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How to Plan, Show and Promote a Photography Exhibit
A famous American humorist, Evan Esar was once quoted as saying, "Success is the good fortune that comes from aspiration, desperation, perspiration, and inspiration". The life of an artist, a digital photographer to be specific, is such that tons of planning, money and sweat can pave the path for success. The steps in which you take to establish yourself can be spontaneous and exciting or patient and well thought out. Given the current economic affairs, there is still room for your dreams and goals. Starting specifically with concrete goals is a great sprint into your career. Let's start with how to book an exhibit, sell your work and get your name out there.
1.Find your theme
When starting to plan your first exhibit, you should research your target audience and pick a theme from your work that they would best enjoy. Remember, you are not just a photographer but also a businessperson. Artists need to be organized enough to focus on a particular theme so that potential buyers and visitors can understand the concepts, identify with them and make sense of what's being presented. Treat your exhibit like a museum which is neatly divided into categories and topics , rather than random images. Eventually, more established artists are able to have more control over the kinds of pieces they want to showcase. It might be a matter of "swallowing your pride" but in the beginning, you have to crawl before you walk.
2. Start Small
Try any and every place where you are able to put up your work. Some great places to start are your local cafés, libraries, schools, restaurants and various public and private places where you do not have to pay to exhibit. You never know who might attend even the smallest of gatherings, so it is important to pitch your work and promote the show. Word of mouth and guerilla marketing techniques (e.g., hanging up posters on every corner if need be) have been key to any start up.
3. Build your Curriculum Vitae
A good CV is essential for promoting yourself in a few words that people will remember you by. Make sure the things that matter really stand out and use bullet points to make your points clear. Don't be too wordy and never lie. Write out tangible and concrete tasks you have accomplished in your education, experience, previous shows, and more. As a photographer, a website and portfolio are simply expected so that people have easy access to assess your work.
4. Get to know your supplier
Build your network of artist friends so that you have connections as to how cheaply you can source your supplies. Allowing you to know the people in these organizations may give you access to wholesale prices for mattes, frames, paints, and more. Make a note of all the local art supply stores, framers, matt cutters, galleries, foundations and museums to help you in this direction.
5. Choose your best work to show
Make sure you preserve and present your artwork perfectly when going to showcase it to the world. Even if you feel you have done a brilliant work of art, do not display it if it has tears, scratches, minor nicks, and slight details that people might criticize you on. Do remember that if you are asking high prices for your art, your customers will be asking for a high level of perfection from corner to corner. People also take great pride in the works that they create so don't let that get overlooked for some bad quality that could have been prevented.
6. Getting a known gallery to sponsor and/or represent you
Especially important are the galleries in which you want to showcase. The more you attend their events and know the managers, the easier it will be for you to book a show of your own. While vying for their attention, persistence is key, as rejection should be a common and forgettable part of the 'pitching' process.
7. Prepare an Invitation List for your showing
The time has come to really make or break your show. By building up a good mailing list and sending out invitations, you will be prepared for the opening. Many times, galleries themselves will also have databases, which will be a nice addition to your own. Without a proper mailing list, your efforts could be wasted, as people might not show up through word of mouth.
And finally...
The main goal after your photograph is ready to go to the market is to become a good businessperson. Even the most talented artists do not get the full rewards when they do not market themselves properly. Some great books to read up on are "Art Marketing Handbook", "Marketing Art: A Handbook for the artist and art dealer", and "Successful Self-Promotion for Photographers". After reading them, you will feel much more prepared and confident to tackle marketing. Not only will you have learned tons about your own field of photography but also tons about business.
Mapping a Network Drive
If you have more than one computer on the same switch or wireless network, then you don't have to use flash drives or email attachments to move files around. One of the best – and least understood – ways to share files on small networks of computers is to use those networks to send and receive files.
One of the simplest ways to do this is to map a network drive. If you know that you're on a network, you can locate your computers by their share name and their workgroup. To view and change the computer name and workgroup, right-click on My Computer, and left-click Properties.
This will open the System Properties menu. Click the Computer Name tab to see your computer's name, and the workgroup it's assigned to on the network. Workgroups are a form of grouping that can be used to organize small networks. Most of the time, it's easiest to keep all of your computers on the same workgroup, and the default is set to "WORKGROUP." If you want to change this, or your computer name, left-click the Change button in the Computer Name tab.
You can change your workgroup name or your computer name here. If you want to change the workgroup name, keep in mind that workgroups are for organizing computers. Creating a separate workgroup name for each computer is not particularly useful, so most of the time, using one workgroup for all computers is fine. The network change may require a restart, so be ready to shut down and reboot your computer. Click OK when you're done.
Once your done, or once your computer has restarted, right-click again on My Computer and then left-click on Map Network Drive.
This will take you to the Map Network Drive wizard. Select the drive letter that you'd like. If you don't have a preference, you can leave this at the default. Next, you will want to find the computer and folder that you want to map a drive letter to. Click Browse to open the Browse Network list.
Here you can browse for the computer and folder that you want to map. Click Entire Network, find and click the appropriate workgroup, and then click on the computer that you want to share with. You may have to wait a moment for this list to locate and list items. Find the folder you want to share and click it once. Click OK to select the folder.
Leave the Reconnect at Logon box checked. You can now click Finish in the Map Network Drive wizard. You have now mapped a folder on a different computer to your My Computer folder. Open My Computer to see it.
This network drive will work whenever both computers are turned on and connected to the network. You can use this drive just like your C: drive and make shortcuts, browse files, and move files at will. You can do this to as many computers on your network as you'd like, too – and this is a great way to make a shared folder for backing up files!
Additional Clock in Windows Vista
Do you have a need for an additional clock on your desktop? Maybe you have a son or daughter in the service overseas, or perhaps relatives living in Europe? It's always good to know what time it is where they are, so you're not calling them at 3 o'clock in the morning and disrupting their rest. So, let's learn how to pin another clock up today!
1.) Right-click on your clock in the taskbar and select Adjust Date/Time
2.) Click the Additional Clocks Tab
3.) Check Show This Clock to add a clock (you can add one or both, by the way)
4.)Select the time zone you want.
5.)Enter a display name for your new clock and click OK.
How Timely!
Always Google One More Time!
All I can say is that I am really thankful my daughter has a computer and that that computer is online 24/7 because as much as I think I know computers, I find out that I really don't know them at all. When something goes wrong and I can't figure it out, I take it to Google. There is a lot of help out there on the internet, and once in awhile (after you have looked and looked and looked), something jumps out and saves you. Just when you can't go on ANY MORE, there it is. For me, this was one of those times.
You know what it's like (and if you don't, just wait, your turn is coming) to be going along, having a good old time organizing family photos or downloading music or typing a letter on your computer, when all of a sudden – out of nowhere – your mouse quits. Or a program closes out. Or your monitor all of a sudden goes red. Needless to say, when something goes wrong, it is never at an opportune time, and it can be very irritating, to say the very least. And lately it seems that I have had a lot of inopportune times.
My latest catastrophe started a few weeks ago. I was sitting there at my computer, happily typing away and my "u" key stopped working. I blew it out (using compressed air duster) and it worked.
The next day it went out again. I blew the key out again and this time it didn't work after the cleaning. I cleaned the whole keyboard thoroughly and when I went to use it, it still didn't work, only this time the "n" didn't work either. I blew it out again and all of the keys worked. I went about my business and totally forgot about it.
Now jump to the present.
I realized a few days ago that I hadn't updated my drivers in awhile. I then proceeded to run a program (I will not tell you what it is in case it works for you – no use in creating (more) paranoia in the computer world) that told me that my display drivers needed to be updated.
I go to install the drivers. Now, I am not a stupid person, but sometimes I get lazy. "No need to back up anything," I yawned. "It's just a few drivers and this program is "the best", so it's cool." I went to update the display drivers, rebooted, and yep, you guessed it. WHAM! Nothin'. A completely black screen.
I did everything my experience and common sense told me to do. Rebooted more times than I scratched my head. Used words that I forgot I knew and that other people in the house probably wished I had forgotten, too. Couldn't get into Safe Mode and finally had to do a repair reinstall.
I put in my disk and began the repair. I put in my language (well, what dialect I speak), the applicable time zone, and then went to put my product key in. I typed in 2 numbers and then the next key wouldn't come up. I tried typing in the rest of the key, but there were only a few characters that worked.
Hmmm. I hadn't updated any keyboard drivers, so that wasn't it. Naturally, the keyboard must be bad. Remembering the erratic keyboard behavior of a few weeks ago, I figured this had to be it.
It wasn't. I took three keyboards and they all stopped on those particular keys. Huh?
So - since my daughter has a computer and the internet is on 24/7 - I took to the forums. And I found…nothing. I spent a couple of hours going all over the internet, and there was no solution anywhere. I had done everything (and more) that was recommended online. And where I had been just irritated before, now I was getting downright angry. My daughter came in and asked (very timidly) if she could get on her computer. I guess my look said it all, because she backed out of the room pretty quickly and didn't come back.
I decided, "Okay, one more time", knowing it was ridiculous; how many times can you "google" something? Well, from now on, I am going to always "google" one more time, because fifteen minutes after I came across some very small type at the very bottom of a very small website, I had a working keyboard and my computer was up and running.
Check this out:
When I looked at my key, I found that the key was not a product key at all; it was a serial number from another piece of software. I found my real key and the rest is history.
When you think about it, I should have known. I should have known when I was putting in my product key that it was wrong. Rather than blame my keyboard, I should have known when I hit the first character key that didn't work that the key was intentionally disabled. I mean, isn't this the first thing they teach you in How-Do-I-Input-My-Product-Key 101?
Whatever. All I know is that – besides the solution to the product key problem - I did learn something from all of this.
Always "Google" one more time.
Recover your Gmail Password with a Secondary Email Address or an SMS message
Forgetting or losing your mail account password is a common problem with web users. Maybe you have a lot of email accounts and passwords to remember . Or may be you had created a Gmail account long ago and haven't used it for months.
In such situations, forgetting the password is normal, but you should also know the procedure to recover it, as well. Following are two ways to recover Gmail account password, in case you lose it
Using a Secondary Email Address
A secondary email address acts as a backdoor of your primary email account. Suppose you forgot the password of your primary email account and can't login. In that case, you can request a password reset of your primary email account using your secondary email address. The link to reset the password would be sent to your secondary email account.
Here are the steps to recover your email password using a secondary email account in Gmail:
1.Login to your primary email account and click the "Settings" link placed at the right corner of the screen.
2.Select the "Accounts and Import" tab and click the "Google account settings" link at the bottom of the page.
3.This will take you to the settings page of your Google account. Click "Change password recovery options".
4.For security reasons, you will be asked to sign in again. In the next page, add the email address of your secondary email account.
5.Click save and you are done.
Whenever you forget the password of your primary email account, you can request a password reset as described later in the article.
How to Recover Email Password using an SMS Message
Using a secondary email address for recovery options is good, but what if you lose the password of your secondary email account as well? How are you going to recover the password of your primary email account, if you do not have access to the secondary email account in the first place?
Hence, you should associate a phone number with your email account. Here are the detailed steps to achieve the same:
1.Visit the settings page of your email account as described in the above section of the article (refer to steps 1, 2 and 3).
2.In the page to change the password recovery options, you will see the option to add your mobile number with your email account. Select your country from the drop down menu and enter the phone number in the text box as shown below:
3.Click "Save changes" and you are done.
Test your Email Recovery Options
Now that you have added the secondary email address as well as a phone number, you should test the settings to see whether it works as planned. Here are the steps to follow:
1.On the Gmail login page, enter a wrong username and password combination and click "Can't access your account" link.
2.On the following page, select "I forgot my password" and click the "Reset your Password here" link
3.On the next page, enter your email user name once again and hit "Submit"
4.You will receive a password reset email in your secondary email address. Just click the link and you will be allowed to reset the email password of your primary email account. If you have added your mobile number, you will receive an SMS message on your mobile containing a 5 digit code. You need to enter the code in the password reset page to complete the password reset process.
Both of the methods mentioned in the article should be implemented to be on the safe side, in case you forget the password of your email account. Have you set up recovery options of your email account yet?
Prioritizing and Deleting Preferred Wireless Networks
You've brought your laptop home after a long trip. You turn it on, expecting to connect to your safe and secure wireless network and find instead that your computer is trying desperately to connect to the wireless network of the hotel you stayed in, now thousands of miles away.
If something like this has ever happened to you before, there is an answer: you can prioritize the wireless networks that your computer remembers.
To find your network connections, first left-click on the Start menu, go to Settings, and then click Control Panel. Double-click on Network Connections in the Control Panel menu.
This will display your network connections. Locate your Wireless Network Connection and right-click on it. Left-click on Properties. 
This will open the Wireless Network Connection Properties Menu. Click on the Wireless Networks tab to view your preferred wireless networks.
This list of networks includes any wireless network you have connected to in the past. Sometimes, if two networks that you have connected to are present, Windows will connect to the network that is higher up on this list. Other times, it may not find any networks that it can connect to, and so it might search for the last network you used – which could be miles away.
This list can be prioritized and cleaned of old networks. If you see a wireless network that you won't use again or don't want in the list, click on it once and then press the Delete key on your keyboard. This will delete the network from this list. You can still reconnect to this network in the future – deleting it simply removes any preferences you had for connecting to that network.
Once you have deleted the networks you don't want, click once on the network that you want Windows to connect to first. Click the Move up button to move this network up on the list. Keep clicking until your most preferred network is at the top of the list. You can also use this function to set a second preference, a third preference, and so on.
That's it! Your computer should connect to the wireless networks you want more easily, especially when there is more than one that you connect to nearby.
Ctrl+Tab Preview Windows in Firefox 3.6
Any tip you read about shortcuts for Mozilla Firefox is sure to mention that you can easily switch between open tabs by pressing Ctrl+Tab on your keyboard. The resulting action is just a quick flip from tab to tab, which can be quite useful.
Today, however, I'm going to teach you how to spice it up a bit.
Note: Make sure you're running Firefox version 3.6 to ensure that this tip will work.
Open Mozilla Firefox, and in the address bar type about:config. I know, we've been here before, so you should know that you can just skip through the warning that comes up.
Once on the Firefox config page, scroll down until you see the entry: browser.ctrlTab.previews
It'll look like this:
Change the value to "True", and restart Firefox.
Now when you have multiple tabs open and you use the Ctrl+Tab shortcut, you'll see little windows with a preview of the tab!
Neat!
Consolidate Multiple Gmail Accounts
It's quite a hassle to manage multiple email accounts on a regular basis because you have to remember all the usernames, passwords and logins to check for new messages. But what if you could tweak your Gmail inbox and get all the emails at one place?
This article describes the step-by-step procedure to manage multiple email inboxes from a single email account.
Before we move on, let's assume that you have the following three email accounts:
1.John@gmail.com
2.John-office@gmail.com
3.John-business@gmail.com
You want to manage all the three email accounts from the inbox of john@gmail.com, which is your primary email account. Just follow the steps mentioned below:
1.Login to your secondary email account from where you would want to forward emails to your primary email account. In this case, the secondary email accounts are john-office@gmail.com and john-business@gmail.com.
2.Once you are logged in, click the Settings link which is placed at the top right of the page.
3.In the settings page, click the "Forwarding and Pop/IMAP" tab and enter the email address of your primary email account in the forwarding text box.
This would forward all the emails received at the current email address to john@gmail.com, which is your primary email account.
4.In the same way, login to other secondary email accounts and implement the above setting.
5.Now, login to the primary Gmail account where you would want to receive emails from all your other email accounts. Click the small "Labs" icon at the right top of the browser window.
6.This will open the Gmail Labs page. In this page, scroll to the bottom and find "Multiple Inboxes".
Select the radio button "Enable" and click "Save changes" at the bottom of the page.
7.This will reload your inbox. Click the "Settings" link again placed at the right top of the browser window.
8.Now click the "Multiple inboxes" link as shown below
9.In "pane-0" enter the email address of your first secondary email account (john-office@gmail.com) and in "Pane-1" enter the email address of your next secondary email account (john-business@gmail.com).
Leave all other settings as it is and click "Save Changes" when you are done.
10.Now reload your email inbox and you will see two panes in the right side of inbox.
These panes are "containers" of your secondary email accounts. Whenever you receive a new email message at any of the secondary email accounts a copy will be forwarded to your primary email account (e.g john@gmail.com)
The copy of that email message will be listed in the respective panes which you created.
That's it! Now you can check email messages of all your email accounts at one place without having to login and out from each and every account. This setting save a lot of time and should be practiced if you get a lot of emails across multiple email addresses every day.
Google Buzz Tips
If you are still uncertain on whether to use Google Buzz or not, I have compiled some Tips and Tricks on using and integrating Buzz with your other social networking sites.
1.Turn off Google buzz
First off, if you are a Gmail user who has no interest in using Google Buzz, Google has made it easy for you to turn Google Buzz off right on the bottom of your Gmail account page. At the bottom of the web page click the link that says "turn off Buzz" and Google Buzz will be removed from your Gmail account.
2.Remove Buzz messages from Your Gmail Inbox
Buzz automatically adds new Buzz messages to your inbox, along with all the other email subscriptions hitting your inbox daily - which is one of the chief complaints about Google Buzz.
First, at the top of the screen, right next to the search box, click the link titled "create a filter". Second, the filter tool contains a text box identifiable by "has words" where you would enter the word "buzz". Third, you will receive a warning when you click "Next Step" saying that the filter search you started will not work because it needs more information, but I have tested that theory and found that it does work for Buzz messages, so you can click OK. Fourth, make sure the box next to "Skip the Inbox" is checked and click on the "Create Filter" link.
3.You Can Tweet and Buzz
Why wouldn't your Twitter friends want to have your Buzz links, too? Google Reader is already connected via Twitterfeed for you to send things to your Twitter account, but that's not the only way to share. The Shared Items section on Google Reader allows you to grab the Atom feed link and past it directly into Twitterfeed. Once you press the "go" button, Twitter can then sync the two accounts together.
4.Using text markup language in Google Buzz
As long as you are using simple text markup language, Google Buzz will be able to recognize it. So, you can Buzz with style as you highlight words that you want to stand out in italics, bold, or strikethrough font options. How you use it:
The keystroke code for making text bold is surrounding the word or phrase with an asterisk.
*word* = word
Underscores surrounding the text tells Buzz that the word(s) should be italicized.
_word_ = word
If you want to strike out the text, then putting dashes at either end is the command used by Buzz.
-word- = word(strikethrough)
Transfer Themes from File-to-File & Program-to-Program in Office 2007
Have you ever found yourself working on a Word document or Excel workbook and wishing you could apply that really cool theme you used in a PowerPoint presentation the other day? And I don't mean just a blanket theme setup… you took the time to change the colors and fonts to make it "just right".
Or, what about the times when the reverse situation is true?
Maybe you had a great theme set up in an Excel workbook, the colors looked amazing in the charts and the font was just perfect. Now you'd like the same setup for your PowerPoint presentation…
Can it be done without the hassle of jumping back and forth between the two programs trying to create the same settings?
You bet - and it's way easier to do than you think!
So, let's say we're in PowerPoint and we're looking to transfer the theme from an Excel file to our current presentation.
Don't bother opening Excel - we can do it all in PowerPoint.
We need the Design tab, Themes section.
Click the bottom down-arrow on the themes list and choose Browse for Themes.
The Choose Theme or Themed Document dialog box will open.
Navigate to the file with the theme that you want applied to your presentation. Select it and then click Open.
Voila! The presentation is now set with the design elements from your workbook.
Basically it works the same in all the Office 2007 programs.
Although, while PowerPoint has a Design tab on the Ribbon, the others use a Page Layout tab.
You'll find the Themes section on the far left end of that tab.
It doesn't get any easier than that when it comes to transferring all those settings from one file to another.
Fix Your Page Border Dilemma
Ever try to print a page border on an MS Word document, only to find out the bottom is missing?
What did you do?
Probably everything you could think of, right? You know, choosing a narrow border, changing margins and so on.
Did it work?
Probably not. So, what did you do then? Remove the border completely?
Let's hope not!
I'd like to suggest that we take another look at the page border tab and see what we can do. After you've made your choices, don't click OK. Instead, take a closer look at what's available.
Have you ever noticed the Options button on the right side?
Click it.
When the Options dialogue window opens, you're looking for the "Measure from:" field in the top section.
Use the down arrow to select Text.
The margin numbers in the fields above will then change. They represent the amount of space from the text area of the page to the page border.
You'll need to experiment with those settings to see what you like best.
Click OK to exit the options.
Click OK again to exit the page borders.
Once you're back in your document, you can see the borders you've set and you should find that with the page border pulled in closer to the text, your printing dilemma is gone!
Add Extra Toolbars to your Windows Taskbar
I personally like to keep my desktop clean with minimal icons on it and just change the wallpaper from time to time. After all, what is the point of having pretty wallpapers on your desktop if you are going to have ugly icons all over it? So in order to do this, while at the same time retaining high productivity, I classify all the frequently used shortcut icons into groups and have them as a pop-up menu (an additional toolbar) I can access from the windows taskbar. I find that my productivity with the computer remains the same, but my desktop is much neater and cleaner when the icons have been moved to pop-up menus (additional toolbars).
These additional toolbars are similar to the quick-launch toolbar which comes as a default toolbar in Windows.
Adding a toolbar to the windows taskbar is very simple and can be achieved as follows
1.) Add all the shortcuts you want together into a folder.
2.) If you want shortcuts to be grouped together into sub-sets, then add a sub-folder with shortcuts within it
3.) Right click on the taskbar and choose Toolbars>New Toolbar.
4.) Navigate to the folder required and then click on "Select Folder".
5.) The toolbar should appear on the taskbar and will function similar to the Quick Launch Toolbar.
6.) In order to remove/disable a particular toolbar, right-click on the taskbar, choose Toolbars and then remove the tick mark against that particular toolbar.
Note: I normally group all the shortcuts into various sub-folders and put all the sub-folders together under a root-folder which I place within My Documents. I then create a toolbar which points to the root-folder. I tend to keep the quick launch toolbar on the left next to the Start button, and add additional toolbars on the right next to the System tray. I use the space in-between for tabs of open windows/currently running applications.
I find this method highly efficient as I can use the available space effectively and I also know exactly where all my shortcut files are and can modify them if required with the change reflecting in the toolbar immediately.
Example of a Toolbar
The screenshot above indicates a toolbar named "Unused Links" which was created in the above fashion. It contains all the links I don't want cluttering my desktop and makes them readily available. The classification into groups facilitates easy retrieval in case I need anything in future. As described earlier, I have it on the right extreme of the windows taskbar, adjacent to the system tray.
Clearing Text Styling in PowerPoint 2007
We all know that when it comes to PowerPoint presentations we tend to use a lot of styling aspects such as text color, shadows, glow, etc… basically all the things that appear in the WordArt Styles section of the Drawing Tools, Format tab that appears on the Ribbon when we're working in text boxes. 
You may not have noticed it but any time that you work with text in a presentation it's treated like WordArt, which is why you have so many choices for customizing the look of your text.
But… what if you've made a lot of changes and you just want to clear them all away to start over?
Do you use the undo button over and over and over again?
Or, maybe you've actually gone through the hassle of creating a new text box and retyping the text?
Either way, those choices can quite a waste of time.
So let's try a single clean wipe of the formatting.
To do that we need to first select the specific text or text box to be stripped of the formatting.
Now we need to be back at the Drawing Tools, Format tab. 
Click the bottom down-arrow on the preset style palette then choose Clear WordArt from the bottom.
POOF!
The extra formatting is wiped clean and you can work on finding the "right look" for your presentation.
