I saw several twitter links come by today that seemed interesting, and thought I would link them up.
Packing Light – from Shutterbug
189 Business Ideas – from New Media Photographer
How to Add a Copyright Notice to Your Photos – from Black Star Rising
Sending Nice HTML Email with PHP – from CSS Tricks
5 Useful WordPress Functions You Didn’t Know Existed – Nathan Rice
Bootcamp II: Introduction– from Strobist
20 Tools to Make the Life of a Web Devloper Easier – from net tuts+
Here are a few links from around the web that have caught my eye.
First off, if you are from Minneapolis, the World Photo Walk Day site for Minneapolis is up and working now. Get your spot before it’s full.
onOne software has a free version of their Photo Tools 2 software that gives you 14 of their tools.
Nikon World has a write up on Scott Kelby and a few of his images. I found out that Scott was a fashion photog, and gave it up before coming back and writing all the photography books.
Moose Peterson has a video mini review of the Nikon 24-70 AFS FX lens. Right at the end he says that DX shooters should NOT get this lens.
David duChemin has a video podcast up based on the ideas in Within the Frame.
From David Zizer: If you were just starting out, how would you build your client base.
Recently met Joe Federer, a pretty cool guy and local Wedding Photographer. Check out his blog. A couple posts down is an example book he creates. Wow!
Joe McNally has a blog post called Getting High. This isn’t about getting on a ladder to shoot. Try the Empire State building. Many of these images are also from “The Moment it Clicks”.
Came across flickr user hellziggy. She has some nice pictures of birds up on her photostream. Also, of interest to people from Minneapolis, she has tagged her pictures with their location. I might have to sneak over to some of her spots.
Yesterday I went to PDN’s Virtual Trade Show. It was pretty good. The technology that made it possible is getting there. I think they have some integration pieces to work on, but it turned out fine.
The highlight of the day (for me anyway) was the creative lighting session done by Zack Arias. But I missed it. I was out, and didn’t get back until just after his part was over, and someone else was talking about lighting toys/models creatively. It was interesting, but I had wanted to hear Zack.
Lucky for me, Zack has posted his presentation in PDF form, and has a Q&A thing going on¬†at his blog. At the end of the second presenter, they also said they would put the presentations online, but I haven’t seen them yet.
Trust me, it is a whole lot easier if you get it right in camera the first time. A whole lot easier. Anyway, I didn’t. I didn’t get all that good a picture of this family, and it was bugging me. The first problem was that I didn’t have all four of them with a reasonable expression. You gotta love groups! The first thing I had to do was to put a left side and a right side together of two pictures. Lesson learned: Keep shooting until you get a picture with all people looking forward!
The next thing I wanted was that burn and dodge effect. I tried a couple of things that didn’t work, then I remembered that I had seen a couple of things on David Zisers blog. The first one I found was this. This video post was specifically about dodge and burn. I could not quite make it work. Then I looked around a little more, and found this. I had this one bookmarked to look at sometime. It is about pulling people out and putting them on a different background. I didn’t really need something so drastic, but I decided to pull them out so I could textureize the background that was flat beige. I then used the same technique for dodge and burn that he did in this post.
I will briefly tell you, but it is better to just take a look at his video. First make a curves adjustment layer, and pull the right side way down to darken the image. Create a mask, then with a large soft brush swish through the faces to lighten them. Then use different size brushes to do touch ups. I think it worked.
David has lots of information and many many video posts. It is worth checking out.
Scott Kelby is putting together the second anual WorldWide Photo Walk. This year it is July 18. If you don’t know what a photowalk is, you should check out the site. Basicly it is just a bunch of photographers that decide to get together on a particular day and all walk together (more or less) in the same direction. The idea being that you would chat, get to know each other, help others, and maybe learn something from your fellow shooters.
Last year was a lot of fun, and I met some great people here in Minneapolis. I still follow their pictures on flickr a year later. We had that walk on Lake Harriet/Lake Nakomis. The picture above was taken while on the walk. The picture below was my favorite from the day, but it was long after the walk while I was headed home.
I am not sure where this years walk will be. Unfortunately, we don’t yet have a walk leader for Minneapolis. Boo hoo. Anyone out there want to step up?
It didn’t take long for this Star Trek movie to¬†make it up on You Tube. I think this is the most hilarious movie yet. Check it out here. I thought they would have had a bigger special effects budget though. The new characters are spot on. Kaplah!
What did you think?¬†I just found out about it here. ¬†I had no idea. Too funny. I guess this is from a couple of years ago, but I hadn’t heard of Photoshop World until recently. I would really like to go sometime though. The next showing is in Vagas Baby!
There was a lot of stuff going on today. It‚Äôs ‚ÄúGuest Blog Wednesday‚Äù featuring Andrew Kornylak at Scott Kelby’s blog. It is another great post. Andrew has started to create what he calls “still motion” video, where he takes still images from his camera and puts them to music to make a video. Some of these are really good. You can get some pretty powerfull stuff when the music syncs with the images. Check out the Parlour one. That was my favorite.
David duChemin put’s up a “Big Q” today that came from your’s truly. I was wanting to know more about some calendar pictures he posted that were split-toned.¬†When¬†did the vision for the image strike – at picture time, or later. Check out the response, and the original calendar post.
I got a response from Tamron. I had written to them last night about sending my 17-50mm f/2.8 lens in for repair. I think it back focuses,¬†the camera¬†still sometimes reports that it is not connected, and the end of the lens with the mount for the hood seems like it has too much play.¬†Makes you want to buy the lens¬†doesn’t it! Anyway, Tamron responded right away. Don’t need an RMA,¬†and turnaround is 3-4 weeks. Think I will send it in.
So what do I shoot with in the mean time? I will have my 50mm f/1.8 prime, but it is not very good inside. I can’t back up far enough usually. What I could use is the new Nikon 35mm f/1.8.¬†It looks to be about $200, but isn’t out yet. There are reviews at SLRGear, DPReview, and PhotoZone. Not a perfect lens, but for $200, seems pretty good.
On Seshu’s website there is great list of 20 photographers that are masters of light, and who are willing to pass on the knowledge. These photographers offer worshops, DVD’s, blogs and books. I have seen many of their websites, and have lots of their workshops and materials on my wish list. You should check out this list and see who you don’t know.
I have been looking around for inspiration for a site redesign. I have a few things going on in my head for little touches and stuff, but I still don’t have a handle on the core colors I want to go with. I was searching google for “backgrounds”, “photoshop abstracts”, and other things when I stumbled upon www.hongkiat.com.
This is a pretty cool site. It has just about everything. Well, actually, a lot of the content is an agregation of other content, so they have stuff like 40 cool abstract and background photoshop tutorials,  60 useful photoshop actions, 41 great looking free wordpress themes, and so on. There is a lot of content collected here.
There is material here on photoshop, wordpress, icons, backgrounds, and more. A lot of is is more “design” and “photo-retouching” related, but it seems like I will spend some time here looking around.