Lola has been using our new logo as a watermark during the last couple of weeks in her wedding blog, sort of testing it while we were finalizing the layout, colors, fonts, etc. Now that we have finalized everything, I would love to get some feedback from our dear readers on what you think about our logo. Here are some of the renderings of our logo in different colors:

Lola and I have been trying to get a good logo for our business for sometime now. We worked with multiple graphic designers and artists and did not like any of their concepts. Then, one day, Lola sees one of my Facebook contacts (our fan) and checks out his work. She was immediately impressed by some of his work and asked me to contact him. He responded to my request immediately and sent several different concepts for us to see. We really liked most of the concept work and had a hard time picking our favorites. We ended up picking the above renderings, in addition to the below “Mansurovs” text:

So, what does the logo signify and why did we like this particular rendering? First, “Lola” translates as Tulip (the flower) in Uzbek and Turkish, so Lola’s name is not the same as the Spanish names “Dolores” or “Lolita”. Because of her name’s flowery nature, the idea was two folded – to have an image of a Tulip and the letter “M” – the first letter of “Mansurovs”, as shown above.

The young artist’s name who created the above for us is Rustam Babadjanov and while he lives in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, coordination and communication was not a problem at all. He is currently finishing up business cards for us as well, which I will post for you to see as soon as they are ready. He does not have a web page or a fan page yet, but as soon as he does, I will post his contact information.

Let us know what you think!

The last couple of months have been crazy and I have been traveling a lot, which is the reason why I have not been able to add fresh content to the site more often. The last two weeks, in particular, were exhausting and I am finally home – that’s after 6,000 miles of driving across the Western USA. Started out in Yellowstone, then went north to Glacier, then visited both Olympic and Mount Rainier in Washington, then ended up in Yosemite and Mono Lake. The purpose of the trip was to photograph landscapes and wildlife, while having a relaxing time with the nature – so it was more of a vacation than a photo shoot. I scouted for new locations and spots, and took the time to explore new places that I have never visited before, so it was a great learning experience. I had the Nikon D5100 with me all along, so another camera review will be posted soon, hopefully by the end of this week. A comprehensive 50mm test with lots of comparisons is also coming up.

Aside from loss of some photographs (more on that on the next post), the trip was great. During the next few weeks I will be working on the images from this and other trips earlier this year and post some images, along with some tips, as usual. Here is one of the images from the trip:

Click the above image to see a larger version of the image.

I have received a number emails from our visitors about some blog issues such as Lola’s Wedding Blog slider not working properly on Google Chrome browser and blog not being displayed correctly on Apple mobile devices (iPhone & iPad). Just wanted to let you guys know that all issues have been taken care of – the slider has been changed and enhanced to work with any browser, styling issues have been fixed and the blog is now displayed properly on all mobile devices. Big thanks to everyone who contributed in getting these issues addressed, we truly appreciate it!

By the way, if you do use Google Chrome, you should know that it is not color-managed. This means that the colors on photographs you view on the Internet will be way off. If my images appear over-saturated, you are probably using a non color-managed browser. It is a shame that Google is holding up on this important feature – Firefox, IE and Safari fully support color management.

Lola and I decided to take a short break between the holidays to rejuvenate and come back with full energy! We really needed it and the fact that my dear cousin along with his lovely wife joined us for a few days gave us every reason to relax and have fun with the family. Now we are back in full swing, with the energy levels enough to take over the world! LOL! :)

I have over 400 comments to respond to (a week of no activity has painful consequences) and I decided that it is a good time to change my comment responding rules. Going forward, I won’t respond to comments that thank me for the post – a big Thank You to everyone who leaves such comments beforehand. I simply don’t have time to respond to every single comment and since it takes me more time to respond to comments than write articles, I think this change will only be beneficial to our readers. Other comments I don’t know what to do with at this point, are people asking for advice on what type of equipment to purchase. While I will certainly do my best in responding with my recommendations, I sincerely ask our readers to check out my other articles, along with my responses to others first. For the most frequently asked questions, I will continue writing more “FAQ” articles, which can be found in our “Photography Tips for Beginners” page. And one more thing, before asking which brand of DSLR to buy, please read my Nikon vs Canon vs Sony article to see what I think of brands. If the above change works out well, I will certainly be able to answer your comments faster and use my time more efficiently to write new great articles and post more exciting videos!

The last thing I wanted to quickly mention, is that we will be continuing our Flash Photography Tips for indoors and outdoors flash photography. Many of our readers found our tips useful for photographing their families during the holidays and I am getting a lot of good feedback on the articles, along with plenty of requests to post more tips on flash photography. We will certainly do that, so more articles and videos on flash photography will be posted this month and going forward.

Happy New Year!!!