EOD and a Newsletter Overhaul
This newsletter is dead. Long live this newsletter. JK but I will be using a different newsletter platform starting next year because this one needs to get their shit together. A few weeks before the holidays I busted my ass trying to set up a print shop to share landscape prints I had for sale as well as gift certificates for portrait and family sessions. I was eager to share about the launch in this newsletter but immediately after sending it I started getting responses saying that the links were all flagged as DANGEROUS. It turns out that Gmail (and maybe other email providers) have recently changed their security algorithms and the redirect language that Buttondown (my newsletter company) uses for links gets flagged as dangerous to these big email providers. I ran tests by drafting newsletters with "safe" links like amazon.com, even BUTTONDOWN.COM (don't click those, lol) and they all come up as dangerous.
I was annoyed and a little embarrassed. I worked hard to set up my little print shop and I was excited to share my work and make some holiday cash but now I'm sending supposedly sketchy links to all my subscribers. I'm sure some people thought that they were legitimate phishing scams based on the severe language of the warning messages.
Buttondown has always felt like kind of a scrappy, underdog kind of company. There has always been bugs, but I can't really work with this. I need to be able to link to my own stuff but also as a wedding vendor I need to be able to link up my colleagues. I'll spend the next week figuring out what newsletter platform will be the best fit for and I'll resume this silliness soon enough.
It's the end of the year and I'm about to head out the door to do my last shoot of 2023. It will be my 88th photo assignment of the year. Not bad! I had a blast. I saw some crazy stuff. I'm really looking forward to next year. I kind of miss the hustle and bustle of busy season.
The pictures this week are from a couple of rolls of film I just got developed. Most of it is from a family trip we just took to Pennsylvania and Maryland. Some are older.
That's it for 2023. I don't know how navel-gazey I'll be in the new year and how compelled I'll feel to make yearly wrap ups and things. I'd love to hear people's thoughts on what they liked to read about and see in these newsletters. I hope to stick with it as consistently as I did this year. I'd love to hear anything, really. Give me a morale boost as I transition to a new (hopefully much better) platform.
