"In Focus" by D. Travis North

In the past week, we have been wrapping up 2009 and looking forward into 2010.  We’ve focused on small details and talked about looking back and reviewing our own works.  We’ve looking deep into the future and made some predictions.  But now it’s time to talk about our relationship with you – how Shutter Photo’s goals will (hopefully) make a happier experience for you.  If you remember, a few months back we took a survey (if you weren’t a part, worry not – we’ll be doing another one soon).  We took the results from that and are actively working to improve ourselves for your benefit.  With that, I’m going to jump right into our goals for 2010:

• More Reviews – We have already done several book reviews here at Shutter Photo.  We will continue to review books, of course.  Our book reviews have been some of our most popular articles.  But in addition to that, we are going to provide more product reviews – whatever we can get our hands on is fair game (hint – if you have connections, send us a message).
• More Articles for Point and Shoot (Pocket Camera) Users -  Many of our articles are targeted at SLR/D-SLR users.   Admittedly, that’s an oversight on my part, and it’s not fair to many of our readers.  Moving forward, we will introduce articles specifically targeted at pocket camera users.  Additionally, in our technical and learning articles, we will take care to note differences and tips for pocket camera users.
• More Photo and Photographer Spotlights – Recently (though we took a bit of a break for the holidays), we were spending a lot of time featuring photos and photographers from our SP @ Flickr Group.  Our features have been very well received, and we will continue to do them.  In fact, we’d like to do more of them.  So now is as good as a time as ever to join the group and start submitting photos to the pool.
• Competitions – This is a bit of a harder lift and possibly the most difficult of our goals for 2010.  We already have our first of hopefully many Ribbon  Contest underway, but we’re going to take things slow.  We don’t want to get ahead of ourselves with a contest format and we want to make sure we do it right.  So the first few competitions will be somewhat experimental.  For example, our first competition is based on Flickr submissions.  One flaw I’ve already received feedback about was that some people are not interested in joining Flickr.  We’re actively looking into other options, and we won’t rest until we find something that works.  We are of course open to suggestions for systems and contest topics, so be sure to leave feedback if you have ideas.

So that’s our goals for 2010.  It’s a short list but it’s not the end-all-be-all list.  We will continue to strive to improve the site and expand it for your benefit.  We are open to suggestion, and I would be happy at any time to hear your thoughts.  So if there is some way that we can improve, please leave a message or use our private contact form.

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