through a flick, the movie stops and when she goes behind the scenes to investigate she sees that the movie camera is actually made of plates and other kitchenware. Film covers the floor and the hamster running the machine has quit work. A Russian woman in a lab coat also wearing heavy black-rimmed glasses and long red-lacquered nails enters to reloop the film and replace the hamster. The hamster won’t stay in the cup and she has to keep popping him back in.



A video installation we liked was a room with six or seven screens of different sizes showing clips of comedian David Alan Grier talking. The focus of your attention changes as the audio levels modulate. …women don’t have orgasms because they’re afraid of farting…

Perhaps my favorite piece in the exhibit, Cheese, is an installation created to house a film. You enter a wooden structure that resembles a rambling ramshackle barn. Inside there are six or seven screens hidden in different corners and tunnels playing parts of the same movie. The story features several women with very long hair—like six feet long. The women dressed in 18th century dresses milk their hair by running water over it and into a funnel and then mix it with goat’s milk to make blocks of cheese. (This may or may not be the plot, but it’s what I thought to be the plot.) Barnyard animals also run loose quacking and neighing. Entering the structure gives you the sense of being in a theater.

The show really got my energy flowing. If you’re in need of a boost, I highly recommend a visit. I marvel at what goes through an artist’s mind. Inspiration can come from anything, anywhere, any time. We decided the fourth floor had the wildest art.

Shoot First, Ask Questions Later?

When I was first interested in photography, I bought a copy of The Family of Man, Edward Steichen’s selected photographs for a MOMA exhibition celebrating human life, birth to death. To write this, I grabbed it down from the shelf and dusted off the cover. As powerful as ever, I marvel at its complete documentation of an era. Now I see where I developed my love of black-and-white imagery. Somehow, black-and-white conveys a purity of intention and motion that can get lost in the glamour of color. Flipping through its worn pages, I stop at two different, but same, portraits of three generations. On one page, an African family from Bechuanaland (now Batswana) poses outside their grass hut (Nat Farbman for Life); opposite, an American family gathers around the wood stove (Nina Leen for Life). There is a stark contrast in lifestyle but there is a sameness in the value of family. I treasure the work of many of the photographers within its pages: W. Eugene Smith, Dorothea Lange, Margaret Bourke-White, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank, Elliott Erwitt, Gary Winogrand and so many others. I was drawn to the way they said so much within a simple photographed moment. A boy screaming his support of his little league team, an American-Japanese woman at a U.S. prison fence, a man throwing his girlfriend playfully into a Coney Island wave, a German boy headed to school amid the war ruins, a scientist holding the hope of a solution in a glowing test tube.

Did these photographers stop to ask permission? Not all tell. There has been a lot of controversy about the Robert Capa’s Spanish Civil War photograph of a loyalist soldier collapsing to his death after having been freshly shot. Capa, who said, “if your photos aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough,” claimed he was in the right place at the right time. Many, however, feel that the chances of him being that close and ready with his camera at exactly that moment, are slim. If he did stage it, does it make the photo less powerful?


What are the ethics involved with photographing people? Should you ask first? Is it invading someone’s privacy to photograph them without their knowledge? Does it make a difference if you shoot for art or if you’re a reporter? Were some of the famous spur-of-the-moment photos really staged, and not spontaneous?





My own feelings and actions have changed over the years. As a younger, less confident person, I pretended to be with the press. People love to have their picture in the paper. Plus, I have always found that if you have a big camera and a little guts, people will let you shoot wherever you want. During the 1991 Desert Storm parade through lower Manhattan, I went wherever I wanted, with the blessing of the cops. I shot inside the ring for many a rodeo, diving for the fence when a bull got too close. I never asked anyone if I could take their picture, fearing they’d say no. But, they always knew I was photographing them.

I still don’t usually ask permission first, but for different reasons. My feeling is that you’ve lost the moment if you stop to ask. Somehow asking permission implies a complicity between you and them that prevents genuineness. Better to shoot first, ask later. Now that I’ve developed a body of work that I’m proud of and feel represents me, I tell people the truth, that I don’t work for the press, but for myself. Sometimes they don’t want anything to do with me, but most of the time, people support me and agree to let me show their image. I confess it still makes my stomach flip a little when I ask someone to sign a release. It’s so important to me, and they have the power to build me up or tear me down.

I do feel, however, that you have to be careful not to compromise a fellow human being’s dignity. I don’t think photographers should exploit their subjects. To me, there’s a big difference between a ‘stolen’ shot of a homeless person asleep on a stoop vs. a portrait of a person down on their luck that conveys a sense of compassion. That would be one instance where I’d ask first.

What do you think?

Fair Sales

Unbelievably, I sold 998 copies of my book, The Dutchess County Fair: Portrait of an American Tradition, from its release in July through the end of January! If I’d known the count was so close, I would have bought two books myself to make it an even thousand. Thanks to everyone who bought a copy and thanks to Debbie and Steve at Black Dome Press.

Transfer Large Files FREE!

As a photographer, I’m often in the position of having to send large files quickly. For more than a year, I’ve been using sendthisfile.com’s free transfer service. It’s fast, easy, secure and has been extremely reliable. Relieves you from dealing with all that ftp stuff.

How to do it:
Step 1: Go to http://www.sendthisfile.com and register for free.
Step 2: Click on the “Send Files” button below the welcome message.
Step 3: Fill in the blanks, browse for your files and hit the “SendThisFile” button.
Step 4: The recipient receives an email with a link. When they click it, the download begins automatically.