Category Archives: personal
Delayed
Just as I start to insert myself back into reality, civilization and all that “real” stuff, the very real weather of the East Coast yesterday decided to extend my trip by another 24 hours against my will. Yes, the flight was delayed sufficiently from my starting city that I would have completely missed my connection flight back home. So, I must spend another 24 hours here with the family in upstate New York – oh the tragedy! It does mean that my blog post schedule needs to adjust slightly, so consider today a pseudo “no blog” post day. I may … Continue reading
Where in the world am I?
Thanks to the timely receipt of the Photoshop Guys Q&A sets, I was effectively able to go “off the grid” for nearly a week! That’s right – completely off the grid! No email, no Twitter, no Facebook, no phone, no internet – nada! It was quite the enjoyable experience. While a select few people did have a “need to know” before I left, I did try to keep this on the down low…
Shooting From the Hip
While recently taking a reality break and visiting family in my old stomping grounds, I had a chance to tour the Farmer’s Museum in Cooperstown, NY. Viewing museums like these is a lot of fun for both kids and adults – kids because of the activities, and adults because I think as you get older, you can start to appreciate with more awareness just how tough things were (or how easy they are now).
eBooks on the iPad?
A few people have asked if I had plans to make the eBooks iPad-compatible. I hadn’t considered that before (the iPad prefers the epub format over PDF), but am willing to entertain the option, depending on interest (it’s a little pricier of a proposition, so the cost would have to be justifiable). So – you tell me…do you think it’s worth getting the ISBN, converting to ePUB and distributing through the iBookstore channels as well? Sound off in the weekend poll:
A simple question is never simple…
I am putting together a DIY project that requires a tool which is rather pricey (roughly $50). So in the interests of keeping costs down, I’ve been contacting local glass cutting shops (although that might be telling too much) to see if they have the tool needed for the job. Specifically, the shop needs to have a 3 and1/8″ diamond tipped hole saw for this project. The first words out of my mouth are always: “Hi, my name is Jason and I am trying to find a local shop that can cut a piece of glass for me, but it … Continue reading
Nothing But the Tail Lights
In the course of pursuing creative inspiration, I’ve often found that just picking a subject and sticking with it can be a good exercise in creativity. Taking something and focusing (no pun intended) on that subject and only that subject can help you see things differently. The exercise is good whether your subject is flowers, thumb drives, coffee mugs (which I’ve done in the past), or in this case – tail lights! [cincopa 10624678] As you can tell, some of the shots are pretty cool, others – well, not so much. Some are out of focus, some are boring, but … Continue reading
What Flash versus HTML5 is really about…
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… For photographers, the Flash versus HTML5 debate that has been raging between Adobe and Apple for several weeks now really doesn’t matter a lot. Have you noticed that? Photographers really don’t care. By and large photographers are mostly interested in seeing where things go because it will define how they push their content … Continue reading
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 … Continue reading
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 … Continue reading
Welcome to the neighborhood!
Not sure if you all remember when we moved a while back, and our first day in, the next door neighbors called Animal Control because our dog was following us in and out of the house as we unloaded. It took some talking, negotiating and convincing, but we did finagle a deal so that the dog wouldn’t be hauled off to doggie jail. It was not the kind of welcome we were looking for. Suffice to say, the lack of any real friendly neighbors or sense of community was kind of a motivating factor in our desire to find new … Continue reading
What’s In Your Backyard?
Remember the interview I did on a podcast a while back with Andie Smith? One of the things we talked about was that you don’t really have to travel a whole lot to be a travel photographer – that sometimes your best shots are in your own area. Well, a local Denver magazine, 5280 Photo, just put out an article in their most recent issue that talks about 52 things to do in Colorful Colorado this year. Naturally, many are photogenic too. So, for a dose of inspiration, don’t forget to look at what’s around you! Here’s a couple of … Continue reading
No Blog Thursday…
My cold is still nagging me and after taking care of some administrative stuff for the blog and our upcoming house closings, I simply did not have the energy to complete my last project of the day (I’ve got to get back to writing in advance to make scheduling easier…). So, today is officially a “no blog” Thursday. See you back here again tomorrow…
Ammo in the armaments
Last night the DALPUG (Denver Area Lightroom Users Group) had their bi-monthly meeting and host Brian Reyman walked us through some of the features of the Lightroom 3 Beta. It was a gret seminar and offered an opportunity for many to get an idea of what to expect. I had not realized that there are many work flow options out there because when queried, the audience responded with quite the variety of software approaches. We didn’t officially count votes, but it seemed roughly along these lines: 40% Lightroom 2 40% Photoshop CS (no query here on version #) 10% Aperture … Continue reading
Building the Perfect Camera, Pt. 1
One of the more recent episodes from the guys over at This Week in Photography had them wrapping up their coverage of PMA, where they talked tech about all the latest cameras to come out from the various vendors. Canon was noticeably absent from the show, but it didn’t detract from an interesting comment I think Ron Brinkmann said where he wished he could pull all his favorite features from each of the cameras and basically make his own. To me, the idea screamed “blog post”! So, I decided to go for it. I went through every major SLR on … Continue reading
Photobet Soup
Just an exercise in silliness today, but I thought I would share some of the acronyms that I’ve learned in this zany field of photography. Let’s see how many we can come up with collectively. Do you know all the acronyms seen here? Know some more? Sound off in the comments with your own contributions and let’s see if we can get the whole alphabet! Here’s my starter set: That’s just off the top of my head too, so I know there’s gotta be more out there! This is 76 acronyms that are related to photography…can you identify them all? … Continue reading
The Moment it…”Oops”!
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 … Continue reading
What is it about Bridges?
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…): Bridges
What is it About Rocks?
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 … Continue reading
What is it about Water?
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 … Continue reading
Software Review: PrintKey2000
Many times I have been asked what kinds of software I use to do various things for the blog, especially things like videos, screen captures, audio recording, and all that sort of stuff. One thing that I’ve never really talked about is screen captures…not the videos but actual still shots of things as seen directly on my screen. There are many programs available to do this, some paid for, and some open-sourced, with some being Mac or Windows specific, and a few scattering that cross both platforms. Well, today, I am going to give a little nod to a Windows-only … Continue reading
Pardon the interruption…
but another drop dead date was today as tomorrow we have our first showing after listing the house on the market. My task of the day (it seems I am getting more and more of these)…clean the garage. So, to make it really worth my while, I told Tracy that if that’s the case I needed a Shop-Vac (and a good one) to get all the standing water out that had dripped off the tires onto the garage floor – it just wouldn’t get clean without that. It worked! Not only did I get a clean (relatively) garage floor – … Continue reading
Composition and the Angle of View
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 … Continue reading
Against my better judgement…
For those of you that have been following the blog for a long time (and let me know who you are, because I want to ask why!), you may recall that I used to put out video tutorials on how to do various things inside of Photoshop. After plodding around with that for a while, I came across the gurus of NAPP and realized that several were already doing it, and doing it much better than I ever could. So, rather than re-inventing the wheel, I abandoned the video tutorials in favor of just sharing my “wisdom” in the form … Continue reading
Challenge yourself!
The field of photography is a very challenging venue and finding your “voice” in a crowded field can often make the task seem daunting. If you want to challenge yourself in different ways, try something else. Painting, singing, and yes, playing a musical instrument can not only give you a new vision for your photography, but it can get your creative juices going in ways that you may not realize. While you may never become a Picasso, Luciano Pavarotti, or a Mozart, even picking up something you used to do as a kid (or when you were younger for those … 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
