Theme Days have move our new portal

Please note the theme day has been moved to the City Daily Photo theme days page on our portal.   

The address is https://www.citydailyphoto.org/category/theme-days/ 

  

thank you

Bob and Denton

HELLO FROM THE NEW ADMIN – WE’RE NOT DEAD YET

 
As Jack Keane has discussed here in recent weeks, the CDP portal website is gone. It, our Blogger pages and Facebook have been maintained by him and Peter Hyndman of Queensland for 10 years. The web development company that set up the portal is no longer interested in it and took it down on September 1.

Jack and Peter would like some relief after a decade. I have agreed to take up the job to the extent my skills permit. I can handle Blogger and Facebook pages but know nothing of website development. The FB page where some of us copy our daily blog posts, https://www.facebook.com/groups/citydailyphoto/, remains unchanged. Please continue to show us your cities there. If the portal does not come back it is the only way for us to communicate easily.

There are two Blogger pages that I myself did not know about until recently. There is a CDP news page, https://dailyphotoportalnews.blogspot.com/, for announcements and general information. (We can also do that on the FB page.) Please check in from time to time.

Theme day lives! Have a look at http://cdpbthemeday.blogspot.com/. We will use that instead of the portal for the monthly display. The Linky tool is there and I will keep that up. I will announce the themes for the rest of 2020 soon and welcome suggestions for the future.

The portal is a more difficult problem. The domain is registered for another two years. One of our members who has HTML experience offered to help but the task also requires knowledge of CMS (contact management systems) and something called Joomla that I’ve never heard of. If any of you have such skills and are willing to volunteer, please contact me soon. Otherwise the portal will disappear.

Lastly, our membership has declined a lot. If anyone has ideas about how to promote it, please tell us. We might put notices on other photography sites to which we belong. I don’t know whether it is possible for me to email people who have been on the portal in the last couple of years. We are looking into it.

So I’m the person you contact now with suggestions or questions. Stick with us.

Bob Crowe

St. Louis Daily Photo 

Farewell from the Portal!

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.  A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted.

Well, folks, it is now the time to pluck up the City Daily Photo portal.  The vendor that supplied the software gizmos that provided daily blog updates has terminated the service.  The monthly themes that once attracted more than a hundred participants now interest only a couple of dozen.  Many longtime CDP bloggers have left the arena.  Others have migrated toward Instagram or elsewhere.  Blogs are less often photographers' online medium of choice.  And, the volunteers who have kept this thing going are themselves tired and distracted by other interests and responsibilities.  

Yes, it is time.  Time to pluck that which has been planted.  This is the last new post on the CDP portal.    It will stay up until it doesn't.  This photo is the one that CDP's founder, Eric Tenin, posted on December 31, 2014, when he wrapped up ten years of Paris Daily Photo and signed off.

Facebook offers a "City Daily Photo" group page where many stalwart CDP members continue to post links to their daily photographic offerings.  If you have not yet joined, take a look and see if that is where you can look (if you are a looker) or where you can post your photography (if you are a photographer and a poster).

Let's thank Eric for stimulating so many of us to prowl our cities looking for people, places and things to photograph and celebrate.  And let's thank Julie for taking up the reins after Eric for several years until health challenges sidelined her.   And we all owe a big debt of gratitude to Peter for teaching himself the technology necessary to keep the portal up and running (and for paying the fees to maintain the domain and the various feeds).  Not to mention the debt we owe Peter for years of applying the bandaids and bubblegum that kept the portal from falling apart in its waning years.  

I'm Jack and it has been (mostly) fun for me to write a couple of news items each month and to come up with the monthly themes for several years.  Recently I passed the tenth year since I retired from employment and ten years since I started my own CDP blog.  Farewell!  My grandchildren call.   

The Last CDP Theme Day: A Favorite Photo

For years, the first day of each month has meant "Theme Day" to City Daily Photo bloggers.  We have had colors for themes.  Locations.  Abstract thoughts.  Numbers.  

Well, September 1 will be the final Theme Day, so CDP bloggers are asked to look over their archives and show us a favorite image.

This photograph of Megan combines three of my favorite things.  First, for 40 years I have lived at least part of the year two blocks from Hartford, Connecticut's Elizabeth Park, where this photo was taken.  Second, I like meeting complete strangers, learning a bit about them, and making portrait photos.  (Megan's mother was in a photo club and Megan volunteered to be a subject for the club members . . . I sneaked in.)  And, finally, I like beauty in all of its forms. and Megan had beauty in abundance.

So, go find a favorite photo and show it to us on September 1.  That will be a bittersweet time on two dimensions for me.  It will close the book on the CDP portal, though CDP bloggers will continue posting on their blogs and will use other outlets like Facebook and Instagram to share their creativity.  And, it is a week before the day when I close on the purchase of a new summer home in southwestern Connecticut and prepare to leave the house where my kids grew up. 

Let's Appreciate Luis Gomez and One Photograph a Day

Luis Gomez is a freelance photographer and photojournalist who moved to Washington, DC, in 2003 from Caracas, Venezuela. During his 35 years as a photographer, he has traveled the world collecting images for work and pleasure.  

Luis is a longtime member of the City Daily Photo community and longtime publisher of his "One Photograph a Day" photo blog.  How long?  Who knows.  The blog doesn't include information about its start.  But, regular readers have come to enjoy his eclectic taste in photographs, and especially his tilted perspective.  Good work, Luis.  Keep 'em coming.

"City People" is the Unlikely August Theme

What were we thinking?  "City People?"  The themes for 2020 are organized around viewing your city in a wide variety of aspects.  When the monthly themes were chosen in late 2019, no one expected that a pandemic would empty city streets of people or that those found would be keeping away from others while masking their faces.  

Don't you miss the days when we could sit in a crowd like this for n outdoor4 concert?  Can you look at an image like this today without flinching at the absence of social distancing?  Still, give it a try.  Let's see what creative way you can come up with to show the people of your city.  "City People" is the theme on August 1.

The View From Squirrel Ridge Informs Us About Virginia's Western Regions

For fifteen (repeat, FIFTEEN!!!) years, Linda Walcroft has been posting prolifically about the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia in The View From Squirrel Ridge.  She shows us old barns, country roads, city scenes, historic sites and the regional flora and fauna, interspersed with current and old family photographs.  For Linda, the blog seems like in part a way to chronicle her region, in part a way to applaud, critique and bring attention to current local issues, and in part a way to create an online family journal.  Whichever trail(s) she is traveling on a specific day's post, it is always interesting and entertaining.

Linda's profile catalogs a varied career, including youth club organizer, secretary, administrative assistant, portrait photographer, technical writer, and webmaster.  Now semi-retired, Linda spends a lot of time with her camera and computer.  We are richer for her choices.