I spend a lot of time reading on the Internet and I've found some very interesting information. Every so often I'll add a new link pointing to something that I've found fascinating or useful.
November 19
Ning - social networking or
just creating your own web page. Very easy and free.
October 24
Not photo related but timely: FactCheck.org
Real information and all sides of the story.
September 25
Dispair, Inc. -
dedicated to the relentless pursuit of dejection. If you've ever seen the motivational
posters, then these are the opposite. As they say on the site - motivational
posters don't work and our demotivational posters don't work even better. And
if you don't like their posters then you can create your own. Also check out
the t-shirts.
January 14
Ever want to calibrate the color on your monitor but didn't want to buy a colorimeter?
Check out Calibrize
- a free program to do just that. It's similar to the Adobe gamma program
in how it operates but is very easy to use and doesn't require a background
driver. Far better than nothing at all but not as good as a hardware system.
Also on the Calibrize site is a very nice primer
on color, color spaces and color management.
December 10
If you like interesting fonts for Photoshop check out dafont.com.
Free and easy to install.
December 3
This has nothing whatsoever to do with photography other than the fact that
I know the person that runs this site and they are a part-time photographer.
If you are dating or have ever had horrible dating experiences, then check
out ManSpam. Meant
for the ladies but a good place for the guys to see where the competition is
missing the boat. Hopefully you won't recognize yourself anywhere on the
site!
October 13
MaxMax - these guys remove
anti-alias and infrared filters from cameras. Amazing sharpness and color with
the anti-alias filter removed but you'll get moire patterns in some cases.
August 30
1 this one isn't photography related but when I watched it I was laughing so
hard I was crying. Called Animator
vs. Animation it's a bit of animation that's worth your time to watch. Be
sure to press 'Play' twice.
August 29
Welcome back! Another good one via TOP
- Livelygrey.com -
"Trying to make sense of color..." Enjoy the color 'games'
as well.
May 6
If you shoot anything that's at somewhat of a wide angle, then check out PTLens.
Good and very inexpensive software to correct distortions in the lens and image.
May 2
As part of the photography
club I'm in we have monthly competitions and I need to mount and mat a lot
of prints. I've developed a spreadsheet to help me calculate the settings on
my mat cutter but Giorgio Trucco has developed a free application to do the
same: Matworks!
April 22
I've been know to shoot a few houses and only recently did I run across a great
site devoted to Real Estate Photography: Photography
For Real Estate
April 21
A friend recently
sent me a link to an image that he was submitting for review. I liked
the image but what really grabbed me was where it was - up on JPG
Magazine. I liked it so much I've subscribed the the print version
and the first issue is wonderful. Mostly images and very little advertising
(and no 'blow') there are also a couple of good articles. Good stuff for
inspiration and learning.
January 19
From Photoshop
Insider - Christiane Beaulieu
shows after and before shots. It's nice to see what some of the really good
stuff looked like straight out of the camera.
January 9
The Strobist strikes again: Photographer Scott
Smith has a neat website that takes the idea of the typical web portfolio
and kicks it up a notch by adding lighting diagrams and how-to
blurbs to many of the photos. It's well worth clicking around a little.
January 7, 2007
The US government has comissioned a lot of photography over the years and some
of it is available to the general public from the Library of Congress website
- specifically the Prints
and Photography Reading Room. How would you like to download a .tif file
of a high resolution scan (55Mbytes) of Dorothea
Lange's "Migrant Mother"? Amazing stuff up there.
December 29
Via T.O.P.
- National Geographic has a great article on "Five
ways to use the Web—the world's largest photo gallery—to help you
become a better photographer." A very good read and lots of resources
some of which are my favorites. I think that I might have found a few new ones!
December 20
The Strobist - an
interesting blog for useres of dedicated flash units with lots of good stuff.
They even have the way to tighten
up the loose hotshoe on a Canon 20D. Wish I'd have found this site before
I had to figure that one out on my own.
I just found out about this site, went there last night, I have to say--it's a really nice resource (and community) for users of dedicated flash units. Lots of good info, nice articles, and tips on using flash. Definitely worth visiting if you're into flash and want tips on getting better results.Copyright 2006 Scott Kelby
December 7 - Pearl Harbor Day
If you check down the list you'll find a link to a giga-pixel picture. As these
things go there are now larger pictures out there. How about 3.8G? Check out
xRez for some amazing pictures
and more importantly a viewer to look at them!
December 4
Lightroom from Adobe is becoming very popular. If you'd like some assistance
learning more about it check out Adobe
Lightroom Killer Tips.
November 15
Found an interesint site that's all about computer hardware and included is
an interesting performance benchmark using Photoshop as the test application.
See how fast your computer runs PS at DriverHeaven.net
October 15
Not exactly photography, but you have to be a photographer of sorts to understand
What The Duck. Artist
Aaron Johnson, who bills himself as "40% photographer, 60% Photoshopper,"
has developed a Dilbert-style comic strip with a photography focus. Called What
the Duck, the first strip was posted in July 2006 and follows the exploits of,
well, picture-taking ducks.
A related sit to What the Duck is That's My Monkey - a place for digital photographers of all skill levels to hang out and share ideas about shooting better and
smarter. The monkey has been working hard to bring you handy Photoshop actions,
informative articles and lots of other stuff.
September 8
Last night at the Photo Venture Camera Club meeting we had a presentation on
depth of field. I enjoyed the presentation and resolved to see if there was
a program out there for my PDA (Windows version) that I could use in the field
to calculate DOF. What I found was not only a DOF calculator, but a sun
and moon position calculator, a multi-step timer and an exposure guide all written
by Jonathan Sachs. Better yet, the applications are free! I've
seen another vendor selling the sun and moon position program for $400. You
can find them here.
September 2
I just found the Fine
Art Photography Gallery & Forum. Wonderful examples of the masters
works. You'll need a high speed connection, however.
March 25
There is a proposed change to the copyright laws that will severely impact professional
photographers. Please check it out at:
http://www.asmp.org/news/spec2006/orphan_faxcall.php
http://www.photoattorney.com/2006/03/proposed-change-to-copyright-law-may.html
March 16
One of the limitations of using dual monitors with Windows is that you could
only apply a color calibration profile to one monitor. That has now changed
as Microsoft has released the Color
Control Applet for Windows XP. This is a free download from the Professional
Photography area of Microsoft. Finally I can calibrate both of my monitors!
March 14
I've been taking an introductory B&W photography class to learn darkroom
techniques and got to thinking about making an 8x10 negative on transparency
film with my inkjet printer from a digital file to use for a contact print in
the darkroom. This would give me a traditional silver print from a digital
file. After looking around I discovered Dan
Burkholder's site specializing in just this process! The information
for digital
negatives has it's own section. - Update - It turns out that my instructor
for Intro to B&W Photography instructor - Mike Bowman - is a good friend
of Dan's! - Update - I've since discovered another site for digital negatives:
Precision
Digital Negatives
January 2, 2006
Happy New Year! No link this 'week' but I've added a new page to the menues
for Photoshop goodies.
December 7 - Remember Pearl Harbor!
The photography club is experimenting with Holga cameras. Holgamods
is a great place for more information.
December 1
A fellow club member told me tonight about a new site full of interesting information
- Radiant Vista. Looks
good - check it out.
November 30
A recent topic of discussion on a printer bulletin board was the differences
that people experience when viewing different colors. One member pointed
to a shareware program that will test a persons color accuracy! It's
from littlebitsmultimedia
and is called Visual
Acuity and Color Vision Testing Software v1.01. Shareware at $10. I
tried the color test and only got one wrong - but it was tough. See
how well you can do.
November 19
Professional photographers, as well as serious amateurs, are always looking
for guidance on digital workflow and most appropriate practices. UPDIG
Working Group, an ad-hoc industry consortium consisting of members such as ASMP,
APA, NPPA and CAPIC has now published a
series of guidelines which will be found to be very informative and useful.
This includes a section on tools
and methods and another on workflow. There
is also a press ready PDF
of the information.
October 26
The Gigapxl Project If
you think you've seen a high resolution photo, check out this site and you may
have to change your definition. Incredible stuff.
September 5
Ah the digital age. It used to be with film that when you wanted
to make a larger image of a negative you just moved the enlarger farther away
from the paper. Now you have to upsize your digital image to avoid
pixelation or other nasties that can happen. Enter InterpolateTHIS.com. Dedicated
to: "making this site an open forum for all photographers, graphics specialists,
DTP, and even programmers to share their know-how, information and tips. We
want to enable everyone worldwide to get the most out their digital images"
it's very much worth a visit.
July 14
From Canon a site for beginners and their DSLR's: Enjoy
Digital SLR Cameras
July 10
Hoodman - Interesting
accessories for cameras including a power grip for a D70, hoods for the LCD
on the back of you camera so you can see the screen in bright light, hoods for
your desktop and laptop monitors and more.
July 7
Ever wanted to shoot infrared with your DSLR? There are several that
will convert your camera to IR by removing the filters. IRDIGITAL.NET
is one of them.
April 7
For those of you that use Photoshop a lot you've probably started to use the
keyboard shortcuts. Here's
a page with printable pdf files of all of them. Thanks to d.
l. for this one.
March 3
I keep getting asked "How do I clean the sensor on my DSLR?". There
are a few good methods and one involves actually touching the insides and cleaning
it, not just blowing off the dust. There is a very good tutorial
up on PBase that shows nice pictures and is the generally accepted process to
clean the sensor. There is more good information on cleaning your
sensor on Luminous
Landscape.
February 26
I'm starting to use a new way to view my galleries - Simple
Viewer from Airtight. Best of all - it's free. Currently
the only picture gallery that I'm using Simple View for is my Favorites.
There's a bug in GD v2 that prevents SV from automatically generating
thumbnails of the pictures but I expect that they'll eventually fix it.
February 21
Time flies by... Ever been stopped and questioned while photographing? I've
run into this link in the past and just ran into it again today in a discussion
of the photographers rights in photographing people in public places. Bert
P. Kraggs is an attourney and has published The
Photographer's Right - A Downloadable Flyer (Your Rights When Stopped or Confronted
for Photography) in both pdf and Palm Books format. A very worthwhile
read. Some have even commented that they print it off and keep a
copy in their camera bag. I've never had the need for this but it's
still good stuff to know.
January 23
Action Central
For those Photoshop addicts out there check out this site. Too many
actions to contemplate. Have fun!
January 20
Think Tank Photo
This should probably be under the Toys section, but I'm putting it here instead. This
is a new company that makes bags, belt and waist systems. Founded
by a former Lowepro designer their stuff looks interesting.
January 14, 2005
Check out digitaltruth
photo source. Good source of all kinds of both film and
digital information. Thanks to Kathy Miller for finding this one.
December 30
Along the lines of TS lenses, check out Lensbabies.
If this little gizmo doesn't get your creative juices going you need help.
December 24
If you've ever thought about a tilt-shift lens for your camera, look at Zork
as well. Very innovative alternatives to dedicated TS lenses.
December 22
I ran across this person's site as a tag line from one of his posts on Rob Galbraith's
Forums. Check out Neil Turner's site, specifically his techniques
section.
December 16
OK, it's not been a week yet but this one was too good to wait. From and article
in today's Indy Star Newspaper is Artistrunway.com
- a site dedicated to local Indianapolis artists. Please check them out and
sign
up for their newsletter.
December 12
Shameless plug this week for one of my own sites: www.Clairich.com
A photographer friend of mine Claire
Middleton and I have teamed up to start shooting weddings. No content yet
on the site but stay tuned. We have images to show but are working on the presentation.
June 9
One of the first site I found several years ago was by Wayne Fulton titled A
few scanning tips. What an understatement. I ended up purchasing his printed
copy of the information and learned a lot.
May 21
The topic this week is panoramic images (see the Toy of the Week). A great place
to start is Panoguide.com.
There a lots of places to learn this technique but this is a good place to get
started.
May 10
Back to the basics. Luminous
Landscape has a wonderful column by Alain Briot on determining
the proper exposure. This is part six in his series on Aesthetics
and Photography.
May 3
Adobe
Studio Exchange - Sponsored by Adobe this is a place where you
can find actions, plug-ins, extensions and tutorials for Photoshop and other
Adobe products.
April 26
The Art of
Photography from Phil Douglis. Absorb, enjoy and see if you don't
think about 'taking pictures' in a new way.
April 19
"Understanding
Histograms"
One of the hardest parts of photography is getting the exposure just right.
With film we use light meters and then wait for the processed film to examine
how we did. With digital you can get immediate feedback on just how well the
image was exposed by using the histogram. One of the best articles on the explanation
of what the histogram is, how to read it and how to apply these principals to
properly exposing shots is contained on the Luminous
Landscape site in the "Understanding
series..." called "Understanding
Histograms". A good follow up article is "Expose
to the Right" also from this site. OK... that's four links, but all
of them are really good! I probably should have saved some for future weeks.
April 12
The FBI has an
interesting article on the comparison between film and digital as well as
photographic techniques for various applications in crimimal justice.