Friday, September 30, 2005
A late afternoon flight
The friday afternoon flight from orange takes off.
Flys over the Blue Mountains,
and onto Sydney.
The lighting was magnificent. I'm starting to believe in the magic of the golden hour. (On a hot still day or a remote hill you may just hear an old photographer mutter that you should only take photos outdoors in the hour after sunrise and the hour before before sunset, the golden hours.)
Sunday, September 25, 2005
Blogging directly from Word
Backuping your photos (made easy)
While listening to the radio this week, I heard Charles Wright, of the bleeding edge blog fame, firstly sympathizing with, but later reprimanding several callers. They wanted to recover photos lost via various mishaps and misadventures with their computers and cameraphones.
Photos can be very precious, because once lost they can be impossible to replace. Here is my simple 1-2-3 to make sure that gets done (regularly)
1) Upload your photos to a second media (eg from your camera or phone, to your notebook computer, to your ipod, if it’s an iphoto model, or the web, eg flickr)
2) Backup the photos to a second location (eg home computer, I use microsoft's SyncToy to do this, or FTP them to a web album eg photobucket or Kodak's Easyshare)
3) Archive by burning to CDs (&/or DVDs) regularly (eg monthly) and keep two copies (one at home and preferable the other at another site)
Do it now!
Photos can be very precious, because once lost they can be impossible to replace. Here is my simple 1-2-3 to make sure that gets done (regularly)
1) Upload your photos to a second media (eg from your camera or phone, to your notebook computer, to your ipod, if it’s an iphoto model, or the web, eg flickr)
2) Backup the photos to a second location (eg home computer, I use microsoft's SyncToy to do this, or FTP them to a web album eg photobucket or Kodak's Easyshare)
3) Archive by burning to CDs (&/or DVDs) regularly (eg monthly) and keep two copies (one at home and preferable the other at another site)
Do it now!
Saturday, September 24, 2005
Friday, September 23, 2005
Thursday, September 22, 2005
Flyr fun
flyr is a great little web applet that lets you search for any geotagged photos in Flickr. The output can be just a thumbnailed display of the photos found or, and this is where the fun starts, annotated links in either google earth or google map formats.
Why not try it out now, click on the form above to get to the search page. Next, just type in "imageo" as the photographer. You can then find where my into the blue yonder photo was taken. You'll also be able to fly around in google earth to see my other photos. If you click on the pin, when in google earth, you see a thumbnail of the photo and a link directly back to that photo in flickr.
flyr has been developed by Paul Downey and the source code is available to installed on your website, see the flyr about page
Why not try it out now, click on the form above to get to the search page. Next, just type in "imageo" as the photographer. You can then find where my into the blue yonder photo was taken. You'll also be able to fly around in google earth to see my other photos. If you click on the pin, when in google earth, you see a thumbnail of the photo and a link directly back to that photo in flickr.
flyr has been developed by Paul Downey and the source code is available to installed on your website, see the flyr about page
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
Into the Blue Yonder
Monday, September 19, 2005
Still looking for the special light
these photos where taken almost two years ago and among my first photographs with my olympus didgital camera. I actually used the photo above to introduce myself in this blog. My tendency to point my camera into the light is oblviously not new
for photofriday topic :divine (light)
Friday, September 16, 2005
Thursday, September 15, 2005
Sunday, September 11, 2005
The massive mountain (ash) gums
Eucalyptus regnans, locally know "Mountain ash" were once highly prized for ship masts
for photofriday topic :massive
Thursday, September 08, 2005
Monday, September 05, 2005
Friday, September 02, 2005
Photo Myth :: Do NOT point at the light.
Why you shouldn't :: taken with my cameraphone
Why you should :: Taken with my olympus C-4000
I’m going to post a few items on photo myths, not because I want to be a myth buster, but because the early photo literature, camera manuals (yes cameras usually do come with manuals), magazines and websites often restate this “myths” without enough explanation.
I do know that pointing a camera at a strong light can caused problems. The reason is to do with getting the correct exposure for the shot. Automatic light meters have a lot of difficulty with strongly contrasting scenes. They will either try to average the whole scene to an average, in which case the light source will be washed out through being over-exposed and/or the show detail lost. Alternatively if the camera has a spot meter, the light, sun & sky maybe ok but everything else will be in heavy shadow.
Yet you can get some really great effects with strong backlighting. The key is understanding how to take the shot using your camera. The fist example I took because I knew it would not work. The phone camera has a simple averaging meter and I did point the camera straight at the sun. The second photo, taken at much the same location and only a few minutes later. This camera has a “matrix” meters methods that bias slightly the center of the photo, but takes several reading not just one. Also I waited till light cloud partially obscured the sun, thus significantly reducing it strength.
The beauty of digital photography is you can take all the photos you are warned not to, and then discard them if they didn't work. Learning what small changes and adjustments can make the scene work, without the “expensive” let downs of ruined prints.