goldengod

I don’t really like doing these updates, especially when they’re personal, but you guys do deserve an explanation for my absence.

Yes, I intended to take most of last week off. That wasn’t intended to spill into this week, but the world had other ideas. I’d rather not go into it, but I had a pretty personal tragedy hit me over the weekend and I’m not really doing anything more complex than tinkertoys for the moment.

Posts will be sporadic, if up at all, until next week. I’m really sorry to let all of you down like this but I need some space, even if it’s only a week.

Thanks for understanding.

Ahoy mates! Today be International Talk Like a Pirate day, but surely you already know that. What you don’t know is how interesting these five links are:

• Malacca Strait Pirates - A National Geographic photo gallery about the pirates of the Malacca Strait in Southeast Asia. Particularly appropriate for today!
• New York Rises by Eugene de Salignac - A Smithsonian article on the works of Eugene de Salignac, the previously anonymous photographer responsible for thousands of beautiful New York photos dating back to 1906. The photo of the Brooklyn Bridge painters is my favourite; the lines are gorgeous.
• The Daily Lives of SS Officers at Auschwitz - A photo album was recently discovered, showing the daily lives of officers who worked at Auschwitz. None of the photos in this audio slideshow are graphic in any way, but that’s what makes them so powerful. It reminds us that, as the narrator says, this was an atrocity perpetrated by human beings with families and pets, not some amorphous group of boogeymen.
• Canon Firmware Hack to Unlock DIGIC-II Cameras - A fancy firmware upgrade for some of the Canon A and S series’ of digital compacts that unlocks a whole host of features. Most of these features, like being able to shoot in RAW, are normally only found in their digital SLRs.
• Photoshop Question: Save as vs. Save for Web? - A pretty good comparison of the advantages and disadvantages of using ‘Save As’ and ‘Save for Web’ in Photoshop. Personally, I *always* use ‘Save As’ but that’s mainly because I’m addicted to EXIF data.

You should also be headin’ into me gallery to see Talk Like a Pirate Day photos from the 2006 Vancouver flashmob.

I don’t!? by Niels Heidenreich

Flickr’s search page is one sexy feature of the photo-sharing site that’s designed to be comprehensive. Almost overwhelmingly so: You can search with the basic boolean “twiddly bits”, a SafeSearch toggle, by content type, date, license, camera, or any combination of the above. You can get intensely specific with your search results.

So tell me Flickr, why can’t I search through photos by orientation?

Is it so much to ask? All I want is to only display results taken in portrait or landscape mode, or even perfectly square photos! It’s not so hard, is it?

You’ll let me search for only screenshots tagged with ‘cats’ (but not ‘dogs’) that are CC-licensed for commercial work, taken between 09/04/2006 and 09/04/2007. Naturally, the only result is a LOLcat.

Why can’t I just tack a ‘taken in landscape format’ on the end of that? My knowledge of database processing for search engines is admittedly quite thin, but it seems like a simple thing to implement.

Flickr already tracks dimensions as part of the EXIF data, as well as for creating thumbnails of photos. It should only be a minor task to return search results where the width is greater than the height or vice versa.

What additional search functions would you like to see Flickr add?

Stages by Scott Robinson

Fall photos are a challenge for photographers and amateurs alike, but the effort can be worth it. The combinations of deep red leaves, bright green grass, and electric blue skies make autumn photos a universal favourite.

With that in mind, here are five solid ways to make your photos impress:

Get in Close to the Leaves

Trees are tricky because they overwhelm your digital camera’s sensor with detail. This can make your photo look overly busy if you’re not careful. Rather than trying to frame the whole tree, move up close and capture just a few autumn leaves.

Zoom lenses are excellent for this if you don’t want to get dirty. Wide angle lenses give a different look to fall photos, but to get up close you’ll have to climb the trees!

Shoot Autumn in Black and White

Another way to make photos of this season interesting is to eliminate the colour. Fall photos are often full of heavily saturated colours; having a photo without them can make people stand up and take notice. Get your audience to focus on the texture and shape of the leaves by converting a few of your fall photos to monochrome.

Use Leaves as a Background Element

Using trees as photo backgrounds in the fall is a no-brainer. You capture all the colour of the season and you can adjust your aperture to give a really pleasing, soft bokeh. Done right, this effect can look almost like an Impressionist painting.

Having the leaves as a prop is also fun. You can shoot portraits of people holding leaves close to their face and kids jumping into great big piles of ‘em. Unlock a host of possibilities by using such a recognizable symbol of the season as a minor element in your composition.

Take Your Fall Portraits on a Cold Day

The chill will make your model’s breath visible when they exhale. That tiny wisp of breath can communicate so much in a photo. Breath and clothes are the simplest way to communicate the coolness of the scene. Giving a photo full of warm, vibrant reds a crisp cool feeling can be difficult, but it will make your photo stand out.

Warm Things Up a Bit

Leaves that have been on the ground for a bit can look dull. Warming the photo up can make people really see the dusky oranges and deep reds of fall. Those of you with compact cameras can try adjusting your white balance or make adjustments in Photoshop later.

If you’ve got an SLR though, here’s where we get a bit technical. When you’re shooting available light, use one of the 81 series of warming filters. The filter will help pump up the oranges and reds. As an alternative, you can put a polarizer on your lens to maintain a crisp blue sky and gel your flash to warm the leaves.

I’ve become a bit obsessed with the look of the Rosco #18 Flame gel, but I’ve also been reading too much Bob Krist lately. A 1/4 or 1/2 CTO gel should be more than enough to give the leaves in your photo a bit more oomph.

Whatever skill level you’re at, taking photos of fall leaves provides a unique challenge that only comes around once a year. Get out there and shoot!

Related Posts:

• 5 Ways to Make Your Texture Photos Pop!
• How to Take Great Photos at High Noon - Part One
• How to Improve Your Photos by Ignoring Them

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Podium by Bri Vos

I’ve made a number of changes to goldengod lately. Some of them, like the BlogRush widget in the lower left, are obvious. Others are a bit more hidden.

Consider this a State of The Blog address, keeping you up to speed on what I’ve been doing. It’s half self-congratulatory BS and half VH1 Behind-the-Music coke-umentary!

BlogRush

The most obvious change is the BlogRush widget that I’ve added to the bottom of my sidebar. It purports to be this fancy new service that performs contextual interlinking of the blogosphere.

The widget displays five articles from other blogs that should be related to mine. Every time I display the widget, I earn a credit to have a link to one of my posts displayed on another relevant photography blog. I also earn credits when the widget displays on the blog of anyone I’ve referred.

There’s a sexy video on the homepage that can explain it better than I. The service has launched, literally, in the last 24 hours. Kinks are still going to be working themselves out, but I’m impressed with the ease of use so far.

I want to try this for a week and see if it becomes a viable source for new readers. If you’re one of my many readers who also writes a photography blog, you can also try it out by signing up here.

Please note that all my BlogRush links are referrals; I enjoy taking advantage of you.

Other Changes

I’ve done a lot more work on the sidebar, but it’s mostly little things. I’ve cleaned up my blogroll a bit to better reflect what I’m actually reading on a regular basis. I’ve done away with my web-1.0-esque links page and renamed a few major pages.

The About goldengod page has been completely revamped. It’s now a lot more relevant to goldengod as a photography blog and sounds less like self-indulgent copy from a Livejournal.

I’ve been asked if I’m going to be removing my cell phone number from the Contact page and the short answer is no. I don’t exactly get a lot of prank or irritating calls because of it and some people have told me they found it useful. By and large, people seem to be too shy to crank call me. No, that’s not an invitation.

The Gallery is in desperate need of an update, as is the Last Fridays page. I’m thinking of culling them completely, in favour of permanent pages collecting short series’ of photography lessons. If I do this, I’ll be doing a weekly photodump from my Flickr instead. I’m torn over this one, so if you have an opinion one way or the other; please let me know.

Post Frequency

The more observant of my readers will have noticed that yesterday was the first day out of the last 40 that I didn’t post *something*. I had issues with my contacts resulting in blinding headaches and an inability to see out of both eyes for most of the day. Fun!

Yes, I do plan on continuing the daily posting schedule. It’s stressful and time-consuming, but in a strange way it’s fun. It’s very challenging to me and keeps me learning something new every day. I’m thinking of stealing a page from Brian Auer and starting to plan out my weekly schedule a bit more.

Regular photography-style posting resumes tomorrow in force, so hold on to your hats.

It’s 11pm PST and it’s beginning to look like I’m not going to get the article on fall photos finished today. Which is too bad, really; you’d have loved it.

So to buy myself a little time, I’ve decided to highlight a site I recently added to my RSS reader: The photography business blog for what appears to be yet another microstock site! I know, exciting. It’s called Photopreneur: Half photo, half…. uh… preneur?

What’s Awesome About Photopreneur

• Quality Photo Business Content - Think John Harrington, but without as many “I Told You So” posts about Getty’s stock prices. The site has reasonably good photography business advice adapted for the small, ADD brains of todays forward-thinking youth. I have half a dozen posts open in tabs that I want to link, but that’d be tacky. Just ignore the lame filler for today about photography schools and scroll down to find the juicy bits.
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• Solid Way of Launching a Site - Running a blog in your niche for a while before your company’s launch is a win-win-win situation: You win by starting to rank for SEO keywords. You win by contributing to an active photography community online that will reward you via participation and silly posts like these. And you win by having an established audience when your site launches!
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• Clean-ish Design - It’s simple, plain, and very readable. Other than a notable exception that I’ll get to later, I really like the design.
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What Sucks About Photopreneur

I’m going out on a limb here posting about what I don’t like; hopefully they don’t check their site stats and also aren’t violent biker dudes. I’m going to chance it….

• “You must be logged in to post a comment“ - That, dear reader, is the sound of me leaving. As simple as that. I’m interested in having a discussion, but not ten minutes of fiddling with my inbox for a temporary password interested. The fewer barriers to entry, the more participation you’re going to see.
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• “We are strictly volunteer here .. but it’s GREAT exposure.” - Woo! I’ve always wanted to work hard and not get paid for it! Apparently it’s not that great exposure, because I didn’t see any author attribution on any articles.
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  Either no one is writing but the staff, or “GREAT exposure” is code for “We strip your byline!”No, you don’t have ads but you’re using the blog as an SEO tactic to launch your microstock thingy. I’m assuming it’s a for-profit microstock thingy, though.
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  Don’t try and take advantage of people with one hand while offering good business advice with the other. Working for exposure isn’t good business for photographers; you wouldn’t ask your mechanic to do it, don’t ask me.
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• MyBlogLog Widget - I’m sorry, but if you’re going to have the Web 2.0 equivalent of Geocities in your sidebar, I’m going to make fun of you. That’s just the way it works. If you’re that attached to tacky looking community widgets, perhaps you should consider hosting your site elsewhere.
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Long story short: I will be leaving this site in my reader, on a provisional basis. It’s a cool site and I enjoy the readability of their photography business content, but it has some irritating habits that they either need to fix or make up for with some seriously good chocolate.

And PhotoPreneur staff? If you’re not a bunch of scary bikers, hit me back in the comments. I’d like to hear what you’ve got to say about my smartassery.

I’m really failing at this ‘coherent theme’ thing, eh? Oh well. I’m spending more and more time out with my camera as the summer light dwindles; perhaps I’m attempting to make up for lost time. If you aren’t outside doing the same, check out this week’s collection of links:

• My Worst Photographic Habits - A solid post from Jim Goldstein on his failures as a photographer; failures that we’re all guilty of once in a while. I highly recommend you read this.
• How To Build a Remote Camera Trigger (PDF) - A 44 page pamphlet on making your own remote trigger. This is a great read for those of you out there into DIY photography.
• Clayton Cubitt’s Katrina Photos -I hadn’t seen photographs of the devastation left by Hurricane Katrina that had an impact on me until this series. Clayton’s recent portrait of Xeni Jardin can server as a ‘unicorn chaser’ to cheer you up afterwards.
• Endangered Machinery - Photographer Haiko Hebig’s exploration of industrial machinery and abandoned control rooms. Some of his work reminds me of Manufactured Landscapes in a way that I quite like.
• Drains of Canada: An Interview With Michael Cook - BLDGBLOG interview Michael Cook, a photographer and urban explorer out of Toronto, Canada. It’s a lengthy interview and might not be interesting if you’re not into wandering through sewers, but the photos included are stellar. Well worth a skim.

I’m now going to bury myself in writing some posts that I’ve let sit in my drafts pile for far too long. Stay tuned!

Last week, Adobe Photoshop Express was finally revealed. John Nack, a senior product manager for the software giant, leaked a screenshot and some details on his personal blog. Photoshop Express will be an online, free version of the world’s most popular image editing software.

The preview above shows a radically different user interface than previous versions of Photoshop. The new design was necessary in order to make it more user friendly without making the software look sparse. I find that it looks more like a dumbed-down version of Lightroom than anything else. Gizmodo commented that it “…reminds us of something from the new iLife.”

After the successful launch of Premiere Express on YouTube and MTV last June, it was only a matter of time before Adobe extended the idea towards their other software offerings. I’m glad to see that they aren’t wasting any time in pushing this initiative forward.

Speaking of future Adobe software, I think the Rubik’s Cube in the lower right hand corner is a reasonable indicator of future plans. It could just be sexily integrated with the full retail suite of Adobe applications, but hopefully they release free versions of everything. I’m looking forward to moving up from MS Paint.

Related Entries:

• Adobe Plans to Take Photoshop Online
• Microsoft Live Labs Presents Photosynth

I’ve already covered before that I hate carrying things, but sometimes it’s a necessary evil. To avoid carrying both a tripod case and a camera bag, I never keep the three-legged beast in the bag it comes with. Instead, I’ll use the tripod bag to hold extra lenses and lighting equipment.

Suddenly, you’re carrying much wider variety of equipment, with a minimum of inconvenience. As for where your tripod goes, it’s up to you.

If I’m using it, I’ll carry my tripod resting on my shoulder with the camera attached. Otherwise, I’ll just hang it off the bag strap. It works excellently and gives me a lot more freedom in the photos I take. Remember to be more careful with the tripod case though, it’s not padded like your camera bag.

What do you think, good idea or bad idea?

Polling Station by hugovk

I’ve long known that Flickr is the photo storage site of choice for my readers, but now I’m getting curious about other stats. This means poll time; completely unrelated to the fact that it’s Sunday, I’m lazy, and the headache I’ve had for the last four hours.

I’d like to know how many views everyone has on their Flickr account, if they’re willing to share:

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This poll popped into my head because I passed 75,000 sometime in the last two weeks and it got me thinking about Flickr metrics. Of course,20,000 of those views are on two photos that have little in the way of artistic merit.

Other than those two, I don’t really know how visitors find me. Mostly through photo groups and my Livejournal, but I have had 18 photos in Flickr’s Explore at one time or another.

Where does the majority of your Flickr traffic come from? Do you know?