Colorful Chili Peppers Produce - My Vision

(Click on images for a larger view.)

This is a continuation of my last blog where I stopped at Seattle's famous Pike Place Market. I took this series of open-air produce photos (scroll down to see all nine pepper images).

The colors on these peppers were intense. It was definitely "eye candy" for a photographer!

You can also view my Flickr Photostream to see more of "My Vision."

Fruit at Seattle's Pike Place Market - My Vision

(Click on images for a larger view.)

While traveling through Seattle, I stopped at the famous Pike Place Market, and took this series of open-air produce photos (scroll down to see all seven).

This "farmer's" market has been around since 1907, and has become a popular tourist destination. Pikes Place original started as a fresh fish market, and has become a delightful place to visit or shop. Many of the shops are in the open air, and it is fun to mingle with the merchants, farmers, and buyers. The produce, cut flowers, and fresh fish are top quality. All the colorful and fresh food make great subjects for photography!

You can also view my Flickr Photostream to see more of "My Vision."

Tracking Twitter with bit.ly - My Tools

If you often wondered how effective your tweets were on Twitter, now you can find out!

Because of the 140-characters limit on Twitter, most everyone shortens their long URL links with services, i.e. TinyURL. A more recent URL shortening service, bit.ly, offers at least one additional free service that I find very useful: tracking your links.

Here's an example: Last week I posted a blog about some photos I shot at the Hubbard Glacier in Alaska. On the same day, I did three tweets on Twitter about my blog post. Each tweet was about five minutes apart and worded differently, but each used a bit.ly shortened URL that referenced my blog post on the glacier photos. Because I had registered with bit.ly (very simple), they tracked the number of click-throughs that each Twitter post (one, two, three) received. (I get a kick out of refreshing the browser every couple of minutes and watching the numbers rise.):

(Click on the images to enlarge)
From that same report, you can also click on the blue numbers to generate a minute-by-minute time line of when the clicks are coming:

As you can see in the above time line, the third Twitter tweet received 52 clicks within about 37 minutes. This is because it was re-tweeted by two of my followers, just minutes later. Wow! this is as close as it gets to instant gratification. (F.Y.I.: my YourPhotoVision Twitter account had about 1,800 followers at the time of these posts.)

Josh Sellers, in his blog, New Media Photographer, has suggested (31 things you are not doing) that photographers should re-releasing some of their older (better) blog posts on Twitter from time-to-time as they pick up more follower. When I do re-post this blog on Twitter, you can be sure that I'll use the third, and more effective tweet!