web site hits

hi all

an unbeliveable 25,000 people visited my main web site marksgardenplants http://www.markgardenplants.com last month. I know there are sites out there with bigger hits but I never expected mine to have that many.

Mark

Wonderful for you, Mark. I tried to access it and it was unavailable right now. Hope you have great success with your website. Lani

you're right it's unavailable right now.

Why is it unavailable, and when will it be available? Inquiring minds want to know.

It took a year for me to get 4500 hits.... well, I'm not very much to homepages anymore :} Don't know how many have visited since I last time checked my Nedstat.

Your page has been offline for some time already - when will it be running with full speed again? =)

it's back online now. it must have been a server problem.

my snowdropinfo.com site all about those lovely white spring flowers gets only 8000 a month.

"Only"

only when compared to the marksgardenplants

Mark, I just tried to access it...no luck...and it is 5:45 AM here....I will try again later. Jo

The link in Mark's first post is spelled wrong, it should be marksgardenplants.com no markgardenplants.com. ;)

http://www.marksgardenplants.com/

Uhm... Mark..., these are in your garden ?

And you are also the photographer ?

Wonderful work.

Impressive.

Thanks for the peek into your garden.

Adam.

Aotearoa

the web site began 2 years ago with photos of plants I have in my garden. It then grew to include plants in my friends gardens .... then plants in other gardens I have visited .... the countries I have been to .... and it's still growing.

yes I'm the photographer and was using a Fuji Finepix 2400 (2 million pixels) but last week I bought a Nikon Coolpix 5000 (5 million pixels) which can go in as close as 2 cm - less than an inch - to the subject but can go closer if I stay back a bit and zoom in. It has a slide copier which I bought to attach to the lens. This means I can now digitise my slide collection to add to the site.

great to hear you liked the site Adam.

Mark

an interesting piece of info re mgp stats is although I clearly say only pages with NEW have images all my other pages are repeatedly clicked on to open them.

I think you should put a page in there that shows your bats off. Fair warning to the people of course so somebody doesn't have a heart attack. After all bats have their place in a garden!

Ponditis the bats used to be in there until they got their own wen site. I'll look into adding a page again.

Mark

Thanks Mark, I think that all should be educated about the bats and their helpfulness in our gardens. Glad you will consider adding a page again. Lani

Ooooh, a slide copier? That's neat. I bet you're having a blast with the new equipment, Mark!

GW I will as soon as I get my head around all the buttons and built in lists it has

wow MArk 5 million pixels. are the pictures appreciativley better? tell me more about this slide copier. Are they widely available and be fitted to most digi cameras?

Psilo slide copier attachments can only be fitted to 2 cameras that I know of

Olympus 5050 http://www.olympus.co.uk/consumer/digimg/intro.cfm?id=C-5050ZOOM

Nikon Coolpix 5000 http://www.coolpix5000.co.uk/

the slide can be digitised with light from light bulbs, strips, bright sunlight and overcast weather

I dont know how much better the images will be at 5 megapixels as I havent had a chance to take any photos yet but I'll keep you posted

right, btw whatever happened to my link from your website?

no work has been done on the site since it was uploaded after the host crashed

Gorgeous. I didn't know there were so many different helebores!! Did you hybridize them yourself?

I wish.

the variety of un-named Hellebores is endless. coming in every shade of white to cream to pink to red to grey and 'black'

The named ones usually come under the names 'Ballard Hybrid' and 'Raithby Hybrids'

these images are growing in a friends garden
http://www.marksgardenplants.com/hellebores1.htm
http://www.marksgardenplants.com/hellebores2.htm
http://www.marksgardenplants.com/hellebores3.htm
http://www.marksgardenplants.com/hellebores4.htm

It's 10 a.m. EST on Wed., Nov 20 and the site is unavailable again.
Later: oh never mind. I saw Evert's post that it was spelled wrong and tried again and got to your website that way. Wow, really great! Thanks Evert and Mark.

This message was edited Wednesday, Nov 20th 10:00 AM

Mark, those are so pretty!! Now I must keep repeating "I don't need another obsession, I don't need another obsession" and hope it works, lol.

Excellent site Mark!!!

Well done M8 .... it's very educational since those are some of the best photos I've seen on the net.

Good luck with it

Wintermoor

Cala keep repeating it. :) I love those Hellebores for late winter color they can't be beat. I think I will add them to my hosta addiction. LOL DH will flip. It will be fun to watch him though .)

you guys are gonna make me blush!

my friend buys 10 hellebores every year

Neat, Mark I would love to be able to afford even two hellebores a year. They run about $20-$40 apiece here. I got several plants in a trade this year so at least I have a start now.

Mark, I posted in the wrong forum. Check out my posting in mail call for some neat stamps that our postal service has issued. Lani

I agree with Wintermoor and others. The clarity of the photos and the no~nonsense design of your pages makes them a valuable resource.

Thanks for all the work you have put into this.

Adam.

once again thanks very much

I looked at many sites in my few years of surfing and saw many pages that were so hard to look at so I set out to make this one very simple and to the point.

Mark :-))

Mark ~~~

I am now shopping seriously for a quality digital camera.

How are things turning out with your Nikon? The 5000 is avalable here in NYC for about US780, plus a few bucks for add~ons.

ALL the images on your site are digital? Some seem to have the..., hmmm..., 'restrained exurberance," shall we say, of Velvia or Kodachrome64. Some of your images look like they are in 6cm x 7cm format.

My experience is that digital imaging (often) is either candy colored or drab..., your colors seem radiant without going over the top. Sort of the direction I'd like to go.

Any guidance to offer?

Adam.

the majority were taken with a Fuji Finepix 2400 which is no longer available. the grainy images are slides scanned using a Nkion Coolscan lll

the Nkion 5000 over here is $1050 which is a scandalous price you guys dont know how lucky you are over there in the US

I dont know what you mean by 6x7 format

if you are no good at reading manuals and remembering what you have read stay away from the Nikon 5000. 8 days now ans no photos taken with mine. I am thinking of asking the store if they will take it back. with mu Fuji I was taking photo in minutes.

Mark, here Nikon 5000 costs over 1150 € ($)...

I'm so jealous for your camera, mine doesn't take var good pics, they are somehow grainy if there isnt' enough light and such.. :P

6x7 refers to the film format - the larger the film size the finer the image resolution - this is a medium format.

Large format gives a negative size of 5"x4" or 5"x7" or 10"x8" and is used by professional photographers for very high quality shots.
Medium format comes in a choice of 6x9cm, 6x7cm, 6x6cm and 6x4.5cm and is used by a number of professional and semi professional photographers particularly for subjects such as landscape
Then there's 35mm which, while not as high quality as the above formats, comes with much more portable cameras and is therefore much more widely used.

Thanks for your explaination of film formats, Philomel. I am a medium format shooter.

Mark, this sounds like grim news regarding the Nikon. Is it that the manual is poorly prepared? That the instructions are exceedingly comlex? Does Nikon offer a support site on line? Are there users groups? AND..., for that sort of money the merchant should very graciously try to help you.

NYC Prices: In NYC's hyper~competitive market, everything replaceable is a commodity and priced accordingly. Things like real estate, which is essentially absolutely limited in quantity, is priced, well..., take a wild guess.

Some airlines run NYC Shopping Charters. It seems that if you are in the market for the right things, you save enough to pay for the ticket, defray some of the hotel, buy yourself a few luxurious meals, and get your Christmas shopping done in NYC.

Please feel free to drop in and support our economy ;~)

Adam.

Hope you didn't mind me butting in Aotearo, do you take all your photos on medium format? I have been considering investing in a system, which do you use?

Can you get back in to Jessops Mark, and see if they can go through it with you? They certainly should as Aotearo says!
Hope you've had some success by now anyway

the book is way too complicated. e.g. if I want to digitize my slide collection the book says do this and shows the menu I should be in. it doesnt tell me how to get to the menu. it's the same throughout. the easiest bit was setting up the camera, date, time, language.

Jessops didnt have a charged battery when I was there. I'll be phoning them today.