Category: thoughts

Wednesday Weblinks

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As I corrected the missing links from yesterday’s podcast, I started surfing my usual photo sites, and I came across this neat site sponsored by Kingston, called Icons Of Photography (IOP). Four well-known photographers offer up their professional albeit short critiques of user-submitted images. I read through a few and all seemed very well-meaning and kind in their deliveries. What a great resource for the budding photographer: Icons of Photography Thanks to the contributors, Harry Benson, Colin Findlay, Gerd Ludwig, and Peter Read Miller for their generosity in sharing views and perspectives on their contributions to the field.

For those of you equestrian aficionados, there’s a new photo contest for 2008 tailored to your interests from the folks over at Equestrian Magazine. (I personally have tried to take a few photographs of some horses and they make for challenging subjects sometimes, so good luck!) Here’s the contest link for those that are interested. Good luck!

Another little tidbit for photo news of the week – as a former graduate student in Political Science – I watch political news fairly regularly. While I try to stay away from divisive content and hotly debated subjects, I do have reason to share a political story here: New Photos from Lincoln’s second inauguration have been discovered and added to the repository for the Library of Congress. Truly amazing shots and in great detail considering the era: 22MG tiff files are available with no constraints on usage (in other words, they’re in the public domain!). Rather than try to reproduce smaller thumbnails here that simply will not do them justice, here’s links to the Library of Congress Announcement and the 4 images:

Image 1 Image 2 Image 3 Image 4

Last but not least – my last hobby before photography was scuba diving (I can never seem to take up something cheap like writing poems or anything along those lines), so I try to peruse news about scuba from time to time. While underwater housings have been around for a while, a company named Aquatica has confirmed they are making an underwater housing for the Canon Mark III. I went to the company’s website, and they have quite the variety of housings that are guaranteed to protect your gear underwater. Like all high quality gear though – it has a price. On the order of $2 G’s US. (That’s two thousand dollars…) Very cool website though and makes me think about mirroring the two hobbies together once again. (I am sure my wife would divorce me though…)

That’s it for today. What photo news have you heard today? Sound off in the comments or to me via email.

Thanks, and as always, happy shooting and watch those apertures!

Thursday’s Thoughts, Take Two – Courtesy of Scott Kelby

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I’ve been catching up on some work from shoots over the past few weeks and came across a set of shots that was prompted on my way home from work.  In looking at the shot some time later now, I realized this would make a perfect candidate for the “Scott Kelby 7 Points System”.  After spending some time with the image, I thought it might be fun to share the before and after with the blogging community.

Here’s the before:

clouds_before.jpg

And here’s the after:

clouds.jpg

Thursday’s Thoughts

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Today is decidedly a non-photography thoughts kind of day.  I am taking the morning off of work to supervise the installation of some new kitchen counters!  That’s right – we pulled the trigger on some new counter tops back in November, and the fruits of the effort are being completed today.  The crew does seem competent enough, but let’s just say it’s a good thing I am keeping a close eye on things.  I suspect that (like most outsourced jobs), corners would be cut to save time and materials if I wasn’t in there asking if this detail or that detail would be completed before they left.

The back carport is on hold today as it’s a steady drizzle and they can’t paint with it as wet as it is.   (Oh, did I mention that we’re converting the carport into a 3-season screened in patio?).  The lead guy came out to collect some unused materials and let me know he had to wait for it to stop raining to pick back up, and we discussed a few minor details t be addressed.  Fun stuff.  I feel like a general contractor today – conducting the logistics and such of all these various subs.  I could see another career path calling! (kidding – IT will always be my bread and butter..)

I did do some before, during and will take some after shots to share later on (probably tomorrow)…

I the meantime, from this experience my thoughts are to always keep a close eye on outside labor – they stay on track and keep consistent quality throughout the project.  Until tomorrow, happy shooting and watch your apertures! 🙂

Monday Minutia – Top 5 B/W Conversion Techniques

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Given the activity and response I received from the “Top 7 of 2007”, it seems the blogging world really enjoys lists. It makes sense if you think about it too. Lists are nice, simple, bullet points that don’t require more than a few seconds to take in. There’s not a lot of prose or bloated paragraphs of meaningless text to scan through. In fact, creating lists does seem to be a common practice bloggers use to attract attention to their sites.

The internet is inundated with lists, whether they provide value or not and on as many topics as you can shake a stick at. The gamut is pretty well covered from A to Z, including The Best Academic Institutions to The Best Zoos of the U.S. Naturally, photography and it’s many sub-fields also pepper the list. So the question becomes one of “How do you filter out the good lists from the bad lists?” My answer to that is to try and raise the bar in terms of the value behind the lists. To that end, the Monday Minutia proposes 5 of the best ways to convert images from color to black-and-white. So…without further ado, here are my Top Five Black and White Conversion Techniques

  1. In Camera – most cameras these days have a B/W mode in their list of menu options and settings. Selecting this as your starting point gives you a true black and white baseline to start with. This approach will probably strike a chord with the “purists” in the crowd.
  2. Camera Raw Conversion – If you aren’t working in camera raw, here is a big reason to think about it – converting images to black and white in camera raw allows you to make a conversion while retaining access and malleability to all image data. The camera raw dialogs that you should use to make conversions here include the saturation slider, then exposure and shadow sliders, followed by the Brightness slider. Don’t forget to play with the contrast slider a little to enhance the effect as desired. Last but not least, for advanced adjustments, the calibration tab can have effects similar to the Channel Mixer.
  3. Channel Mixer – with your image open in Photoshop (7.0 or higher), you can select a specific color set you want to remove from or add emphasis to in an image. The traditional color sets or red, green and blue are available, as well as a constant (think brightness), and a check box for monochrome.
  4. Hue/Saturation Adjustment – whether as a dedicated layer, or directly to an image, the Hue/Saturation allows you to account for different intensity levels of a wide range of colors, from Red, Yellow, Green, Cyan, Blue, and Magenta. You can also adjust the range of color within one of the default ranges for each set by adjusting the left and right limiters of the color wheel at the bottom of the dialog window.
  5. Grayscale Conversions – most black-and-white images aren’t true black and whites, because a little color from a specific range is added back in for emphasis. To make an image truly a b/w, it would only have a range of black and white. This can be done using the grayscale option in Photoshop. Often, this is used as the last step in a digital approach to black and white photography so that saturation and brightness level loss is minimized.

So, that’s it for today – my Top Five B/W Conversion techniques. What techniques do you use? Feel free to use the comments or my email to share your methods. Naturally, being the multimedia-oriented blog, I will have a PDF version of this post available for download later this evening. Until then, happy shooting and watch your apertures! 🙂

As promised, here’s the PDF version…although I noticed some of the characters (dashes and quotes) didn’t convert as nicely as I’d hoped…

Best Blog Sites of 2007

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Rather than regale the CB audience with some trivia for the Monday Minutia, I thought it might be fun to start off 2008 with the list of MUST SEE blogs for the year. These are blogs that I have come to know and love for very different and varied reasons, ranging in purpose and perspective from tips and tricks, to the nitty gritty of lighting, along with casual conversation and the occasional in-depth reading jaunt. Without further ado, I give you: THE SEVEN OF ’07!

1. Photoshop Insider – Daily posts from Scott Kelby, who is very well-known as both an author and an instructor. Scotts contributions to Photography include the formation of NAPP, the implementation of the highly regarded (and highly expensive) annual Photoshop Expo, and now the Kelby Training online learning website where you can subscribe either monthly or annually to get all the education and learning you want. With heavyweights like Adobe, iStock, CDW and a host of others offering discounts to NAPP members, Scott and his gang pretty rule the roost and have the enviable position of setting the standard by which all others are measured. From a blog perspective, Scott’s site is a great info-mercial for keeping up to date on the latest learning strategies and materials that the NAPP team has to offer, as well as occasional insights on various tips and tricks. For me, PI is a great place to go to get some light reading in and pick up some tips or tricks along the way. A great learning resource to have in your toolkit. Given his instructional methods and techniques, the only thing missing here would be a weekly podcast or vlog posting, but that’s mitigated by Photoshop User TV, so it’s a very minor nit. Otherwise, I do not go a day without reading the musings and postings of Scott.

2. Strobist – If you want to learn about lighting, this is THE place to go. Everything from demonstrations, to techniques, and even instructional guidelines (See Lighting 101, and its sequel, Lighting 102). I am still something of a lighting virgin as I admittedly have not taken my flash off the camera yet, but this is a great place to go to learn the nitty gritty, see sample shots, and pretty much get all the info you could ever want on lighting.

3. The Digital Photography Show – Hosted by Scott Sherman and Michael Stein (but it’s really more Scott with a dash of Michael), this is a great resource to keep current on industry news, participate in contests, and hear from top people in the industry on everything from camera and photoshop techniques to file management and printing. One of the nice things about TDPS is that they do a brief text-based version on the blog, and then a more detailed version in a podcast – great for downloading and listening to while on the go.

4. Photoshop User TV – This is the insanely popular weekly vlog of the Photoshop Guys – Scott Kelby, Dave Cross, and Matt Kloskowski where they demonstrate and share techniques, tips and tricks on how to get the most out of Photoshop. If memory serves, this regularly gets premiere billing in iTunes.

5. Tips from the Top Floor – Chris Marquardt has made this show very popular both in his homeland of Germany and across the pond to the U.S. This is in no small part due to his regular workshops he conducts to share his knowledge with others. From his last trip to the states, I think he hit close to a dozen cities for workshops, and these were spread all over the country. Videos and online training is one thing, but Chris brings his knowledge to you, and at a very wallet-friendly rate.

6. Photojojo – This is a very kitschy kind of site but also very handy. Regular informative posts show how to do unique things with your photos, ranging from making a photo cube to photo mobiles, and even making useable stamps from your photos. Some of the tips and ideas that come out of here are better than others, but by and large, it’s a very outside-the-box kind of delivery, and makes for a great RSS feed.

7. The Online Photographer – From the mind of Michael Johnston comes a daily dose of photography-related news and information. The Online Photographer really raises the bar in terms of the quality of the writing material. This is not to say that other resources are not well-written, just that TOP writes better than most. The range of subject matter is also quite extensive – and has educated me on more occasions than I would care to admit. The one caveat is that I do sometimes have to pay attention to what I am reading – much of TOP’s content would go beyond a brief scan or skim which is what I usually do on web sites. TOP is also not a place to go if you’re looking for a quick tip or trick on how to do something. Rather, TOP is a collection of very well-written articles and commentaries on the state of the photography industry. The best analogy I can think of is a newspaper…where most blogs are like the comic section, TOP would be the equivalent of the New York Times. Overall, TOP is a highly recommended source for reading material related to, but fair warning – come ready to read!

So, that’s it. The best seven from ’07! I could have done five, or ten, or some other common multiple, but the the alliterative potential would have been lost. Ya know I just can’t let that happen. Have a good day, and tomorrow is Tutorial Tuesday!

A Friday Fix and some Funnies

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Made a few minor updates to the Canon Battery Lithium Content page. First, I added some additional information that was initially lacking (it seems some of the Canon EOS series batteries have multiple cells, so the numbers needed another factor entered in the formula.) The other part was that I updated the location of the page – it’s now in the tutorials/education section where it belongs.

Apologies for the missing Thursday post. I am sure it won’t be the last time I don’t have time for a post this year…just disappointed the first missed post day came so soon (day 2 – I didn’t count the 1st)!). The funnies come today via WTD and FBorFW:

What the Duck:

What the Duck Cartoon Strip

For Better or For Worse:

For Better or For Worse

And last but not least, a written one:

Once upon a time there was a photographer in one of the most remote parts of the African continent on assignment. He came across a primitive village where the residents were living in thatched huts and wearing colorful primitive garments. He approached a man who appeared to be the chief who was wearing a large headdress made of woven hemp and colorful feathers. Not knowing how to speak to him, he pointed to his camera then to the chief inquiringly. The chief nodded his approval. As the photographer was taking a meter reading the chief said “today use f/8 at 1/125 for ISO 100 film”.

Got any good jokes? First person to post an original photo-related joke wins a free action from me!

Wednesday Web Links

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Having travelled during the recent holiday, a few photography-related issues came up during my travels.  First off, was the procedures used to handle photography equipment.  While travelling, my gear list included the following:

  •  Apple Macbook Pro
  •  Canon Rebel XT
  •  Canon 18-55mm kit lens
  •  Sigma 70mm f2.8 lens
  •  Canon 530 Speedlight EX
  •  Various CF cards, batteries and charging mechanisms

 Prior to entering security checkpoints, I pulled my laptop out, set it in its own container, and sent it through the security X-Ray.  Nothing I had was ever submitted to additional inspection.  This was quite the opposite experience that others have recorded on their blogs (see Scott Kelby’s experience recounted here). It was quite a pleasant experience.  One thing that helped me move through my travels with ease was in knowing the expectations of the TSA, and what they look for and like to see.  For example, I also know from previous experiences that leaving your batteries inside the flash will display oddly on their X-Ray scanners, so I always make sure batteries are removed from devices when packing.  It also helped to check the TSA restrictions and guidelines on their website (especially since my wife enjoys her lotions and potions).  So, in the interests of sharing that information with others, here’s the TSA link for permitted/prohibited articles:  TSA List.  Needless to say, DSLR’s are not subject to additional searches or inspections by any regulation in place with the Transportation Safety Administration.

 The other thing that I encountered specific to photography was how and where we are permitted to take pictures.  Without regaling all the details, here it’s enough to say that after a frustrating experience with a supervisor, I wanted to report him to the customer service department for his airline.  After snapping his picture, he suddenly became much more animated, and dashed off.  A few minutes later he confronted me with two local policemen who stated that “You can’t just take people’s picture anymore.”  At this point I replied, “Well, I am not sure what he told you, but the only reason I took his picture was to assist in reporting him to his superiors because he refused to even try to help me.  As far as taking people’s pictures, legally speaking, he has no right to privacy in a public place, and I can take his picture as long as I don’t use it to promote a commercial product.    Here’s a printout on Photographer Rights that may be of interest to you.”  For those interested in what I handed them, it said in part that:

 ” Members of the public have a very limited scope of privacy rights when they are in public places. Basically, anyone can be photographed without their consent except when they have secluded themselves in places where they have a reasonable expectation of privacy such as dressing rooms, restrooms, medical facilities, and inside their homes.”

 Suddenly these two officers, who were intending to interrogate me, turned their heads to him questioningly, clearly indicating he had recounted a very different story from what actually occurred.  Having this document also bolstered the evidence that I was within my right to do what I was doing.  So, I would encourage everyone to carry a copy of this with them.  Check it out here:  Photographer’s Rights.  Thanks to Bert Krages for putting this information together. Other than the flight delays and dealing with less than helpful airline supervisors, the holidays were quite enjoyable, and I hope everyone else had a great Christmas too.  See y’all tomorrow!

Monday Merriment

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Good evening to the photo community.  As Tracy and I return from our travels up to the frigid northern territories of Ohio, we are so happy to have made the trip to visit family.  Christmas, after all, is about spending time with family.  So, a short post today, simply from me and my family here to you and anyone else out there who may be reading…

Merry Christmas !!!!

God bless us all…

(and no post tomorrow)

Friday’s Follies (but not really…)

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Fun stuff for the first Friday follies from Canon Blogger…but it requires a little prep, so bear with me. (I need to get in a program to help me with my alliterative tendencies, don’t I?)

First off, I had a thread started in an online community that was getting a lot of dialog on the latest Scott Kelby book and what people’s thoughts were on it. Specifically, I was interested in the reaction to the nature and trend of his teachings – in recent publications, I’ve noticed that his tutorials and work flow seem geared to be recipes for how to process certain types of images. Before investing in the book, I thought it might be good to hear from others who are software cautious in their purchases like myself.

It seems my suspicions were well-founded on a number of fronts. First off, the book is very proprietary in it’s dictum. Now granted, the title does clearly indicate for CS3, but given that there are commonalities between CS, CS2, and CS3, one would think that some things are portable from one application to the other. Apparently not, and the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. How do you get people to buy a book? By making it specific to a particular product. That way, you have something called built-in obsolescence. The knowledge learned will eventually go out of style, as newer applications are built that have new features or different ways of doing things.

What’s so funny about this? Well, the funny part was that I made the mistake of referring to Scott as a “re-known photographer” on my initial post.

That was quite funny because some people took great exception to the two words being used in conjunction with one another. Very odd how people can often take a subject matter, and disregard it completely to argue over the minutiae of semantics. Eventually, I acquiesced and changed the phrase “re-known photographer” to “re-known author”. After appeasing the hypercritical crowd, some very good dialog continued afterward. Jeff Schewe’s name has been added to the mix for discussion on the forum, so if anyone knows how to cross-connect these two, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments too!

As for the rest of my “review” of his book, I will have to defer until reading it myself. Given the initial response though, I think I will wait for it to come to our local library.

Thursday’s Thoughts

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Wit the sidebar poll continuing to generate some increasing preferences toward PS CS3, I can’t help but wonder why more are not adopting LR as an alternative. My guess is that it has something to do with familiarity of the interface, as well as the support for dual monitors, and the added benefits of layers and filters. I’ve also heard from a few that profiling papers using LR is more challenging as well.

From this I am thinking that it may have been a little counterintuitive for Adobe to launch not one, not two, but three new software lines that in essence are competing with one another for market share. While I can see the merits of appealing to a [b]wider[/b] market share with a multi-faceted approach, I can also see some downsides. For those on a budget it seems clear that LR is the way to go, but with CS3 and CS3 extended, and the myriad of ways to obtain the software at serious discounts, I can’t help but wonder why LR would still be an option. I saw an academic price for CS3 extended recently at [b][i]under[/i][/b] $300! That’s within $100 of Lightroom!!! For me it’s a no-brainer, and I will definitely make the move to the Extended version after the holidays.

It does seem though that in using this multi-faceted approach, Adobe is appealing to a wider range of shooters. The “other” category seems rather low, which tells me people are not only choosing an Adobe solution for their work flow, but that they are also moving toward a dedicated solution that is geared towards their goals. I kind of feel bad for the competition as it seems with this approac, Adobe is goig to become the sole provider of photo editing software (that can be taken seriously anyway). That brings anti-monopoly issues into play and I can’t help but wonder if Adobe had considered this in their long-term strategizing….

In other news, the Photoshop Guys over at NAPP and Kelby Training have announced a whole new online training system. Now, instead of paying per class, you pay fur usage of the training resources, much like Lynda.com Some pretty big names in the photo education field are hopping on the coattails of Scott Kelby and his ever-rising presence in the training environment. Kudos to them and best of luck. Feel free to stop over at the NAPP site for more info as they will likely pimp that heavily for the next few months. Nothing wrong with self-promotion, and these guys definitely have it down to an art form. Anyone wanting to monetize their photo presence should take a hint from the methods they’re using over at NAPP and follow the leader (anyone else remembering the Honda commercials?)…congrats to the NAPP crew, and watch out Lynda.com!

Another totally random thought I’d had recently was on the layout and purpose of Canon Blogger.  As I’ve spent the vast majority of my posts either addressing industry news, events, information, and presenting tutorials, tips and tricks, that Canon Blogger could also use a face of just photos.  So….I started a blog over at the blogspot domain.  Canon Blogger was taken so, I had to take the next-best thing:  CanonBlogger1.  So…for a view of my photoblog (or as close to a photo blog as I dare to go), stop over to that page:  Canon Blogger’s photo posts to enjoy some of my digital photos, all taken from my Rebel XT.  (Some day, the elusive 40D will be within my grasp…with fellow photogs and blogers as my witnesses, I promise that will happen….when I can’t say, but my suspicion is shortly after the X-Mas tree comes down! 😀

Last but not least, it seems the latest Tutorial from thursday is going to garner a new record number of site visits based on my analytics metrics as of right now, so thanks to all who have stopped in to view the tutorial. It’s down a couple posts by now, but feel free to visit the flash page from here: Faded Antique Effects

My wife and I are sitting in an airport in Charleston SC waiting for our flight to Ohio for the holidays, so I might not post again until after Christmas. I have a feeling I will get an opportunity, but just in case, let me take a moment to be specifically and intentionally non-PC and wish everyone a very Merry Christmas!

That’s all for today. Anyone that would like to share their comments/replies/thoughts from todays post is encouraged and welcome to share in the comments section below, or to email me directly. My addres, as always, is jason <AT> canonblogger <DOT> com. Happy shooting, and have a good afternoon – get that shopping done!