How to help our site
- by Keith Cooper

Improving what's here...

The information and articles side of the Northlight Images photography web site is entirely written and maintained by myself in my spare time.

As you might know, I'm a professional photographer at Northlight Images for my 'real job' which is covered in a relatively small part of the site (in numbers of pages)

I've always believed strongly in freely 'giving back' some of my expertise and knowledge to help other people enjoy more of their photography.

During 2010 I'm trying to add new original content at least every other week, and hopefully making the existing content more readable.

Some ways you could help:

Spread the word

If you've found something of use or interest, please bookmark it and if you think anyone else would appreciate knowing about it, tell them or post links to our articles.

The web works as much by people following useful links from others, as it does from search engines.

I know that the site gets a lot of visitors through the rumour pages, but in some ways I'd rather it were best known for the range of articles and reviews I've written...

Ask questions

Many of our articles have started from people writing in and asking questions. If I find myself writing a reply of any length, this often serves as the basis for an article.

I do my best to answer all emails, but it does get a bit busy sometimes and I fear I may have let one or two get past me - if you use the contact form then it does not go via our usual filtering and I should get the email.

Suggestions for the site

The site is maintained by myself and that puts a limit on redesigns and complex web design. If you've ideas for how to make the site look better (not using Flash BTW ;-) and easier to find things, then please feel free to let me know (NOTE - this is not an invitation to tender for web development work!)

As a result of recent discussions I've modified the top layout of articles to make the page table of contents and links elsewhere on the site a bit more consistent, and made it a bit more obvious where article content begins. Changes in site design are often minor, but can make a big difference to ease of use.

Guest Articles - Expanding the site's content - can you help?

There is a limit in how many new articles and reviews I can add each month.

We are in the process of adding good original content by other authors, and welcome contributions.

At the moment we can't pay for articles/reviews, but authors would retain copyright on their original material, with Northlight allowed to edit and publish content and images.

Full credit, a brief bio and active links to your own web site/blog could be included. Articles would need to be of similar length to our normal ones and include good quality images (max. width 640 px)

We would edit articles for style (i.e. UK English spellings)

More information about writing articles.

If you're interested, just ask...

Our advertising - supporting the site

Site content is totally free, and as far as I'm concerned will always remain free!

We do have adverts on the site to help defray some of the costs of running it - if you are looking to buy something, then going via one of our adverts will make a small contribution to our costs.

It really does help, so thanks to anyone who has ever contributed in this way.

The Amazon adverts for example, pay us a small percentage in commission - you don't pay any more.

Amazon UK / Amazon France / Amazon Germany / Amazon USA / Amazon Canada

I've specifically decided that Northlight Images will not sell hardware or software directly.

When I'm personally looking for information about a product, knowing that someone is not directly selling it possibly inclines me to value the information a little bit more. Hopefully this policy earns the site a bit more trust from visitors.

Our reviews are somewhat longer than many articles that get called 'reviews' on other sites. I always try and write reviews that will also be helpful for people looking to use the product for real and learn more about the subject. All our current set of reviews are listed on the review page.

Although I'd previously decided against it, I've had a couple of mails saying that people would prefer to directly contribute to the site. I suppose, the equivalent of 'buying me a pint' as we'd say here in the UK.

Thanks for reading this, and I hope you continue to find items on the site of interest and use.

Keith Cooper