Category: web links

Day swap

Jason3 Comments

I was having some issues with the post production and rather than hold off until late tonight to release the tutorial, I figured it’d be better to just swap Tuesday and Wednesday’s posts, so today is an early edition of my week around the web:

  • Jason Moore did his weekly round-up, and also saw his 600th post – congrats Jason!
  • Andrew at Visual Realia has a really great take on the theme of flowers and dewdrops – check it out for some inspiration!
  • I read up on the Copyright Law and Orphaned Works Act pending in Congress. Not good for us – good for corporations. Read up and submit your works today!
  • Thanks go out to Lisa, from Sage Family Studios, who is a fellow NAPP member for mentioning this in those forums.
  • Mark Brian, (sorry Brian, I am always wanting to call you Mark for some silly reason) from Professional Snapshots, has an image that will melt your heart (congrats again mark), and a Layers book review (by Matt K.) to make you green with envy (I want the book now).
  • The Online Photographer did an article on the sadness following the Kentucky Derby. If you are a softie like me, be warned, kind of heart-wrenching, and my heart goes out to the owners.
  • For fellow bloggers, this may be of most interest, as I finally took some time to read ProBlogger. I still have my work cut out for me! Definitely worth a read (or twenty) if you have the time – lots of ways to improve your niche, writing, style, professionalism, and much more!

Finally, it is worth noting that Dubai seems to be the hot spot lately. many of the most active and visible blogs on the web including the likes of Scott Kelby, Jeff Revell, Joe McNally, and now David Hobby, along with other notables have been visiting a growing body of budding photographers in the area. Some gorgeous and inspiring works have been posted over the last few weeks on all these guys blogs. Go check them out for a major dosage of creative inspiration here, here, here and here. If you stop in, take some time to share your thoughts with them – if you think I work hard at blogging and photography, it’s a drop in the bucket compared to these guys, both in breadth and depth! Amazing stuff out there…

Well, that should keep you tied over until the tutorial can get wrapped up tomorrow afternoon (I’ll forgo a morning post since this is going up later than normal). Until tomorrow; Happy Shooting and Watch those apertures!

Wednesday Web Gems

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Getting back to the basics, my original plan was to feature some unique links I’ve found from around the web on Wednesday, so the theme would revolve around “Wednesday Web Gems”. That theme returns today…here’s what’s goin’ on:

  • 1001 Noisy Cameras does a price check for the Canon bodies at various online retailers – very good info!
  • Canon themselves announced that they have surpassed the 40K mark for EF lenses. Interestingly, the first 30K took about 19 years, but the last 10K only took 2 years…says something about digital photography, eh?
  • My favorite Lighting resource, David Hobby’s Strobist site did a feature on how to sync a Canon G9 at 1/2500th of a second. Very much for the lighting enthusiast, but since it’s Canon, it fits my theme for the day, thanks David!

I’d do more, but it’s rather late and the pillow is loudly calling my name.  Happy shooting, watch those apertures, and we’ll see you tomorrow!

Calendar Templates, Part II

Jason2 Comments

This week I wrap up the tutorial started last week on creating a Calendar Template using Photoshop. One of the things I found most useful was performing the screen captures of each month prior to beginning the place functions inside Photoshop. As you can see in the tutorial, the results came out really nicely.

This whole project started from wanting to make a single-page calendar and in looking at the design offerings on Mpix, thought “Hey! I could make that!” The second half of the genesis came courtesy of Matt Kloskowski over fro the Photoshop Guys where he did a tutorial a while back on making a desktop calendar for a single month. So…I put the two ideas together and this is the end result of that effort. I figured it may also have some interest for other photographers in making calendars incorporating either their own prints or those of their clients. Clearly, this is a “down and dirty” version, but if anyone is interested, I do have a pretty high resolution sized template that I would be willing to share on request.

In other news, I’d like to give some shout outs to Brian over at Professional Snapshots, who just last Friday celebrated the birth of his new daughter Isabelle! Congrats to Brian, even though this means he has pretty much lost the ability to sleep through a night for at least the next 18-24 months! Yeah, this may be your fourth, but I’ve heard the stories from siblings and neighbors! Enjoy!

Also, don’t forget to stop over at Jason D. Moore’s weekly summary of all things photography! I always head there to make sure I’m not missing anything interesting.

Last, but not least, the tutorial links: Flash first and QT second…

Calendar Templates, Part II

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Workflow – ACR vs DNG which way to go?

Jason4 Comments

Recently two of the blogs that I read brought some meaningful insight on individual work flow perspectives. The first was Scott Kelby’s Photoshop Insider, where he had a few people criticize his critique of camera raw in Photoshop CS3, Lightroom, and Bridge. It was a pretty good and informative post, but a select few saw that as an opportunity to say that he was not giving Apple’s Aperture a fair shake. He actually replied to the comments (which he normally doesn’t do), and with quite an effective argument. This was quite the departure from his normal style, where he has just a few things to say and they are punctuated by pictures, as he likes the visual aids. The ultimate point though, was that Scott is very much a fan of the Adobe Camera Raw in his work flow and post processing of prints.

The other was Mike Johnston’s The Online Photographer. TOP is a great blog if you like to read, but is not very often written with the visual learner or “reader” in mind. The post that struck me was Mike’s Friday post, where he espouses “What to Buy” and his thoughts on the DNG format. While quite interesting, it’s not exactly in keeping with my thoughts on post processing.

Since I am more of an ACR guy than a DNG guy, it’s really going to be beside the point to discuss my feelings on work flow and post processing. Instead I am goig to take a different tack here and say that work flow is really up o whatever works best for the individual. I know some people that go with open sourced options like GIMP, and that is equally viable if the results are acceptable to the photographer. It’s ultimately a matter of this – opinion!

All of this brings me to my final point, and that is really about the nature of blogging itself. Blogging, as much as we like to think otherwise at times, is just our personal opinions. I think sometimes we get wrapped up in promoting certain ends, and I am equally guilty of that here at CB – I promote my own photography, ideals that I believe in, and software and hardware that I use. Nevertheless, it is, after all, just my opinion.

So, partly in response to those that started giving Scott K. a hard time, and in defense of Mike’s DNG work flow with the Pentax – lest we begin to take ourselves or others begin to take us too seriously, we are all just promoting our own opinions on subjects related to photography. It’s definitely useful though as different thoughts and opinions and ideas are what inspires each and every one of us to new levels of creativity and original thoughts. So, my hats off to all the blogging world, but this weekend, most especially to Scott K. and Mike J. for being on the leading edge of the topical content for photography.

In closing, I’d like to open the comment section up for others to share their thoughts and opinions on work flow, and blogging in general if you like. What work flow style do you prefer? Do you act on the recommendations of fellow bloggers, fellow photographers, or on other resources? Don’t forget to get out and shoot too though, so happy shooting and watch those apertures!

In the spirit of keeping things light-heartedly, and as a “make-up” for the short post yesterday, here’s the weekly best from What the Duck!

What the DUck - Friday, April 25th

A marriage made in Heaven – FTP and Raw

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Yes, that’s right, I am taking a pretty drastic departure from the alliterative titles for posts, but today the two topical subjects are so widely divergent, the title seemed rather amusing. As most of my readership knows, I have been working for some time no on a variety of articles discussing how to create and publish your photos in an online web gallery. For those of you that missed the first few articles, check out the first two articles here and here. Well, today is the unveiling of the 3rd chapter – FTP software. I give a short comparative explanation of a few interface options for both Mac and Windows. That article will be downloadable at the end of the post.

For the other half of the post today, I’d actually like to give some kudos to Scott Kelby over on his blog Photoshop Insider, where he gives an excellent summary of the differences between how Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) functions in Photoshop versus Bridge and versus Lightroom. I know quite a few people (myself included at least initially when LR first came out) had some trouble grasping the differences between each of these uses, and Scott really gives an good post on clarifying this. Plus, it’s Scott Kelby, so there’s always some humor thrown in for good measure! Check it out when you have a minute.

We’re probably not going to get the needed count of 100 votes in the poll for this cycle, but if you haven’t yet, register your category today (see right hand panel for options). I’ll hopefully have a more thought-provoking poll available in May. I’m sure there’s more news to report, but what with getting the photo site (www.jasons-photography.com) more inline and presentable, as well as getting some actual business cards made up and starting to advertise and promote things, I’ve not read much on the web lately. For a good web resource on many of the latest happenings, stop over at Jason D. Moore’s site. He gives an excellent wrap-up every Monday, and has links to a lot of the more popular blogs and photo outlets on the net. He’s linked on the side panel too as I am a member of his blogroll (I actually had the honor of helping out and sitting in on a weekly P&P a week or so ago… *waves to Jason in case he’s reading*…)

Finally today, an amusing shot of the dog from messing around with ambient light earlier today on our afternoon walk (and I am starting to include larger sized images to share so if you click on the pic, be prepared for a pretty large image (1023×646):

maggie.jpg

So, with an article, a web link and a potd, I bid all the reading and viewing audience a good evening and wish you happy shooting tomorrow. Remember to watch those apertures! 😉

Sunday/Monday Round-Up

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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…

How well do you score?

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!

Lightroom 2.0 Beta – First look at the dual monitor! (A preview video)

Jason4 Comments

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Just before I hit the sack last night, I saw that Adobe went and released Lightroom 2.0 in its beta form. I’ve already downloaded it and checked out some of the key changes. Until this release, I had used a trial version on my one desktop, and decided I’d tr it for 30 more days just a week or so ago on this main one. Well, right after recording a tutorial on creating web galleries in LR 1.x Adobe goes and does this! I shoulda known better.

The NAPP staff was clearly in on the development as they’ve got a page already set up with a first look on a lot of the key items. Great info and the features are definitely the ones I’d been waiting for – guess it’s time to buy! In my earnest to see everything I noticed though, that Matt K. does not show the dual monitor display on his first look. Was rather disappointed, so….in the interests of showing to others what I just saw, I did a little brief first look of my own. The resolution is super huge (1024×768), and it does look a little “off”. The reason here is because my one monitor is a 19″ and my other one is a 15″. So, on Windows it looks a little funny. But, it does get the gist across for those interested in seeing what’s there for the latest version. Check it out in the Quicktime download attached to this post.

As for the nuts and bolts of changes, I’ll leave those details to the pros over at NAPP and other blogging venues. Some of the more salient and interesting ones I saw today are here:

Only a few wishes…I didn’t immediately see any support for tethered shooting…but I guess that’s could go on a wish request since it’s still in beta. Also, it looks like the second monitor support means just 5 view options: loupe/grid/live loupe/locked loupe/compare/ and survey. I was hoping the 2nd monitor would be customizable with the LR panels (like Photoshop), but I’ve not figured out how to do that yet. If anyone knows whether that is something I am missing, or if it’s not been added…let me know.

Anyway, that’s the big news today – LR 2.0 beta was publicly released during the keynote at Photoshop World! With Photoshop Express, and tons of other R&D stuff coming out of Adobe – it’s a good time to be a fan! SO, without further ado, here’s my first look at LR 2.0 dual monitor setup options! Quicktime only version today (renders faster than the flash version and has wider viewing from those that visit the blog).

Wednesday news and info – lots about light

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Back into the cockpit today for the typical Wednesday news and information…

In the interests of full disclosure, and sharing news across the photography spectrum, there is a full review out for the Nikon D60, which is the Nikon equivalent of the Canon Rebel XTi – the entry level SLR for each vendor.  They seem pretty happy with it overall.  Check the review out here, and thanks to the Digital Photography Show for pointing me there.

Strobist offers some sage advise today on it’s most recent post, where David reminds us to not think of lighting as the be-all, end-all, but to use it as a tool for accomplishing a goal or to solve a problem.   Always a good read, but particularly useful for me since I have a model shoot coming up soon, where I hope to take this advice to heart.  Stop over and read the latest when you have some time.

Another useful lighting scenario played out over at Scott Kelby’s blog the past few days.  Scott had a shot set up and a couple of us asked to see the setup, and he shared that today.  Pretty useful info and further solidifies the idea that moving lighting of camera and diffusing it is the ideal route in any shoot setup.  I guess that means I need to get a diffuser too.  The gear quest never ends…*sigh*

In a little self-pimping, I’ve got a new poll up – how many cameras do you own.  Forget about SLR versus P&S versus medium format, wide format, film, working, non-working, or any other caveats.  Grand total, all-in, how many cameras do you currently own?  I’ll reserve guesses on results this time as in the past I’ve been famously wrong.  Also, stop over and view some of the photos I’ve put up for sale on Redbubble!

Here’s a short slideshow of some of what’s available:

Some of my photos for sale

Until tomorrow, happy shooting and watch those apertures.

Monday Morning Travel Recap

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Well, the weekend was a cornucopa of Denver tourism. We left SC at the not-so-bright hour of 5am and arrived in Denver by 10. That gave us time to make the last tour of Invesco Field. As a dyed-in-the-wool Bronco fan since pretty much as long as I can remember, this was the epitome of the entire 7 day trip. Needless to say, my camera pretty much clicked non-stop for the entire visit. I’ll share some shots later this week when I can get some time to work a few up.

Yesterday we visited the Celestial Seasonings tea factory. After Invesco I owed my wife that, but I have to say it turned out to be much more interesting than I would have thought. No cameras allowed in there, and just as well – the powder from the herbs and roots and spices in the air sometimes made my eyes water. If you’re ever near the Boulder area, I would highly recommend a tour – it was free and well worth the time.

Back to the real world of photography Continue reading “Monday Morning Travel Recap” →