As you may recall, the photo walk group for Denver made another sunrise attempt at RMNP at Bear and Sprauge lake last weekend. Since the sunrise wasn’t what we’d hoped (the weather doesn’t always cooperate in landscape photography), we journeyed on, and stopped at a really nice place for panos. While we were milling around, I did capture a few of the crew and some actually held some promise. Here are a few of the “RMNP Outtakes”:
Call me crazy, but I thought the outtakes were rather fun, and the last one for some reason is very compelling for me….what about everyone else? What are your thoughts? These photo walks sure are a great way to inspire the creative gene if you have the right mindset, and we have another one going on tomorrow back in our familiar haunt of downtown Denver, under the guidelines of “Embracing the Constraints” where all we get to shoot with are P&S and phone cameras. Yours truly is leading it, so if you have an inkling and are in the area, check out the site here: Denver Photowalk Group
If not, have a great weekend, happy shooting, and don’t forget to stop back in on Monday for yet more photography goodness.
We all know the real phrase, made famous by none other than Joe McNally, and his well-received book “The Moment it Clicks””…(and a great read, so go check it out if you haven’t already). However, that’s just Joe… I seem to encounter more blunders than brilliance.
For instance, I was working on the photos from the weekend shoot and had a rather good set I wanted to put into a panorama shot. Before taking the good set though, I decided to run a test on some older images on a new program that came which came recommended to me from Alex Saunders over at Tenuous Thread called AutoPano Pro. So, in working with the trial software, I went into Lightroom and grabbed my 12 or 13 photos to stitch together from my archives and see how it did for a test run.
Well, because the stitching of 12-13 images can take a while, I left it and came back the next day to find I had grabbed one of the wrong images. Can you find my “oops”?
Here's the edited version
Pre-post production
So, my foibles and failures in attention to detail thrown wide for the world to see! 🙂 It can be fun though when you look at these things lightheartedly and just have a good chuckle though. Anyone else have any stories or foibles they want to share? Comments are open…
Congratulations and kudos go out to the winner for the February contest – the theme was Height and the winning image came from Sue90ca! To see all the images submitted for February, check out the thread here with all the images. Some really great ones were included, and as always, it was a tough decision. Nevertheless, Sue90ca’s “Crayons” was selected as the winner.
Before anyone asks, the March contest info is not up on FLickr yet, but I should have an announcement for that later on tonight. I’ll give you a WILD hint though about the subject and the prize! Happy shooting and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow!
P.S. Sue, if you could email me at jason <at> canonblogger <dot> com or message me on Flickr, I need to get in touch with you about the prize delivery for February…congrats again! 🙂
As the popularity of this theme continues to grow, I am really having more fun culling through my own archives, and have several ideas for actually getting out and shooting even more “themed” sets. However, today, I present to you (courtesy of my wife, who astutely remembered that I shoot a lot of…):
Hmmm….seems I have a new series theme going on here – people keep asking when the next series will be posted and are also asking me for specific series sets of photos. I am not sure I have the library of images to accommodate everything, but that just gives me motivation for subject matter whenever I go out shooting again! So, if you have a series that you’d like to see from me – suggest it in the comments or via email! For the time being, here’s another popular set from the library of yours truly:
Rocks
There’s the latest “set” for everyone’s viewing enjoyment. Feel free to leave feedback in the comments with your thoughts as we are always learning from one another! Happy shooting and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow!
No, I am not talking about Operating Systems, rather I am talking about a follow-up to yesterday’s photo post with the theme of “Water”. You see, another recurring theme for me is windows of buildings. Taken from various angles and in various lighting conditions, and all over the place, ranging from South Carolina, to Colorado, Mexico, and various points in between, here’s a random sampling of windows I’ve captured in camera:
There you have it – just a random sampling of “Windows” as I’ve seen them over the last 5 years. Got your own archives of thematic images? Anything that has captured your fancy consistently over time? Share your own themes and photos in the comments (remember, you can upload to the comments now)! Happy shooting, and don’t forget about the February contest going on in the Flickr thread – a 16×20 print canvas is at stake. Get your photos in while there’s still time!
Something about water really draws us as photographers – whether it’s the sunrise on a lake or ocean, the beads of dew on a morning flower, the tears or sweat as they roll down a cheek, or even the implied motion of water drops bouncing in the air – water somehow draws us all. Could it be that humans are made up of a majority of water? We do need it to survive – water is one staple we cannot live without. Those two atoms of Hydrogen and one of Oxygen have so much meaning for us, we somehow are compelled to capture water in all its various forms of…dare I say beauty? Who knows what drives us to capture it in camera, but I for one enjoy it! Do you?
The idea for this post came from a tweet where someone referenced their entire archive saying they had photos of this and that, and were prepared for most situations when clients would come to them and ask “Do you have a photo of…?” so they could say yes! It prompted me to go through my own archives, and I found several recurring themes – one of which was…can you guess? WATER!
Go through your own archives and see if you can find recurring patterns – I asked some fellow photogs and water was a common one, which got me to thinking about this post in particular. “What is the deal with water?” Do you see a lot of water in your work? What other themes arise from your archives? Sound off in the comments, as I’d love to hear what inspires others (even if it is water too!)
Don’t forget, the LDP Flickr contest continues and the “Heights” contest deadline is about a week away. Get your photos in soon to be in the running! Happy shooting all and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow!
We’ve talked a lot about various rules of composition – what they are (Rule of Thirds, Golden Mean, etc) and when to adhere versus eschew them to create dramatic effect. One thing we’ve not talked much about is the idea of changing your angle of view. We have mentioned the concept in the past, suggesting that to get a good perspective to look up, look down, look behind you, and in new directions to get a unique view on things. While this is always a good practice to remind yourself that there are other perspectives, it’s never really been discussed or illustrated in depth.
So, what I did was take a pretty ordinary object – my coffee mug – and take ten different pictures of it. I challenged myself to look at one thing in ten unique ways – at different angles, and to try and find one that showed me something different than what I would usually expect to see. I did get ten different angles, so technically I accomplished the objective. Since some were very close to one another though, I am sharing here six different angles of view to help illustrate the purpose behind the exercise:
I used my 70-200 f4 and a tripod. The white background you see in some pictures is just a piece of foam packing that was used to ship prints to me a while back. I had my flash on the hot shoe, pointing up and to the rear most of the time. Camera settings were 1/250th, at f4, and an ISO of 400.
It was pretty fun actually because I drink coffee every day! So, taking this regular object that I usually don’t even think twice about (although I am a coffee hound so I do have quite a collection of mugs to choose from…), I took 6 distinctly different angles of view. Some are more boring than others, sure! But some are actually kinda cool – in particular I am fond of the one with the mug handle sticking in the air! To keep it in place I simply stuck my lenscap behind the mug as a prop! It’s a fun exercise, and can make you see regular objects and scenes in new ways. This is just one way to force yourself to think creatively.
So now, it’s reader assignment time – go find something regular, anything! Whether it’s a coffee mug, a screwdriver, a telephone or a clock radio…pick something then force yourself to take ten different shots of it. Zoom in close, go super wide. Drop your aperture way open for more blur and selective focus. Use a totally different lens than you normally would. Going with the 70-200 I forced myself to back up. I could have swapped to the 10-22mm and gotten something totally different…and the same goes for the 70mm macro. Whether you live in an apartment, a house, or……an airstream (do you really know anyone that would live in an airstream?), there are tons of ways to think creatively that surround you! Seek them out, and you will find a piece of yourself – share it with the world!
Post your creativity exercise shots up on Flickr in the LDP pool – show that creative side and happy shooting! Until tomorrow, keep them shutters clicking, and watch out for a new Audioboo about the new Canon T2 Rebel – gonna be a fun clip on what Canon has been up to! 🙂
The most common questions I get here on the blog center around the idea of how to take better pictures. Whether those “better pictures” are better landscapes, or portraits, wildlife or events, everyone wants suggestions on how to approach the practice of taking pictures better. Esoteric and creative considerations aside, there are some fundamental “tricks of the trade” that, by and large, will almost always improve your craft in pretty much any genre. So, today, I thought I would take a moment to share 5 “tricks” I’ve learned that always lead to better landscapes: Continue reading “5 Tips to Better Landscapes”→
While recently participating in a Photowalk group outing to Rocky Mountain National Park, with the fellow local photogs, I learned about this great little plugin for Lightroom that allows you to export your photos directly to Flickr…all within Lightroom! It’s a pretty cool little plugin, and as you know, when I learn something new – so do you!
This plugin comes courtesy of Jeffrey Friedl, and one of the greatest features of it is the cost – absolutely free! Well, that’s not exactly true, you do need to spend one cent via Paypal, but for a penny, check out what you can do:
I started off downloading the ZIP file (and it works for Windows or Mac) and expanding the archive. Then I moved the plugin to the root of my Applications folder on the Mac (you can choose where ever you want to store plugins, you just have to tell Lightroom – and for me this is an easy place). The icon for it looks like this:
Flickr Uploader Plugin Icon
Nothing too spectacular yet, and there’s a little bit of installation and customization needed. Your needs may vary based on how you want to use the plugin, Flickr, and Lightroom, but the cool thing is that Jeffrey has put together a plugin for most online locales including Smugmug, Zenfolio, Facebook, Photobucket, and many more. So, if you use another resource, it’s worth checking out. I’ll continue here for the Flickr plugin and you can decide for yourself if it’s worth adding this tool to your workflow.
Next up, I went ahead and configured the plugin from inside of Lightroom to use my Flickr account. Here’s what I did. To start, click on Export, just as if you are exporting to disk or some other resource
Open Export Dialog
One the export dialog box is open (and here’s the tricky part), look to the far right of the gray bar across the top that says “Export to Disk”. You’ll see two little arrows which means there are menu options:
Files on Disk
If you click on those arrows, you’ll get a new dialog box (bet you didn’t know that was there – did you? 🙂 ), and the Flickr option will show up. Select the Flickr dialog one for our purposes here:
Flicker Exporter
Once you select the Flickr Exporter, you will get a new dialog box that will start the authentication process that Lightroom will use to log into Flickr. If you have multiple Flickr accounts, or specific authentication methods you prefer, these steps may change a little based on your needs. But here, I am doing things the most straightforward way:
Flickr Authentication
Next up, if you are logged into Flickr already, the plugin will open a page that will grant access to the plugin. So, it helps if you are already logged into your Flickr account on the internet. So, you’ll get a dialog box that looks something like this from the plugin to that effect:
Warning Notice from Plugin
On clicking the OK button, it will take you to the grant access page, and you’ll get another dialog box that grants the plugin access to post photos to your Flickr account (which, after all, is the goal, right?). The one notable difference you will see in yours is that my face won’t be staring back at you like here. That is the avatar for my Flickr account, so your screen should show your avatar – if it shows something different, then you are in the wrong account (but I guess that goes without saying)!
Granting Access from Flickr Side
A second confirmation screen from Flickr will also let you know that this is a 3rd party application, and just acts as a security measure to make sure you are aware of what that means. Click the button that says “OK, I’ll authorize it”, as shown below. Again, while it goes without saying at this point, your dialog will look a little different different. If it doesn’t and you see my avatar in your Flickr account, I am gonna be calling soon! 🙂
Authorization
Finally, you will get a confirmation screen on Flickr, noting what you’ve done (they make it pretty clear what you’ve done, and how to delete it if needed on the Flickr side):
Flickr Confirmation
On return to the Lightroom interface, you’ll get a confirmation screen there as well – just click it to continue:
Lightroom Confirmation
On granting access, you’ll get an authorization code, which for obvious reasons I am not going to post here, but make a note of that code and enter it back when you return to Lightroom. On completing that you will be presented with the Flickr Uploader Dialog. Here I am going to show you a few key ones that you have to scroll down to be aware of in making your uploading preferences.
Your Flickr Account login in Lightroom
This first shot (above) shows the top part of the dialog, and shows how you are authenticating on Flickr. Now, use the scroll bar on the right side to move down through the options. First stop, the Photo Set. On authenticating, the plugin will pull your complete list of photo sets from Flickr. If you don’t have any photo sets built, then none will be here. Since I do have photo sets, it will default to the first one alphabetically. You can change the sort order, and specify what photo set (if any) you want the uploaded image to be added to, as desired. For this example, I did not add the photo to an existing set, or create a new one.
Photo Set Choice
Pretty straightforward, but let’s keep scrolling through a few more key items you will want to think about utilizing or disabling depending on your work flow. The next one I think warrants mentioning here is the groups. One of the ways you can increase the visibility of your photos on Flickr is by participating in groups. More people look at them, you’ll get more feedback, and sharing our photos with others is the goal anyway, so go ahead and add the appropriate groups here. I selected the group “CanonBlogger” for obvious reasons! 🙂
Publishing to a Group
Only a few other options that I think are useful from this plugin, so we’re almost done. Next up, is another social networking one that I tend to use fairly regularly – Twitter:
Twitter posting
Last but not least are the meta tagging options you have available to you from the plugin interface. The options are just to diverse to go into detail here, and I prefer to tag photos on Flickr differently than in Lightroom, so I leave these blank, but in the interests of full disclosure, here are some of the tagging and naming options in the plugin dialog:
Tagging Photos
If you think about it, for a penny, this is a pretty good deal (I went ahead and made a donation, which I would also encourage you to do as well – Jeffrey has clearly put a lot of time into developing these plugins, and he needs to eat, just like the rest of us). So, there you have it – the process of finding, downloading, installing, configuring and using the Lightroom Flickr uploader. As I mentioned at the beginning of the post, there are other uploaders available as well, and I am going to probably go get the one for Smugmug as I have an account there too. It just makes the sharing of your photos that much easier. (Who knows, the Facebook one may also make its way into my utility belt at some point once I get more comfortable with it…)
If you have questions or problems with the installation or the uploader itself, Jeffrey has a good FAQ page here that should answer most questions for you. If not, I am sure he has an email address available somewhere for specific questions not addressed online. For my work, I think this plugin totally rocks! It’s going to become a staple in my work flow, and if you are into social media at all, I would highly recommend it for those purposes as well.
In talking about all of this, it bears mentioning that some of us are not fans of Flickr, Twitter, or Facebook, and while I can understand the hesitation of some, it’s really a matter of personal preference, and maximizing the time you spend on your computer. if these outlets aren’t your cup of tea, that is totally fine. But if you have the Flickr plugin – it is that much easier for you to participate in the Monthly Giveaways here at Canon Blogger/Learning Digital Photography!
With those thoughts, I’ll leave well enough alone as this post has gone on long enough for one day. Happy shooting (and uploading) and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow.
