Wandering in the LightWandering in the LightThings They Forgot to Tell You About DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY 
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Punting collages & that postcard feel
2009-02-09 04:48:00 I do like the new picasa collage features, the picture pile with the normal photo boarders gives the collage a real postcard feel. Perfect to bring many aspects of an event or pleasant day out into one unified image. Photo collages are a great albeit informal way to present collections of snaps. You can do it the old fashion way, print out the images and assemble with scissors and paste, buy on of the photo collage frames (usually with pre-cuts mats) or use one of the newer photo collage and poster printing services available from a lot of digital photo processing centers these days. Speaking of new photo processing services, more and more services are providing square formats on blow ups and even canvas prints. A collection of square images can make a wonderful wall display. More About: Postcard , Feel
Christchurch Sumer
2009-02-09 03:52:00 Mid-morning in the Hagley Gardens on one of Christchurch 's hottest days. A world away from melbourne's heat and bushfires.
Some more multi-image panoramas
2009-02-08 08:09:00 The Marlborough Sound Area has so many magnificent full panoramic vistas, it is ideal for some more multi-image panoramic (assembled with autostitch) More About: Multi , Image
Almost full moon
2009-02-07 05:08:00 Two photos taken from Tahunanui beach using reflected light and stitched with Autostitch. More About: Full Moon , Moon , Full
Progressive upload as I travel
2009-02-06 05:58:00 From new zealand tripTrying out using Picasa Web Album as a progressive store of my photos as I travel. The convetional photo upload can be a bit tedious and prone to drop outs, where as the web album upload seems to be an ftp that can restart where it last got to (also click on the preserve bandwidth box) More About: Progressive , Travel , Upload
Dark Subjects light background
2009-02-05 10:12:00 This is one combination that will confuse digital cameras. More precisely confuse their light meters. A very dark subject against a light background, usually results with a silhouette. These statues are on the foreshore in Nelson, (New Zealand) and there was a bushfire raging nearby, so there was a drama in sky sky due to smoke. Yet neither the statues or the richness in the sky are capture when the camera chooses the best exposure. Perhaps this is an ideal situation for some HDRi help out. I took a set of three bracketed shots 1.5 EV apart. The under-exposed image (-1.5 EV) shows the sky, but no details in the statues. Whereas the overexposed image (+1.5 EV) captures the detail in the statues, but the sky is washed out. I then used picturenaut to combine the tones across a broader range and with a bit of adjustment in the tone mapping set I was able to get a reasonable result, but not exciting or as dynamic as i hoped. The best solution was to come back... More About: Dark , Light , Background
Bandwidth and sky drive
2009-02-03 22:08:00 I should have realized it before I typed the suggestion about using sky drive for photo back while travelling? For example today I took 550 photos (a lot where for multi-image panoramas, before you label me extravagant). even in jpeg format that was close to 1.6GB of photo dedicated space. On my wireless modem that would be a couple of hours transfer at least and because i am roaming internationally the double dipping data charges of around $15/Mb mean it would be probably cheaper to buy a new digital camera each day. So I had forgotten about the massive bandwidth, modern digital camera photos consume. I haven?t attempted to use it so no damage done to my bank account. I still upload my photos to my notebook computer each day via picasa, as is my routine, but rather than then sync?ing them up to sky drive. At the same time I load them I sync them onto a backpack style hard drive. Its not that I won?t be using any or all that generous space on sky drive for my photos, but ... More About: Drive , Bandwidth
Depth Of Field
2009-02-03 10:10:00 A telephoto lens, especially the zoom variety, have distinct issues with depth of field issues. That is the part of the image that is in focus at any time. This can be used to great advantage, For example to focus on something, like a flower at close range, and push a distracting background out of focus. Some telephoto zooms have a macro setting or switch for such closeups. Alternatively, a foreground object can be used to ?frame? an interesting subject in the background. The obvious disadvantage is you can?t have both in focus at the same time. More About: Field , Depth
Windows Live Essentials
2009-01-16 14:49:00 View Full Album I have just updated my Windows Live Writer, which I use a lot for preparing these blog posts, other than support for tables and maps which I haven?t tired out yet. It has a couple nice insert features for photographer (and movie maker). You can now insert a photo album,like the one to the left, but only by uploading the photos directly or using the windows live on-line album feature. The insert video feature is much the same but also has the ability to add video from common on-line services like You Tube. A similar feature for the photo gallery that read from Flickr, photo bucket and/or picasa web albums would have been a winner. Windows live essentials can be downloaded for free and includes a few other neat utilities, but just getting windows live writer will make your blogging life easier. The other surprise was that sky drive, also free, now gives you 25 gigabytes of space for free! Yes, I got that right 25Gb! That is a lot so I have started to use it as a tria... More About: Windows Live , Essentials
My Photo Impressions (an update)
2009-01-14 06:56:00 Whilst I have not been publishing them here, my photo impressions of birds in particular, have become my best selling works. This one, of a lone gull flying into the sunset, focusing on the theme ?extinction is forever?. It has been in preparation for some time for the Venus Artist Contemporary Showcase. I always end up doing lots of tweaking of colour palette and tiling textures. In the end I have opted not to include in the exhibition (it is the first photo impression I has included a written message on) but have also posted it on RedBubble (you can purchase a poster or a large canvas version from them). I treat the creation of (Iphotographic mosaics just like a classical painting. Whilst I do use modern software and digital photos I follow a more traditional method to develop the image. The photo itself is like the initial sketches one would do to develop composition and form. Next I look at the tones and colours of the image and select a limited palette of harm... More About: Photo , Update , Impressions
HDRi revisited, and a newbie
2009-01-01 14:30:00 I was testing out my new lens (the replacement for a favorite that had an unfortunate accident) in the local rainforest. I was using it at a decent wide angle (32mm, that?s about 48mm equivalent in old-school 35mm jargon) and decided to take a EV bracketed set for some HDRI post processing, even though I didn?t have a tripod. I was happy with the original image, and below are the ±1.5 EV photo also taken at the same time. The exposures weren?t so long but with the mirror movement between shots it was long enough to guarantee that I might move and my photos would be out of registration. To complicate things there was a reasonable breeze moving the ferns. Since my chief bug-bear with currently available HDRi software is image registration, this is the prefect set to test out the new Picturenaut program, which is self promoted as a new breed of HDR tools. It is free to download, small and compact, fast and easy to use. Just running with all the default settings I got th... More About: Newbie
feather in the forest
2009-01-01 08:18:00 More of the birds at Grant?s Picnic ground in Kalista More About: Forest , Feather
Happy New Year
2009-01-01 01:51:00 Experimenting with long exposures to capture fire works. My Pentax has a B (for Bulb) Mode that keeps the exposure open for as long as you hold the button down. Trying to keep the camera steady for this hand held shot was a challenge but the camera was pressed firmly against the glass window (This also cut out unecessary reflections) More About: New Year , Happy , Happy New Year , Year
Cartoonize yourself
2008-12-31 00:50:00 A really great Melbourne identity died this week, the cartoonist William Ellis Green, better known as WEG. I am lucky enough to actually have one of his caricatures of me. The WEG story I like most, happened earlier this year when a burglar broke into his home. When the police arrived and asked for a description he said I could do better than that and dashed off a caricature. The police recognized the burgular and the story goes that 15 minutes later the guy was arrested and charged If you don't have access to a friendly cartoonist there is a neat on-line service that can help you out, it is called BeFunky and it has a tool called cartoonizer. Their promotional video is better than anything I could describe, so here it is - Cartoonizer in Action from BeFunky on Vimeo. When you have finished there are a number of ways you can save your work including exporting directly to a comprehensive range of popular social networking sites. I'm sure you can have some fun wit...
on the roof of the world
2008-12-24 10:18:00 I have been reading Alain De Botton?s ?The Art of Travel?, which features a graphic of the view from an jet airplane window, on its cover. (I?m fairly certain it is a mock up rather than a true photo mainly because there is no internal reflection). The image is accurate in that it shows the interesting phenomena of a very dark sky above the horizon, when view from the upper atmosphere, because the air above is very rarified and has little moisture thus little backscatter of light. Taken over the great barrier reef, about 20 minutes out from cairns. (note the reflection of my shirt in the lower part of the image) More About: World , The World , Roof
Some digital photo (christmas) fun
2008-12-23 06:26:00 Christmas is a good time of year for a bit of frivolity and why not use some photos? The photobucket slideshow has a couple of neat christmas themes, but if you'd rather be just taking more picture check out 16 tips for christmas photos More About: Christmas , Photo , Digital
Just how many digital photos do I actually have?
2008-12-23 00:47:00 I am catching up on a few things, including backing up photos from my recent travels, and I got to thinking - "Just how many digital photos do I actually have?" It took me a while to figure out how I might get picasa to do it. The on-line picasa help and forums weren't a lot of use other than informing me that picasa 3 can now handle a million photos. I didn't think I had that many. Then I read that backup would estimate the number of discs required, and figured it must also counts the files, folders etc. to do that. It is in fact very easy to do, On the tools menu find the backup pictures item and a set of dialogue boxes appear at the bottom of the screen. Ignore panel one for this process. So don't start the back up, just select all in panel two and picasa will go away and search through it database and get a summary of not only number of photos, but also disk space consumed and the number of CDs or DVDs required to back up everything . I had my answer now and hit ... More About: Photos , Digital
King of the castle
2008-12-20 01:59:00 Baby superb wren on south walkerville beach. More About: Castle , King
Flickr and low band width
2008-12-18 04:58:00 I have been travelling a lot recently and I tend to travel in places that have very low bandwidth connection to the net, and or I?m trying to use my Next G Modem (and the telstra ads only give you half the story, you can use their next-G in more places, that is true, but it will be ..s l o w, ?v e r y s l o w, ?s o s l o w ?i t w i l l b e u n u s e a b l e ) Flickr seems to becoming particularly fragile when it comes to bandwidth, I?m not sure when this trend started (maybe several months ago), but it has become very susceptible to timing out. You wait ages, nothing happens, then it you are lucky an error message (and the humo... More About: Band , Uploading
The Art Class
2008-12-16 07:45:00 Taken with my cameraphone and assembled with picasa collage & autostitch More About: Class
Lens Disaster
2008-12-15 01:38:00 I?ll be the first to admit I am hard on my field gear, from boots, sunnies, phones, computers, I own and regularly use several devices with cracked LCD screens, and super glue or duct tape repairs. All this is a fact of life, I need things to be robust and reliable, that's all I ask. Yet I must admit I was a bit devastated by yesterday?s ?office? accident. My well padded camera bag (that by the way normally tolerates a lot of rough handling, apparently rolled off my desk and possible as it fell the camera must have spilled out and when I found it the camera and lens where well separated and bag open.Worst was to come, when I inserted the lens it just popped out again. Seems two small plastic lugs are all that holds it into the bayonet fitting, and the nature of the breaks does not give me any confidence that super-gluing will succeed. The saddest part is it is my favorite lens. More About: Disaster , Lens
Anticipating a flood
2008-12-14 07:28:00 I was anticipating a peak flood in the Dandenong creek after the past two days of rain. However the flood control measures, which includes filling jells park lake, where working well. Whilst the creek was high and running fast it was spilling over its banks. One downside was with the flushing out of storm drains and gutters a lot of rubbish was ending up along the river, captured by quieter eddies. As I have been noticing for a few years now, the real litter problems is not so much plastic bags as foam cups, takeaway food containers and plastic water bottles.Yet there is always a bright side, along with most keen gardener in Melbourne these guys seem to be appreciating the extra water. More About: Flood
smiley face 2
2008-12-01 12:38:00 The lunar, venus & jupiter alignment was visiable as the sun set so I took the opportunity to do a few multi-image series that I could splice together with autostitch. The panorama below was one of the last and I used the "night scene" mode, which unfortunately over exposed and blurred out the moon and the planets but it produced wonderful colours aqnd lighting. More About: Face , Smiley Face , Smiley
smiley face 1
2008-12-01 11:53:00 There is supposedly rare cosmic alignment going on right now. Happily the cresent moon, venus and jupiter are ligned up like a smiley, :) the universal emotion for happiness. More About: Face , Smiley Face , Smiley
Barista School
2008-12-01 00:38:00 Making a good coffee is as much an art as taking a good photography. Having the best subject, best equipment is not enough you still need inspiration, experience and understanding of the medium as well. Even with the best beans and the best espresso machine you still need a dedicated barista's touch to appreciate the magic. As well as great coffee I had enough photos for firstly create a super wide panorama using autostitch then use mosaic maker to create a multi-image mosaic (you will need to click on the image below to appreciate the "detail"). More About: School
Soaking up the warmth
2008-11-26 12:32:00 Cormorant drying its wings, Jells Park Lake More About: Warmth
Vertical stitching
More articles from this author:2008-11-21 03:51:00 The grey polluted and rain soaked Jakarta afternoon appears to be growing new sky scrapers each hour. It is a very vertical story like the tallest trees in a forest and not something that the normal landscape mode photo with a wide angle lens does any justice to. Even tilting the camera to the portrait mode (long axis running vertical) may not help a lot. Using a stitching program vertically (autostitch does this automatically, but other software may require rotation of the images to be stitched first) can produce a convincing tall image. More About: Vertical 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 |
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