yes, another round of photo link love…

  • Photocrati — Pricing your Photos
  • Digital Photography School  — how to create an HDR image with Photomatrix. (I’m convinced most of the “hate HDR” group simply don’t realize taht all they’re noticing are the badly- and over-done images. Well-done HDR doesn’t telegraph that HDR was used…. Unfortunately, there’s an awful lot of really bad HDR out there, especially from the group that thinks all knobs should be turned to 11).
  • Photocrati — working your borders
  • Joe McNally — heading west. (I want that softbox thingie on the long stick. And now that I think about it, a softbox about 1×2 feet in a similar portable setup would be killer for flower/macro work, maybe on a smaller tripod that you could set up quickly….
  • Moose Peterson – Getting Down Pods. love the Ground Pod. Now that I think about it, it’s about perfect for putting that sofotbox I just mentioned on, too. maybe need two….
  • Photocrati — websites for the business of photography
  • Art Wolfe — Getting into the Stock Market. The photography industry is going through changes as significant as newspapers are but with changes and challenges come opportunities. Art Wolfe is looking at building a private stock sale business that would avoid the problems of both the mega-Stock companies like Getty and the microstock business. it’ll be fascinating to see how this works out.
  • Harold Davis — becoming composition conscious
  • Scott Rouse — Keywording and Tagging in Lightroom

Bay area birding resources

here are a few links I’ve collected recently with resources for birding in the areas near Silicon Valley:

  • Santa Cruz County Birding Guide: http://scbirdingguide.org/
  • San Mateo County Birding Guide: http://birding.sequoia-audubon.org/ (I think the design of this is exceptional, and could be a model for anyone considering building one)
  • Oregon Birding Trails: http://www.oregonbirdingtrails.org/ — done some birding on the coast, of course but I’ve been thinking of going and birding up in the Klamath region when I can. they’ve also just added a guide to the Williamette Valley…

Some photo link-love goodness..

I’ve been collecting links again. I am hoping this is the last link-post for a while, because I really am trying to commit to getting back on a writing schedule. Real writing shall return to the blog shortly….

  • Jan Klier: balancing color temperature
  • Photoblog 2.0: touching the rainbow. On the other hand, more and more, I realize the type of landscape work I want to do looks a lot like what Harold Davis does….
  • MooseNewsBlog: It wasn’t along for looks… I’ve long looked to photographers like Art Wolfe for inspiration in my wildlife and bird photography. The more I look at Moose Peterson’s work, though, the more I see a style that really speaks to me — technically very strong, works hard to bring the personality of the animal out, and really putting the animal front and center. His son Jake isn’t exactly bad, either. (astute viewers of my flickr stream might see the inspiration for my new image framing here…)
  • Jim Goldstein: 11 must-have photography iPhone Applications. (I’ve been experimenting a bit with Photocalc and Focalware, plus things like GPS locating sites with Compass and I’m currently trying out three different apps for tracking tides because none is a clear winner. All research into what apps I really want to encourage porting to my new phone….)
  • Online Photographer: Depth of Field Hell, the Coda. This, to me, looks much like the religious fight over whether or not to use a UV filter over a lens. I use one — it’s saved a lens from death for me once, a good investment — and I’ve never seen a photographer with a set of photos be able to actually show which ones did and didn’t have the filter on. Theoretically, yes, an extra filter might soften an image or otherwise modify it. But using good quality filters, if nobody can tell you which pictures were taken with the lens, arguing over the theory seems rather silly. (this all started with this posting)
  • Digital Photography Schoool: Fixing animal’s eyes in lightroom. I do something similar now; more generally, especially with animal and bird photography, I find you simply can’t process a photograph on a global basis and expect it to be a great photograph; too many angles and shadows and textures, so you need to make local adjustments. The eyes are just an important (maybe the most important) feature to evaluate for local enhancement; it’s what draws a viewer into the picture. My adjustments are now primarily done in Viveza as a LR plug-in. Very nice and convenient.
  • Photocrati: spoiled! — something we forget with modern camera technologies; just how much easier it is to take photographs today because of improvements in capture and lens quality. I routinely shoot at ISO 200 now on my D30, where “in the day” when I was shooting film, ISO 200 scared the crap out of me as far as noise. Heck, I remember shooting high school football with Tri-X,where you reveled in the grain. Today, grain is artificially ADDED to photographs by some as an artistic enhancement. think about it…
  • Layers: Confession of a compact-camera shooter. Yes, you don’t need an expensive DSLR to shoot quality photos. Laurie’s used a compact for her hockey photography for years because it creates less — angst — at the door. (FWIW, it’s the Panasonic Lumix line with Leica glass and a 35-400 optical zoom…). I’ve used them, too, but these days, I have decided to live with my D30/RebelXT and use the RebelXT and my tamron len 28-300 as my carry-around pack.
  • Paul Burwell: Secrets of the Photo Workshop Business. A nice cautionary note for those looking to take workshops. Since I’m doing my first this fall (in Morro Bay, where George Lepp will speak)
  • Chase Jarvis: Photographic Assistants, what I look for. I’ve considered trying to do a few assistant gigs, just to get the experience. Of course, I need free time to even consider that…
  • PhotoShelter: Michael Jackson Memorial Images and Distribution workflow: fascinating stuff here.
  • Juan A. Pons: Why I shoot in Av or Ap mode. Yeah, me too, a lot. Nature work is a lot different than studio or landscape work where you can lock in an exposure over time; I find I end up looking for the right compensation, and then needing to trust the camera. When  the subject is outside and moving, too much goes out of your control…
  • DIYPhotography: one. two. three. white background. cute. and nice technique, too.
  • Steve Berardi: sometimes the view is better from above
  • Steve Berardi: should you always isolate your subject? I have found I prefer not compltely isolating out from the background a lot of the time. Sometimes that “portrait” look works best. Honestly, if that’s what you want, you can mechanically make it happen in post processing now, too. Which would merely start various debates about the ethics of doing so, I bet..
  • David duChemin: Your Oh Sh!t Kit. You do carry one, right?  Another thing I always carry in my car — a supply of water; if you break down out in the middle of nowhere, having some water can significantly reduce the hassles of trying to be okay until you get found or can hike out…
  • Jim Goldstein: five reasons why metadata should be part of your workflow. I’m reasonably good about metadata, but I’m not reliably geotagging things yet. That’s going to bite me down the road…
  • James Duncan Davidson: A sneaking suspicion. Oh, yeah. the airlines have been allowed ot create a situation without accountability, so of course, there are problems. It’s not rocket science. The casinos figured it out decades ago. So why do we allow airports to get away with this?
  • James Duncan DAvidson: end of the line for Kodachrome. I admit it — I was always more an an Ektachrome shooter. And Tri-X. And Velvia. But film is continuing to fade away, and while I never expect to ever have to shoot film again — this is a bit of a sad milestone.

The Sharks off-season so far

Happy American Independence day! (and a few days late, Canada Day, aka hockey player independence day..

I wanted to make  a couple of comments on the Sharks off-season so far. Back in may I made my proposals for “fixing” the Sharks. Since then, Huskins, Clowe and Blake are signed. Semenov, Lemieux, Goc, Plihal and Grier are moving on. Of those, I had Goc and Plihal on my roster, but both of them no higher than Black Aces — so for the most part Doug Wilson and I are on the same page. Well, I’m on the same page with Wilson, let’s be real here…

Where he and I disagree slightly: I called for the trade of Thornton and defended Nabokov; Wilson made Thornton and Boyle untouchable, and Marleau and Nabokov visibly in the “tradeable” pile. Craig Button was on NHL Home Ice after the Sharks went out of the playoffs and more or less mirrored Wilson’s idea here on Thornton; it’s the support crew around Thornton that needs to help him get the job done because he’s being mobbed.

Intellectually, I can agree with that; emotionally, I still feel like both Thornton and Marleau (and Nabokov, for that matter) look to me like they aren’t taking it up that one final notch in the playoffs. That’s probably because that notch is in use much of the season as well, not because they aren’t using it.

All in all, I’m happy with the off-season so far. Wilson didn’t do anything dramatic at the draft — but didn’t make any stupid grandstanding moves, either. Ditto free agent day; he focussed on keeping the players he wanted here in San Jose, and got Huskins and Clowe signed, and worked out a deal with Rob Blake. All great signings for the team. Wilson’s made it clear that July 1 is the day GMs will definitely overpay because of the way the market is structured, and he’s right. Unlike some fans, I’m not interested in watching GM’s “make a splash”, I want a better hockey team. Patience is a good thing many times.

The Sharks pursuit of Gustavsson (“the monster”) is fascinating. I don’t think they’ll get him, but it’s clearly a shot over the bow at Nabokov. Greiss is probably the backup in San Jose this fall (Boucher was a real trooper, but solid backups are fairly easy to find, and it’s time to let a kid step up) — but Laurie and I aren’t convinced about him. We’ll see.

Free agent day in general? I was fascinated by how many players moved around and how they shifted. There was a real levelling of talent across the league, as players moved to “less good” teams to clear cap space or to keep their salaries at par, while top tier teams worked the cap and ended up with “not quite as good, but cheaper” talent. Parity kicks in hard core; unless you are a fan of a dynasty (and more specifically, a dynasty that involves your team — yes, talking about you, Red Wings fans) this is good for the league. Lots of solid, competitive hockey, and teams in the chase most of the season. It only sucks if you somehow believe your team should be awarded the Cup on opening night adn the rest of the season is a formality.

Detroit has some serious challenges; they lost a lot of talent in free agency. OTOH, they have a lot of talent in the minors, for all some pundits are pointing and declaring it’s over, come next April, we’ll likely be talking about 2-3 Red Wings who ahve stepped in from the AHL and are surprising the crap out of everyone. Except, of course, the Detroit organization.

Big winners? I really like what Burke is doing in Toronto. And Dean Lombardi has the Kings moving in the right direction.

Losers? I don’t understand the Brashear contract. I do understand the Hossa contract in Chicago, but I think they’ll regret it down the road. These decade-long contracts get scary and limit your options, and you just have to hope you guess right. Gaborik is another one: I wouldn’t have gone beyond two years in the deal, not because he’s not good, but because he’s never healthy.

The biggest loser this off-season is Dany Heatley, though. More on that in another post.