Category: Photos

  • I blew up everything

    No frills or photos at this point. Somehow over the last few weeks I have managed to totally destroy my formatting for the blog and everything along with it. I kept thinking about starting all over from scratch and I came close to having to do that.

    I think my old posts will still be here going forward, but I am not sure about any of the formatting/photos. It has turned into a real mess.

    What I am ending up with right now is a WordPress.com hosted site using a custom domain name (www.artnortonphoto.blog) rather than the WordfPress.com URL. That, by itself, created all sorts of problems with my Elementor/Elementor Pro license. I had to deactivate it on the old URL and reactivate/connect it to the new custom domain. It was supposed to be a straight-forward process, but it didn’t work out that way. It took me a couple of days of off-and-on work to finally sort it out. Along the way, I am slowly learning to use the AI help available in WordPress. I said many years ago that this was going to be an adventure. It is certainly still quite the adventure.

    Hopefully, the next time I post something, I hope the formatting will be a lot better.

    Thanks for stopping by.

    Art

  • How many times am I going to try again? Maybe I will go for broke.

    Black and white photo of a Snow Leopard at the Stone Zoo in Stoneham, Massachusetts. It shows the snow leopards head and shoulders. This photo was taken in 2009

     

    Snow Leopard at Stone Zoo – 2009

    My two biggest concerns have always been losing all my previous posts if I totally revise things, and having to try, all over again, to have this blog have the same format as my website, ArtNortonPhoto.

    First concern – Losing all my previous posts.

    I am guessing that there might be a way to export all the “data” and then import it after I re-do the format of the blog.

    I need to research this and probably do a chat with the WordPress support center. I have been told that they are very helpful.

    Second concern – Should the blog be the same format as my website?

    Some people would say “Yes. You need things to be consistent.” But I am really wondering about that. I am beginning to think that it is quite acceptable to treat them as two separate entities but still have them linked.

    My plan at this point is to spend some time going back and watching some of the beginner tutorials on YouTube and see if I can get comfortable with things again and then have a chat with tech support.

    AND an Oops

    I didn’t realize that somewhere along the way, I shut off the tool that allowed someone that looked at the post to sign up for notifications. I think I have fixed that. 😊

    I guess that is all for now. I am going to spend the rest of today looking at tutorials.😒

    Thanks for stopping by!

    Art

  • Who knows what is next

    The 1761 Old Mill Restaurant in Westminster, Massachusetts

    I am definitely not very consistent with this blog. I haven’t touched it since last October. Yikes.

    I have even received emails from the WordPress.com support team to see if I would like some help and I haven’t yet taken them up on it.

    I guess my biggest hesitation is not being able to decide which way I should go. I currently have my website using SmugMug and my blog is with WordPress.com. SmugMug does not have an actual blog function available, so the question becomes do I leave things the way they are and get the blog as close to the same appearance as the website or do I develop a completely new website AND blog using WordPress.com for the hosting and then eventually cancel my SmugMug account? The other alternative is to go with a new hosting service and then build a new website and blog using WordPress.org which I am told has a lot more flexibility with templates and stuff then WordPress.com.

    Oh well, I’ll figure it out one of these days.

    Until then, I hope you will enjoy the black and white photo that I took of The 1761 Old Mill in Westminster, MA. It is a great restaurant with a delicious menu.

  • Elementor #1052

    I know I’m going to break something

    Morning Walk 2025-10-21

    Well, I have decided that I can’t get there from here, so, I have made a number of changes to the underpinnings of this blog.

    I  have upgraded to the WordPress Premium plan which gives me more templates/functionality and more customization options.

    I have also added the Elementor plugin which is included in the Premium WordPress package.

    Because I will be changing templates and using a different editor, I know things are going to get very broken.

    I am hoping that my previous posts will stay connected, but who knows.  Time will tell.

    Thanks for stopping by,

    Art

  • Blog, here I come

    Well, after a lot of poking around the internet and looking at WordPress and how to do things, I have decided to keep going with a blog. It is going to be a lot of work and I am sure I will make tons of errors along the way.

    Long exposure of rock surounded by water.
    Rock in the Water at Ashland Reservoir

  • Note to Self – Do I really want to do a blog at all?

    Morning Mist

    I haven’t touched this blog since July of this year and I am wondering if it is even worth it. Maybe I should just keep my SmugMug website (https://www.artnortonphoto.com/) active and the heck with the rest.

    I have spent the last couple of weeks reviewing my website. I ended up changing the primary template and adding a couple of additional galleries which are pretty sparsely populated at the moment. I have also gone back and started to update keywords for all the photos. That is going to be a very long process, but, from what I have read, it should be well worth it from an SEO standpoint.

    As for this blog, I guess only time will tell as to whether I will keep it or let it disappear into the sunset.

    Thanks for stopping by.

    Art

  • Heading in another direction?

    Photo taken at the Blithewold Mansion in Bistol, RI. I have always been fascinated by the pool table and the way they have the cue sticks set up on it.

    Well, I have spent a lot of time thinking about how to proceed with this blog and my website. While I am not going to start over, I have decided to most likely move things over to WordPress.org at some point and maybe use SmugMug for just my photo galleries. That will require getting a web host for the blog and the pages that are currently on SmugMug. Still not totally sure I want to do all that but in order to use the plugins that I want/need, I have to move off of WordPress.com.

    What I have done is signed up for a UDEMY course on WordPress.org. The instructor (Andy Williams) is a gentleman from the U.K. and he did an excellent job of putting the course together. I am about half way through the course and from my standpoint, it is a heck of a lot better than most of the WordPress tutorials I have seen on YouTube. I am actually enjoying it and he has been very quick to respond to any questions that I have had.

    And last thoughts for tonight. For quite some time I had stopped doing anything with Instagram. I think it was 3+ months of no posting. I have decided to start posting again, but I am making a point of only doing a single post each week. It could be of anything that I have taken in the previous week. I think in most cases it will be a photo from my morning walks at the park across the street from where we live.

    That’s it for tonight. Have a good evening/morning depending on where in the world you are.

    Thanks for stopping by,

    Art

  • Trying this again

    Well, maybe it is time to try this again. It has been a long time since I have posted anything here and I am not sure if I will really get going on this, but I guess I will give it another try. One of my thoughts has been to just use this blog to reference my morning walks at the state park across from where we live.

    This photo isn’t actually from a morning walk, but a photo taken out the window of our “office” a couple of weeks ago. We have seen a number of different critters around – fox, mink, bobcat, deer and hawks. Unfortunately, when the bobcat was around I was out and my wife wasn’t able to get her phone quick enough to get a photo. Oh well, maybe next time.

    Thanks for stopping by,

    Art

  • Break

    I give up for the time being. I always kept thinking that I would try to add a post every few weeks or so, but that is not happening. I think I need to admit that blogging is not something that is high on my priority list at this point.

    I really haven’t even been doing a lot of serious photography either. I do the occasional “photo-shoot” out the back when the birds are active at the feeder, but that is about it.

    For the time being, my two highest priorities are going to be to continue to clean up my Lightroom mess and really learn how to use SmugMug. As far as Lightroom goes, I just have way too many photos. I am slowly going through them and getting rid of a lot of “duplicates” which is more like 20 of the same thing when I had the camera on high speed shutter. That is going to take me forever. Ugh!

    I signed up with SmugMug about a year ago but didn’t get beyond the basic setup. I started going through a few tutorials on YouTube that SmugMug had put up on their YouTube channel. Their SmugMug Live episodes are great but there are about 119 of them. I have a lot of catching up to do. I also came across a new video for beginners and then a follow-on one. They seem to be good, and I am learning a lot from them. It is going to be a slow process, but well worth it in the long run. I may actually figure out how to use SmugMug to blog.

    I will continue to post to Instagram and maybe a little to Flickr as I continue to work on my website.

    Thanks for stopping by,

    Art