Monthly Archives: March 2009

Get Your Seat to the Digital Wake Up Call

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digitalwakeupcallbanner1

I briefly mentioned David Ziser’s tour before, and that I have already booked my seat, but I thought I would tell you a little bit more. Why you say? Three reasons: I want to see you go because David is an amazing photographer with a ton of information he is willing to share with you. Two, because I have a discount code for you, and three, because I am running my first contest, with the prize being a seat at the big show.

I forget now how I stumbled upon digital pro talk, David’s blog. I hadn’t done any weddings, and it looked like he was a wedding photographer, and I was ready to move along, but I decided to read a couple of posts. Well, I have been back many many times to read and reread his posts. He has so many¬† interesting things to say about portraits, lighting, gear, and the business of photography, that there is something there for everyone whether or not they ever shoot a wedding.

It looks like his digital wake up tour will have a ton of useful information.  What might you learn? This is from the tour site:

  • 32 ways to use your on and off-camera flashes for creative and dramatic effects.
  • 10 of the best camera settings and lens choices for creating striking images on every job.
  • 7 ways to use the new DSLR video capabilities to transform your product offerings.
  • 10 “Magic Bullet” techniques to make your digital workflow nearly effortless, highly efficient, and fun with today’s top software from Adobe Lightroom, NIK, and LumaPix: FotoFusion.
  • 20 new product and marketing ideas targeted to today’s customers¬†which will¬†add substantially to your bottom line.

Your still on the fence? How about all of this stuff you will get :

  • Tour Handbook including: program notes, photography, marketing and more
  • 2 Hour DVD with extended program content
  • $100 Rebate from American Color Imaging
  • 1 year membership to WPPI and Rangefinder magazine, a $99 value
  • FREE 3 month membership to DigitalProTalkPlus.com, a $45 value
  • FREE 3 month subscription to PPA Magazine, a $15 value
  • FREE PPA Indemnification (no-fault) insurance for all new PPA menbers, a $50 value
  • Over $2,500 in door prizes awarded each evening
  • And a chance to win 1 of 4 Grand Prizes worth over $5,000

David is bringing the event to 58 cities across the US, including the Minneapolis event September 16. I’ll be there. If you don’t win the contest, David has given me a discount code that you can use to get $20 off the event. Enter code:¬† ZCWDWC09 ( last digits are zero nine) on the registration page, and you will receive a $20 discount. Price will be only $59 after the discount.

Want to enter the contest and go free? Ok, the contest will be me arbitrarily picking the most dramatic portrait from the photo’s submitted to the Cyberward flickr group.

  1. First get a flickr account. They are free.
  2. Upload your pictures to flickr.
  3. Join the Cyberward flickr group
  4. Add the¬† tag “dwc09” to the photo’s
  5. Limit the photo’s you enter in the contest to 3 please.

The contest will run until April 11 at @ midnight (Saturday). I will choose on Sunday, and email the winner and post the winning picture on April 13 (Monday)

Good luck, and see you in September at DWC09!

Update:moved the contest end back into April (again) and added the registration code

Studio Pictures of Lorenzo

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Lorenzo1

I finally got the pictures of Lorenzo “developed”. This was a difficult shoot. He was not in the best of moods. He was tired, and bored most of the time. Very squirmy. I didn’t get any of the pictures of the family to turn out. They were never looking toward the camera at the same time. A couple of the shots of Lorenzo turned out.

We had a 1 to 1 lighting ratio set up. Two strobes at 45 deg from the subject in softboxes. There was a light on the background too. I don’t think we had the background light centered well, and with Lorenzo moving around, the light was often in my pictures. I found getting good pictures of him difficult.

Loading Java Resources Correctly

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I am currently creating a continuation of the java series on useing reflection. In one of the examples I was trying to read from a properties file. I completely forgot how to find the resource I was looking for. I found this article on Java World. It’s from 2003, but still relevent.

To start with. The myFile.properties file is in the same package as the class MyClass.

These were my attempts:

// 1. Just get a FileInputStream
InputStream aStream = new FileInputStream("myFile.properties");

// 2. Switched to getResourceAsStream
InputStream aStream = MyClass.class.getClassLoader().getResourceAsStream("my/package/myProps.properties");

// 3. Settled on 
InputStream aStream = MyClass.class.getResourceAsStream("myProps.properties");

So, the first attempt was me completely forgetting how to do things. The only way that works is if you are putting in an absolute path from the file system. Never a good idea.

The second one, using the ClassLoader went astray because I forgot to include the “/” at the beginning.

The third times a charm. If you get the resource right from the class, you can also use relative pathing, and I got to drop the path.

That works much better.

Trumpter Swan Pictures

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I finally got my swan pictures processed from Monticello a couple of weeks ago. I couldn’t get any of the heart shapes, when you have two of them facing each other and their necks make a heart. Part of the problem was there were too many swans. You couldn’t get a pair isolated. They would never get perpendicular to the lens either. Oh well, here are a few. More on flickr.

Pay attention to me 

Swan Couple 

DSC_5388 

Leave me alone

Intro to Java Interfaces

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This entry is part 4 of 13 in the series Intro to Java

Interfaces are a very important part of Java. They can also be quite confusing. In this lesson, we want to take a look at Interfaces, what they are, their relationship to classes, and how and why we use them.

Sun Trails

Index: http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/index.html

Link into Object Oriented Programming Concepts Trail: (interfaces) http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/java/concepts/interface.html

What is an Interface?

I think of an interface as like a contract. If you want to fulfill a contract, you have certain obligations to fulfill. The same for a Java contract (interface). An interface defines a set of obligations that an implementing class needs to provide. The obligations are nothing more than method signatures. No code, just the signatures. The class that implements the interface provides the code.

The other thing an interface does, is it allows different classes to appear similar, at least in so far as they implement the interface. As you will see, a Bird, a Fish, and a Mammal are not the same, but if they all implement the Animal interface, then we can treat them all like Animals.

Continue reading →

iPhone Apps on my screen

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iphone1I started typing in a reply to someone about what iPhone apps are living on my screen, so I thought that maybe I would post the list of things that I have on my iPhone here.

First up is Flickr. They don’t have an iPhone app, but they have a mobile site that is quite amazing. Great UI.

I also use the Facebook app for accessing Facebook. Most of both sides of my family now used Facebook, so this is a great way to check in.

The wordpressapp is pretty neat. It allows you to create posts right from your phone. This is not perfect. You can’t access images that aren’t on your phone. Ones from your wordpress library would have been nice. Much better than using Safari and the admin section.

I jumped on twitter recently, and the twitterificapp works great for me. It would be even better if the iPhone would let you know when updates occur, but that is not yet in the iPhone architecture. Checking by accessing the app probably saves battery life though.

AccuWeather and The Weather Channel are much better than the included weather app.

WhitePages is great in the US at least. I look up people and phone numbers with this all the time. It lets you add addresses to existing contacts or create new ones as well as providing a map of the location.

LockBox allows me to put sensitive info into the iPhone with an additional password. There are a few with that name. Thisis the iTunes link.

Yelp and AroundMework great in the US. I can see restaurants, businesses, bank machines, and more that are near by my location.

Flixster is also pretty amazing. It has a great interface to tell what movies are playing, where, and when. It used the location service to tell you what is near by. You can also see info on the movies playing or coming in the future as well as play trailers. I don’t get to movies much, but a guy can dream.

I have craigsphone (for craigs list), eBay, and Amazon on my phone, but don’t use them much. I have looked up prices on Amazon while out an about though.

I have Pandora and Public Radio Tuner to stream audio, but haven’t found that I use them much. I drive too much I guess.

Been trying to find good lists and to-do apps. I am trying ShopShop (grocery app comparison) and ToDo’s right now.

I also started using NetNewsWire. I have their desktop app on my Macs, and the mobile version of the RSS reader on my iPhone. I created an account with them and now they all sync together. Pretty cool.

Newspapers like the New York Times and USA Today have mobile app versions. It is faster and more UI friendly than their full or even mobile sites.

My 2 year old loves DressChica and I Hear Ewe.

Also check out Terry White’s Tech blog. He reviews iPhone apps every week. http://terrywhite.com/techblog/

There are a bunch of photography tools. I am pretty cheap, and haven’t tried any of the pay tools, and haven’t found any photography tools that are free that are worth buying. Depth of Field Calculatorlooks interesting. Just look at the photography catagory in iTunes. There are lots of apps there. Scott Kelby (on photoshop user tv) recommended FocalWare to see sunrise and sunset times for landscape photographers. It is $9.99. Haven’t tried it yet.

I am amazed. These apps combined with maps and address book have become glued to my hip. In about a month I am now wondering how I lived without them. I probably use more of the data plan than my voice plan. (I only have the 400 min plan)

Photog Arrested Taking Amtrak Photos

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I am not sure how I missed this. Very funny. Well, not the arrested part, but the Stephen Colbert video piece is from Feb 2. I still don’t get what people have against photographers, but the name of National Security seems to be some great rallying war cry for security guards. What the heck?

[update:I have it embeded now]