I have switched my home/family website to WordPress.  I have been thinking about doing this for a while.  It just seems to make sense to have a database backend to the website that I don’t have to move everything if I change the template.  I have been testing some templates becuase I’ve been getting more requests for website design in Saginaw and Bay City and need to have a showcase.  Check out the new design at http://www.defoenet.com

I have also been learning Joomla (sorry WordPress fans).  I’m not sold on Joomla yet.  It seems a lot more clunkier than WordPress.  But when you get asked to modify websites that are run by Joomla it is time to learn the system.

More wedding and more cakes.  Here are a few pictures from some recent weddings.  One was in Millington and one was in Saginaw.

Looking for a wedding photographer?  Contact David Defoe at http://defoe-photography.com

About two months ago I wrote a short post about coming across the 360 Main Street blog (original post here).  I hadn’t check out the website in a while and I got an email from my wife that a really nice and interesting guy came into her store and she though I should contact him.  This interesting guy happened to be Brad Osmund, the publisher of 360 Main Street!  I still have not had the chance to meet Brad but I plan on contacting him soon.

Everyone in Saginaw needs to check out this blog.  There is a lot more content than the last time I checked it out and I’m sure that it will grow substantially in a very short period of time.  Then you can say, “Oh I knew that website when . . . “

http://www.360mainstreet.com

I shot another wedding over the weekend.  This time I was working for Mid-Michigan Wedding Photographers.  The river front that we wanted to use for some formal pictures with the bride and groom ended up being full of fishermen.  It just so happened that the couple likes to fish.  The fishermen were very accommodating in lending a pole to take a few quick pictures!  It ended up being a great scene to help capture a memorable day.

I had not looked at the website for my church in a while.  Today I was doing to keyword research and decided to check out the site – http://www.svcc.cc

I was disappointed to see that the site was gone and there is a coming soon in it’s place.  I was also disappoined to see that there was no SEO content in the one static page.  If fact the entire site was an image and had no text at all and the images didn’t have “alt” tags.  There is no way that anyone is going to find this website.

Now that the church is a blank slate, what should be included in the page to make people find it . . . or better yet how are people looking for churches and how many searches are there?

Using one keyword tool I saw that about 3 searches per day are being done for the words “saginaw church”.  That’s a very low number.  So using another tool that I have I asked for keyword suggestions.  All the high search terms are very generic like “catholic church” or ”baptist church” but what about being local?  What about more specific searches?  The info just wasn’t there.  Are people not searching for a church?

Do you have a church?  Looking for a website design?  Want to get your church to be found on google?  Contact me for more information about website design in Bay City, Saginaw and Midland.

Debra and I did a photoshoot for Reivew Magazine’s Fashion Plate section last night.  Fawn was the model and the clothing was beautiful.

Bob Martin, the editor of Review, and I were talking about online news and magazines.  It was a great discussion and there seems to be a lot of buzz about it right now.  With print newspapers cutting back and Bay City Times and the Saginaw News only printing 3 times and week this is an even bigger topic.  We talked about the article in Fast Company that I just read about local news being the current Internet boom that no one knows how to capitalize on.  My wife and I have had the conversation a few times about how to design a website for local Saginaw, Bay City and Midland news.  I setup a sample at http://defoenet.com/greatlakesbay/.  This isn’t being updated, it was just a sample to try to get a business partner for the deal.  Perhaps I can find a financial partner and get this site going, or perhaps I can work with Bob and help grow what he has spent 30 years building.

Anyone looking for website design in Bay City, Saginaw or Midland Michigan?  Contact me.  Having spent over 6 years doing website design and marketing for Labadie I am up on the current search engine marketing trends and can create a site that is easy for you (or your kids) to keep updated.

NASCAR Pictures

I had tickets for the Carfax weekend at the Michigan Internation Speedway again this year (picture is from last year).  I was looking forward to going and taking pictures again.  This morning my phone rang and it was my rep from Carfax.  Appearantly they liked my pictures from last year and requested that I get pictures on Saturday of the Carfax sponsored car driven by Andretti.

Let’s see if my pictures end up in a national campaign.  That would be sweet!

For all the years that I’ve been living in Saginaw I’ve never attended a Friday Night Live event.  Last Friday night I went to take pictures of the WIOG Labadie Lizard Fair Scion.  The Scion left about the same time that I arrived, so I wasn’t able to get a picture.  My wife and I got some nacho’s from the El Farlito booth and sat on the hill.  The entertainment, Erika Bonilla, was great!  Never having been at one of these events I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of people that were in the park.  You can’t beat the price – FREE!  So I’m sure that the wife and I will be making plans to attend more Friday Night Live’s before the summer is over.  Who says there’s nothing to do in Saginaw?

I had the opportunity to judge a beauty pageant this past Saturday.  I knew that my wife Debra had been asked to judge and I planned on going anyway.  My usual role at these (and most other events) is as a photographer.  I got a call on Friday night about 5pm and they had a judge that was ill and needed a fill in.

Having a wife that is the state director for the Michigan Galaxy Pageants and having been a pageant parent they figured I was up to the job.  I agreed and was emailed the bio sheets and photos to judge photogenic.  I had my wife drive for a few hours on the way to OH so I could go over the information and judging sheet.  I must admit that being a pageant judge was a little more difficult than I thought.  I’ve sat in the audience for many pageants and scratched my head wondering why some of my picks were not in the top 10 or top 5.  I now have a little more insight into the judging process and I’m sure there were people in attendance that night who were judging the judging, just as I have done on many occasions.

The Pride of Montpelier Pageant was a very organized pageant and it was difficult to make a final decision.  The contestants were all great and I wanted all of them to get a prize.  In the end there is only one winner per category.  I have read it and heard it but ultimately the interview really does make or break a contestant.  So next time I’m sitting in the audience and want to criticise the judges I will have to think twice because I don’t know what happened in the hours before when they were meeting with the contestants.

As part of the 2009 Lawn Chair Film Festival it was zombie night in Saginaw!  Last night the film festival was showing Shawn of the Dead and the night featured a zombie costume contest.  There were some great costumes and increadible make-up jobs.  One zombie had a pipe sticking out of his chest that dripped blood.

The night was a lot of fun and aside from about 5-10 minutes of light rain the movie weather was great!

For more Saginaw zombie pictures click here.