Jason

Additions to the TOP Test!

April 23, 2008 Jason2 Comments

It’s kind of a no blog Wednesday for me here at CB, but I’ve made a few additions to the TOP Test today! Now at 23 questions, it requires more right answers to get a 90% or better. Do you remember your score from last time? Stop in again and see if you can improve! Do you remember the questions from last time? See if you can tell which ones are new! Share your thoughts, scores, and ideas for new questions here in the comments or via email.

Feel free to add the page to your browsers or link to your blog: http://toptest.canonblogger.com

Some more are on the way, and I’ve also got another article on the Web Gallery setup that may be of interest that I’ll put out tomorrow: FTP software. Last but not least, don’t forget the poll going on how many cameras you own featured here on the blog. It ends on the 30th, so as they say in politics: Let your voice be heard! Until tomorrow then, happy shooting and watch those apertures!

Creating templates

April 22, 2008 JasonLeave a comment

Hey all, today is tutorial Tuesday, and I share a technique I used recently in creating a calendar template to import client photos in. I could only get about half way through the tutorial before I had to stop (I am trying to keep video tutorials at or under 5 minutes), so this will be part 1 of a two part series. Today I show you how I created the graphics with some guides, and keeping things all manageable on just a couple levels. As usual, the tutorial is linked in both Flash (web based) and QuickTime (iPod/iTunes friendly) formats at the end of the post.

Additionally, I’ve got a few rather unique shots (I think anyway) from my outing to Magnolia Gardens this weekend. There was a heavy thunderstorm the previous day, so lots of opportunities for some macro and water works. Here’s two I thought that the viewing audience might enjoy:

That’s about it for today…a few photos and a tutorial for your viewing pleasure. A multimedia blowout this week thus far, with an article yesterday, photos and videos today, and who knows what tomorrow has in store…more articles, and maybe….an audio podcast *gasp!* (Likely not with the latter though – so no promises!) Until then, happy shooting and watch those apertures! 🙂

CB Episode 038: Calendar Template

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Meaningful Monday Materials

April 21, 2008 JasonLeave a comment

Yeah yeah, I know, sometimes the alliteration gets old, but it really is a disease for someone who enjoys to write! Anyway, resuming the content on how to create web galleries, I thought that today would be a good day to share the next chapter draft with the reading/listening/viewing audience.

This go around, it’s Chapter 3 which talks about some of the basic coding concepts. If you are going to be customizing your web galleries from software like Lightroom or Photoshop, some basics of coding concepts are helpful to get the end results you need. Thus, I’ve put together a very basic, but detailed article that talks about the most basic of coding, being HTML and CSS. I also include some useful resources for those interested. Anyway, not much else to report today. For some news and events from around the web, stop over to Jason D’ Moore’s site for his Monday P&P Blogroll. (Thanks for the linkback Jason, and helping out last week was a lot of fun, let me know if you ever need any assistance – it really kept me on my proverbial toes!) 🙂

Happy shooting all, and watch those apertures! Here’s the link to the PDF article: Coding Basics.pdf

Friday Night Lighting…(and a funny)

April 18, 2008 JasonLeave a comment

Normally Frida posts are filled with humor, funny and generally stuff that is trivia to help keep us all grounded in reality and realize that there is more to life with photography. I am starting to get a little of a backlog with the projects I’ve been working on though, so I am goig to lighten the load by one project here today – and that is a DIY lighting project.

Before I continue, the DIY lighting concept is not something that comes easily to me, as I fully admit that I am no lighting pro. If you want pro advice, the best place to go is to Strobist where David Hobby hosts an excellent lighting blog that has become pretty much the place to go for lighting tutorials. What I have learned from that site would take days to rattle off here. So, rather than regale you with all of that, I’ll just say that Strobist has given me new insight into uses for everyday objects.

Here’s the lighting project – a while back David talked on his blog about using household items to create lighting peripherals such as reflectors, bounce lights, light stands, and has been a common theme for quite a while. So, the inspiration for this came from what to use to make your own DIY snoot. A snoot is a device that focuses the light from your flash (which you know of course to take off the camera if you want really good light).

Well, at work I noticed one day that a commercial industrial sized roll of TP had been used and the cardboard roller that it was on was just sitting on top of the paper towel dispenser. I picked it up, looked it over and it seemed to be close to the size of my 550EX flash. I took it home and tried it out – bingo! The only problem was, it really wasn’t long enough. Well, no biggie, I just waited another few weeks and sure enough, another TP roller appeared on top of the towel dispenser. I snaked that one away, and brought them home. A few pieces of scotch tape to attach the two devices together and I was ready for my test shot:

Notice the light leaking through the side though? Well, I decided good old duct tape might be able to fix that. So, a few tears and strips later, and I got this shot:

Looking a lot better now, but now I am noticing a little light seeping through the back end still – any ideas how to eliminate that, or is that there in most snoots? Not sure, but this cost me a grand total of probably 05 ¢ of tape. So, I played around with the distance, as David suggests over at the Strobist site, and I finally am happy to announce that this snoot works best at a distance of about 4′ from the subject, and (surprise surprise) at about a 45 degree angle to the subject. I was hamming it up for the camera just to give a little variety while I figured this out, and actually came out of the lighting test with a self-portrait I am not too ashamed of. It’s end-of-week scruff, so that will be gone come Monday, but I thought the lighting effect of a snoot (concentrated light) is pretty useful.

So, there it is – the Friday Night Light experiment. I know it’s late, but better late than never right? Anyone else have any DIY lighting experiments they want to share? If so, all are welcome to join in the comments area. Otherwise, have a great weekend, happy shooting, and watch those apertures! (mine was a little soft – but I think that may have been oof, not dof softness)…

Oh yeah, I almost forgot, Fridays always feature a WTD cartoon, so here’s my fave of the week:

No blog Thursday – smelling the flowers (and shooting the moon!)

April 17, 2008 JasonLeave a comment

Sorry all – after my Jalbum tutorial hit on Wednesday, I spent the better part of my afternoon and evening talking with some of their folks – and they want me to do a few more videos for them. I excitedly started talking logistics, and details before putting together a few short versions for use on the website. At 11:30, I realized – egad – I’ve not done my Thursday Thoughts yet!

So…rather than try to cobble something together at the last minute, I’ll make this a no blog Thursday, and suggest that if you are still up, go outside and look at that moon! Man it’s gorgeous!

Wednesday’s Webinar

April 16, 2008 Jason3 Comments

Okay, it’s not really a webinar, it’s a tutorial, but since I usually publish the tuts on Tuesdays, I had to come up with a clever name for the post title, and webinar was the best I could think of…it’s corny, but what the heck.

This week, the final installment of creating web galleries using different applications. Previously, I had looked at how to create web galleries using both Photoshop and Lightroom, and discussed some of the basics involved there, as well as some of the pros and cons of each. In this third and final segment, I look at an open-sourced option called Jalbum. This actually turned out to be a really cool application with some features built in that just made me say “Now hey, that’s cool!” For starters, you can add a comments section for your photos – great if you want to get a dialog going. You can also include a shopping cart and a link to a paypal site for people to not only check off what they want to purchase, but also complete the transaction. Very slick and clever implementation here. I wish the folks at Adobe had thought to incorporate this sort of feature in Lightroom – I can’t imagine a professional photographer not wanting to sell their work, so am wondering why Adobe seems to have missed the boat on this one. Perhaps when LR 2.0 comes out of beta, this will be an incorporated feature. (Is anyone at Adobe watching?)

After watching the video, you should bounce back here to the blog, so please feel free to share your comments on the video. Did you like it? Was there anything I missed that you would like to see? Too much material, not enough? Did I talk too fast? Let me know if you have software or applications you would like to see featured as I can usually find a trial version or something to go over some of the basics. Comments section or email, as always are encouraged. We’ve also only got two weeks left in the camera quantity poll, so don’t forget to vote!

Anyway, enough teasing and hinting of what’s to come…I bid you adieu and happy shooting until next week as I give you the full tutorial on creating web galleries with JAlbum! (don’t forget to watch those apertures…)

View Jalbum tutorial online (flash-based)

Photo Tuesday (to take your mind off taxes)

April 15, 2008 Jason4 Comments

Since I devoted Monday’s post to the Photography and Photoshop Blogroll report for Jason D. Moore, my other announcement got shifted back a day, so this week things will be a tad more compressed. I’ll try not to bore you with excessive links and heavy-handed material where you have to read a lot. That means – it’s Photo Tuesday! (The tutorial will be released Wednesday…since there’s no “Wednesday Web Gems” for the theme.) Besides, since it is a blog that I am pretty much writing single-handedly, I can change things up if I want, right? 🙂

So…for Photo Tuesday I thought I’d announce that I have a new gallery of photos put together on my dedicated photo site. The site portal is here: www.jasons-photography.com and the latest gallery addition is here. Please take a moment to stop over and then share your thoughts with me here (or via email) on the shots. Too many? Not enough? Layout? Treatment? Etc.? I’ve collected these images over the past 3-4 years and finally have enough (I think) for a dedicated gallery of wildlife. As a teaser, here’s a few thumbnails…all taken from my Canon XT and processed through Adobe Lightroom 2.0 (Beta)

As a final reminder, it is tax day here in the U.S., so if you haven’t done your taxes yet, today’s your last chance to get them in legally. If you’re a last minute kind of person, this is pretty much it! Well, that’s it for Tuesday – happy shooting and watch those apertures! 😉

Sunday/Monday Round-Up

April 13, 2008 JasonLeave a comment

A fellow blogger and photographer, Jason D. Moore, is out on a project this week and asked for some help in writing his weekly P&P (Photoshop & Photography) blogroll which comes out every Monday. With so many interesting and inspirational blogs and resources out there, I could hardly say no, so, this Monday I am happy to fill in for Jason in that regard. Andrew Smith is covering the first half (and is already finished, thereby indicating my slacker status), so be sure to stop over there to see what his half of the round-up includes. Since this took a little time to put together, I obviously had this done before Monday morning, so decided to post here on Sunday to catch the end of the week-end crowd. So, without further ado, on behalf of Jason (and Andrew), here is…

Jason Moore’s Weekly P&P #72:

· Photo Two-Twenty Kinda interesting blurred and shallow focus captures form a track meet. If you’re into abstract works, this is definitely one you should stop on over to see.

· PHOTOBLOG by Jim Larimer has been quiet for the last week or two, but nonetheless, his posts from the last week of March had some very powerful imagery. Worth a stop over just for the creative appeal he has.

· Photoshop Insider – Scott Kelby – Off in Dubai with his brother and good buddy Jeff Revell of PhotoWalk Pro notoriety (see below)

· Photoshop Killer Tips Pretty self explanatory from the title, Matt K. one of the Photoshop Guys gives a tip a day and worth checking out if you want to learn how to commit type, stop an action, clean up your palettes, and decrease file size.

· Photoshop Quicktips Looks like Justin has decided to focus his work efforts elsewhere as this has not seen much activity in a while, but his personal site (http://justinseeley.com) has been pretty regularly active with his sharing of content in the way of thoughts, reviews, and such. May want to update your links to his work accordingly.

· PhotoWalkPro : Jeff Revell joined his good buddy Scott Kelby and Scott’s brother in Dubai for a shoot. Posting some really cool images thus far, so will be one to keep an eye on! (Besides, he’s a devotee of photo walks, which I personally think is one of the best ways to learn, so definitely give the site a visit…

· Richard Vanek – Black and White Photography A quiet week for Richard as he’s been down and out with a bug of some kind. If you’ve never been here before, he’s got some great B&W shots – plus a dry sense of humor (but that’s a good thing!)

· Samuel Barr Photography A small prayer for Sam as he is out from Thursday on bereavement. Judging from past images and diversity fo subject matter, one to keep on your radar though…I love his work he posted Thursday as he made the announcement. Very powerful image!

· SDuffy Photography This weak Shawn shares info on mounting your pictures, some Flickr photo faves, and his own news reports on his “Friday Link Love”. Found a few myself to check out, so stop on over!

· Strobist An authority on lighting, David Hobby this week includes sticks and paint cans for stands, Honl Speed Grids, Reynolds Wrap backgrounds, and much more!

· Terry White’s Tech Blog Terry White’s coverage this week includes a great report on Elinchrom’s wireless peripherals for shooting tethered. Well worth reading!

· The Digital Story Derrick Story’s blog is a new one on me, and I wish I’d known about this sooner. This week’s news includes unlocking raw on P&S cameras and a Stephen Johnson interview via podcast.

· The Global Photographer Andy Biggs was out last week in Botswana and South Africa, so not much recent activity, but bookmark because on his return there should be some spectacular imagery there!

· Visual Realia Okay, yeah, this is Andrew’s so he gets a plug regardless, but Man Alive, he’s got some great floral shots! Great stuff here Andrew! I like how Andrew includes a short poem associated with each image too. Nice touch…

· Watch This Space Like bikes? Then be sure to stop over here as Stephen Waterfall shares his images from Forest City Velodrome where he went last weekend to shoot the race.

· What the Duck I’ve been including WTD comics on the blog for a while – great to keep levity when all around you things are falling to pieces. Always remember to laugh!

· Weekly Photography Tips Scott does a review of Matt K.’s book “Layers” from PSUTV. I’ve always liked Matt’s style, but Scott’s review makes me want to buy a couple copies of this. A good review too.

· What the Heck Journal Martin Andreasen has some interesting photos on his daily photo blog. If you need some creative inspiration or ideas, this is a great place to visit! You can see why he’s got the blog titled this way, and it definitely makes you stop and think…

Another weekend shot to….heck

April 11, 2008 Jason2 Comments

First it’s the teeth, then it’s the toes – anyway, another weekend of hopefully getting out and shooting for a change of pace (I really do prefer to be out taking pictures, rather than in PS or LR editing them, or even be inside on a computer, but being in the IT industry as a profession, well, that’s the fallout…anyway I digress). As it is, I am stuck inside again, so after a day of actually walking around on my feet, I am trying to post with one leg sticking out to the side (left) and leaning back to write. Needless to say, it’ll be a short post. As a kind of wrap-up of the various projects I have in the works, here’s a week in review:

Work is almost finished on the web gallery articles. I have one more video tutorial to record on JAlbum, and two articles to share with the readership.
My magazine cutting frenzy continues as I shred through stacks of almost two years of photo magazines. The binder is getting thicker and the magazine stack is getting smaller!
I’ve launched a beta for a new idea on a sub-domain for Canon Blogger, The Online Photograph Test (or TOP Test), which has already seen a few corrections and improvements, so thanks to those that wrote in and emailed…keep ’em comin’!

In other news around the photo world:

Adobe launched their new “TV” service…it’s really a flash-based online multimedia portal to all types of content, naturally with much of it focusing on Adobe products. Seems like a cool enough idea, and probably intended to compete with YouTube, but on with a more professional and polished approach. We’ll see if it catches on – my guess is yes with the poster boys talking it up all over the web.
Adobe makes the weekly news twice as they re-released Camera Raw 4.4 that were previously pulled.pulled, have since been re-released by Adobe. This link is for the Windows version of CS3, LR and Mac versions are also available from the download site – just use Google as needed to find the version you are looking for.
In case you missed it earlier this week, Donny did his last episode (my guess is “of the season” in another hysterical segment of You Suck at Photoshop -careful with kids around…’nuff said. Well, it ‘s been followed up by a “honorarium” of sorts where you can vote for the DIY’er in both Photoshop and comedy categories. Kinda funny, but not the same as Donny – so go watcfh, then vote to bring Donny out of hiding!
What The Duck makes it’s Friday appearance below, which means my leg is getting numb and the hour is getting late, so it’s time to bid a hasty adieu! Good night, have a great weekend, happy shooting, and watch those apertures!

How well do you score?

April 10, 2008 Jason2 Comments

First off, let me state that I am aware I missed a post and did not really give much advance warning. Now that it’s done, and at least ready to see a beta response, I guess I can announce it here. Well, before I make any announcements, let me back up a little bit. Since inception about 6 months ago, I have endeavored to put forth meaningful and thoughtful comments and ideas on this blog – mostly about photography. Sometimes I have presented things from as professional a perspective as I can muster, and at other times, I have been admittedly personal in my expressions. Either way, it’s probably fair to say that I have been putting a lot of time, thought, and energies into posting articles, content, and interesting materials for all to enjoy. This got me thinking about the constantly changing nature of blogs. Something new each and every day – the time and energies to putting new and fresh content out on such a regular basis can be overwhelming, to say the least.

So, with that little nugget, I was thinking – what if I were to put together something more constant, but still with the ability to change and improve? Not articles mind you (and my set of web gallery articles is still progressing – almost there, I promise!)…but an online, interactive approach to sharing and offering resources to help people learn more about photography. Now that would be cool, right? Well, here it is! It’s the brand, new, just been born, never-been seen before:

The Online Photography Test

That’s right – I’ve been putting some time into setting up a site that can give people a place to go and see how they are doing with their photography. Right now, it’s in a beta form, with only 20 questions, but I am hoping to add more with time, and also to add various types of tests. Eventually, I see the site as having a set of metrics where people can go to see where they’ve improved, what they need to work on, and where they are pretty solid in their knowledge base. Naturally I am starting with the basics and intermediate material here, with more advanced stuff to come later. There will hopefully also be a comment section eventually, where people can submit ideas for new questions, and discuss the material or see some dialog there within the photographic community. That clearly is “just a dream” right now, but should be fairly easy to implement if there is sufficient interest.

So, without further ado: stop over at the beta test site and take what I am affectionately calling the OPT Test. Take the test and see how you score! Did you do well? Any material you would like to see added? Dropped? Changed? What do you think of the wording and format? Since comments aren’t enabled there – please come on back here to CB and share your thoughts on the newest and latest addition to the CB set of resources. I’ll put forwarding on at the final site once things are more cleaned up and there are various versions for people to explore. So, take the test, and see how well you score! Happy shooting and see you back here again tomorrow (watch those apertures!