Monthly Archives: February 2008
Finally Friday Frenzy
Lots to share today – I saw over at Tips from the Top Floor that the US dates, and more importantly, locations are now set. Check them out for a location near you (hint: if you are near San Francisco, Nashville, Ft. Collins or Portland Maine, you are in luck!) Scott Sherman and Michael Stein from The Digital Photography show have their latest podcast out – looks like the photo walk talk missed the cut for this weeks episode. Oh well…still lots of fun things to get caught up on, including their newest contest. In other Friday folly-minded news, I … Continue reading
Thursday Throwbacks
Okay…let’s throw things back two days and pretend it’s Tuesday again. Why, you ask? Because I finished the tutorial I had started. It’s just a quickie, but does explore some often missed elements from the Tools Palette – particularly with the Options bar for each tool. While there clearly wasn’t enough time to go into great detail on all tools – I did give the crop tool and the Lasso tool a run for their money. Watch me screw up too and blithely ignore it while powering through! Rather funny stuff – but hey, if we take ourselves too seriously, … Continue reading
Wednesday Withdrawl
Wow – time flies when you’re away from the computer – my hands have been literally tied up with a pinched nerve in one hand and a few cuts and bruises on the other from my voracious weekend. As a result, I have not been able to spend nearly enough time either behind a camera or in front of the computer. So, today is an “official” no blog Wednesday. Tutorial will have to wait another day as I am doing things very piecemeal at this juncture. Hopefully Friday will be full of news enough to carry everyone through the weekend. … Continue reading
Top Ten Tuesday
Sorry folks, not much to do today. My busy weekend and a rather odd chain of events from Monday night has set me back a we bit in the sleep department. I spent last night catching up a bit – will try to piece together a tutorial after work today, but no promises. It may be a day or two before I can get things together again. In the meantime, here’s another of the “Top Ten Things” for Tuesday to add to your daily hit list. This week I take a look at online print labs. Remember, these are not … Continue reading
Muscle Failure Monday – and the “sweetness” factor
As the weekend fades into the recesses of time, it leaves a reminder with me in the form of muscle failure from the screened in porch project. For regular readers (the half dozen or so)…you may recall me having posted in passing about the porch before. Well, enough was enough for me and I went full bore to finish the dang thing this weekend. I did (for the most part), but am paying the price today. The remaining false studs were put in place, and the panel trimming began in earnest. I never realized how tiring it can be to … Continue reading
Friday Freebie – Top Ten Forums on the Internet
One of the most dynamic ways to share photos in real time is via photography forums. There are literally hundreds upon thousands to choose from. So…how do you know which ones to visit? Well, find a Forum Ranking post from bloggers like myself – usually you can find a few good ones from blog posts. So, on that note, here’s the Friday Folly – A Free Top Ten list of Photo Forum communities! Naturally, this list is highly subjective, and indicative of the ones that I have found useful for my own purposes over the last two or three years, … Continue reading
Tips for Photo Walks
Hey all, sorry for the late posting today – in the middle of the week I don’t have as much time to put material together. However, a few weeks ago Scot Sherman and Michael Stein took a photo walk with some listeners from their Digital Photography Show while in Vegas. That, in conjunction with a new site developed specifically for photo walks, made me start thinking about the keys for success to photo walks, and what our local group (The South Carolina Photography Guild) does on a regular basis. Since I had already offered to share those thoughts with Scott … Continue reading
Woot! Another Wisdom-filled Wednesday of Web Wonder!
As promised, here’s another set of things to inspire, amaze, and tantalize your senses from what I’ve been reading and seeing online in the last week or so. In the interests of keeping things from rounding out to increments of fives and tens (Sports Night reference – anyone know it, or am I alone in my vagaries?), here’s 6 links for Wednesday: Joe McNally’s Video on creating a shot of the Empire State Building (Although I think I posted this before – but worth a second watch anyway…) Earthbound Light – Very good site – particularly the photo tips archives … Continue reading
Tuesday Tricks and Treats (and a tutorial)
This Tuesday, I’d like to share some neat tricks I came across online. First, How to Light a Shot on Two Planes – this came courtesy of The Strobist (one of my regular reads) – plus it includes a really cool-looking shot of some Turkish Delight! Apparently he (David Hobby, Strobist author) did this workshop in Florida last weekend with industry folks like Scott Kelby and others from NAPP in the room – no, that wouldn’t be at all intimidating! Another neat treat I read about through PhotoJoJo was a blog where two friends who live a fair distance (3191 … Continue reading
A long weekend…
President’s Day has afforded many of us the pleasures of a long weekend. I took advantage of the opportunity by catching up on some over-needed Z’s, visiting with family, and making strides on the back car-port-turned-screened-in-porch. So, it’s now Monday afternoon and I am just now sitting down at the computer for some meaningful minutia to share. One fun little tidbit I got came from the Red Bubble community where a lot of fine art photography can be found. It seems many there are familiar with another community called EyeFetch. I know, there’s tons of communities out there, but these … Continue reading
Friday Free-for-all
So, last night after the sappiness ended, I came back to the trusty glow of my monitor and started knocking out a few more photos for my display book (more on that later). During a break, I stopped into the NAPP forums (highly recommend a membership with NAPP btw, at only $99 it’s a steal!) and was reading through some of the stuff, just to try and catch up a little more on my own knowledge base. Boy what a humbling experience that was! I did come away with some great web gems though, so every Wednesday for about the … Continue reading
Sweet Nothings
Ahhh, February 14th – the day of and for romance. Today, more than any other day of the year, couples are permitted to become super- and sugar-soaked sappy with their significant others. Flowers, chocolates, cards, poems, jewelry, movies, dinners, and of course, the *ahem* activities that can often follow from the dishing out of romance for 4 or 5 consecutive hours have become requisite components of a “holiday” that apparently is
Another Wednesday Walk around the Web
I mentioned it in the latest video podcast, but it also bears mentioning that Popular Photography’s annual Photo Wizard contest is now underway. Visit the contest page here for all the info and to download the images for compositing. Good luck to all. In other web news, did anyone else read about Apple’s latest update to Aperture 2.0? Sounds like they are trying to compete with Adobe Lightroom – over 100 new features including one called Recover Slider…hmmm. Other fun and inspiring sites I saw in the past few days: Joe McNally’s blog – a little blurb about his book … Continue reading
Selective Color, Part III
The Tuesday tutorial for this week is the final installment in making selections based on a specific color, or range of colors. The first demonstrated how to use the Magic Wand and Lasso tools to copy an item onto it’s own layer, while preserving the rest of the image for editing. Part II looked at using the history brush to bring back color in a specific part of an image for a unique way of identifying one colorful object of an image. In this final installment, I use the Color Range method to demonstrate how you can make a selection … Continue reading
Tuesday tutorial teaser
Today, I am going to show you yet another technique for making specific color selections, but as noted in the title, this is just a teaser – the tutorial is not finished in production, so I should have it up later this evening (around 7). In the meantime, I would like to thank everyone again who has been reading, watching, listening, and sharing their feedback. Let’s keep it up – what other tips, tricks, techniques and stuff do you want to hear in tutorials? I’m listening…
Weekend Wrapup (a.k.a. Monda Morning Minutia)
So, over the weekend, I usually step away from the computer and pick up the camera. Well, this past weekend, I confess, I did not step away from the computer as much as I had planned, and did not pick up a camera as often as planned. Suffice to say, I did find some rather meaningless trivia out from my computer time. A neighbor is starting a work-from-home type business where he makes signs and he is using some software called PXI. Asked if I could come over and install his fonts and clipart. After doing so, and poking around … Continue reading
Friday Follies for February
Okay, my Friday follies are a little later than normal (I usually either post super early or before diner). Anyway, without further ado, here’s some fun diversions for Friday: Stop over at Photo.net and enjoy some amazing photography from Rarindra Prakarsa. I found him through Scott Kelby’s blog. Another fun site to enjoy some photography fine art would be a recent discovery I found: Red Bubble. (I even created a profile there to see how things work) Need a tripod in a pinch? Try Photojojo’s suggestion of using a screw, a string and a weighted washer. It’s not really as … Continue reading
Re-visiting stock versus fine art photography (does noise matter)?
I mentioned briefly in a post last week about a discussion that took place in the forums section of a prominent stock agency. The question was raised (by me) about whether fine art photography can co-exist and sell as “stock” when the agency itself is marketed as a stock site rather than as fine art photography. The question never had a clear resolution, but some common ideas did seem to bubble to the surface. First, there is the idea that if a photo does not meet certain criteria in terms of noise, sharpness, chromatic aberations, etc, then it does not … Continue reading
Weekly Web Walk
As promised, here’s my weekly walk around the web…although I must admit the tune “Window on the World” as sung by Jimmy Buffet is running through my head now. Anyway, to get things started, the PMA show for 2008 was this last weekend. We’ve all heard the big news events, including the Canon XSi, the Nikon D60 and the new lenses each is adding to their market. But, what might be nice is a complete rundown of the new bodies released, and reviews of those new additions to the marketplace. Well, no fear, I found one such resource here: PMA … Continue reading
Big Blue Bowl – Selective Color, Part 2
The tutorial for this week is the second in what will hopefully be a three-part series showing the various ways that you can approach selective coloring in Photoshop. Last week, I went over the technique of using the lasso and selection tools to select your color component and then putting that on its own layer. This week, I look at the history brush. You can quickly see the differences between each and how each has its advantages and disadvantages. I gave a shout-out to Scott Sherman and Michael Stein’s Digital Photography Show on the video, but you really do need … Continue reading
Missed Mondays
Egads, I am such a slacker – never posted yesterday. I was still feeling the effects of a rather tedious weekend spent on some home renovations and Super Bowl side effects. Suffice to say, I hit the sack at 8pm – a first for me in quite a while. However, I do have some tidbits to share – both Scott Kelby and David Hobby from Photoshop Insider and Strobist fame respectively give mention to Joe McNally’s recent book – The Moment it Clicks. I usually avoid promotional recommendations, but with the excerpts that I’ve read and the buzz about it, … Continue reading
Printing your pictures online
I know it’s unusual for me to make posts on the weekends, but I felt this subject warranted an extra post. One of the things that’s always a hassle to deal with is taking your prints from not only the camera to the computer, but then from the computer to the printer. Often times we are limited by the quality of our desktop printers. To combat that, we turn to local printing outlets. Even more so, in this day of technology, online printing has become much more consumer-oriented, with a lot of the mystique and confusion, (i.o.w. – hassle), alleviated. … Continue reading
Selective Coloring: Method #1
The task of selecting a single object in an image to highlight by means of leaving that color intact while altering the surrounding elements is nothing new to photography…and there are several ways to do this, with varying levels of success and usability for each. The tutorial for this week looks at the simplest of ways, by putting that object on its own layer. The nice thing here is that the technique is portable to multiple versions of Photoshop. Having recently upgraded myself to CS3 Extended, I am trying to keep tutorials cross-functional across multiple versions for usability. Enjoy, and … Continue reading
