Here’s one for everyone…what’s this?
I had to go through some archives to find one that fit what I was looking for this week, but I found it. This is a crop of a larger image. The only thing I did was a little levels adjusting, the crop, and then some sharpening. Can you identify this? Share your thoughts in the comments! The winner – wins!
As always, happy shooting and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow!
Before the release of CS4 in Adobe’s announcement this morning, I happened to see a post in the NAPP member forums of someone thanking the Photoshop Guys for their top ten of the new features for the latest edition of Photoshop Creative Suite 4!
So, for those who want the early bird news, here’s a hint of what Adobe will be talking about later this morning:
Kudos to the NAPP staff for taking the time to put all this together – 17 video tutorials in all – (and this is just proof positive that membership has its privileges…because by learning from those on the cutting edge means you are getting cutting edge technology too! I am not sure if it’s publicly viewable, or if it’s a members-only thing, so will refrain from providing the links to the CS4 features they talk about, but I must admit, this does have me more buzzed about the announcement than I was before. Make sure you stop in to Adobe to watch it as I am sure there will be much excitement across the blogosphere about this!
Anyway, back to the regular blogging – I’ve got some announcements of my own to share, but they kinda pale in comparison…
For those that have been visiting the blog, you know that Podpress, my plugin of choice for putting out podcasts has been broken for some time as the developer has not released an update that makes it compatible with WordPress 2.6 Well, since it has been several months now, I am officially parting ways with it as my method for publishing.
Thanks to the folks over at Blubrry, I have been successfully able to implement a new alternative to embed podcasts into the native feed that already exists for CanonBlogger. So, in the interests of getting the content posted to iTunes and to those feeds that had not been updated from web references, I am going to spend the next few days providing some video content updates. The expanding ease of the .mov format not only in this interface, but also for portability purposes also seems to suggest that I am going to stick to that format exclusively for the foreseeable future.
For those that had been coming to the blog for their content, you will already have seen this video, but for those who have been waiting on the feed for new multimedia, this will be new material. Today, I am re-publishing the tutorial on reducing noise in your images. Enjoy! For the rest of you, see if you can tell the differences between some clouds shot with and without a circular polarizer. Share your thoughts in the comments on which one is with and which is without.
Image A:
Image B:
Well, it finally happened…I got my copy of The Moment it Clicks, by Joe McNally. Read through the entire book over the course of the weekend – twice. This guy continually amazes me, not only for what he’s teaching, but his matter-of-fact and down-to-earth approach to instruction. This book really and truly does live up to its reputation as THE book of the year. It made me laugh, it made me cry, and everything in between. I have not been prone to reading much lately that isn’t photography-technical jargon. What with the TOP Test being a project that is so close to being done, practically everything I am reading lately is technical and quite detailed on the minutia of photography. Suffice to say, the Joe McNally book gave me a great moment of pause over the course of the weekend.
A couple of things to note about the book – it’s not really instructional, but you will learn a lot if you are attuned to picking up little nuggets or pearls of wisdom between anecdotal narratives. It does follow an anecdotal line, in that you see an image and text on the facing page – that narrative is either about how that picture was obtained, or some humorous back story or “behind the scenes” in the making of the shot. Just great stuff, because as photographers, we love to hear others war stories. Joe McNally does not disappoint. Finally, on this book, if you happen to read the introduction, you will find that there is an additional chapter available to you. All you have to do is register at Peachpit, and enter the ISDN # of your book to get the additional read. Great photos throughout, but I dare say some of the best are in the added digital chapter.
Finally, it also brings me around to the last thing I did this weekend of a McNally nature: I re-watched his talk over at Google for the umpteenth time. It is such a great talk, and if you like story tellers, and listening to stories, this is definitely one to bookmark. I have it bookmarked myself just to listen back on it from time to time for moments when I need a little inspiration or motivation. Here’s the link to the Google talk.
Yes, it was my weekend with Joe McNally…except he didn’t even know about it!
Be sure to stop back in tomorrow as Photokina will be underway – today is Press Day, so we will likely see some other impressive leaps forward in camera gear and technology during the course of the next few days!
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:
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!
The cloud and haze of my head cold has lifted and I find myself able to think clearly for the first time in several days…almost a week. With the fervor and excitement of the 5D Mark II hitting the blogosphere, and the requisite discussions now settling to a dull roar, it’s time to get back to the business of blogging on everything photography!
To start, I’d like to call out for thanks fellow NAPP member Erik Bernskiold. Not only is he a talented Photoshopper, but he knows quite a bit about web design too (and he’s like 1/3rd my age!). Anyway, I was quite flattered when he asked me if I would be willing to participate in a short interview for his blog/website. Needless to say, I accepted. You can see the Q&A on his blog here. Talk about tutorials – he crosses outside of Photoshop and does a lot of Adobe tutorials, so definitely a good guy to watch. (Plus, he’s super-nice and always helpful.)
Next up, I’d like to also send out some thanks to Michael Johnston over at The Online Photographer who linked back to the blog here on his discussion of the Canon 5D. For anyone who has read CB for any length of time, you know that TOP is where I go for my daily read of insightful, educational and theoretical musings on the industry of photography. Always a cool thing to get a nod from one of the elite, so thanks Michael.
Finally, since yesterday I skipped over the “What’s This?”, there’s no better time than the present to insert another photo opportunity. It should be fairly easy, but you never know…so, what’s this:
That’s it for today. Happy shooting and we’ll see you here tomorrow.
Stop the presses! No What’s This today! CANON ANNOUNCES THE 5D MARK II!!! Here’s the first pics Canon released. The specs are pretty impressive and pricing is already amazingly low! I saw this over on TWIP, and verified it on Canon’s site. Here’s everything about it, specs, pricing, and photos! I didn’t want to jump on the 5d Mark II rumor bandwagon, but with this being public, I must say…”Holy Crap!” There’s also links at the end of this post to some video samples with audio in 3 of them from the camera. They look and sound pretty darn good to me! The last video was taken at night and shows some great noise handling…
Here’s the nuts and bolts of all the specs:
I guess the only thing that surprises me is the frames per second for still captures. Yeah okay, it’s capturing 21.1 megapixels and at a full frame, but it is also able to capture 30 fps in HD video! Why is the still frame rate so slow comparatively speaking (at 3.9 fps)?
That being said, the video features are astonishing, as is the low price point! I would expect the older Canon 5D’s to drop into the $1000 range shortly…start checking the auction sites! For the full story that gives all the hype and glamour of Canon news announcements, check out the press release here with all the above shots also in high resolution:
Anyone else want to salivate over it with me? What are your thoughts on this new release? Will this answer the gauntlet of the D3 that Nikon threw down a short while ago? I would tentatively say yes – but only time will tell!
Video clips:
http://www.canon-ci.co.kr/product/smov/pop01.html
http://www.canon-ci.co.kr/product/smov/pop02.html
Today is the latest installment of the Geographic Composition series from Jason Moore, noted photographer and Photoshop Pro over on his blog. I had the privilege of being a contributing participant again, so in lieu of the typical tutorial that is associated with Tuesday postings, here is the shot that I shared in the Geographic Composition series. The theme for this most recent series is Big and Small.
Be sure to stop over at Jason’s blog to view the rest of the images (it’s an excellent resource to for creative juices and to see the latest trends in the industry. He’s in my blogroll to the right, but it bears sharing a link here as well: Jason D. Moore Photography
To start off, I have a little housekeeping news to share. The feed is fixed! As you may or may not know, the podpress problems with the WordPress interface have also been creating feed problems too. So, for the time being I am probably going to refrain from trying to embed multimedia files within the posts. After going back and looking at some validation errors, I also re-tagged a few posts to try and clean things up. Well, the long and short of it is that feedburner is now working again, so feel free to go back to feeds as a means of reading posts. Don’t forget to stop in on the blog though as there are resources that I can’t link in text such as the polls, the podcast awards link, archives, and other stuff. For those that are still subscribed to the feed, you are about to get a super long feed listing!
On to other news, I was doing some research and writing this last weekend on The Online Photography Testing Center (the Advanced test is done by the way, and the final [expert] exam is also underway!), and in doing a lot of reading and surfing, I came across a few sites that are worth mentioning.
And last but not least, I must admit that I forgot my own anniversary date! I had thought that since I began recording site visitors in September of 2007 that the blog had “officially” started back then. However, the blog technically had some posts in August of last year, so my anniversary date blew by and I didn’t even notice. Suffice to say, it means I’ve now spent over a year on this blog. I’d give out prizes, but after the move, funds have diminished sufficiently that I must hold off on such excesses until things are a little more stable! So, at the risk of a little shameless self-promotion:
Canon Blogger has been blogging along now for over a year!
Thanks to everyone who has contributed and encouraged me, and stopped in to share their thoughts, comments, and feedback to keep me motivated.
Another week in the record books, and the poll has changed out. Since the week pretty much consisted of discussions about noise in your photos, let’s see what people are using in the way of 3rd party plugins. So, take a moment to participate in the poll on the right. Thanks for all the participation last week – 29 people voted! Let’s see if we can crack the barrier of 30 this week!
Today I thought it might be fun to share a few links to fun Photoshop resources – reasons to laugh and just take a break from it all. Here’s 3 of my favorites:
Fair warning, the second one could be considered “not safe for work”. Do you have any fun Photoshop resources or web sites that you visit just for laughs? Share them in the comments. Have a good weekend all, and, as always, happy shooting!
