Category: Friday Follies

The 700 Club

Jason1 Comment

This post makes it officially 700 thoughts and musings on the blog.  At an average of 250 posts per year (since I don’t normally post on weekends and occasional “no blog” days), that means we are closing in on the end of three full years of blogging!

To the readers who have been there with me since the beginning, I’d like to say thanks for all your patience as I’ve walked through several fires of growing pains.  I’ve come to the realization that the more you write, the greater the chance you have to sound like either a fool, or a pure and simple $%^&.   Hopefully I’ve minimized both of these occurrences enough to warrant another 700 posts!

There’s a couple things coming up on the horizon that are quite exciting, and a few fire irons already nice and hot (see contest #1 and contest #2 going on right now)!  The biggest change is coming at the end of the month when CB gets a pretty serious face lift.  Other upcoming things of interest include  a podcast with none other than Martin Bailey on Monday, the 3rd Annual World Wide Photowalk in July, and the 2nd release of the 49 Photo Tips download!  (The first is still available here…)  All this is accompanied by the regular news, reviews, and photography experiences/insights that I share with you here daily.  So, you’d think that with all that, there’s be nothing else of a “big news” item to announce at this time.  After all, it’s just Friday, right?

Well, not to disappoint, but there is some news to share with you today on post #700!  This is not only news, it’s pretty big news!  In fact, it’s not just pretty big news – it’s super huge!  Are you sitting down?  Are you ready for this? (Cue “Jock Jams“…for those of you that did not experience the early 90’s, the link may be a #lame one…)

Actually, I’d better not just quite yet.  But, I can let you know that Anaheim, Salt Lake City, Denver, Minneapolis, Seattle and Portland all have something in common (they make a nice circle…don’t ya think? 🙂 )…

More tk…happy friday and have a great weekend all!  Get out and shoot ya some! 🙂

The first ever Comment Contest!

Jason18 Comments

After a short (and unexpected) break from blogging yesterday, here’s a Friday Free-For-All for you!

Here’s where reader input is going to be what makes or breaks the content – that’s right, I am putting it all on the reading audience.  You can link to your own site in the comments, and the “Comment Luv” plugin will show the most recent post for fellow bloggers too.  Here’s what the content topics are to chose from (you can pick one, two, three, or all of the topics to address in your comment):

  1. What are your favorite iPhone/iTouch applications (for photography)?
  2. Who would you like to see guest-write here on the blog (you can include yourself too)?
  3. If Canon Blogger were to start a monthly newsletter, what would you like to see in said newsletter?
  4. If Canon Blogger were to start publishing eBooks for download, what topics would you like to see addressed?
  5. What one photo tip would you share with others above all else to help improve their photography (and “Take off the lenscap” is not allowed! LOL)

The best part of this?  Some lucky commenter will win a $25 gift card to B&H Photo from yours truly!  Yup, no sponsors, no tricks, no gimmicks, no nothin’ but free moolah to the best photo store on the planet!  All out of my pocket!  What am I looking for?  Useful content and ideas that will help me generate more resources to share with everyone.  So, get your thinking caps on and get to commenting.  If you post a comment and think of something later, feel free to add it – but your name can only be “entered” in the Comment Contest once!

When does it end?  Midnight Sunday!  (August 30, 2009 – so if you are reading through archives and this is like March 15th, 2035, sorry, the contest is over…)

And speaking of contests, you also only have three days left to get your shots into the Flickr thread for the “Win a Wacom” contest!  The contest pool of entries has increased a tad bit, but you can’t win if you don’t play, so get a shot or two in over the weekend – as they say at the Lotto – “Hey, ya never know!”

Finally, on this last Friday of August, I’d like to share yet again, an absolutely hysterical strip from What The Duck (I shared it earlier this week), but this  just floored me, so had to give another shout out for those that haven’t picked up WTD in your readers yet (and you should!).  So, have a laugh, then have some fun and share your thoughts – the sky is the limit.  Have a great weekend everyone and we’ll see you back here on Monday!

Pick a theme – tell a story

Jason4 Comments

When working on capturing your own creative vision, here’s another useful tip in getting the most out of your work – pick a theme when looking for creative inspiration.  A theme can be a useful cornerstone or building block which you can use as a springboard to get started on projects.

The reason why themes are such useful tools is because this can also give you the basis for telling a story, which is a commonality of many powerful and evocative works, whether that story is natural beauty (landscapes), urban decay (architecture), romantic moments (wedding photography), etc.

I’ve put together a short list of a couple great starting points for themes to tell your creative stories:

  • Laughter
  • Faces
  • Circles
  • Skies
  • Glass
  • Fences
  • Freedom

Any themes that catch your eye – give you a creative idea?  What about other ideas or themes?  I’d love to hear your ideas, so feel free to share them in the comment section, or via email.  You can reach me, as always, at jason <AT> canonblogger <DOT> com.  Happy shooting everyone!  Don’t forget the August contest to win a Wacom Bamboo fun is underway – with the Flickr thread up and running here:  Win a Wacom! Now, to kick start the weekend… a little WTD humor:

WTD768

Grab the Feed

We’ll see you back here on Monday!

Friday Fab Five

Jason5 Comments

For something new here on the blog, I thought it might be fun to share some of my favorite keyboard shortcuts in Photoshop.  The idea here is that people will share their top five in the comments area and we can get an idea of many more keyboard shortcuts than we ever could have found out on our own (unless of course you are some Photoshop guru like The Photoshop Guys and the trainers/instructors of the world that do this for a living and already know all the shortcuts.)

So, anyway, here’s my Friday Fab Five Photoshop shortcuts and what they do:

  1. CMD/CTRL+J = duplicates your existing layer
  2. CRTL+ALT+SHIFT+E = Stamp Visible  This takes all your visible layers and merges them onto a new layer.  Increases file size, but very cool
  3. CMD/CTRL+’ = (yes, that’s apostrophe) – it activates the grid in your preferences.  Since my grid is set to every 33.33% and one subdivision, it basically shows a Rule of Thirds grid overlay on my images – very handy for compositional cropping
  4. Left and right brackets – decrease and increase your active brush, whether it’s for clone stamp, healing brush, eraser, history brush – whatever
  5. Alt+Eyedropper = you can drag the eyedropper outside of Photoshop to sample a color in another application (great for color matching)

So, those are my five for this friday – what are yours?  Sound off in the comments!  In the meantime, have a great weekend and happy shooting! I’ll leave you with my favorite What the Duck cartoon of the week:

wtd732

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Finally some good news – it’s Friday!

Jason2 Comments

Well, there’s some other good news too.  Wacom delivered the something to me door yesterday to review here on the blog.  I’ll be doing a more detailed write-up for both Windows and Mac in the near future, but thought y’all might be interested in the unboxing – seeing what you get from the good folks at Wacom when you order a:

BAMBOO FUN!

So, here’s a little teaser video for those that are interested:

This might be fodder for an upcoming contest or giveaway, but only time will tell, so keep your fingers crossed.   In the meantime, here’s the rest of the Friday news:

Okay all, that’s it – been a crazy busy week, and I am tired, but also geared up for the weekend.  Happy shooting and we’ll see you back here next week for hopefully a little more of an uplifting series of content!

Grab the Feed

On the Coast of Somewhere Beautiful…

Jason1 Comment

A short vacation means that I’ve not had much time to generate any photo-related content, but hopefully the title will be a hint of things to come, so be sure to stop back in Monday for some photo goodness and other news and events.  In the meantime, enjoy the weekend, and have a Happy Easter.  On that note, enjoy a  Friday funny courtesy of What the Duck!

wtd686

 

Happy Shooting!

Facelift Friday

Jason7 Comments

With February now in the archives, I figured this may be as good a time as any to get a head start on some Spring Cleaning with the blog.  The theme I had been using for the last year or two had been getting a little dated, and the designer has not issued any updates since 2007.  Additionally, some portions of the blog just were taking more muscling to conform to the evolving standards of CSS, XHTML, plugins, and even WordPress itself.  So, consider this a Facelift Friday!

Those of you on the blog, you can see what I am talking about – this new theme is much more photo friendly – the header image is more standardized, so I can start putting more of my images into the rotation for everyone to enjoy.  Plugins also enjoy more support, as does the RSS, calendar, and other sidebar features.  For those of you picking this up via the feeds, please take some time to stop over and enjoy the new layout.  This is, of course, the “first look”, and I will likely be making some adjustments as things settle in, including widening the body width for the main posting area, and dressing up the edges a little.  Any ideas for what to consider?  More pics?  Perhaps some page links?  (I noticed the pages area is now not visible from the main one…)  Feel free to chime in now while I am still in “clean-up” mode!

Okay, so the Spring Cleaning is a little premature, but felt it was needed due not only to update some features, but also due to some coding deficiencies were brought to my attention (thanks, and shout outs to Kerry of Camera Dojo!).  Anyway, on a happy note, I’ll leave you with a little WTD humor since it’s been a while for a comic post:

What the Duck
What the Duck

Have a great weekend, and don’t forget to share your thoughts on the new theme/layout in the comments – it’s now or never to see your feedback implemented!  Happy shooting and we’ll see you back here Monday morning!

Friday Morning Coffee

JasonLeave a comment

Well, another day of IT goodness is ahead of me so this is just a short post to say have a great holiday-shopping filled weekend!  (We’ve only got 20 days left until the bg day – gosh I hate how commercialized this holiday has become!)  In some photo news, I shared a few snapshots with Photography and the Mac – he asks for shots of a coffee cup and a phone for his Friday blog posts so readers can chime in on which is worth me.  Kind of a fun exercise, so stop over there and check out all his installments – you might see the shots I contributed go up some time today.  If I have time, I’ll put together another post later on today, but don’t hold your breath!  Happy shooting and we’ll see you back here Monday!

Five Friday Freebies

Jason2 Comments

It’s fun to share resources that can really help you save time and money in pursuing your photography goals, and because there’s not a lot of really high quality resources out there, posts like these are few and far between.  However, I do have a few resources that may prove useful to wrap up the week:

  1. Online Price Calculator – So many people ask “How much should I charge for…”  Well, here is a good starting point.  For something more serious look FotoQuote
  2. Free Stock Photos – So many stock photo sites out there, yet none seem to offer up imagery completely for free.  You do have to register, but well worth the 10 seconds…
  3. Free CS Tutorials – Yeah, I know, there’s tons of sites out there that do this stuff, but Erik stands above the crowd in his technique and approach.  Well worth the time to peruse his library of Adobe tips and tricks
  4. B&H Photo has a handy resource that shows compatibility for some TC’s.  The one linked is for the Canon 2x TC
  5. The Online Photography Test – hosted by yours truly, and with the Beginner and Intermediate tests completed, is an great resource for evaluating and improving your knowledge base across many areas of photography

And, to close out the week, be sure to stop over at What The Duck!  My favorite one this week:

Happy shooting, have a good weekend, and we’ll catch you back here on Monday!

Friday Frenzy

Jason6 Comments

Just a quick wrap up here for the week as the day is getting late, and I’ve got miles to go before I sleep.  Um…yeah, okay, that came from a poem somewhere but I forget who wrote it or the title, so no credit line on that.

As we all know by now (unless you are in a cave somewhere in the Congo), Canon has released the 5D Mark II and the specs were posted here a few days ago.  Forums and the blogosphere have poked and prodded at just about everything they can until the camera itself comes to stores in October.  So, for the time being we will likely see just more pontificating.  As for the content here at CB, I am probably gonna draw back a little and let others wax on about it.

In more current events, Adobe released the Camera Raw update for all your product needs.  It’s now at version 4.5, and is available for Mac and Windows download free here:  Camera Raw 4.5

What the Duck had a great week from the comedic standpoint, and I really can’t pick a favorite, so just go there and read through them all!  Great stuff!

Nominations are now open for the Podcast Awards for 2008.  They close at the end of the month, so be sure to stop in and let them know who you think is deserving of the awards for this year.  I’ve also got a link to them on the sidebar with a suggestion for CB (hint hint:  Education).  There’s 22 different categories so be sure you’ve got the URL’s for all your favorites handy to plug in the appropriate content areas.  Others that I would recommend for nominations include:

The list goes on and on, but there’s only one tech category and most of the blogs I visit fit that area.  Although there is a People’s Choice category too.  As for CB, I’ll stick with the educational theme.  So, if you think I’ve helped with education in photography and photoshop at all, then add a kudo in there.  Who knows – maybe I’ll actually make the top ten in that category! 🙂 (I doubt it though…but it never hurts to self promote, so there it is!)

Also, I’ve got a new poll up on the sidebar.  After posting the features about the 5D Mark II, I thought it might be interesting to see what features people would like to see in their camera gear.  You can pick any three, so let’s Rock the Vote (so to speak), and get those opinions in.  I wanna hear from YOU!

Finally, I thought I’d share a shot I did kind of by accident.  I was trying to do some night photography with HDR in mind.  Nothing came out all that well so I just started trying all sorts of things.  Came up with this:

3 of Me
3 of Me

Do you like it?  Too much?  Not enough?  Is it too processed?  I’m kind of biased, so rather than reveal my own thoughts on this, I’ll leave it to the readership to decide if this works at all.  Please share your thoughts in the comments!

Okay,  so much for a quickie!  I’ll just leave it at that, and wish you all an excellent weekend filled with productive and creative results.  Happy Shooting!