Category Archives: Flickr
Friday Round-Up
A bunch of news for today – as most of you know, our inaugural workshop was this last weekend in Anaheim, and boy was it rockin’! Great participation, great input, and super feedback from everyone. On the anonymous feedback forms, every ranking was either a 9 or a ten (and there were more of the latter than the former)! Such a rush to see so much appreciation, and Denver is sure to draw an even bigger crowd. There’s only a few early bird seats left (3 I think), so if you haven’t registered yet – better sign up while the … Continue reading
A bit of Tea, Chap?
A recent visit to the parental units in upstate New York was long overdue for a number of reasons. First off, I’d not been back in nearly 4 years! Second, they had done some pretty extensive renovations and were clamoring for family to come see all the newness of their kitchen (and for the record, it was pretty fabulous), but third, and perhaps most importantly – the maternal unit is quite the avid gardener, and she prides herself on the beauty of her English-style gardens.
Contests, Contests, and yet more Contests!
The June contest came to a close on Sunday, and after looking through all the images after anonymization (a.k.a. my wife downloaded them) and import to Lightroom, the winner has been determined. (Drumroll please…) And the June winner is:
May We Salute You
The May pool of photos that everyone contributed to was quite stunning – the listening and reading audience is quite a talented group and some of the images on here were really incredible. Full of vibrance, vision, color and passion – it was really hard to narrow things down – but I give you here just a few from the wonderful month of May. There really is no better way to say it than: May, We Salute You I’m pretty sure the artist name matches with the description and caption, so be sure to stop by not only the LDP … Continue reading
The Ides of April
Well, it’s not really the ides of April, more the Ides of Closing. Yup, us nomads are at it again – we just can’t seem to settle down. Our cross-country move into an apartment for 6 months, then another move into our current house for two years was not enough. Nope, we got the itch again. Funny how the moving itch is coincidentally happening within a week of our seven year anniversary. Isn’t that supposed to be the itch? Oh well, I’ll take this itch over the alternative. So, with this being closing date and all, I’ve clearly got a … Continue reading
Saving Money is Always Good
In photography it’s pretty much accepted that you get what you pay for. If you want super fast glass with pristine optics, then expect to pay for it. Alternatively, if you’re on a budget, don’t expect apertures in the 2.8 range do bring the sharpest images. You can also kiss things like Image Stabilization goodbye (Vibration Reduction for the Nikonian crowd). So, yeah, we all know that photography is a field where you have to spend money. But, this does not mean you have to spend money unnecessarily. When there are savings out there to be had, I am all … Continue reading
Early to bed, Early to Rise
Makes for a great opportunity to shoot sunrises in Rocky Mountain National Park! And that’s where the Denver Photo Walk Meetup group is headed again tomorrow. You’ve seen the video here on the blog for a few months now and for those of you that have watched it, you know the light wasn’t as good as we had hoped. Tomorrow morning, we’re hoping for a different set of lighting conditions. About 14 of us have made the commitment (so we’re committed!), so it should be a pretty good sized group. Sunrise is predicted for around 6am, which means about a … Continue reading
Camera Bag Must Haves?
Over the weekend in between packing and moving boxes, I spent a little time with the Twitterverse and had a chance to get some fun dialogs going. One of the questions posed was “Camera body aside, what are the must have essentials for you in your camera bag?” My answer was my two filters, the polarizing filter and the ND filter for the wide angle (10-22) and telephoto (70-200) respectively. I got some great responses from people that I thought would be interesting to share here on the blog today. Here’s the responses from each twitter name: tcrpmg: Charger, extra … Continue reading
Portrait or Landscape
One of the more common questions when it comes to composing images is whether to shoot with the camera oriented in the landscape or the portrait position (horizontal or vertical). As always, the answer is usually along the lines of “it depends…” There are some instances though when a portrait orientation is more conducive and others where a landscape is equally superior. For instance – if you want to have your images published in magazines, portrait mode might work better primarily because that is how magazines are typically laid out. Calendars, on the other hand, because of the opposing orientation, … Continue reading
New Formats for the New Year
With the advent of a new year, the podcast is hopefully going to take on a new format – with things being more conversational. Erik Bernskiold comes back to the show and we’re talking about all the latest news in photography, as well as a main talking point of how to publicize and share your images online – looking at the pros and cons of the various options that are out there. Lots of news including announcements from the recent CES show, as well as contest information, and listener questions and answers so it’s a pretty heavily packed show. Almost … Continue reading
December Winner!
The trumpets sound! The chorus rings, and the internet shall stop and take notice! Why you ask? We have a winner for the December Giveaway! I am happy to announce that the winner of the December Giveaway Bonanza is none other than: Frank Sammut! Frank’s shot of a childs hand, offering up a gift perfectly symbolized the concept of giving, and his blurred bokeh of the holiday theme in the background was just beautiful! He’s got some great work on his Flickr page too, so stop by and check it out and tell him congrats! Congratulations to Frank for winning … Continue reading
37 out of 52
Can anyone guess the significance of the post title right off the bat? Any takers at all? For those that could, cool! For those that can’t, 37 is a reference to the last podcast for 2009! Episode #37 (Longevity of Lenses) is now available for your listening pleasure in iTunes and with the folks hosting the show directly on the web at Personal Life Media. It might be an hour or so actually before the show is available for download on iTunes, so hold off for a little there before downloading – you might get the previous episode! It does … Continue reading
I Got a Camera for Christmas – Now What?
With the major holiday of the year behind us, many are proudly wielding new cameras…but many are also asking questions. The most popular question I am getting via emails is something along the lines of: “I got a new ______ for Christmas. Now What?” (Insert your own camera make/model in the blank) The answer to this really depends on what, if anything, you had before the new item made its way into your hands. For simplicity sake, I’ll break the response down to 3 different categories: 1. This is your first “serious” camera, and you are making the foray into … Continue reading
Video Hosting Services Review
With the increasing popularity and discussion of video (we are always hearing about the convergence of photography and videography), I thought it might be interesting to take a look at the different video hosting services, and look at their functionality. So, earlier today I recorded a video using Quicktime Pro on the Mac, and tried uploading it to 3 different popular services: YouTube, Vimeo, and Animoto. Here are the videos in that order, followed by my thoughts on each: YouTube: Thoughts Price: It’s free! Nothing beats free in my book, and with the competitive landscape of technology, this is pretty … Continue reading
Episode #36 – The End is Near!
Okay, the end isn’t near, but the end of the year is near, and it’s time to start doing wrap-ups all over the internet and other publications. Heck, even Time Magazine has a photos of the year, as did Rangefinder, and many blog authors are doing the same. So, in the interests of always “doing something different”, I am inviting everyone that listens to the podcast and reads the blog to share your own thoughts of 2009 in the comments. Here’s the questions that I always think about at the end of the year: What was my best photo? What … Continue reading
Flickr Plugin for Lightroom
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 … Continue reading
There’s a fine line…
There’s a fine line between standing up for your rights and intentionally inciting controversy. As you may know, I have been known to stand up for my rights. At the same time I can also respect the need to be cautious, given the nature of the time that we live in. Since you probably are wanting to know where this is coming from, while going through my daily blog reads, and weekly reader posts, I was reading a post from friend-of-the-blog Becky Thomas. She had a post up on her blog about someone who was detained (note – detained, not … Continue reading
I’m dreaming of an HDR Christmas
Last night I got the bug to try something I’d seen before – the classic Christmas-y look with a score of music and a shallow depth of field. It was straightforward enough and after putting a piece of sheet music on the piano, and trying it that way, wasn’t getting the drop off in depth-of -field as I had hoped for. So, I took a different approach and put the music sheet flat on a table, knowing the dof would drop off that way, with the foreground out of focus and receding off in the background too. So, the second … Continue reading
Podcast #35 is now live!
The latest episode of Learning Digital Photography is now live and ready for your download and listening pleasure. As always, there’s news, interviews, and listener questions and answers – and this time it’s a theme of Treats, Travel and Tips. I had the pleasure of bringing Andie Smith back to the blog/podcast and we actually had a chance to sit down and really chew the fat on a lot of stuff. News Nikon Contest – $100,000 Giveaway! Saturday Night Live recorded on a Canon Techie Tips for Shooting at Holiday Events Interview with Andie Smith AndieSmithPhotography.net Andie.Smith on Flickr @AndieSmith … Continue reading
December Giveaway News
A few days late, but the year-end giveaway is quite exciting as there is just a ton of good stuff going into this giveaway. Here’s the inside skinny on what the winner is going to walk away with in December: A free copy of the “Within the Frame”, the wildly successful and great book donated by David DuChemin! A free copy of “Visionmongers”, the latest book from none other than David Duchemin! A free copy of Photomatix, the software known for its HDR processing, donated by the folks over at HDRSoft! A free 16″x20″ gallery wrap of a print of … Continue reading
And the Winner Is…
With the November giveaway deadline behind us, it was time to look at all the submissions and pick a winner from the set of entries. Without further ado, the winner of the November Contest/Giveaway is: The theme for the contest was “Winter” and though it was a little early for this, Yvonne took her creativity to new levels by doing some rather unique post processing on an image and it worked! It looks like she converted this to black and white or added an infrared filter of some kind. Not sure what exactly she did, but it sure gave me … Continue reading
How Low Can You Go?
In episode #34 of Learning Digital Photography, we look at the subject of low light photography. In these shooting circumstances, you often need to drop your shutter speed pretty low, while shooting with apertures that are relatively open, and high ISO’s in order to get the scene with enough light. Whether you are shooting night photography, concert photography, or foggy weather, these are all things to look at and think about. To help shed some light on the subject (get it? ), we talked to Becky Thomas (aka BecThomasPhoto on Twitter) on the show. A great conversation, and lots was … Continue reading
Software Review: Noise Ninja
With the October Contest underway where the winner will walk away with a fully licensed copy of Noise Ninja, courtesy of the folks at PictureCode, today is a great day to give everyone an idea of what makes this program one of the industry leaders. Since I have talked about the presence of noise in your images before (read that post here), re-hashing the principles of what introduces noise and the artistic benefits and image quality downsides of it in your images isn’t really needed. Instead, here I will simply share some of the interface, and a few before and … Continue reading
