Mechanics II
Posted by ReclaimedPixels in 500px, Photo on February 24, 2012
Best Photography Podcasts
Posted by ReclaimedPixels in General information, Review on February 17, 2012
I have a problem. I’m addicted to Podcasts.
The thing is; I have 2½ hours of commuting every day I can spend on 1) watching movies, which makes me dumber, 2) sleeping or 3) listening to podcasts, which makes me smarter.
I choose #3 (and sometime #2). In my selection of podcasts I have a bunch of photography favorites; Podcasts that focus on photography from different angles and gives me a broad spectrum of information about whats happening in the photosphere. Everything from general knowledge, to DIY and tips’n'tricks are covered. I’m behind with most of them, but that is not going to stop me from sharing with you what my favorites are.
This Week in Photography
TWiP is one of the first podcasts that I started listening to. Most of the original cast is still running it, but the pool of hosts has increased greatly over the years and that has added a depth to the information that is second to none.
Alex Lindsay, Steve Simon, Frederic Van Johnson, Ron Brinkmann and Scott Bourne was the original cast but the addition of Nicole Young, Martin Bailey, Syl Arena, Tristan Hall, Sara France and MANY others have made this a must-follow podcast!
The main focus of the podcast is what is happening in the world of photography. Everything from new gadgets to news about lawsuits, discussion of rights to lights are covered. The listeners questions section gives short and (fairly) precise answers to lots of the questions that you might have about photography. The Pick of the Week section might cost you money, though. Some great gadgets have peeked my interest after hearing about them on TWiP.
Photofocus
Not going to call this podcast a spin-off of TWiP but it was started, and in still being run, by Scott Bourne and originally co-hosted by Rick Sammon. This podcast is about answering questions and giving great tips. It is fairly fast-paced and contains loads of great information.
AdoramaTV
This Video podcast features Mark Wallace and Bryan Peterson. Bryan Peterson serves up some fairly short videos that focus on simple concepts and tips and tricks, like seeing a shot or trying out slow shutter speeds and such.
Mark Wallace hosts longer (usually around 15 minutes) video training tutorials as well as some short App and gear reviews. If you want to learn anything about studio or flash photography or general lighting techniques, this is where you should start. Mark Wallace’s way of instructing and explaining is excellent and its obvious that a lot of work goes in to the preparation of this podcast!
For a podcast that is sponsored by Adorama it contains very little advertisement but a lot of great information. Highly valued!
Martin Bailey Photography Podcast (Enhanced)
One of my newer additions to the listening-list even though this podcast has been around for a while. Martin Bailey is a British photographer, living in Japan and with his soft and smooth voice, he takes you through lots of tips and concepts and well as do’s and don’ts, all from his own perspective. Its nice and refreshing and up-front. With over 320 episodes at the moment and some classics (like Episode #7) under the belt, this is another ‘must’ for photographers!
There are other podcasts on my list, but the ones mentioned is the Crème de la Crème.
Please leave comments if there are some that you spend time on and find worthy of your ears and time!
Did my Lightroom 4 wishes come true?
Posted by ReclaimedPixels in Books, General information, Lightroom on January 11, 2012
A few months ago, I wrote a blog post about a few (4!) wishes that I had for Lightroom 4 and now that the Lightroom 4 Beta is out, I think its time to recap and see how many of my wishes came true.
But start by learning a little more about Lightroom 4 by checking out the beta. Download Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 Beta and see what new featurea and functions that you get.
My four wishes where the following:
- Location Management
- Face Recognition
- Location Recognition
- Lightroom Library Cloud Sync
(Read more about them in detail here)
Of the four features listed above, it looks like I go one. Location Management! That not a lot, unfortunately.
It will be really nice to drag’n'drop images to Google Maps locations and thereby automatically tagging your photos with GeoLocations information and it will be even nicer to be able to get a world map and see where your photos were taken, but it could have been so much more if Adobe had added Location Recognition too, and it would have taken them a few steps ahead of the competition (Read: Apple Aperture).
I thought Face Recognition was a given, but hey; What do I know.
A couple of new features that I’m really looking forward to is the new White Balance Brush which lets you paint White Balance adjustments to specific areas of an image and then there are the new sliders that make way more sense. Also the Clarity function had been updated to you don’t get that annoying halo-effect when you use it. I know these are small things, but those are some that I’m looking forward to.
As I don’t do much video work and book printing, I personally don’t have any feelings towards the new features that Adobe are pushing the most, but if you are a wedding photographer, I’m guessing you’ll be VERY excited about these features.
Also, look out for The Lightroom Queens upcoming ‘Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 – The Missing FAQ‘ as I’m also hoping that Martin Evening will update his awesome ‘The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 Book: The Complete Guide for Photographers‘
How To Find Your Photographic Interest
Posted by ReclaimedPixels in General information, Ideas, Photo on December 20, 2011
As an amateur photographer it can sometimes be hard to figure out what it is that you want to shoot.
Most people start with shooting everything they see and everything that they can get near and then at some point figure out what it is that you don’t want to shoot.
As an example, when I first started getting interested in photography, I would point my camera at everything that looked slightly picturesque and fire away, later to realize that most of the pictures were eligible for pixel-recycling.
The reason for this is the ‘Jack of all trades, Master of none’ problem. Different motives require different techniques and if you try to master them all in the beginning of your photo career, you will most like end up being mediocre across the board.
The solution is to narrow your interest down to what it is that you REALLY want to shoot. Figuring that out can remove a lot of ‘instructional video’/'how to noise’ and let you focus on specific techniques and styles and become a master of them. After you have mastered one skill, its much easier to keep that skill up and at the same time spread your wings of expertise over another photo genre.
If you’ve ever found yourself in the situation where you want to do it all, but realize that you must find somewhere to start, how do you go about finding what interests you the most and thereby telling yourself in that priority you must expand your skill-set? Well, I might have the answer to your question; Favorites!
Find a website where you can give photo critique and select photos as favorites. Let it be deviantART , Flickr, 500px or any other; Only requirement is that you can create an account and select images as favorites. For this example I’ve selected 500px, mostly because I love the iPad App and the sleek feel it has (and the ability to quickly select a favorite picture).
The 500px website
Then edit you profile settings and allow all content. Don’t limit yourself by now showing nude art or manipulated images as well as drawings and CGI. Lets see it all. In the case of 500px the only filter is nudity, so lets disable that filter (that is show images with nudity).
Now spent a few minutes browsing through the top images. The images that most people have voted up. Just go through them quickly. Don’t linger too much over an image, speculating too much on if you like it or not. If an image is pleasing, favorite it and if you get that meh! feeling, skip it. Remember the 1998 movie, Ronin, quote “If there is doubt, there is no doubt”.
Next, wait until you are in a different mindset. Maybe you have a coffee break at work, or maybe the kids are finally sleeping or maybe you are enjoying Frantz Peter Schubert’s ‘Serenade’ by the fireplace. Go to 500px or whatever site you decided on, and go through another 100-200 photos, selecting the ones that you instantly like or feel some sort of connection with. Do this over several days, preferably over a couple of weeks!
What ever you do in this time of ‘favoritting’, don’t access the list of favorites that you’ve selected as it will influence you greatly on your choices.
After a while you will need to find some time, as it is now analysis time! Feel free to find some paper and a pen or, if you have a good memory, save the trees.
Open your Favorites folder in your profile on the website and start assigning categories to your favorites. Count how many favorites you have en each category, and soon you will realize what it is that you like the most.
Pick your top two categories and let them be the objects of your photographic focus.
The good thing about this approach is that you find out what you really like and you will realize that even if you are in different mindsets that will be types of photography that you always like the most.
Second; You have an awesome inspirational starting point! All those favorites!
Now go to Vimeo, YouTube and Google and learn everything you can about those top two categories! And start shooting!
I did this to myself and my Top Two categories ended up being Architecture and Fashion/Nude Art
Selection of my own personal favorites
Time to reboot the blog
Posted by ReclaimedPixels in General information on November 26, 2011
After a few months were I’ve set my photo hobby aside, I’ve decided that it wasn’t worth it. So its time to pick up the camera again.
My first couple of projects will be refinding inspiration. I have a few hundred bookmarks to kickstart that and A LOT of webclips (thank you for keeping me sane, Evernote) that can be harvested for good ideas and inspiration.
There is also a couple of DIY builds that would be fun, like a beauty-dish and a light-tent, that will be fun winter projects. Guess there is lots to do!
Also books… Was going through the pile of books that I’ve bought but never read and there are some real gems in that mountain. Must reads that never made it to the nighttable. Expect a couple of reviews of some of them!!
Now it time to get started with cleaning out my man space in the basement and get it all organized and nice so the dark winter evenings can be spent surrounded by everything photo!
Have fun!
ReclaimedPixels
Put these in my Lightroom 4, please!
Posted by ReclaimedPixels in Ideas, Lightroom, Wishlist on June 20, 2011
This is not a Lightroom blog and shouldn’t turn into one, but Lightroom is my photo-management application of choice and I therefore have a lot of opinions on it.
One of these opinions is on what the product lacks, when it comes to features. Well, actually its more on what I think Adobe should consider throwing into Lightroom in the next version.
- Location management
More and more cameras have a build in GPS (and hopefully some high-end DSLRs soon) and I personally think that is one of the things that we’ll see more of.
I personally have a USB GPS Logger that logs (!) where I’ve been. When I import my images into Lightroom, I want the Lightroom dialog box to ask me if I have a GPS Logger and if so, ask me to insert it. Then Lightroom should automatically add the location to the EXIF data of the image. Right now, I have to use a 3′rd party program to first write the GPS location information to the images on the memory card and then import them into Lightroom. I know that there are plug-ins to Lightroom that can do the same, but that doesn’t change the fact that its a fairly tedious process to go through. - Face Recognition
Auto tagging faces
Tagging! Not many people love to do it, but most agree that its useful. I personally loathe tagging, but like it when its done.
I tag with location, people, places, landmarks, country and whatever I can think of, but most of the tags could/should be added automatically based on many different aspects (see below). Face recognition should be the first one to be added. Aperture does it. Facebook does it. Even my cellphone does it. Why not Lightroom?
After importing your photo’s Lightroom should simply ask if you wanted it to auto tag the images and ZAP! Its done.
I’m not the first one to request this feature, so there might actually be a chance for this to be build in to the next version of Lightroom. - Location Recognition
I guess this is a combination of the two features above. If you take a photo of the Eiffel tower, why is it Lightroom doesn’t automatically contact a community based service (or even Google/Bing) and automatically tags the image with whats in it and even where its taken?
It could be based on GPS Location data and/or object recognition. Theres some really smart people out there, working on algorithms that could provide a solution for this… Adobe; Contact them!
Autotagged: The Little Mermaid, Copenhagen, Denmark, Europe
- Lightroom Library Cloud Sync
First of all; Yes, the Cloud business is a little out of control. Second; There might be some use for it, in the Lightroom world of photographers.
What if it was possible to check part or all of your library into a cloud and access it from anywhere, either because it was sync’ed with all your desktops and laptops or because you were able to access it via WiFi, 3G/4G or whatever kind of connection you had? That would be awesome!
No need to export and import libraries. Always in sync with your primary library. Always a backup. All of it handled by Adobe.
Think of the posibilities, like a Dropbox-like photo sync as well…?
I’m not suggesting that Adobe should host hundreds of thousands of RAW files, but they could facilitate a syncronization between Lightroom installations. P2P in the way it was ment to be used?!?
Adobe? Call me! We have Cloud business to discuss!