Brighten up your desktop

Feel like you’d work more productively if you had a calming landscape to look at rather than those boring old spreadsheets? Constantly worried about what day of the week it is and fretting that you can’t recall if next Sunday is the 15th or 16th of the month?

Put your worries to one side and enjoy a free wallpaper that combines not only a soothing scene of the lovely Lake District but a handy calendar right there on your desktop. It’s OK, no need to thank me. It’s my pleasure.

Axiotron Modbook

This is the first and, as far as I know, only tablet Mac currently on the market. It’s made by Axiotron and has only recently hit the shops. I’ve yet to see any reviews of the Mac Tablet but it certainly looks like a flash bit of kit. It’s so much more productive working with a Wacom tablet rather than a mouse and so the appeal of being able to draw directly onto the screen is obvious.

Pixelated Image

I had started to write a lyrical and eloquent post about David duCenin’s wonderful web site because I wanted to tell you how inspiring and motivational I have found it. But all you really need to know is that having followed his recent comment on my blog to his web site, looking through the wonderful content kept me up way past my bed time and prompted me to get up extra early this morning to continue reading.

The very first category in my web browser bookmarks is entitled “be inspired” and is reserved for those very special sites that are uplifting, educational, informative, entertaining and, most importantly, which are capable of motivating me and of getting my brain whirring with new ideas. David’s pixelatedimage.com site is the latest addition to that very exclusive list of bookmarks.

These are just a few of the highlights I found last night and this morning:

1. David’s Portfolio, especially his recent World Vision photos from Mongolia, gorgeous images from Nepal and the “Colours of India” and “Classic India” galleries.
2. David’s Blog has some great info, including…
3. A glowing review of Joe McNally’s new book, The Moment it Clicks, which led me to Joe McNally’s web site and then to his blog. More great reading!
4. Flying with Fish. A blog written by a well-travelled photographer, Steven Frischling, with lots of hints and tips for the travelling snapper.

I realised too that David was also a finalist in the recent Travel Photographer of the Year competition so I’m doubly delighted to be in such illustrious company.

I’ve ordered Joe McNally’s book, which, to veer off at a very angular tangent, reminded me about what I was saying the other day about blogging becoming a great producer of the “buzz” that can surround new products. I haven’t seen the book mentioned elsewhere and although it may be reviewed in one or two of the photographic magazines that I subscribe to, there’s no guarantee that it would ever have come to my attention. It’s no surprise that companies are turning their attention to bloggers when they’re looking to promote a product.

My copy of “The Moment it Clicks” should be here in a day or two and I’ll certainly post a review here when I’ve finished reading it. Indeed, with a growing number of products to review and comment upon I shall be stealing an idea from David duChenin and Scott Kelby (and others) and introducing my very own rating and endorsement system for products that I’ve used, books I’ve read and web sites that I’ve visited. It will probably be no more complicated than a simple five-star rating system but if you have a clever idea for something I can use instead of stars then please share it. I did think about have an f-stop rating system with great products getting f/2.8, average products receiving f/8 and a rating of f/22 being reserved for the real dogs but felt that it was unnecessarily complex. Simple, as they say with a stammer in my home town, is often best.

Don't steal people's photos

This is an American copyright infringement case but the principle of using photographs without the permission of the copyright holder (usually the photographer) remains the same worldwide. It’s illegal and you shouldn’t do it. I’ve recently noticed a couple of my photos being used without my permission and although this was quickly and amicably resolved (they’re paying my invoice) it does illustrate the fact that many people think that photos in the public domain are available to be used for free.

I think what made it worse in this case was that the defendant’s testimony was ruled to be “inconsistent and full of contradictions” and that he had a”reputation for being highly deceptive and saying one thing and then doing another“.

Getty Sold for $2.4 billion

Getty Images has been sold to private equity firm Hellman and Friedman for $2.4 billion and shares in the company climbed by over 30% following the announcement.

Taking the Queen's Shilling

I think the term is “crowdsourcing”. Taking a task traditionally performed by an employee or contractor and outsourcing it to an undefined group of people, to paraphrase Wikipedia.

In this case, it’s advertising in the shape of ebuzzing. Rather than outsource the marketing and promotion of a product to an advertising agency, companies will pay approved bloggers a fee to talk about a product on their blog. I suppose the principle is that if you get enough bloggers to write about a new product then the resulting “buzz” will prove to be equally as effective as a major marketing campaign. It seems to make sense on one level. If you add up all of the reader numbers for several thousand blogs then you’d see an impressive total. And Bloggers are real people, like you and me, so we’re more likely to trust what they say than what an ad agency tells us. Probably.

The crowdsourcing phenomena is not new of course and stock photographers have seen the introduction of crowdsourcing at “microsites” like istockphoto. It’s a similar principle, rather than employ a few professional stock photographers, microsites offer to sell stock photos for any number of amateurs. If the market for stock photographs remains the same then the revenue available to photographers obviously diminishes when there are more photographers wanting a slice of the pie. That’s a pretty simplistic analysis and there’s evidence that the arrival of very cheap stock photographs has seen the market increase although not necessarily in line with the increase in the numbers of potential stock suppliers.

All of which is a diversion from the purpose of this post which was to introduce the fact that I may be posting items in the future that are sponsored through ebuzzing. The inclusion of the little icon at the bottom of the post will identify sponsored articles and the editorial nature of my musings will remain unbiased and uninfluenced by the promise of a little filthy lucre. Some may ask whether the integrity of a blog can be upheld when posts are sponsored and my answer to that would be (a) What integrity? and (b) I have a wife, Canon, Epson and Lowepro to support (except not the wife) so if someone’s prepared to chuck me a tenner for my unbiased scribbles about their product then they’re more than welcome.

This post is sponsored by ebuzzing ;o)

Buttermere Panorama

This panoramic image of Lake Buttermere in the Lake District is constructed from nine separate photos and was stitched together in Photoshop. It shows a 180 degree view from the western shore of the lake.

I’ve been to the Lake District many times over three decades but I’ve never known the weather to be anything like as good as the weather I enjoyed last week. Usually, time in the Lake District is spent cocooned in wet weather gear and the expectation is for rainy days and grey skies. However, for five days last week the only cloud I saw was the tiny, wispy one that appeared over the lake in this photo. There were blue skies and mirror-like reflections in the still waters of the lakes, it was a rare and welcome treat.

Clicking on the picture above should open up a larger version of the panorama in a new browser window.

Got my goat

There aren’t many things that really get my goat these days, apart from discourteous driving, which always gets me reciting a list of expletives. Oh, and poor customer service. And any sort of automated phone system. And the lack of anything remotely watchable on the TV. OK, that’s the start of what might become a long list if I let it continue.

One thing that rarely annoys me is looking at other photographers’ work. There’s always a lot to learn from other photographers, especially those who manage to earn a living from their trade. Which is why I was surprised to feel the hairs on the back of my neck pricking up yesterday when I read a National Geographic interview with Lynsey Addario.

I’ll share just two excerpts from the interview with you, the full text can be found in the link in the previous paragraph:

“In one house there were these two little girls—one was maybe ten and the other seven—and their mother was working out in the fields. I walked into the house and said hello, and one of the girls just stared and started crying, because she had never seen a foreigner.“

and

“But he just said, “Not possible.” For him, he couldn’t fathom bringing a photographer to a funeral. They aren’t used to people documenting their lives.“

Lynsey Addario has photographed Syria, Afghanistan, Lebanon and the Miss India Beauty Pageant - all potentially dangerous locations for a photographer and she’s taken photos that I would be hugely proud to have taken (check out her impressive web site) but, and it’s a big “but”, why on earth does she think that walking into somebody’s house uninvited is not going to freak children out and in what world is she living if she thinks that arriving at a funeral with a big camera is going to see you welcomed with open arms?

This is an attitude that I’ve encountered quite a lot, sadly. Westerners who trot around Third World countries like it’s their personal adventure playground, sticking their cameras into people’s homes and lives as if the fact that because people are relatively poor (financially) it makes them little more than colourfully convenient photographic fodder. Seriously, to suggest that, “they aren’t used to people documenting their lives” is the reason why people wouldn’t want you to photograph the funeral of a loved one seems hugely ignorant and insensitive to me.

Grrr! It really made me bristle. Perhaps Lynsey was quoted out of context and I may be doing her a huge disservice, in which case I apologise. But her comments do reflect an attitude that I’ve encountered previously and, if nothing else, serve to illustrate the pompously arrogant and superior attitude that a lot of Westerners seem to have when visiting certain places in the world.

I’m going to give this some thought and see if there’s not a more rational explanation for such behaviour and perhaps a more reasonable response to be made by me. In the mean time… Grrr!

PS - Whilst we’re on the subject of annoying things: web sites that resize themselves to take over your computer screen!

Kirkstone Pass II

Just to round off on yesterday’s post, these are the three originals that make up the final image. Just as Masher suggested, they were taken in quick succession, all at f/16 and 1/6, 1/13 & 1/25 of a second respectively. I rarely use a tripod so often prefer to take a single RAW file and then make three versions of it, each at different exposures. I use these to create my HDR images although I know that the result is not strictly showing a High Dynamic Range.

Kirkstone Pass

This photo was taken shortly after sunrise on Kirkstone Pass between Ambleside and Patterdale. It’s a narrow, winding and very steep road that’s known locally as “The Struggle”.

This is another HDR image although rather than using three files constructed from a single RAW image processed at different exposures, this is a combination of three separate images, taken in quick succession with the camera fixed firmly to a tripod and with a remote release cable.

I’ve been experimenting with the HDR process recently in an effort to produce more natural-looking images. HDR images can look a bit artificial. It’s a look that suits some images but I find that they can end up looking very alike. I think this one’s reasonable though. It doesn’t seem to have that very obvious HDR feel to it and I think I’m beginning to find settings that produce more realistic images.

(Canon 1Ds MKII - 43mm - 1/6, 1/13 & 1/125 at f/16 - ISO100 - No Flash)

Next Page »