June 19th, 2006
The Orlando Sentinel has an interview with Carl Purcell that explores the life of the 77-year-old travel photographer. He has visited 99 countries and been published in just about every major travel publication and has earned my respect for the knowledge he has gained and subsequently shared with his peers.
June 19th, 2006
This April, I was lucky enough to catch the ephemeral Japanese cherry trees in their full spring regalia. The previous year, I circumvented their arrival in Japan by heading on a vacation to the south of the country at exactly the wrong time to catch them.
So I was quite pleased to find myself in a static position in the north of Japan this year and I could let the fleeting flowers come to me and I could see for myself why the Japanese loved these tiny, pink flowers so much. The sakura really are spectacular, though they seem to have special significance to the Japanese and for them, each tree almost seems imbued with divinity.
I have just now uploaded a gallery of photos of cherry blossoms and their arrival in Ichinoseki, Iwate, Japan.
June 17th, 2006
If you have a free afternoon and you’re looking to practice both your portraiture and your people skills, you may consider having a look at photojojo’s guide to impromptu street photos. Just grab some poster board and a handful of small rewards for your subjects and you are on your way to meeting new people and getting some fun shots.
With the summer season upon us, you may be lucky enough to have an air show appearing somewhere in your region in the near future. Digitaldarell.com has a detailed guide to shooting air shows that will help you to capture all the action. The only thing I would add is that you shouldn’t forget to point your camera at the events on the ground from time to time. You may find yourself able to get some interesting shots of the planes or their pilots when you take a break from craning your neck upwards.
The gravity-defying MonsterPod looks like it would not only be a fun toy but also a practical addition to the camera bag of anyone looking to support their compact camera or external flash in a bizarre location. This small, red camera support has a strange, morphing underside that allows it to stick to most surfaces and hold a 10 ounce camera or flash. Weird, but potentially-useful stuff. For $30, it might be worth it just to see how the thing works.
Lastly, iView has updated its MediaPro photo management software to version 3.1.1.
June 16th, 2006
I have just posted a few more galleries of photos from Cambodia. Most of them were shot one gorgeous morning at Bakong temple in the Roluos group, West of Siem Reap.
Inside the moat of Bakong lies not only the ancient, crumbling temple, but also an elementary school with curious students and a practicing monastery with friendly monks willing to make your acquaintance.
Here are some samples from the galleries:
June 15th, 2006
Harald Heim has an exhaustive article up at luminous-landscape.com on shooting dance performances. This guide covers all sides of a potentially-difficult subject to photograph, so read up before you head to the stage.
June 15th, 2006
Six photographers in California are poised to set two new world records: the world’s largest photograph and the world’s largest camera. Constructed using an air hangar, this gargantuan pinhole camera will be used to produce a panoramic image of the landscape on the outside of the hangar.
The photographers are using a nearly 31-by-111 foot piece of white fabric covered in 20 gallons of light-sensitive emulsion as the “negative.”
I’m genuinely curious to see how the photo will look when completed. It will take ten days for the exposure to be completed, so the results will surely be unique for more than just their size.
June 15th, 2006
To follow up on the previous post, computers.net has one of the many early reviews of Google’s Picasa Web Albums that are bound to pop up in the coming days. Check out their review complete with screenshots here.
And because I forgot to mention it before, Mac users have a little less to get excited about with Google’s recent news - the Picasa application is still only available for Windows. Google has stated that a Mac release is an option in the future, but they have not given any firm release dates.
June 14th, 2006
Google has announced the launch of their Picasa Web Albums service. Google’s photo sharing site is currently only available by invite. The launch of this test version of the site coincides with the new version of the Picasa photo software.
Another front on which the search engine wars are being waged, the Picasa service will serve as Google’s weapon in the battle against Yahoo’s popular Flickr photo sharing site. With a firmly-established community of Flickr users, Picasa has an uphill battle. If nothing else, a little competition will serve the users of both sites well.
June 14th, 2006
Adobe has just released Adobe Lightroom Beta 3, their RAW image processing solution currently only for Mac OS X. Download and try this public beta release at the above link.
For extensive coverage of the functions in this release, read photoshopnews.com’s article on Lightroom Beta 3.
Edit: I just had a quick look at the program and I personally find that it’s still far too slow for my purposes. I’m running a 1.5 GHz Powerbook with 1.5 GB RAM, so I am above the system requirements, but operations that happen quickly in Adobe Camera RAW just take too long with Lightroom. I hope that the program speeds up in future releases because a number of the features are attractive and it could be a good addition to my workflow.
June 13th, 2006
What do you do when you have to shoot, process and capture images of 18 tennis matches in one day with no list of players to guide you? This post on Blue Pixel has a detailed look at how Reed Hoffman overcame the tight deadline for this hectic day with an efficient digital workflow.
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