SI’s Most Interesting Pictures 2006
December 21st, 2006
Sports Illustrated has a great collection of their most interesting images of 2006. Check it out for some excellent sports photography.
Archive for December, 2006
More Photos of Taiwan
December 18th, 2006
Over the weekend, I posted a couple more galleries of photos from Taiwan.
First, a batch of photos from the rural area of Ershui. This quiet town on the Jiji small rail line was a good spot for a leisurely bike ride and some monkey watching up in the hills.
The other gallery I posted is from Changhua, a city that boats a rather enormous Buddha statue overlooking the town below.
If you would like to read more about my travels in each of these locations, check my blog entries on Ershui and Changhua
Lastly, some appetizers:
Travel News and Information Site
December 15th, 2006
As the links keep coming for the tourist removal tutorial, I noticed one of them coming from gadling.com which is not so much a travel blog as it is a blog about travel. First glance suggests that it’s a worthwhile source for travel information and news, so go get reading up on all the places you want to go! And thanks to them for the link.
I should also say a big thank you to stumbleupon and lifehacker for their generous contributions to my site’s traffic. And thanks to all the other folks who though the piece was worth a link. Much appreciated!
Photoshop CS3 Preview
December 14th, 2006
The National Association of Photoshop Professionals has a good, first look at some of the new features that will be in Photoshop CS3. Among the highlights are the improved functionality of Camera RAW and a big upgrade to the Bridge application.
There appears to be a lot of other potentially-useful functionality appearing in CS3, so hurry up and have a look!
Photos of Lukang Posted
December 14th, 2006
More photos of Taiwan are up. This time, it’s a gallery of photos from Lukang, a beautiful little city in Western Taiwan.
Most of the city was relatively plain, but the small portion of it that wasn’t seemed like it had stepped out of the past. I won’t dwell on describing it too much here. If you’re interested, feel free to check out this detailed blog entry about my short stay in Lukang.
For now, a few photos:
Photoshop CS3 Public Beta Available this Friday
December 13th, 2006
AppleInsider is reporting that Adobe will be releasing a public beta of PhotoShop CS3 this Friday:
“The Photoshop CS3 beta, which will be posted to the Adobe Labs website on friday, will include Adobe Bridge and Device Central components, and be available simultaneously for both the Mac and Windows operating systems.”
In addition to the feature additions that will be available, this release should get a lot of people excited for the fact that it will be a Universal Binary release meaning that it will be natively supported on Apple’s Intel-based computers. Unfortunately, for owners of those machines, they will have to wait a little longer to try out the UB PhotoShop CS3:
“People familiar with the Macintosh version of the editor confirm it to be a Universal Binary which ’simply screams’ on Apple Computer’s new Intel-based hardware. However, they tell AppleInsider that this week’s beta will include only the standard version of Photoshop CS3.”
For this Friday’s release, it’s only PhotoShop CS3 that will make its debut. Other Creative Suite applications will stay under wraps a little longer:
“…the San Jose, Calif.-based software developer does not plan to release or discuss details of other Creative Suite 3.0 applications, such as Illustrator, Dreamweaver and InDesign.”
Head to AppleInsider for more details.
Sun Moon Lake Photos Posted
December 8th, 2006
As I was travelling through Taiwan and exploring the area around the Jiji small rail line, I realized that my way back to Taipei could pass through one of the country’s favourite destinations: Sun Moon Lake. So, I quickly adjusted my plans for the trip back and I was able to spend an afternoon on the shores of this gorgeous, blue lake.
I quickly realized that I could have done with an extra day there. Renting a bike for a day and riding around the roads near the shore would have made for a great day’s adventure. But since I was short on time, the afternoon would have to do. I walked along the lake’s edge to Wenwu Temple and explored there until I had to make my way back to quaint little Shuishe Village to catch my bus back to Taipei, happy to have taken in some beautiful views and country quiet.
Dear Digg, Reddit and del.icio.us
December 6th, 2006
Thanks for all the traffic! It’s encouraging to have so many people check out the photoshop tutorial I posted yesterday. Thanks also to all the other sites that have linked the article - there’s too many to name here, but I do appreciate it. I’ll have to see about putting together more articles for you.
A few commenters here and on other sites suggested that the technique I posted had alternatives and they are right. Sometimes, it may be possible to use a small aperture and/or a neutral density filter to bring about a lengthy exposure time. The result will be that the people in your photo will be relatively invisible if they are moving - there won’t be enough hitting them in the same place at the same time for the sensor/film plane to pick up their shape.
The difficulty with this technique is that there is a high potential for streaks to appear in your images from where the people were moving. Especially if there is a group of people, you are likely to get a smear where the group moved through your image. And if anyone stops, there will probably be a blurred, ghostly figure showing up in your picture.
Another popular alternative on various sites was to physically eliminate tourists using, baseball bats, guns, or whatever weapon happened to be handy. As frustrating as it can sometime be to wait for people to leave your shot, I can’t endorse this technique. Especially considering the stories I’ve heard about some foreign prisons!
There are also the people decry the removal of tourists from photos altogether. Sure, some people want them in there, but some don’t. I wrote the tutorial for the latter. I shoot both scene with and without tourists. When I want a scene without tour groups in it, it’s nice to have this technique in my bag of tricks.
Lastly, on a non-photo note, I want to say a big thank you to my hosts, Hostrocket for successfully managing a colossal amount of traffic. I was pleasantly surprised to find that my site remained available while getting so flooded with hits.
People Removal Photoshop Tutorial Posted
December 5th, 2006
I have just posted a digital photography and Photoshop tutorial aimed at helping you get tourist-free postcard shots the next time you head out on vacation. It’s a handy trick that has served me well and I hope it can be helpful for you too.
I hope to write more tutorials related to photography and travel photography in particular, so please feel free to send the story to your favourite news and bookmarking sites like digg and del.icio.us. It will motivate me to do more!
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