It’s been a busy couple of weeks. It feels like I’ve been shooting non-stop for the last 14 days. I shot my first wedding, I hosted a three day photowalk around Mount Shasta and I spent last weekend in Yosemite. I have a lot to tell, but I want to start with Yosemite. I’ve been visiting the park since I was a boy, but I haven’t been since I got into photography two years ago. So this was my first trip with my new photographer eyes. It’s inspirational for everyone that visits, but it was a totally new experience behind my lens.

I tried to shoot Horsetail Falls during that window where the setting sun hits just the falls creating this molten lava look. This winter has been so dry, Horsetail wasn’t more than a seep, but it still looks cool with the light hitting El Capitan. I got the pleasure of meeting up with Lori Hibbert and Jeffrey Sullivan who are very familiar with the park and showed me some great spots I would not have found alone. So thanks you two!

Tonight, I’m sharing my sunset shot from the classic Tunnel View overlooking the valley. To the left you have the mighty El Capitan and on the right is Bridalveil Falls with Cathedral Rock. Further back is Half Dome. Coming into Yosemite, I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about shooting in the crowds of people. Having to setup close to other photographers competing for a view of the landscapes. While it was busy like I feared, people were cordial and real pleasure to meet. People who all share the same passion I do, so there was an instant connection with these total strangers. So the competition quickly turned into comradery.

There’s no denying the fact that the internet revolves around social. It is only going to get more tightly integrated when things like Facebook’s “Frictionless Sharing” becomes more widespread. So as a website owner, how do I utilize all of this social power for my own evil deeds? Sure, I’ve got social buttons so it’s super easy to +1 and “Like” all of my content, but that so 2010. The latest craze has been to bring the social networks to your website by generating conversations around your content instead of people simply leaving comments.

This is where LiveFyre come into play. At the core, they are a hosted comment service. The magic lies in how it’s tightly integrated with Facebook and Twitter (hopefully Google+ in the future). You can @ mention all of your Twitter and Facebook contacts to bring them into the conversation here on my website. You can share good comments on Facebook and Twitter. To top it all off, it will bring posts from Facebook and Twitter into your page where it belongs using what they call SocialSync.

It isn’t perfect yet. For example, I have a site that is half custom built and half WordPress. So on their end, they consider this two separate websites and is treated like two separate installs. So I have two places to maintain settings and moderate comments. They say this is getting worked on. The other problem I have is with SocialSync. While it’s great that it’s snatching all the posts from Facebook and Twitter and bringing them into my website, it’s just there for reference. You cannot interact with those posts and tweets at all. You can’t “Like”, or reply to those conversations. You can’t even follow a link back to Facebook to enter into the conversation there. This is a new feature and they are iterating their product quickly so I suspect I won’t have to wait long.