Sorry all, the trip out west must have done a number on me because I was out as soon as I got home from work today. In trying to muster up the energy to record, produce, and output a tutorial today, I just could not find it in me. So, rather than deliver less than meaningful content, I’ll call this a no blog Tuesday and hopefully come out firing on all cylinders tomorrow. Happy shooting and keep them apertures in check!
Category: Announcements
March Mystery…nothing happened yesterday!
Okay, well, that’s not true, but as predicted, I was not able to put a tutorial together for Tuesday, and it’s unlikely I will have one out this week simply due to time constraints and the fact that I have been spending most of my time recreating and spending some quality time with my wife, We’ve been enjoying our vacation immensely, and I shall return tomorrow with hopefully a little more info to share. I would expect that next week will see two tutorials to make up for the downtime this week. So, with that in mind, enjoy the rest of the day. Happy shooting, watch those apertures, and we’ll see you here tomorrow! 🙂
For now I’ll leave with a teaser of my day at Invesco…
Thursday Throwbacks
Okay…let’s throw things back two days and pretend it’s Tuesday again. Why, you ask? Because I finished the tutorial I had started. It’s just a quickie, but does explore some often missed elements from the Tools Palette – particularly with the Options bar for each tool. While there clearly wasn’t enough time to go into great detail on all tools – I did give the crop tool and the Lasso tool a run for their money. Watch me screw up too and blithely ignore it while powering through! Rather funny stuff – but hey, if we take ourselves too seriously, then we’ve stopped having fun, right?
Anyway , here’s the links to the Flash and Download versions of the tutorial.
Enjoy the weekly shenanigans, happy shooting and keep watching d’em apertures! 😉
Wednesday Withdrawl
Wow – time flies when you’re away from the computer – my hands have been literally tied up with a pinched nerve in one hand and a few cuts and bruises on the other from my voracious weekend. As a result, I have not been able to spend nearly enough time either behind a camera or in front of the computer. So, today is an “official” no blog Wednesday. Tutorial will have to wait another day as I am doing things very piecemeal at this juncture. Hopefully Friday will be full of news enough to carry everyone through the weekend. Stop back and look for the tutorial of the week, some web links, and my weekly thought segment – until then, happy shooting and watch those apertures!
Woot! Another Wisdom-filled Wednesday of Web Wonder!
As promised, here’s another set of things to inspire, amaze, and tantalize your senses from what I’ve been reading and seeing online in the last week or so. In the interests of keeping things from rounding out to increments of fives and tens (Sports Night reference – anyone know it, or am I alone in my vagaries?), here’s 6 links for Wednesday:
- Joe McNally’s Video on creating a shot of the Empire State Building (Although I think I posted this before – but worth a second watch anyway…)
- Earthbound Light – Very good site – particularly the photo tips archives
- Action Central – probably one of the best resources for Photoshop actions (and they’re all free!)
- A History of Photography – everything you could want to know (from an historical perspective that is…)
- NAPP Member Portfolios – some of these will take your breath away!
- Happy Belated Birthday to Photoshop (yesterday)! The first version ever shipped on Feb 19th, 1990!
Well I’ve wasted enough of your Wednesday, so happy shooting – just remember to…(wait for it)…watch those apertures!
Tuesday Tricks and Treats (and a tutorial)
This Tuesday, I’d like to share some neat tricks I came across online. First, How to Light a Shot on Two Planes – this came courtesy of The Strobist (one of my regular reads) – plus it includes a really cool-looking shot of some Turkish Delight! Apparently he (David Hobby, Strobist author) did this workshop in Florida last weekend with industry folks like Scott Kelby and others from NAPP in the room – no, that wouldn’t be at all intimidating!
Another neat treat I read about through PhotoJoJo was a blog where two friends who live a fair distance (3191 miles to be exact) from each other and they each share an image a day on their blog, one from each region. A definite cornucopia of inspiration as sometimes it’s the regular snapshot-types while others it’s truly breathtaking scenes…and when the two complement each other, it’s just too cool (February 7th is my favorite day so far)! Stop over when you get a minute and comment on their work – they deserve the accolades. The blog name, coincidentally, is titled 3191!
And last, but not least, the tutorial for the week – my inspiration for this came from (surprise surprise), NAPP contributor Matt Kloskowski. He had done this trick on the show (and in the NAPP member space) for Macs, with a little verbal instruction set at the trailer for Windows users. After sharing a few msgs with him – I decided to do the counterpart tutorial this week for Canon Blogger – the Windows version of creating a Desktop Calendar. So…to Matt, thanks for the creative idea, and to the rest of the world, here’s how to create a desktop calendar for Windows. Enjoy!
Uh Oh…
I spent too much time surfing after dinner and not focusing on the tutorial…and paying the price now. I just finished cleaning things up and am entering the 2nd half of production. I fear with he time being 10:30pm, it might not get out until after midnight. But, in the meantime, I had an interesting dialog this evening on a stock agencies forums debating the question of whether fine art and stock photography can co-exist in the same market. The discussion never had a resolution, but it did open my eyes to a few outlets online for those who are interested in marketing their fine art photography. I suspect that may be part of an article that may emerge from the weekend! In the meantime, the tutorial should be finished and ready for download once you wake up in the morning. So, for now I’ll bid all a good night, and again, apologies for the belated tutorial this week.
Oh Yeah – GO GIANTS!
BRRRRR!!!!
Here’s what’s going on as I enjoy MLK day off…first, the Sunday football yielded Super Bowl berths for New England and the Giants. The frozen tundra of Lambeau Field (as Chris Berman says), was quite cold at 0 and the wind chill at -20! Makes the teens of SC seem timid. Nevertheless, it’s cold here in South Carolina too. At times like this, it makes me wonder whether or not Global Warming really is a problem.
The South Carolina Photography Guild had their monthly shoot yesterday at Middleton Plantation, and while it wasn’t in the teens, it was still very chilly, as we bundled up against the wind and elements. I came away from the trip with several decent shots – enough to put into my galleries as a dedicated album! I’ll share a few shots at the end of this post.
Today I am going to purchase Photoshop CS3 Extended edition. I have been toying around with the trial version for long enough, so figured it’s time to bite the bullet. Lightroom may also become a purchase option too, depending on funds. That will likely take place this afternoon. I am also going to try and get the tutorial through production today for publication tomorrow morning, so that may be out early too (doncha love Monday’s off?) 🙂
Scott Kelby’s blog, Photoshop Insider, got a fair amount of traffic last week as he produced a “wish list” of sorts for Lightroom where people could sound of in the comments. This was one of those rare opportunities to let developers know what you think, because my guess is he’s got their ear as one of the leading trainers for the Adobe platforms in the country! I added my two cents for multiple paper profile support (on or around #120 I think). See if you can find me! 🙂
Last but not least, I saw a few posts around the web for the SoPoBoMo – if you ever wanted to put a book of your imagery together, now’s your chance! Check them out and sign up today (I couldn’t commit to the time frame because of some other pending things during that same period. Neat stuff though…
Not much else going on for Monday yet (it’s only 9am), so I’ll leave with a few photos from our outing yesterday:
Friday Filter Fretting (and a funny)
Well, I’ve decided to go ahead and pull the trigger on two purchases… first on an ultra wide angle lens that has been noticably missing from my bag thus far. The winner of my internal mental anguish is the Sigma 10-20mm lens. With the free shipping thanks to my NAPP membership, I’ll be picking this up from B&H Photo (which I would probably use even w/out the bonus of free shipping – B&H rocks!). Canon just did not make a wide angle that would fill my needs (nor fit my budget), so this Canon Blogger could theoretically be called a Canon/Sigma Blogger as I have an equal number of both vendor lenses in my gear bag.
The other is an accessory item – a graduated Neutral Density filter. Knowing how expensive they are, I figured it might be a good idea to make this purchase all at once since I know the wide angle will be most most for landscape photography. I am still torn here though between a B+W one or the Tiffen one. I’ll freely admit to not knowing my head from a hole in the ground when it comes to filters, so thought I would make the Friday post a user-driven one. Which filter would be better suited for use with this lens? Both B+W and Tiffen make the 77mm filter in the graduated ND variety, and both are non-coated filters, with a 2 stop loss of light overall and a glass rating of .6 With only a $20 price difference between these I am wondering if there is a certain element (pardon the pun) of distinction between brand names that I am missing. So….what do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments or with me via email (jason [at] canonblogger [dot] com).
Last, but not least, as many photo-types do, here’s the weekly funny from WTD:
Happy Friday, Happy Shooting, and don’t forget to watch your apertures! 🙂
Web 2.0 Style Graphics
In keeping with the theme of last weeks tutorial, I’d like to round out the discussion of Web 2.0 styles. Last week we took a look at using Photoshop to create Web 2.0 style text and type, while this week we turn the focus to Web 2.0 style graphics. With the emphasis on Web 2.0 style effects lately, one may ask what this has to do with photography. Well, in creating our photographs, we often like to use the web as a means of displaying them. With the myriad of cookie cutter templates out there, creating a customized and personalized web site is becoming more and more crucial if you want your images to stand out.
If it helps, think of the web as your framing process. Sure, you could hire it out. There are web designers out there that would be fully capable of creating a custom web site for you. But, if you are limited in your budget, and are like many of us, you can create a nicely polished website that will enhance your images nicely. The website in this sense represents the mat and the frame through which your clients and customers view your products.
This is not to say that a photographer should dedicate serious amounts of time to web and graphic design. Au contraire! Rather, take a default template from the likes of the Photoshop and Lightroom options you already have, and customize them with your own graphics. It’s not that difficult and can serve to take you to the next level of quality image presentations. Now, having said all that, it should also be noted that next week, I will be returning to more photography-specific tips and tricks for the weekly tutorials, so we’re not going to be stuck in web graphic design forever.
I also wanted to offer a brief explanation for the late posting of the tutorial… someone had emailed saying that the intro was producing a white line on the left side of the video. As it turns out the intro was recorded at a different resolution so I took some time tonight to correct that. The timings were a little off afterward so I had to adjust for that as well. But, it is now fixed. The reason I am saying this? The animated text has gotten a little boring. I would like to move toward a flash-based intro (the original was recorded in Powerpoint *shudder*). But, I really don’t know much about Flash. I am on day 7 of the trial version and have miles and miles to go before even grasping some of the basics. So…if any Flash gurus out there would like to do a charity case, feel free to email me – you’ll see your name up in lights, (I’ll set up a contributor tag in all future videos) and I’ll be more than happy to provide a link to your website. (Hey, it’s all about helping one another out, right?) 🙂
One final note is that Canon Blogger is now in iTunes! After some initial testing of graphics, audio, and determining what feeds best for iTunes from the blog, there’s a good working feed where you can subscribe to the shows from there. Stop in and check it out. Feel free to share your ideas on the value (or lack thereof) by offering a review. It looks like a few have found it already, but no reviews as of yet. Be the first and review the show on iTunes today! I’ll likely be adding an iTunes feed button to the sidebar tomorrow too, but in the meantime, just search for “Canon”, and I’ll be the second podcast under the “Software: How To” section, right beneath Rick Sammon’s show… it’s getting late, but I’ll try to get a link feed generated for the sidebar tomorrow. In the meantime, you can view the show directly in iTunes from here: iTunes Feed
Okay…enough of me blathering – on to the tutorial!