So, I have been sitting here thinking I need to update the theme I am using to 2.7, when I found this link. There are a ton of resources listed here about WordPress themes, but the most interresting is here.¬† It is about Justin Tadlock, and how he created a “base” theme for you to use. Using this well structured base, you may only need to modify css files. His “base” theme is called hybrid, and it is not the prettiest theme, but it is not meant to be. It is to be the starting point. He has two child themes there that both start with hybid, and they are very different. Hmmmm. Maybe that is the way to go…
Monthly Archives: December 2008
Best Photography Blogs
I was out on Scott Kelby’s blog when I saw he linked to a post on The Top 100 Photography Blogs. I looked through the list, and Scott’s is on the list (why he linked to it in the first place), but not all the places I check in with on a mostly daily basis are there. It got me thinking. Where and why do I check in with different blogs? So here is my much smaller list of photography blogs I read regularly and why.
- Scott Kelby’s Photoshop Insider – I just love this guys writing style. He is very honest, genuine and fun. I come here to read about general photography and shooting stuff, and for pure entertainment. I just like reading this blog. I think it was one of the first photography blogs I came across, and I have ben hooked ever since.
- David DuChemin’s PixelatedImage – This is blog about vision. About one mans quest to take his inner vision and turn it into images. It is a very interesting read. David often “rants” about the industry and can provoke discussion. I got caught up in one of his rants once, but it is almost always worth a read. My own vision I find somewhat elusive, and through David’s blog I am looking for it bit by bit.
- David Zizer’s Digital Pro Talk – This is all about the wedding photographer. Sort of. He is an amazing portrait photographer, and offers many tips and insights into gear, the business, weddings shoots, portrait and location shoots, using flash, and more. He writes well, and you can always pick up some useful piece of information from this blog.
- Joe McNally’s blog – He makes long rambling stories into posts that just have to be read. I always get a chuckle out of things he has written. I think of Joe as Mr. Speedlight. His blog and books are all about this travels, shoots and the half dozen or so Nikon Speedlights he seems to carry with him.
That is about all I really check in with on a daily basis, but there are several others that I will stop in a check out as well. These are in no particular order, but I usually stop by once every week or so.
- David Hobby’s The Strobist – The number one stop on the internet for a off camera small flash education. There is lots of material here to look at other than the blog, and I have spent some time going through the 101 and 201 intro how to classes.
- Jao Van de Lagemaat’s blog – I “met” Jao on the ArsTechnica forums, and check into his blog every once in awhile. He takes great landscape pictures, and has posted some interresting things about color, lightroom, RAW, and other things.
- Steve Weller’s Bagelturf – Another small blog that I happened upon while looking up Aperture related items. I check in on this guy from time to time to see if any Apple/Aperture/programming things he is up to are interesting.
- Dave Cross Dave Cross Online – I have to check out the Canadian every once in a while. Some of his recent “finish the sentance” interviews have been funny. He also stars with Scott Kelby on the Photoshop User TV video blog that I try to watch each week.
- John Paul Caponigro’s Bog – If you want to learn about light, here is the place to go. The blog can be technical, but practical, and you will learn all things light and photoshop.
- Moose Peterson’s Blog – Wildlife photographer extraordinaire, Moose will teach you tons about taking that great wildlife or landscape shot. Lots of entries from his blog are from the seminars that he takes part in, including the DLWS, that I would love to take part in.
- Sly Arena’s PixSylated – He is often giving great tips on using small flashes and other fun photography stuff.
- Matt Brandon’s The Digital Trekker – Matt is a travel photographer creating pictures out of his vision of the world. Along the way he tries to pass his insights and thoughts on in his blog. He lives in Singapore and travels quite a bit, which puts a neat spin on his insights.
Creativity, the Artist, Vision, and Me
Matt Brandon posted an article just before Christmas that I read today about the photographer as artist, and where inspiration comes from. He linked in a Joe McNally article that I had read when he published it back on the 15th of Dec. It was reading Joe’s article that I decided that I need to scrap trying to get paid to take pictures and try to find ways to get great experience doing things I like to do, to both enjoy photography, and get some portfolio building stuff. Besides, I need to learn to be able to take pictures that would be worth charging for.
Matt’s post was interesting too. Before I started to consider myself a “photographer”, I don’t think I would have considered a photographer as an artist. Looking at others photography, and knowing now what can go into the picture taking, and the picture processing, I can definitely see others as artists. I have a friend that tries to call me an artist, and it just doesn’t sound right. I don’t see myself as an artist. I am trained as a technical person, and don’t really do “artsy” things. I came at photography from wanting to take pictures of my kids, and digital photography because I like toys I can use with computers, and becuase I hate getting pictures developed for the time and expense of it. Something has happened along the way though, and I have come to love photography for the photography part. My wife even tells me I don’t take as many pictures of my kids as I used to with a point and shoot.
I talk lots of different pictures now. Macro stuff, flowers, night exposures, landscapes, etc. But, and artist? I don’t think of myself as uncreative. I am the guy the other technical people turn to when they need site design, or graphics help. But, and artist? I am not sure why I resist it. I have accepted the label of photographer, but maybe I don’t feel that my pictures are yet good enough to get the artist label? Maybe. Maybe it is because I don’t feel that I draw on the artists creative well to drive my picture taking. I don’t even know what that is.
Matt and David talk a lot about vision. I am on a quest to understand really what that means. They make it sound like it is just something you have, that you use, that comes out in your pictures. Is this what artists draw from? Is this what artists want the world to see in their work? Both? I don’t know where to draw the creativity from within me. I know that I have some, I have great ideas, and am left handed for goodness sakes!¬† I don’t know what I want to say with my photographs. I just seem to like taking them, and get a kick when others like what I have done. There sure isn’t an overriding theme to my pictures.
What is really interesting is that both Matt and McNally talked about hitting a dry spell. Well, that would be me as well. I haven’t really taken many pictures this fall/winter (other than a few of family). I used to shoot every day, and wanted to go out and just walk around and see what I could take a picture of. So what changed, or dried up? Good question. It is not that I have technically perfected taking pictures. It is not that I can always get an image from my mind to the camera. So where did the passion go from a couple of months ago? That is probably why most of the recent posts have been about Javascript, and my flickr account has seen one new image since Halloween.
It is hard to systimatically get back on track when you don’t know where your creativity came/comes from, or what you vision is, or wants to be.
Javascript Speed Tests
As part two of yesterdays Javascript Speed post, I have an interresting link. MooTools, another Javascript library, has a speed comparison page up here. I had looked at MooTools a while back when I put up the slideshow piece on the front page of the site. I didn’t look into it too much, but it seemed small and compact. Anyway, the speed comparison is interresting. If you go to the site, press the “start tests” button in the upper right to see the differences. I got here while I was looking into jQuery. Prototype gets smacked in the speed test. Yikes.
This post is from 2007, but was already complaining that WordPress was going to use Prototype instead of jQuery for version 2.0. (which was just released a month ago) It would appear to me though that WordPress went and switched to jQuery. Looking at the WordPress docs, I found this page on AJAX, and it talks about jQuery.  When I look at the source of one of the admin pages, there is jQuery references all over, but nothing about prototype.
Looks like WordPress has switched to jQuery, and if I am looking at making plugins for wordpress, I might want to think about moving to jQuery.
Javascript Speed
I have been working on a new script that will “fly” collages out from an album. It was using an effect from script.aculo.us. I am much closer, and am in the process of gathering images to post before I call it done. I tested it with Safari, Windows Explorer 6, and Firefox 3.0. I have to say, it was crazy smooth in Safari and Explorer. I was disapointed in Firefox. It is a little jerky. It was in development, but I figured that was just something to live with until I tried the other browsers.
There is hope. Firefox 3.1 is in beta (as of October), and it is supposed to have Tracemonkey support among other things. All the browsers have been madly working on their javascript kung fu it would appear. I haven’t tried the beta, but here’s hoping for a smoother ride once it hits prime time.
Eye-Fi is pretty neat.
So I have had a few minutes to play with my Eye-Fi card now. First off, it is now working. It does appear that they sold a bazilion of these for Christmas and the servers couldn’t handle it. (According to their site) They have aparently recoved, and I was able to get registered. So far I have hooked it up to Gallery2 running on annieandchris.net to recieve the pictures. Pretty cool. I could just snap a picture of the kids, and blamo, it would appear on the website.
A couple of things so far. I have no geotagging data in EXIF. Not sure if that it becuase of my router doesn’t work with their “skynet” or whatever they are doing, or something else. Also, you can’t tell in camera if the picture has been sent or not. I saw in their control panel that you could select to get a SMS or email or something if pictures have been uploaded, so that might work just as well. It would be nice to know when it is safe to delete the images. When the images hit my Gallery2, they get placed in a new folder named with the date. I think I want all Eye-Fi pics to get placed into the same folder. I might have to try hacking the remote script.
Merry Eye-Fi Christmas
Merry Christmas to anyone that wants to be wished a Merry Christmas. This morning I opened a present to find an Eye-Fi explore card.Sweet. These things look pretty cool. I wish I could tell you how cool it is to wirelessly transfer images to my computer, but alas, it is not working.
The 2gig card comes with a reader and the software on the card. That is pretty smart. No disk required. I installed the software on my Mac laptop, and tried to go to the Eye-Fi manager app, which directs you to their website login. Problem is, I haven’t registered yet. I searched everywhere on their site, but can’t figure out how to register. It is supposed to send me their automaticly, where I would register and be good to go. Unfortunatly that is not how it is working.
I tired another mac as well, but the same thing happened. I looked on their forum, and found a thread that was suggesting that I may have to send the card back because it may have been registered to someone else already. That would be silly if they have no way to reset their cards or their online database. Hopefully once customer service is at their stations again, someone there can get this straightened out.
Javascripting
So I started playing with Javascript a bit more recently. I looked for a library that could do some cross browser animation stuff. The lightbox script was based on prototype and script.aculo.us for effects. I have only scratched the surface of what these librarys can do, but they seem pretty cool.
The project I am working on is an upgrade to the single collage that I have up at christopherwardphotography. The idea is that you would pick an album, and the images would fly out from the album. What I wanted was something that would move an image. The scriptaculous Effect.move class provides this. The really cool thing I found was that the javascript interpreter does not stop and wait for the move to finish. It keeps going. If you call out several in a row, all the images will move on the screen at the same time. Very cool.
I will have more about this “flyout collage” later when I am finished. It will apear at christopherwardphotography when it is done.
Digital Pro Talk Links
I was reading Digital Pro Talk today, and came across a couple of things of note. First up, David pointed out a series of 50 photoshop tutorials at Smashing Magazine. I don’t have time to look at them right now, but I looked over the topic list, and they seem pretty great.
David also had a post a couple of days ago on presenting your images to clients. This was very interesting. He has posted other thoughts on the idea, and I am starting to come around. Before I started into photography, it seemed to me that photographers would want to meet with you to up sell the heck out of you. Some still do, but the way David approaches this appears genuinely with his clients needs/wishes in mind. Yes, he has a product to sell, but the customer has a desire to get beautiful memories. That is why he was contacted in the first place.
The senior photo’s I took of Gavin could have benefited from this. I didn’t sell any pictures at all. I talked to his mom about a few options, but never heard from her. I think next time I will try to take more time to whittle down the selects, and look at how they are presented.
Sold my first print
I had created this picture as a poster a while back. My sister liked this image, and I had this poster printed up for fun on standout. It looks really great. My sister does’t like the standout style though, she likes regular frames better, so I brought it to work to show off. A coworker really liked it, and thought she might buy it, poster, standout and all. Well, it didn’t quite happen, but she did buy a print of the poster in 8×10 that I had up on my wall at work. So there you have it, my first print sale.