Archive for the 'tools & techniques' Category

I came across a post by Chase Jarvis on how he packs his photography gears.
Chase is a professional commercial photographer specialized in life style and sport photography. His gear is simply huge and it requires quite some skills and practice to pack them all. However, I think any photographer - being though an amateur or hobby photographer - might benefit from his video. Thanks Chase for sharing it.

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I have been testing recently a few tools that help photographers displaying their photos on the Web in slideshows in a creative way.

Flickr slideshow	The first one that I still use most of the time due to its simplicity is the traditional Flickr slideshow. All you need to do is organizing your photos into sets or collections, or just tagging them after uploading them onto Flickr and sending the View as a slideshow link of the set or tag to your friends or clients. Pros: easy to use on-line tool, no need for installing anything it’s free assuming that you do not pay for your Pro account on Flickr Cons: you have to upload your pictures to Flickr (you do it anyway, don’t you ) no background sound/music can be used only one type of transition between the pictures is available you may need a Pro account for $24.95 USD per year in case of hitting the monthly bandwidth, file size or other limitations of your free account
SimpleViewer	Simpleviewer is a quite mature flash slideshow application from Airtight Interactive. Detailed configuration instructions are available in case you need some help on the relatively simple customization and configuration. Pros: free stylish on-line tool, no need for installing anything customizable (colors and layatouts) no need to upload your pictures to any photosharing site Cons: no sound (or at least I could not find how to add it) you have to store your images with the “application” on your Web server Comment: there is an independent “fork” development called FlickrViewer originally developed by Mark Sweeting and then updated for the newer version of SimpleViewer by Dustin Senos that makes it possible to show pictures stored on Flickr in the SimpleViewer way It is worth to keep an eye on Airtight; I’ve just come across their really awesome TiltViewer. It rocks, man.
Jumpcut	Jumpcut is a video publishing site with a full featured on-line video and slideshow editing tool. You can upload your images to your repository or Jumpcut can suck your photos from Flickr. (Both belong to Yahoo! and your Flickr and Jumpcut accounts can be linked theoretically - I could not do that). The Web 2.0 slideshow editor does not require anything else than your browser and is amazingly simple to use. Pros: free on-line tool, no need for installing anything customizable transitions between images background sound feature very well designed slideshow editor Cons: your stuff is stored on Jumpcut Jumpcut seems to be full with adult material today which might not be desired for your reputation
SoundSlides	The feature list of SoundSlides is comparable with Jumpcut with two important differences: it has an off-line slideshow designer tool, and you can publish your slideshow wherever you want Pros: customizable transitions between images and backround colors background sound feature Cons: you have to install the software on your computer (available for Windows and Mac) the slideshow editor is a bit awkward when you are adjusting the timeline of your show not free: costs $39.95 USD SoundSlides Plus: $69.95 USD
Animoto	Animoto is a special kind of animal: when you upload your images (or let Animoto transfer them from your Flickr account) and select or upload your music Animoto analyses both the pictures and sound and creates a unique clip of differently transitioned images. Transitions and timeline is chosen automatically and cannot be overwritten. However you might click on Remix to create a new clip which is going to be different. Pros: free (for a 30 second clip) really easy to use on-line tool, no need for installing anything background sound feature Cons: you do not know how the result will look like your stuff is stored on Animoto 30 minutes is just too short Comment: full length video feature: one video: $3 USD, all-access pass for a year: $30 USD

I use exclusively Adobe Photoshop Lightroom for processing my photos. I upgraded to version 1.2 some time ago and try to keep an eye on the huge amount of articles and tutorials published about this tool.

Recently I came across a collection of Lightroom presets with video tutorials explaining their usage by Jack Davis. Presets are image manipulation settings that are stored and can be applied to any picture.

There are two things that I especially like in this functionality:

1. The way the effects of a preset can be seen as a preview (see the srceenshot below)
2. And the openness of the preset descriptor file format. These files are plain text files with easy to understand structure. They can be modified even manually. (The location of these files on my computer is C:\Documents and Settings\…\Application Data\Adobe\Lightroom\Develop Presets) This file format makes it possible to share your presets with others (through for example lightroompresets.com) without any restrictions or even use presets developed by the pros.

More on presents: Inside Lightroom - Colour Presets.

This is a video recording of Chase Jarvis‘ presentation that he gave on a PhotoShelter event in New York to the audience of more than 600 photographers. Chase is a commercial advertising photographer. He is - as he says - a reasonably good photographer. He is damn good, actually.

In his talk he describes how he works and illustrates his speech with really inspiring pictures. You can see several behind the scenes movies as well revealing what is in the black box of commercial photography shooting.

If you cannot find 55 spare minutes to watch the video, just read a very brief summary from me below:

He works along the lines of the following concepts - or as he calls them - universals.

Hard work means what it means. It can hardly be done part time. It’s more than a full time job. In some cases you spend reasonable time away from home and family. Partly this why you need the next point:
Passion is about liking what you do. Passion for pictures you are taking. Simple. You won’t be able to achieve much without really liking what you do. And you have to be able to find time to shoot what you like.
And you have to develop your personal style. Take your dream pictures. Differentiate yourself from the crowd. You need to be unique in a way. Your style is going to be your brand.
People are important. Not only the models you are photographing but your fellow photographers as well. You have to know and be a part of a community. Sharing your secrets with the industry contributes to making the whole industry better.
Business skills are important to get assignments and get paid for doing what you like. You need to be educated on this stuff. Read those books, man.
Being unconventional is about doing things in a way they have been done before. Making pictures that are not out there yet. Think outside the box.
You can give back to the community in many ways like teaching, sharing photos, giving speeches and inspiring others, just like Chase is doing. The old school is over and does not work any more.

And a very important point he makes around the end:

Pros’ thinking: Get Smart
Amateurs’ thinking: Get Paid

Thanks, Chase. You inspired me a lot.

I found the video on the Photography Tip blog.

Just fallen in love with digital photography, DSLR, remotely controlled speedlights, silk smooth background for portraits, mindbogglingly minor details of little creatures, saturated colours and HDR and it happened all of a sudden that I saw a few photos made with a medium format film camera and scanned after that.
And those photos are great in a way that I think my photos made with my Nikon D80 will never be.
And I am scared of medium format, scared because medium format equipment is way more expensive than that I can afford.

When talking about about medium format photography the first thing that is usually mentioned is its resolution. Medium format is big. Bigger even than full frame. An SLR has a 35mm wide film- and a fullframe DSLR has a the same sized sensor - while the medium format starts at 60mm. A popular size in this world is the 6 cm x 4.5 cm which is often mentioned as 645 in the model name of cameras. Some digital backs result 39 megapixel images. 39 megapixel, can you imagine that?

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With LucisArt filter

…and without

Related posts:
Playing with the LucisArt Photoshop filter plug-in
A bit of LucisArt again