Steven’s Notebook

I came across an interesting article today, Email Full-resolution Photos From the iPhone 3G S. The article applies to the non-’S’ model, too, and probably to the earlier non-3G as well.
iPhone users should give it a read; I hadn’t even payed enough attention to notice that sending photos via the obvious method does not send the [...]

Photography is, when all is said and done, an art in which light is a very important element. Where there is little light, we do what we can to compensate. We use strobes, we use fill lights, we use reflectors — sometimes with good results, but often not.
There are times to just say “the [...]

Stephen A. asked a question this morning, how many pixels are needed to get a good large print. My assumption is that he means from a photo printing shop, not from his home inkjet printer.
I’ve had this chart for a while, though I don’t remember where I got it from — probably either SmugMug, Digital [...]

While Photography has a great deal of technical aspects to it — you’ve got to get the “right” amount of light to the film/sensor but you only have three real controls, each of which also changes another aspect of the picture — the biggest part of photography and perhaps the hardest to teach is [...]

There were several replies, in comments here and elsewhere, to my challenge last week:

The wind will change and your face will stick like that… [Andy]
If you keep making jokes about my squinty eyes, I’ll start talking about your landing strip hair cut. And what are those on the front of your face, runway lights? [Bob]
Charlie [...]

You Suck At Photoshop, via Ernie. Good stuff – funny, informative. Well, ok, so it’s only somewhat funny and then in a twisted sort of way, and if you’ve worked with PS for a while you probably already know most of this, and some of the audio’s probably “not safe for work” though that might [...]

I spent some time at the home of some friends this morning, making their family portraits for them.

I don’t take the opportunity for photo shoots like this as often as I’d like. It was an enjoyable experience, and in about an hour of shooting (and a little over an hour in post) I was [...]

When you’re going around the house (and car) resetting from daylight savings time, don’t forget that your cameras have clocks as well.
And take the time to remember to check the batteries in your home’s smoke detectors, too.

Question: When you tag a photo with location information, do you use the location where you were standing when you took the photo, or the location of the object or people in the photo?

Making the rounds this week on various WDW-related blogs and forums, You know you’re a Disney cast member when…
There are a couple that I know apply, and bug the heck out of my sons:

You have the overwhelming urge to offer to take people’s pictures
When you go on vacation, you say hello to Housekeepers in the [...]

I walk around Walt Disney World and take pictures. I hang out with the kids playing lacrosse or marching in the band and take pictures. I find things I think are interesting along the side of the road or in my backyard and take pictures of them.
But Michael Kamber…
I got up and ran to [...]

Also from last week’s lunchtime visit, here’s an almost 180-degree view of Village Lake.

That’s a really tiny view, you really need to click through then hit the “all sizes” button. Similar to the last posting, I used hugin to assemble this pano, this time from 7 images. The pictures were taken with a little Point&Shoot [...]

A panorama shot of Disney’s Saratoga Springs Resort & Spa, made of three pictures taken from Downtown Disney. The pictures were taken with a Kodak EasyShare CS4230 and combined with hugin. In the foreground are part of the Lego brick dragon that lurks along the shore.
I’m pretty impressed with hugin. These were taken with [...]

Whatever you do, don’t take a picture of this building.
Washington Post, Secret Buildings You May Not Photograph, Part 643:
The only antidote to this security mania is sunshine. Only when more and more Americans do as McCammon has done and take the time and effort to chronicle these excesses and insist on answers from [...]

First it was rules against photography in subways, then of bridges. Now you’re going to love this beastie:
New York City May Seek Permit and Insurance for Many Kinds of Public Photography.
New rules being considered by the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theater and Broadcasting would require any group of two or more people who want [...]

grr. Why does PhotoShop CS keep stripping EXIF info when I SaveAs JPG? Not all of it, mind you, but the Date & Time get reset to when the SaveAs happens :(

Here’s a little something I noticed while wandering around the maps on flickr… either some people aren’t being terribly exact when they’re geo-tagging their pictures, or some data’s being lost somewhere along the way. There are a bunch of pictures that are obviously in the “wrong place.” This is a cool picture, for example, but [...]

Jim Goldstein writes in If I Only I Knew Then What I Know Now:
The art of improving is by harnessing ones frustration, dissatisfaction and/or curiosity. Pushing oneself to not just practice, but research and experiment is the key to mastering photography… technically in camera or with post-processing. With that in mind the one piece of [...]

Steve Crandall, quoted in 2004: “It may be that independent cooberation of photos (several images taken from different cameras) are required to give a warm feeling of truth.”
This week in Toledo, when several pictures of the same event were compared one was different: “Each paper had its own similar Bluffton picture. But The Blade’s [...]

Today I was in downtown Atlanta — at the courthouse for my turn in the Jury Duty box, actually — and during lunch I was thinking it’d be nice if I had my camera with me… when I realized that I did, in a way.
My new phone (at what point is it a smart [...]

I know I’ve made images of this barn before; as I passed it today I figured I’d get a fresh one and try that Orton thing that Geren mentioned. The instructions he points to really lightened up the image, so I backed it off a little and had to play with the transparency to get [...]

Snarfed unabashedly from Alex:

The Great Flickr Tools Collection – long list
Flickr Tools – another long list.

I need to take some time to explore both of those lists.

Want to create a shiny logo that looks like it’s covered by glass? Mike Lane’s got a great tutorial.

Today is Nature Photography Day – get out there and shoot something. :-)

Flickr’s gone gamma. New features and all that jazz. Ok, so I’m a couple of days behind. Sorry ’bout that.
If you only ever go straight to your photos and contacts, it’s easy to miss their news, but it’s there.

Last week I wrote about restoring old photos.
Yesterday Derrick Story posted New Life for Old Photos on Macworld.com.

One of the local high schools’ lacrosse program had their annual post-season banquet last night, and it included some of my photography. I’d stopped by one game back in February at the request of one of their coaches, my friend Peter. I took and edited some pictures, posted them on my photography site, and was [...]

I decided to pull a few old snapshots out of the photo album just to see how much I could do to restore them. I’m no photo restoration expert, so if you’ve got pointers please pass them along.
I started by scanning a photo on my HP PhotoSmart 2570. This is a photo of me [...]

A Photo Every Day – that’s what I set the goal at about a month ago. The real goal, of course, is not to have 365 useless images at the end of the year. It’s to improve as a photographer through practice and feedback.
I’ve missed a couple of days, but I’m sticking with it. I’ts [...]

For Flickr users, here are some URLs that are useful that I’ve found in the FAQs and/or forums:

Recent Comments on your photos, and
Comments you’ve left on others’ photos.
Your recent photos, by date taken: a List, the Calendar.
Sponsor me with a gift Flickr Pro Account

I especially like that last one.

Yesterday I posted sunrise light.
Here’s the sunset light.

Alpharetta’s “new” Milton High School shines in a brisk January morning’s sunrise.

This certainly isn’t an abandoned building, though the fate of the “old” building has yet to be completely determined.

Andrew Kantor, USA Today: New digital camera? Know how, where you can use it
With all these cameras snapping around us, I started to wonder about the laws regarding using them. Where can you shoot? What can you shoot?
Mr. Kantor’s a writer, not a lawyer, though his research seems to be pretty much in agreement with [...]

I’ve tried to get more in the habit of carrying my camera around more, shooting on a more regular basis rather than just taking it to specific events. This Christmas vacation was a good time for that, just keeping my eyes open and taking pictures of whatever I saw. Here’s a view out the passenger [...]

This past Friday and Saturday I had an exciting opportunity and took it, attending the Atlanta Photojournalism Seminar. There were workshops and viewing sessions, portfolio reviews and an expo area, and of course many photographers to meet. To the board of directors of The Atlanta Photojournalism Seminar and the staff (all volunteers, I believe) who [...]

It feels really strange, now that High School football season is over; it’s Friday and I don’t have a game to shoot. I got a fair number of pictures in the local weekly newspaper this season, and last week I got an assignment to cover the Georgia AAAAA Volleyball Championship match.

Milton’s girls fought hard, barely [...]

High School football games here are on Friday nights, but the local paper doesn’t come out until the following Thursday. You’d think that gives me plenty of time to get my pictures ready, but not really. They want to put the paper to bed by Monday afternoon in order to send it to the printers, [...]

Last Friday I wrote “Today also marks my first day as a ‘real’ freelance photographer.”
Page 24 of today’s Alpharetta Revue and News is the first evidence of that.

click on the image for a larger version
The image they printed is a crop of this shot. There’s no photo credit in the version of the article posted [...]

Last spring I was thinking a bit about “photo integrity” (whatever that may be). Now, as I ponder the idea of turning hobby into secondary income as photographer, I come across this in the New York Times’s No Picture Tells the Truth. The Best Do Better Than That.
But the untruth – or, at least, imperfect [...]

3/16: “I wonder how long it’ll be until judges and juries are overly suspicious of any photo, audio or video recording brought into court – if they’re not already.”
Steve Crandall:
The next big thing may be wrestling with the impact of several million photoshop artists. It may be that independent cooberation of photos (several images taken [...]

I thought I’d written about this before, but a quick search doesn’t find it. If you’re someone who archives photos, music, or other data to CD or DVD for long-term storage, be sure to read through the NIST report on Care and Handling Guide for the Preservation of CDs and DVDs, or at the very [...]

Tim Bray is reading Photoshop Elements for Digital Photographers by Scott Kelby, which I’ve been looking at as well, and observes that “integrity is history. The image is no longer the capture of a instant’s light and colour, it’s, well… whatever you and Photoshop make of it.”
The ‘art’ of photo retouching is a lot older [...]