Surely you’ve heard the whole ruckus about Flash versus HTML5, Apple versus Adobe, and the Conan vs Leno thing now, right? Well, before we all get too caught up in these heated debates, let’s take a step back and think about what is really going on here… Continue reading “What Flash versus HTML5 is really about…”
Keep on Shootin'!
It’s been a while since an episode of LDP ran, but as we keep on shootin’ our way through life, so to does LDP continue on albeit not as frequently as any of us would like! Nevertheless, I get caught up somewhat on the photo news beat with some of the top stories over the past three weeks, have a great conversation with Tyler Stableford, a recent addition to the distinguished annals of the Canon Explorers of Light group. He’s been featured in photo magazines including Sports Illustrated, National Geographic, and many more. A recent series on the Colorado F-16 fighter pilots is what caught my eye about him and we recently had a chance to chew the fat…on this show! Continue reading “Keep on Shootin'!”
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Canon Rebates Announced
With the economy being in the belt tightening times, the time for Canon rebates could not have come sooner. They announced them on Sunday, and you have until July 10th to cash in. The full page of rebates is available here, but of specific note are the lens discounts that you can get at reduced prices include two that I have had my eye on for a while: Continue reading “Canon Rebates Announced”
Hardware Review: Sigma 4.5mm Fisheye (Circular)
As things start to settle down again, I’ve got a pile of reviews pending work, so this past weekend, while in bachelor status temporarily, I really knocked out a few projects, including getting caught up on some overdue reviews and blog writing. Today, the first of these projects is the Sigma 4.5mm fisheye lens review. This is a super cool lens, and has a lot of opportunities for creative exploration. I took the typical test shots indoors to get a feel for where it’s strengths and weaknesses are, how it focuses, and then took to the streets. Continue reading “Hardware Review: Sigma 4.5mm Fisheye (Circular)”
Droid 2
So, the Droid has been in use for about a week now…and I gave some initial feedback on it yesterday, but thought it might be helpful to give a short video on how to tether the Droid to a computer. It’s pretty straightforward, so here you are (special shout outs to Rich Charpentier for requesting it)…
As you can see – nothing too difficult or fancy to tether a Droid, which makes for great file manipulation and transfer, which means photos are also easily archived across multiple platforms! How are others tethering their smart phones? Just as easily? I didn’t like the Touch having to go through iTunes and be “licensed” on each computer. Thoughts and feedback welcome in the comments!
Don’t forget – I am also sharing pics daily on http://mydroidpics.com Won’t set the photo world on fire, but you can get an idea of the quality of images coming off the Droid! 🙂 Happy shooting all and we’ll see you back here tomorrow!
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The Droid Hath Come
That’s right folks – the time has come for an upgrade to my rinky dinky 1990’s flip phone. I’ve gotten with the decade and upgraded to a Droid from Motorola (yes, I am on Verizon). The upgrade was pretty smooth, although the “tech” at Best Buy had trouble migrating my contacts over. Since I use Gmail for most of my contact info anyway, I figured it would migrate in pretty seamlessly once I got online and sure enough, everything pulled down no problem.
So, how is this related to photography? Well, I can now take and share 5 MP photos with much more ease. The Droid also has an app for Audioboo, so I can go back to creating audio shorts regularly on all things photography too. Plus, as photographers, let’s face it, we are gadget-hounds, and this is definitely a gadget worth considering. Here’s a couple pics I took of the Droid the other day:
There’s the Main screen of the Droid, with my own wallpaper already selected as the background. The audio port is the 3.5mm standard, and another neat feature I like is the micro-USB port for charging and tethering to a computer (that’s right, tethering to a computer!) Check it out:
And, the headphone jack which is right next to the on/off button – makes it easy to find and access:
And, last but not least – the 5 MP camera! This is probably what I am most excited about!
If you’d like to see some actual pics from the camera… check out the new blog I set up just for that purpose. I’ll try to post a shot or two every day over at: www.mydroidpics.com
That’s it for today, but more photo goodness coming tomorrow, but I can’t tell you yet (it’s a surprise!)…happy shooting and we’ll see you then!
Creating a Monthly Desktop Calendar
I alluded to it yesterday, and have already had several people inquire about the procedure to create this desktop calendar. It’s really quite clever, and kudos go out to Jeffrey Friedl over on his site for the script: http://regex.info/blog/photo-tech/calendar He does a decent job at the basic explanation, but since we are a visual world, here are some step-by-step instructions on how to run things from beginning to end! Fair warning – this does require Photoshop as the script (I don’t believe anyway) will run in Lightroom because it uses layers…
1. Download the script from the link above (I downloaded to my desktop on Windows XP)
2. Copy the script from your desktop (or whatever download location you configured for your browser) to your Photoshop folder, as indicated in the screen shot.
3. Open Photoshop (if it was already open, you should probably close PS and restart it)
4. Open the picture you want to apply the script to (I started with the largest size desktop I wanted to configure it for, in this case 1600 x 1200.
5. Navigate to the Presets option in Photoshop and open the script
6. The interface lets you select certain information such as the month it will run for, when the week starts, etc.
7. Special mention here to include certain holidays – if you have custom days (say birthdays, anniversaries, etc) to add, create a text file for reference and point the script to that txt file location. If you don’t want certain days highlighted,you can leave this option un-checked and proceed with the script.
8. It may take the script some time to run (it took me about 58-61 seconds to run it on my computer, but I was multitasking with other things at the time…). When it’d done, you’ll get a stack of a lot of layers that looks like this, with the default layer selected of “Picture Mask”. Note: I’d also recommend checking the option to rasterize most text layers otherwise you’ll have up to 30 additional layers of text (one for each day of the month)! The layers underneath this are where all the really cool stuff is, and the other layers are dates and effects that you can change to suit your own tastes.
9. Once you have tailored the layers to suit your needs, simply flatten, save as a jpg and configure your desktop to use that image! Since I typically will save to multiple desktop dimensions, I start with the original and re-size to each output, from largest to smallest saving each as a jpg then letting the script use that to create the desktop calendar.
There you have it! The nitty gritty details on how to create a really slick looking desktop calendar for you and your clients. Simply print as pictures through your favorite venue if you like and watch the sales come in!
One final little news note that is time sensitive – DIY Photography has a very creative approach to contests and the prize package is worthy of a nod (don’t know how he/she/they managed to come up with this big bag of goodies!), so stop over here and throw your hats in the ring: http://bit.ly/aRQa9l
See you back here tomorrow for the latest in photo goodness! I’ll also bring up a couple tips on how to tweak the layers to your own ends, but feel free to begin exploring your own creative approaches! 🙂
Over $2000 in prizes!
With April in the books a new winner has been determined. It was a really tough call as all the entries this month were deserving, and each could have easily been considered a winner given the theme, the composition, creativity, and treatment. All in all, the cream really has risen to the top, and I am seeing some really impressive quality in the images this month.
Okay, enough dancing around the subject. The winner is:
Bryan F
Seriously, I don’t know if I can keep doing these contests, because every month the decision gets more and more difficult to make. It was a real toss up, and the only reason this one topped the others is because of the sense of tension brought to the image as well. I just kept coming back to it saying “Wow…” So, congrats to Bryan F – he is officially now the first repeat winner on LDP, and also he marks the winner who took us over the threshold of $200o in giveaway prizes! Pretty cool if you think about it – on many counts!
In new contest news – the May contest is now underway, and the theme this month is:
WIDE!
The reason? Well, by now you should know that themes are typically based around some premise of the prize, and since the prize this month is the well-respected PTGui Panorama Software (thanks to the folks over at PTGui for their generous sponsorship). Given the nature of the contest theme, there will be a slight variation this month: images should be no wider than 1600pixels on the longest side. The theme lends itself toward panorama shots, so it would be silly to restrict the dimensions to prevent any decent panos. This will also be noted in the contest thread up on Flickr. Get clicking and above all, have some fun! Deadline is the last Friday in May (28th).
Oh, and in case you can’t keep that in mind – download a May Calendar (yup, they are back at least temporarily…more on that on tomorrows blog post). For now, feel free to download your own desktop sized calendar from the links below:
For those interested in the technique, be sure to tune in tomorrow. Otherwise, happy shooting, good luck in the May contest, and we’ll see you back here mañana!
P.S. For vendors interested in sponsoring a contest or future giveaway, I am getting caught up now and ready to start scheduling giveaway content starting in August 2010. For readers, if you know of any vendors that would be cool for prizes, by all means, let me know and I’ll see if I can’t get them on board!It's Official – CS5 has been released!
Yup, the day it became available for purchase/download, the trials also became available – a first for Adobe! I’ve already downloaded it and am starting to play with it for the first time (was not a beta tester). Suffice to say, it’s pretty slick and yes, as I said yesterday, I am getting the upgrade! Rather than show you screen shots and pore over the list of new features which has been done ad infinitum, I did a short video of some of the settings I like to adjust on an initial install. So, here is that video straight from YouTube!
The Easter Egg had some cool trivia too. For instance – does anyone (outside Adobe) know how many babies were born to members of the team during production? WHo is the queen of the tenth floor? Is the wizard still there? If so, where is he now? Neat little nuggets just waiting to be discovered all in CS5! Got the answers or your own nuggets? Sound off in the comments! 🙂
Also, a final reminder about the April giveaway – some lucky participant will win an Expo Disc from the folks over at Expo Imaging. Get your balance-themed photos in before midnight tonight to have a chance at winning! Here’s the link: April Giveaway
What makes you a professional?
Photography has become a huge industry, within a very short period of time relative to the presence of the field. Think about it – the technology to capture images has been around since the 1800’s with the first pinhole cameras, and metal plates of silver halide that were then reversed onto copper to produce an image. Even when film became a more cost effective method of producing images, we still have not seen such an explosion of interest in photography as we have in the past 5-10 years. With the growing interest, many have hung out shingles, offering their photography services, trying to make a living at it.
Now, while I grant you that some are more talented than others, and even have vision that others lack, there is a disctinction that exists around photographers – lines in the sand, so to speak. And these lines pretty much have divided us into one of the following categories:
- Professional
- Enthusiast/Hobbyist
- Amateur
Here, the ‘amateur” or beginner is pretty much evident by recency or lack of experience, but it’s the other two where there has been a blurring of the lines. Traditionally, the difference between a professional and an enthusiast is the former made a living at it. But then, enthusiasts and hobbyists decided to throw their hats in the ring and earn a buck or two. So, the definition became more strict – a pro is someone who earns more than 50% of their income from it. While that still exists in many cases (and I think fits for tax purposes), the quality of the results is much more blurred than before.
With the advancement in gear, things like image stabilization (vibration reduction for Nikonians), and some just astounding increases in ISO handling, shutter speeds, and everything else, including cleaning things up in post production, some not very good photographers have been able to maintain a living at it. Meanwhile, “enthusiasts” are out there pouring their heart and soul into work but are tossed aside, simply because they don’t make money (or enough money from a percentage perspective) at it.
Clearly, enthusiasts can produce professional results, and equally, there are professionals that have produced, well…less than professional results. So, with that in mind, I would submit that the definition of a professional (for me) really is defined by the quality of the product. Consistency, reliability, knowledgeable, and high quality is what I look for when hiring someone to do anything. And if someone can do that, regardless of how others classify them, to me that is the very definition of professionalism.
So, where did this come from? Well, after the success of the article I put out for people in Shutters and Apertures Explained, I decided to start assembling all the articles I had previously written in various capacities with the idea of putting them out as a collective bundle for people to enjoy. Once I got everything assembled, I was astonished to find that I have produced over 20 articles on photography alone, and countless others on various computer topics, including Helpdesk documentation, Service level Agreements, Helpdesk and Desktop support documentation, along with many other types of technical content.
All told, I have over 150 publications under my belt in the writing world. Yet prior to “Shutters and Apertures“, I had not earned a single dime. Does that mean I am not a professional writer? While my earnings have been a mere pittance compared to many in the field, the quality of content is something I am proud of. Even this blog has been a huge commitment of time and energy which requires research, editing, proof-reading, and much more, way before I ever press the “Submit” button!
So, with over 150 articles and writing credits, and over 6 years of writing experience in various capacities, why do I not consider myself a professional writer? I think the answer lies in how you perceive yourself. Where you think your strengths are, and where your ambition and passion lie. When does one become a professional anything? I’ve got my own reasons for choosing IT as a career path, (and photography and writing as secondary income sources), and while most define me by my predominant income source – I would classify myself as a professional in all of them.
Quite an extensive narrative, eh? But, it does bring up an interesting question of “What makes anyone a professional?“! So, with that in mind, let’s turn the question outward and see what answers we can find! What makes you a professional? Is it your income ratio, the quality of your work, or something else? What defines you? Sound off in the comments – I’d love to hear what others think on this topic!