Win with Moonfruit!

I used Moonfruit a few years ago when I took a brief trip into the world of web design for my Ma's restaurant and I have to say I was pretty impressed.
If I hadn't been drawn in to Digital Photo Gallery when I started up my portfolio and had had more time, Moonfruit is definitely the builder I would have gone with.

With their swanky new revamp, they're looking very swish indeed and they now provide everything you need and more to have the best (and prettiest) web presence at the click of a few buttons.

Getting suckered into their beautiful new website aside, their price points are super reasonable, whether you're on a budget or have a bit more to spend. I was also excited to learn that just by signing up you can be in the running to win a face-to-face consultation with a top web-designer to create a bespoke website, as well as getting a FREE 3-year subscription, sounds like a pretty sweet deal to me.

Whether you're a blogger, a photographer or a business, Moonfruit seems to me to be a great, simple way to give your web presence a kick start so if that's something you're looking into, I'd definitely recommend that you give it a go!

Click here to register and find out more.

*This post contains affiliate links but additional views and comments are my own*

Happy 4th January!

And happy new year, etc.

I would apologise for my absence but I've been quite busy, and productive so I won't say anything, except hello!
I have a backlog of photos to share with you. Mainly from NYE, which was actually quite fun, until Moon and I ended up on his sofa at 3:30am watching Glastonbury highlights that we'd already seen. A bit of Ring of Fire always brings people together, but more on that in a future post.

Right now, I'm sat here typing to you because after literally months of promising (really you can check up if you want), I finally got round to uploading and posting my online portfolio. I'm actually quite pleased with it, so thank you Digital Photo Gallery, you are simplistic and just what I wanted.
The only thing I am having slight issues with is that my 'About' page looks odd, but it will do for the time-being as I think I'm overdone on the whole thing after spending the last two days on it.

The New Year was definitely a good excuse to get it over and done with because after having put it off basically since graduating, I'm fairly certain that I needed a reason for a little get up and go. I mean, I dabbled in making one from scratch and if I was honest with myself and really tried, I could probably have breezed through it, but sadly, I have a tendency to be quite lazy and would rather just refresh my social presences all day.

I external-linked to this blog because I've grown far too attached to it to create a new one for the soul purpose of having everything integrated. I also linked to my old Photography Tumblr for my University work for the sheer ease, but also due to the fact that had I not, I would have to list each project in the sidebar (unless someone can tell me otherwise), which would definitely look crap, and the Tumblr isn't too dissimilar to my portfolio anyway, plus no one will actually be leaving the site.

So I'm fairly pleased with it anyway, and feeling a lot more confident in my abilities as a photographer now that I've categorised and ordered everything and it's out there for real people to see. It would be nice to have some feedback on it.

Link: http://www.ruthjohnstonphotography.com

On the job front, there is nothing that exciting, although I'm sure there are people still bleary-eyed from their first day back. I'm going to give everything a bit more time as most of the emails I've sent out were over Christmas so I wasn't expecting an immediate response anyway.
I have got an interview tomorrow though, not sure if it's creative as the description was a bit vague and the title was kind of general, I'm still looking forward to it though, it sounds like it has potential to be interesting.
This is not very 'me' for my first blog of 2012, but I thought you should know that I have a portfolio now and that I've begun the year with an attempt to be less lazy and do the one thing I should have done the previous year.

Misc.

Yesterday, my new favourite film magazine, Little White Lies held a Twitter competition to win a beaut gold foil-block print of The Tree of Life by illustrator, Joe Wilson and I won one! I should definitely get round to watching The Tree of Life now, it's been on my 'films to watch list' for ages.
So, long story short, this should be making it's way to me pretty soon:

(via Church Of London on Flickr)

In other news, I have been persuaded to abandon creating a website from scratch once more due to an invite to join DPG.com. I already know a few photographers that use it and it has a really simple and easy-to-upload-and-maintain system, as well as being fairly customisable it seems like it could be right up my street. So when I have the time that's what I'll be working towards, if my domain name stops giving me minor grievance.

I also thought I would take the time to share these photos with you from the dribs and drabs that I've taken in the last few days, like I mentioned in my previous post I haven't been snapping that much, but I thought that here was as good a place as any to put them.



I've been spending a lot of time thinking about the squirrels that live down The Cut, it must be such a stressful lifestyle, living practically on a railway line and being so small.
Here is what my nails look like, I used this tutorial for the Picasso/Motel-inspired onces. I did have that design on each nail but I got a bit fidgety. Emma, the girl who does the nail art tutorials on the Motel Rocks blog also posts some really neat designs on her own blog, a great blog to visit for nail-art envy.


I start the internship tomorrow, I'm surprisingly calm, I've spent nearly all day playing The Sims 3... really.

This week I'm working on:

I might actually have finally begun to get round to it! I've been putting it off basically because I've been so caught up in finding a job and going away. Now I can worry a bit less, I figured that I may as well and I've familiarised myself again so it shouldn't take as long as I thought it would, particularly now I've sorted the photo-side of it out.

I've also been inspired to create a 'Ruth Magazine' CV to send out to companies to grab their attention, don't know why I didn't think of this before I have fairly solid InDesign skillz.
I think I just needed to be pointed in the right direction, and that help came in the form of the 1987 edition of 'The Chris Wheal'.

Free Street Photography books

Apparently Flickr is down right now, so I'm unable to share the photos from yesterday with you. It's no biggie though, a morning on Twitter has allowed me to discover the awesome new Photography website, The Development Tank.
As they're on Tumblr and therefore readily accessible to view, I would imagine they will fast become a favourite, just remember that you might have probably seen it here first.

Anyway, they recently put up a post about free digital street photography books available from Thomas Leuthard. I thought this was pretty neat, I know it would have been useful for the numerous street photography projects I was assigned at University. The books are both visual and educational in terms of putting the techniques on show into practice. I would recommend you check them out, because not only are they pretty good, but they're also free.

(via The Development Tank)

http://www.85mm.ch/Book/Books.html

581.

This has proving to be a lot easier than I thought it would be, here is the beginnings to my new website. It's only the initial template for the moment, as I'm off to Hong Kong tomorrow. But I thought I'd demonstrate that I'm not all talk and that I really am working on it.

I think I could do with re-sizing the buttons, to be honest I'm not really sure about buttons anyway but I thought I may as well. I've 'sliced' it up and it all seems to be working, it's quite nice to be able to do what I want, even if so far it's not particularly innovative or exciting..