Portraits of Africa

Within my photo series “Portraits of Africa” here is the image of a young African boy.

Portraits of Africa

I just love Black & White Photography and how it adds depth to a picture, especially portraits and expressive faces.

“Portraits of Africa” are shot on a simple NIKON Coolpix P90 with a minimum of post-editing, ideally nothing at all.

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Web Design Trends 2012

The upcoming first Ycademy Seminar 2012 will focus on Web Design Trends 2012 in terms of what they mean for our brand-new WordPress based Semiomantics XO 2012.

Web Design Trends 2012

In order to follow and implement Web Design Trends 2012, learning new languages like CSS3 and html5 has become crucial – especially also due to the unfortunate conflicts around Flash which cannot be seen on the exploding mobile market. Accordingly, this weekend’s fully online YCADEMY Seminar will need focused attention and strong nerves! That’s the price to pay to be and remain a qualified Semiomantics expert!

MadMax is ready – are YOU?!

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Touched by Gorillas

I was always touched by gorillas and I just love Nature and its wildlife, however, this short video about a close encounter with a family of gorillas in Uganda was sent to me by a friend and mutual wildlife lover… I invite you to see this and admire what a wonderful world we are living in! I just love Africa, where you feel the heart beating deep down from the earth and each single day is filled with surprise, magnificence and thrill.

Touched by Gorillas

Here’s the video that I simply call “Touched by Gorillas” – no need to explain or say anything… and especially those of you who know game reserves and camps can appreciate this wonderful experience to the fullest.

Imagine you sat there with your camera… I had quite a similar experience in the mountains with a wild troop of baboons… but gorillas are something else!

The above picture leads to the original website – thank you for allowing us to share this with the world!

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TOP SEO Performance on Semiomantics

Here’s today’s example of TOP SEO Performance on Semiomantics XO 2011 (soon to be updated to XO 2012):

Earlier today, I wrote a small article for Monkey Valley Resort on “Best Tapas in Cape Town” as that’s what Darren Byrne from Thorfynn’s Restaurant at Monkey Valley Resort wanted a photo of on a hot Saturday afternoon yesterday.

While his interest is that a maximum of people see the News and visit his restaurant, my goal as a web designer is to ensure the message I put out on the Monkey Valley Resort Website reaches Google Top 10 – meaning a maximum of traffic and visitors to the website. Here’s the resultrank 7 out of 709,000 search returns and climbing! Ammmazing – Ole!

TOP SEO Performance on Semiomantics

A day earlier, I prepared the brand-new menu en al for “Best Valentine’s Dinner Cape Town” on 14th February 2012 at Thorfynn’s Restaurant HERE and – lo and behold – captured position 5 within a few minutes… and -as I just tested – am holding it to this moment without further intervention or support – see the screenshot here (click on it to enlarge it):

Best Web Design South Africa on Semiomantics

And to end this post, the day before I followed a request by Monkey Valley Resort founder Judy Sole to promote ‘a bit more beach’ – and did a simple article “Visit Noordhoek Beach”. This post just shot up to spots 1 and 2 on Google Top 10 :

…and as I saw just now, after 2 days, it has captured even spot 3!

No doubt: Monkey Valley Resort has chosen simply the Best Web Design South Africa on Semiomantics – high SEO optimization, a captivating design and high functionality! Unbeatable and proven on a daily basis!

And as the Internet becomes increasingly sophisticated… quality counts!

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uMthwakazi Band at Monkey Valley Resort

Great news: the uMthwakazi Band will be playing at Monkey Valley Resort in Noordhoek, South Africa, on 29th January 2012 as of 2 pm! Besides this date being my birthday, it seems that I will be going for a heavy camera session with this dynamic group of musicians playing a contemporary and yet traditional mix of Xhosa indigenous music, classical and modern with an amazingly versatile young vocalist who handles variations between Jazz, Opera and traditionally African with ease and in a very personal style.

To give you a simple impression, here’s a video from YouTube, just click on the picture or on the embedded video below:

uMthwakazi Band at Monkey Valley Resort

Monkey Valley Resort has a history of musicians and bands playing at special occasions and especially on Sunday afternoons. Many guests will be pleased to see an African band like uMthwakazi complementing the beauty of the “Out of Africa” setting this unique Nature Resort just 30 kms out of Cape Town has to offer.

About Mthwakazi

Here’s a little bit of background about Mthwakazi:

uMthwakazi grew up singing in choirs. Afr winning Opera competitions, she worked in the theatre from the age of 13 years and later studied Xhosa Bow Music at the University of FortHare.

Ultimately, in 2009, she toured with Isango-Portobello, the Oliveir Award-winning South African Opera Company from Cape Town, to London, Paris and Holland with such productions as “The Mysteries” by Eric Abraham and “The Magic Flute” by W.A. Mozart, both directed by Mark Dornford-May.

On her return she persued her own solo music career where she staged with such icons as Madosini, Thandiswa Mazwai, Jonas Gwangwa, Sibongile Khumalo, Tina Schouw and Neo Muyanga.

She featured as a guest musician in a recently released album and appeared in a DVD performance by Simphiwe Dana.

uMthwakazi is currently recording her debut music record in Muizenberg to be released early this year, 2012.

We are very much looking forward to see this great talent LIVE at Monkey Valley Resort on 29th January 2012 – YEBO GOGO!

Monkey Valley resort will be rocking! Make sure you BOOK HERE.

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Color Trend 2012

So what’s the Color Trend 2012?

Clearly, neutral colors are out; we stay with the reds, the pinks and greens and especially bright colors with “Tangerine Tango” leading the hot palette… with a tan-tan musical note to it! Absolutely perfect for South Africa where a beautiful summer had us dance into the new year!

Seems they made a round in my garden… Web Design with Passion is fully in the trend! Now here’s for a tango!

Trend color two is “solar power” – a yellow that’s again a key color, this time with a maizy hue, totally within the global trend of a ‘green economy’ and definitely part of the above photo… You may even find a soft margarita green.

Color Trend 2012

Besides the Color Trend 2012 the emphasis is on being ‘bold’ and grabbing the viewers attention – which at the end of the day is the sense of every graphic, video, ad or website design! No wonder that the fonts should have depth in one way or another, meaning shadows, 3D effects, transparencies, gradients – just make it special!

Best is to extend this attitude across the background and add graphics, high quality large pictures, animations, videos, media… grab your visitors… and yes: retro and vintage are celebrating their comeback and if that’s what you like: integrate it and add your personal touch!

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Color Trend 2012

So what’s the Color Trend 2012?

Clearly, neutral colors are out; we stay with the reds, the pinks and greens and especially bright colors with “Tangerine Tango” leading the hot palette… with a tan-tan musical note to it! Absolutely perfect for South Africa where a beautiful summer had us dance into the new year!

Seems they made a round in my garden… Web Design with Passion is fully in the trend! Now here’s for a tango!

Trend color two is “solar power” – a yellow that’s again a key color, this time with a maizy hue, totally within the global trend of a ‘green economy’ and definitely part of the above photo… You may even find a soft margarita green.

Color Trend 2012

Besides the Color Trend 2012 the emphasis is on being ‘bold’ and grabbing the viewers attention – which at the end of the day is the sense of every graphic, video, ad or website design! No wonder that the fonts should have depth in one way or another, meaning shadows, 3D effects, transparencies, gradients – just make it special!

Best is to extend this attitude across the background and add graphics, high quality large pictures, animations, videos, media… grab your visitors… and yes: retro and vintage are celebrating their comeback and if that’s what you like: integrate it and add your personal touch!

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Vineyard Hotel Weddings

Set within beautiful gardens and a very elegant ambiente, Vineyard Hotel weddings must be amongst the most memorable in Cape Town, South Africa! The below photo shows the garden terrace opening onto immaculate lawns with flowering pink bougainvillea, white dietes and guinea fowl visiting to pick up some delicacies from the award-winning gourmet menu!!!

Vineyard Hotel Weddings

Vineyard Hotel weddings are ideal for couples on the go who seek to get married in Cape Town – meaning within the city and in close proximity to the buzzing Cavendish Shopping Center – while enjoying closeness to Nature and the majestic backdrop of Table Mountain. At this time of the year it’s just too obvious why Cape Town is called “the garden city”: absolutely everything is blooming… jacarandas are oceans of soft mauves splashing their blossoms onto the streets… and even the highways offer alleys of flowering shrubs like white and pink oleander and fiery red hibiscus to name just a few.

It is in this beautifully landscaped and lush garden bordering on the banks of Liesbeek River that we prepared and then celebrated a Cape Town Wedding with an Irish touch. At this stage, I am still busy sorting the wedding photos and wedding video clips, audios, sounds and music! It’s enough material for a feature film… and the photos from the next station of this multiple-place-wedding are already coming in!

Meanwhile, I have to work in a very reduced way while waiting for my new system with the required memory and punch to edit all this material and then create the Wedding Website! It will be yet another exciting learning curve – but it’s work I really love doing… and it’s just the beginning!

To be continued…

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Best Cape Town Weddings

Cape Town Weddings are a hot topic on Google right now as the Mother City and South Africa as a whole are exploding with the most glorious summer weather and Nature is in full bloom. However, at the end of the day, the best Cape Town Weddings don’t depend on a specific place but on the intention of the people gathering to celebrate the happy event! It’s always about the people – family and friends – who bring their love, joy and genuine goodwill to bless the new couple and ensure that they will be remembering their wedding day as the happy beginning of their united lives.

Best Cape Town Weddings

Of course, it’s also high season for photographers and videographers who aim at shooting the best moments of these Cape Town Weddings – each one with their specific style – some super-glamorous, others more journalistic or with an artistic touch, some like it colourful, others simply black and white. What is important is to capture the atmosphere and those very unique instants – mostly totally unexpected – that have a profound meaning and really touch our heart. In this respect the wedding preparations leading up to the event may be just as important as the wedding itself – and – as on this photo here – there are many things going through a loving mother’s mind when she ‘releases’ her daughter into a new and promising bond.

Wedding Website

I was asked why I was preparing a Wedding Website when normally people go for a so-called “Wedding Album”?

Well, one doesn’t exclude the other … and a form of a wedding album was delivered already to satisfy all those who wanted to see photos ‘now’, almost as it happened…. – however, and especially in today’s Internet-oriented world and with so many families being spread across the planet, there are many advantages to having a wedding website:

Firstly, you can seal your new bond by buying your new name (as a .com of course!) – it has something solid and lasting to it, don’t you think? That’s a good start…

Second, a wedding website can be fast and easily viewed on many devices by anyone who is given access from all over the world, and this for at least 35 years!

Third, a wedding website can be very interactive; friends and family can leave comments and, of course, the new couple can continue writing and adding pictures, videos and audios of their new life… like an online family-bio…

Fourth… and this I think is simply the best: you can easily turn a Wedding Website into a Family Website … adding the new events like the birth of a child, its first steps, its first drawings, its first so many things… as well as trips to exotic holiday destinations, their favourite recipes, when he meets the Queen or Donald Duck… or anything of importance that the young couple wants to share…

Fifth: a wedding website is a brilliant investment in your future, it is something that’s alive, vibrant and communicative – and it’s growing… extending that first moment when you gave meaning to your words into the future with all its promises, traps and surprises… for sure something your grand-children will enjoy !

Last but certainly not least: this wedding website belongs to YOU – it’s not exposed to the volatilities and risks of any social network where someone else is in control – no, this is entirely YOUR STORY – YOU ARE IN CONTROL!

And that alone is priceless!

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Happy Weddings in Cape Town on Google

Monitoring our SEO results on a regular basis is an ongoing process – also in 2012. We are determined to give our customers the very best service and help them achieve high rankings on Google Top 10. This is nothing we can nor should take for granted as algorhythms change and so many relatively volatile factors are involved, however, keeping an eye on the pulse and being flexible allows to firstly observe any major changes and then adapt accordingly and as fast as possible.

In this respect, I watched the results of  “Happy Weddings in Cape Town” on Google – this being a short and sweet article published yesterday on the relatively new website I created for Monkey Valley Resort HERE.

The result – and this within only 42 seconds – was absolutely astonishing: Position One on Google ahead of 2,560,000 search results! See the screenshot I took yesterday, below:

Happy Weddings in Cape Town on Google

This morning – basically a little less than a day later – I wondered how the ranking would look now – and here is the even more spectacular result: Positions 1, 2 and 3 on Google Top 10!

Cape Town Weddings

What does this mean in terms of Cape Town Weddings and Monkey Valley Resort?

It’s quite simple – yet demands highly qualified skills and the right WordPress based Semiomantics Script to be achieved: if you take the above screenshot as an example, you see a typical Google page. There are Google Ads at the top (on a  yellow background), Google Ads to the right (continued to the next page indicating this is a highly sought-after keyword and gets lots of advertising) – and then you see basically 10 websites competing for the top 10 positions on Google (this is page one of Google with a total of 2,560,000 search returns… with always 10 websites per page… do your own maths as to how many Google pages on this keyword combination alone there are…!)

It means that the 10 websites who made it to Google Top 10 are visible for anyone punching in “Happy Weddings in Cape Town” – perhaps because that’s what they want to go for while planning for their own wedding… – and of course these 10 websites are the one’s these people will click on! Logical – who goes any further if what they are looking for is on the first page?

It means that these 10 websites who made it to the top get all the attention… the clicks… the so-called traffic! It means that the potential of making a sale is divided amongst those 10!

Of course, there are all these Google Ads – meaning the owners of those websites pay heavily – 24/7/365 – to be visible on Page one on Google and get attention as well! It means that heavy Google Ads budgets are allocated each and every month – short-term, medium-term and long-term… and forever rising. A budget of $50 a day brings you nowhere given the price a click can cost these days! So do your maths again… and decide what makes more sense: investing in the right website (yes, there are updates and upgrades as the Internet changes all the time, that’s just as it is…) or be dependent on heavy advertising without a guarantee to get it right (keywords move like mercury…)

Google Top 10

The choice is – as always your’s! Nothing stops you from doing both: getting the right website and advertising with AdSense. But if you’re on a tight budget the answer is pretty clear – yes?

What is needed, however, is regular posting, meaning writing good content on a daily basis to keep things moving and alive. The Google spyders like to be stimulated and fed with new original material each day… and you may be in right competition on special keywords – like in this wedding example. In this case you either do it yourself, or you employ someone who takes on this important online marketing and publishing job – or you outsource to a professional who may be the best guarantee for continued success on Google.

Being visible on Google Top 10 – like you see above… meaning 3 positions of 10 on page one, means that you get 30% of the traffic! Meaning a large chance to get visitors to your website… and if your website is attractive and offers the answers and sales pipeline people are looking for, your online business will grow and bring you the desired success.

I hope I could explain this well and simple enough to respond to many questions received on the topic. It ain’t easy… I know! But being number one on a Formula One track ain’t either… and this is not much different, really!

If things aren’t clear yet, let me know…

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