Chuqui 3.0 » Stuff You’ll Like

Stuff You’ll Like

chuq — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 07:52:27 +0000

A weekly compendium of stuff I found I thought you’d like. If you do, let me know, so I know to find more of it for you.

Photocritic: Visualising Studio Lighting.
Read/Write/Web: first look at snapgroups. I’ve been waiting to see what Mark Fletcher (Bloglines and Onegroup, which became Yahoo Groups) had up his sleeve. It’s SnapGroups, which is a fresh take on community/group/forum/list type setups. At first glance, looks very interesting. This looks like it might give Yahoo Groups a run for its money. Already beats the hell out of Google Groups, but then, so does a hit to the head..
Jeremy Pollack: 5 Lightroom Quick Tips
George Barr: One in a Hundred
Michael Zhang: Time-Lapse of the Milky Way over Hawaii. Awesome.
Jim Goldstein: Gates of the Valley, Yosemite National Park
David duChemin: Confessions of a So-Called Pro
Michael Johnston: National Geographic ten top photos of 2009. there’s been some grumbling about NatGeo’s choice of photos here. I think photographers need to step back a bit and see that these were chosen as much for (if not primarily for) the story they’re telling as the photo and quality itself. Great NatGeo work, but the photo is the vehicle, not the purpose.
Rob Knight: unclutter your library with lightroom’s stacks.
Joe Pelletier: Trail of the Stanley Cup. One of the rarest and most sought after hockey book set. Laurie owns all three volumes as part of her collection. Her collection is around 500 volumes, not including media guides (more or less complete back into the 80’s and other volumes earlier) and programs (a few thousand, something like 20 linear feet of them going back into the 30’s) or my collection of rulebooks (including ones going back into the 40’s). At one point when we were actively collecting we kept hearing about another collector in B.C. we kept hearing about in various stores — one store told us he wanted to meet us as he was buying for the Hockey Hall of Fame and wanted to buy our collection. No idea how true it was, nobody ever followed up with us on it. Most of that was “before eBay”, today, anything worthwhile ends up online there or on abebooks or one of the other used services, and it’s almost impossible to find really rare stuff at non-insane prices, so mostl we don’t… but while we were building this collection, we sure had a lot of fun wading through dusty bookstores…
Juan Pons: Favorite Images from my “Winter in Yellowstone” instructional photo workshop. (sigh. jealous).
Mike Panic: 7 things photographers should never do

This article was posted on Chuqui 3.0 at Stuff You’ll Like. This article is copyright 2009 by Chuq Von Rospach. This content may not be republished on another site without explicit permission from Chuq Von Rospach. Please consider subscribing to my RSS feed so you don't miss a single one of my carefully crafted, emotionally satisfying and Pulitzer-quality words. Stuff You’ll Like

Stuff You’ll Like

chuq — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 02:00:42 +0000

A weekly compendium of stuff I found I thought you’d like. If you do, let me know, so I know to find more of it for you.

10,000 Birds: Inaccessible Island Rail. excerpt: The Inaccessible Island Rail is perhaps the coolest bird that neither I nor anyone I will ever meet will ever see.
Audublog: Klamath settlement could benefit habitat for California migratory birds.
Google: Google Voice, explained. I’ve been using Voice for a while to manage the fact that I deal with multiple cell phones now, and I’m happy with how it centralizes and simplifies my telphonic life… Which is way more complicated than I ever expected “a phone” to be…
PDNpulse: dining room/studio in Brooklyn. Because Im’ looking at how to set up a home studio area I’ll actually be able to use….
Strobist: it’s time for the PC jack to die.
Rick Sammon: Quick Tip on Fill Flash
Michael Zhang: Use Bicubic Sharpener for web resizing
Chris Brogan: attention as a currency and noise
Mark Williamson: They closed Death Valley
Jim Goldstein: Mavericks — impact of scale
Scott Bourne: better skies with lightroom’s graduated filter
Alan Murphy: Using a water drip to attract birds
Rick Sammon: Q&A on color space
Kent Newsome: how to vastly improve your Facebook experience with filters and lists
Trey Ratcliff: Trey Ratcliff Speech at Google (I had a chance to see Trey speak at Apple on this trip, and had to cancel to go to a meeting I ended up not needing to be at. oh well)
Trey Ratcliff: how to make a web portfolio (the joys of Smugmug)
Syl Arena: Speedlighting — learning Canon Flash Photography
Merced Sun Star: San Joaquin River National Wildlife Refuge. This’ll give you a feel for what it’s like being at a fly-in. Until you experience one, though, you don’t really understand just how it affects you at a visceral level…
Adactio: testing huffduffer’s sign-up. Interesting rethink on a signup sheet. The A/B test is intriguing.
Digital Photography School: Taking Stock of your own photography
Michael Frye: Oaks. (going to look for this tree next week…)
Brian Auer: Tone Curves: final tips, tricks and things to avoid.
Outdoor Photo Gear: Setup Heaven in South Texas
Michael Zhang: Stop Motion Post-It Animation by Disney

Stuff You’ll Like

chuq — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 02:00:29 +0000

A weekly compendium of stuff I found I thought you’d like. If you do, let me know, so I know to find more of it for you.

Dak Dillon: A Photographer’s Guide to Working with Magazines
Jeff Revell: HDRSoft makes HDR easier with Photomatix Light
Ed Finkler: We are the stupid ones.
Heather Morton: Doug Menuez and his new Stock Site
Peter Carey: How to control multiple flashes wirelessly with a Canon 7d [[ good timing!! ]]
Kirk Tuck: My idea of a great workshop. Collaboration is key
David Hobby: After the Light: High Pass Post Production
Kurt Repanshek: 15 years into the wolf recovery program
Moose Peterson: What’s the best investment
10,000 Birds: Help! It’s raining Brown Pelicans!
Jeff Atwood: Cultivate Teams, not ideas
Michael Frye: Coyotes
Juan Pons: Recording Audio with your video
Brian Auer: Nonlinear Curve Adjustments and histograms
Round Robin: We Love Birds launches
Matthew Ingram: Don’t let the Good Become the enemy of great
Harold Davis: Split toning in a winter vista
Paul Burwell: top ten ways to make sure you’ll never be a pro

Stuff You’ll Like

chuq — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 06:55:56 +0000

A weekly compendium of stuff I found I thought you’d like. If you do, let me know, so I know to find more of it for you.

Carolyn Wright: How to deal with infringements.
Kevin Marks: Standards are the Links of the Social Web
Tim O’Reilly: Google Buzz re-invents gmail
Don Dodge: Google Apps Developer Blog
Matt Kloskowski: Four Signs that it’s time to start from scratch in Lightroom
Jeff Revell: Tips for better zoo photography
Rob Sylvan: Customizing your Camera Raw defaults in Lightroom
Steve Berardi: What went wrong with this sand dune photo
Greg Russell: Shooting Panoramas with minimal equipment
Rick Sammon: Crop my pictures and you’re a dead man
Sean McCormack: LRB Exhibition
Images without borders: Welcome to Images with0ut borders
Louis Gray: Low Quality Offensive Ads degrade the web experience
Nick Nichols: Full Disclosure
Hal Schmitt: Stitching Together Your Panoramas using Lightroom and Bridge/Photoshop

Stuff You’ll Like

chuq — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 02:00:26 +0000

A weekly compendium of stuff I found I thought you’d like. If you do, let me know, so I know to find more of it for you.

Vincent Driesen: A successful GIT Branching model. (via Jeremy)
Michael Frye: Photo Critique, Subway 1
George Barr: Yours, Mine and History
Naturescapes: 2009 Images of the Year. (wow).
Jeremy Pollack: Pre-Travel Research Tips
Audubon: Reintroducing Wolves could rehabilitate ecosystems.
Steve Berardi: how three bananas can improve your photography skills
http://moosepeterson.com/blog/?p=12203#mce_temp_url#: Wildlife Photography — Your cup of tea? (yes!)
Jim Goldstein: 10 tips to managing social media productivity
Rick Sammon: On Creating a Photo with Emotional Impact
Michael Frye: Waterfalls in Winter

Stuff You’ll Like

chuq — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 17:00:24 +0000

A weekly compendium of stuff I found I thought you’d like. If you do, let me know, so I know to find more of it for you.

Wildbird: Bolsa Chica footbridge being installed. This will really make Bolsa Chica even more interesting to explore. (this is good)
Oregon Live: Brown Pelicans are lingering on the Oregon Coast. (this is bad..)
Rick Sammon: When you are through changing, you are through
Terrie Eliker: Beating Lens Fungus
Daniel Jalkut: Can’t Catch Me
Grant Brummett: 400mm birding lens comparison (I use the 100-400 IS a lot, plus the 300mm F4 IS with a 1.4x tele. the 300/1.4 is definitely crisper than the 100-400 at 400mm, but less flexible, so it depends on what I’m trying to do. In general, I shoot the 100-400 when I’m handholding and walking around, and the 300/1.4 combo on a tripod. Don’t forget to turn IS off when attached on a tripod)
Fraser Speirs: Future Shock.
Steve Frank: I need to talk to you about computers.
Moose Peterson: This Unsettling Thought Might Bring some Comfort. (moose writes on something I’ve written about also)
Audublog: A whole bunch of reasons why birds matter
Alan Hess: Off to the Zoo
Cats Who Code: How to easily create a Thematic child them. (it’s time for me to get butt in gear and start the blog redesign seriously…)
Greg Russell: Evolution of an image, and the value of critique forums

Stuff You’ll Like

chuq — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 02:00:31 +0000

A weekly compendium of stuff I found I thought you’d like. If you do, let me know, so I know to find more of it for you.

Caterina Fake: Participatory media and why I love it (and must defend it) — and while she’s absolutely correct, she also without realizing it shows the flip side of participatory media (the abuse of it), when she has to point out “Sadly, it’s true. All my archives have been taken offline so I don’t have to spend hours clearing out comment spam with horrifying subject matter. I’m sorry.” — every system needs to understand how it’s going to enable people who embrace the community values, but exclude those that only see the value as something to acquire. That’s why historic villages had walls and gates — not to keep villagers in, but to keep them safe. Sad that it’s necessary, but necessary it is.
Mike Chen: I’ve been traded to SBN — congrats to Mike, a good move by SBN to bring him on.
Scott Bourne: A simple primer on photographing birds in flight
G Dan Mitchell: Photographing Death Valley
Flickr Blog: FlickrTab — (chuq says: one thing I haven’t found a solution to that I liked was integrating my flickr photos with my facebook page. FlickrTab looks like what I’ve been looking for)
Harold Davis: Creating HDR Images by Hand
Brian Auer: Photo Editing with Histograms
Hal Schmitt: Stitching Together your Panoramas using Lightroom and Bridge/Photoshop
Kurt Repanshek: Wintering In Yellowstone — Logistics (on the list — I want to do this even more than go to Churchill for the polar bears)
Jim Goldstein: Dawn at the Racetrack; death valley
Scott Bourne: the HDR Wars
Audubon Magazine: A couple of thoughts on the Magazine’s Photo Awards
Tom Stienstra: opening gates for Sweeney to sea hike

Stuff You’ll Like

chuq — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 02:00:18 +0000

A weekly compendium of stuff I found I thought you’d like. If you do, let me know, so I know to find more of it for you.

National Geographic: Quashing Kudzu.
Engadget: AT&T pricing changes. If you’re an iPhone user, make sure you’re set up with your new, improved, lower prices. It probably also doesn’t hurt to review your plan and see if you can change features to save money. Same with your landline, cable, sat-TV, DSL, etc, etc etc, because the companies rarely seem to remember to give you the better rates until you remind them…
Michael Frye: Snow. Frye now has a blog talking more about the environment than about the photography, and it looks like a real winner with some nice stories and thoughts about Yosemite.
Audubon California expands Kelso Creek habitat protections in Kern County
DC Birding Blog: What makes birds cooperate against predators?
bbum: solar install on an eichler (Part 1). I love owning an Eichler — but they definitely come with challenges, the best being a house with no attic OR crawl space, meaning stringing cables is a challenge and a half. Ours fortunately doesn’t have electrical strung across the roof. We also don’t have foam roof; when we reroofed, we stripped it and had R14 rigid laid down and then tar and gravel over it, and it’s made life much nicer here. Except the garage, which turns out to be a faux savings, because the garage is now horribly cold or horribly hot depending on the season, and really should have been insulated as well. oh well, live and learn. (memo to self: ask Bbum for the name of his electrician. a guy who ‘gets’ Eichler is gold).
Jolie O’dell: There’s no such thing as free content. (TAANSTAFL – ultimately, someone is paying for it).
Round Robin: Godwits go Missing on Chloe Island. (hmm. maybe they’re visiting the Pier 39 sea lions)

Stuff you’ll like

chuq — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 05:00:42 +0000

A weekly compendium of stuff I found I thought you’d like. If you do, let me know, so I know to find more of it for you.

Brian Auer: How to read histograms
Michael Frye: Talking about photos. Frye has started a blog where he talks about the story of making the image. Looks to be an interesting set of discussions
Michael Johnson: Canon 5D Mark II Price Drop…. and Why. — my first reaction; if you’re someone (like me) thinking along the lines of a new 7D body, the price difference between the 7D and the discounted mark II make this an interesting option. And perhaps this price drop might cause adjustments in the used market that bring the price of a good full-frame body even closer to the 7D. Something to keep in mind if you’re body shopping right now.
A Photo Editor: good news in photography
Joe McNally: Dang. (I was discussing sports with a friend the other day and trying to explain why I’ve become so uninterested in baseball, and really couldn’t articulate where my loss of interest came from. Oh, yeah. Barry Bonds. Mark McGuire. Baseball’s complaceny about steroids adn the rampant abuse because it led to lots of home runs and fan interest coming out of the work stoppage. And now the fallout as the sins come home to roost. Now I remember… Sympathy for McGuire? None. chances I’ll support him for the hall of fame? None. Interest in baseball right now? Still — basically none.
PhotoWalkPro: new signature worthy papers from Epson. Have to try these out. I’ve really liked printing on some of the Hahnemuhle papers (especially photo rag bright white, german etching and Pearl 320), but still looking for a killer glossy paper to fall in love with.
Jim Goldstein: Best Photos 2009.a nice collection of “best of” resources, including mine. Some very study-worth portfolios here.
Sean McCormick: Practical Presets (for lightroom)
Marco Arment: Don’t be a hero. (amen. I did the same thing in my job search. Too many companies take advantage of someone’s enthusiasm and build their businesses around burning out their people by creating chronic schedule death marches, but far too often, the people who burn the candles at both ends don’t get a cookie for doing so, they get laid off. So why do we keep buying into this? This is a part of silicon valley (and tech industry) culture that the geeks have to stop accepting so willingly. There’s a time and a place for long hours and deadline crunches, but they shouldn’t be 24×7x52 environments.

This article was posted on Chuqui 3.0 at Stuff you’ll like. This article is copyright 2009 by Chuq Von Rospach. This content may not be republished on another site without explicit permission from Chuq Von Rospach. Please consider subscribing to my RSS feed so you don't miss a single one of my carefully crafted, emotionally satisfying and Pulitzer-quality words. Stuff you’ll like

Stuff You’ll Like

chuq — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 16:25:37 +0000

A weekly compendium of stuff I found I thought you’d like. If you do, let me know, so I know to find more of it for you.

Tim Bray: After Branding. In 2010, you are whatever the Net says you are. Deal with it. (good advice for anyone living in the public eye online, and if you’re online, you’re in the public eye)
Scott Bourne: Traveling? Better get a UPS account. If you ask me, the terrorists are winning here, by convincing us to destroy our transportation system FOR them.
Lighting Essentials for Photographers: 8 Essential Sites for Emerging Professional Photographers
Brian Auer: My Favorite Photos from 2009
Jack Hollingsworth: Twitter Mantras from Twitter Monk
Michael Zhang: Interview with Laura Brunow Miner of Pictory. Pictory is impressing the hell out of me so far. It looks like it could really shape how we build online publications moving forward. (“I also felt there was a need for more online publications with the care and intention of print magazines, but also the practicality of the web.” agreed!)
Virtual Photography Studio: The Real Reason more photographers can’t break into the destination market
Steven Snell: 10 Keys to Growth as a Designer — and all of them relevant to the photographer and most creatives.
Active Light Photography: The only time for Yosemite
Hal Schmitt: Basic Stitched Panorama Guidelines
Sean McCormack: Action Keyword List
David duChemin: Sustaining the Practice of Art
Rick Sammon: Great Day for the Fox, not so much for the squirrel
Rick Sammon: Become a conservation photographer in 2010
Chase Jarvis: Create. Share. Sustain.
Trey Ratcliff: HDR, it’s about the light
Rick Sammon: Envision the HDR End Result in your Mind’s Eye
Rick Sammon: Create an HDR Image Even When the Subject is Moving
Jeff Revell: The HDR Debate: What’s All the Fuss?
Trey Ratcliff: Just Find Some Beauty (to some degree, this is the piece that triggered much of the current HDR ‘debate’)
Lighting Essentials for Photographers: Branding your Photography Business, a Realistic View

Stuff You’ll Like

chuq — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 00:00:38 +0000

A weekly compendium of stuff I found I thought you’d like. If you do, let me know, so I know to find more of it for you.

X-Equals: Survival kit; what keeps the studio functioning.
Virtual Photography Studio: Three Ways to stop quitting
Jeff Lynch: A tale of two images
Sherry Osborne: Photography in Extreme Cold
Brian Auer: 60 second Post-Processing Technique
Michael Johnson: The Tenset
Dan Mitchell: Congrats to Stephen Oachs and Aperture Academy — Aperture Academy is a new gallery and training center in Campbell, near my house. Need to go in and take a look, but their training sessions look really interesting. Reminds me of Light Photo Workshops in Los Osos, where I took the HDR class at the expo this fall — both places are teaching things I’m looking for the time (and money) to take…. Scary feeling — all the places they’re going on workshops are favorite places of mine to shoot…
Andy Long: Capturing birds in flight
Art Howard: Keep your sock drawer straight. (chuq: amen. not there yet, of course)
Zack Arias: Controlling the work you show
Moose Peterson: High Noon in the Old West
Harold Davis: Kiss from a Rose (chuq: studio and macro work needs to be a focus of mine in 2010; Davis impresses the hell out of me with his technique)
Barrie Smith: tips on early morning photography

Stuff You’ll Like

chuq — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 02:00:16 +0000

A weekly compendium of stuff I found I thought you’d like. If you do, let me know, so I know to find more of it for you.

Scott Bourne: Five reasons why photographers should build a blog rather than a website.
Smashing Magazine: Styling HTML Lists with CSS (jCarousel looks like exactly what I want for something I’m planning)
Gizmodo: how to overhaul your phones with google voice. Since I’m now carrying multiple phones, Google Voice has been a godsend for centralizing voicemail across them. Great overview of how to take advantage of this service…
Lightroom Labs: Keyword Sets simplify your workflow
Michael Frye: Digital Graduated Filters (or why I don’t carry them any more).
Pictory: The first photo essay from Pictory is out, and it’s on San Francisco. This is just so beautifully done. Awesome.

Stuff You’ll Like

chuq — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 03:21:13 +0000

A weekly compendium of stuff I found I thought you’d like. If you do, let me know, so I know to find more of it for you.

Jeff Atwood: Microformats: Boon or Bane? (boon, but damn hard to explain why. Jeff does a nice job)

Stuff You’ll Like

chuq — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 02:00:46 +0000

A weekly compendium of stuff I found I thought you’d like. If you do, let me know, so I know to find more of it for you.

Moose Peterson: Or is it passion?
Pictory Magazine: From the former editor-in-chief of JPG magazine comes a new venture, Pictory. Which is sort of JPG re-imagined. I’m really interested in seeing her implement her vision, I really like the approach.
TUAW: building a bootable USB diagnostic and repair flash drive for Mac OS X. I am so going to do this….
Boston.com: 100 days in Glacier National Park. Oh, man. I would so love to do something like this some day. The photography is just stunning.
BBC Earth News: Clever Ravens Cooperatively Hunt. hint: birds are a lot smarter than most people think. Take it from someone who’s cohabitated with a cockatoo for 20 years.
Audublog: Owens Lake Solar project. I’m of mixed feelings here; I sympathize with the potential problems created with the project, but I still think solar is a better option than carbon-based energy generation, and you have to generate the energy somehow. Still, perhaps the best lesson taken from this is that “green” solutions are not problem free; they simply create different problems that need to be mitigated. Both Solar and wind energy generation can have significant complications for local ecological inhabitants (wind energy can create significant bird kills, especially raptors); it all comes down to choosing which set of problems is least painful — and not thinking they don’t exist.
Daily Shoot: From James Duncan Davidson and Mike Clark, a system designed to help give you structured goals for improving your photography. Check it out. If you like it, sign up and try it. Fascinating, if only to see how people are grabbing some of the online tools (Twitter, flickr) and using them in innovative ways.
Joe Decker: Working with Silhouettes.
10,000 birds: Birds of North America, Photographic Guides. Illustrative vs. photographic guides is one of the best ways to start a friendly argument among birders. Sort of like vi vs. emacs for geeks. (me? I carry a sibley, but I also have 3-4 other general guides and a few specialty guides I have at home, and especially with the specialty guides for things like gulls, photographic guides are a must)
Reuters Photographers: Polar Bear turns Cannibal. It’s something that won’t end up in the calendar under the tree this month, but one thing nature photographers know all to well is that nature isn’t always pretty and fluffy. Those teeth and claws are there for a reason, folks… (some of the comments on the reuters article notwithstanding, this behavior shouldn’t surprise anyone who knows bears; female bears don’t mate while raising cubs. Male bears want their genetic material propogated instead of some other male bear’s genetic material. Kill the cub and hang around the neighborhood, the female will end up going into heat so the male bear can mate with her. It’s not exactly Disneyland out there, folks…
Iain Williams: Photographing emotive situations – Polar Bears. A nice commentary on the previous photo. And yes, it is necessary to photograph that which makes us uncomfortable. Real life and real nature is not a Disney movie. And even Disney killed Bambi’s mom (and took a lot of crap for it, but it was both gutsy and an important piece of a powerful storyline).
Rick Sammon: manual mode is a must for Panos. (yes, it is…)

Stuff You’ll Like

chuq — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 02:00:26 +0000

A weekly compendium of stuff I found I thought you’d like. If you do, let me know, so I know to find more of it for you.

Virtual Photography Studio: Photography Disaster Protection and Recovery: Are You Prepared? A very good way to store stuff like your gear inventory and photos is Evernote; it’s a nice tool that has mobile versions for many phones as well, making it really convenient as a way to store stuff you might need access to on short notice.
Austin Mann: 10 Ways I’ve Used Gaff Tape in the last year (via Scott Kelby) (Austin’s web site)
Lightroom Labs: Keyword Sets make repetitive keywording push button easy. (I really need to implement this into my workflow).
Zeldman: On Self-Promotion. Direct self-promotion is ineffective and will go unnoticed unless it is backed by a more indirect (and more valuable) form of marketing: namely, sharing information and promoting others.
Steve Berardi: How to use the ’special’ histogram
Mike Spinak: Red-Tailed Hawk Photo Shoot. A great overview of the planning and thinking that helps you make a nature shoot successful.
John Harrington: Nine Inconvenient Business Facts for Aspiring Photographers
Dave Cardinal: Tack Sharp, a tale of three images
audublog: santa clara valley audubon speaking up for local burrowing owl population.
Because I had to:

Stuff You’ll Like

chuq — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 02:00:27 +0000

A weekly compendium of stuff I found I thought you’d like. If you do, let me know, so I know to find more of it for you.

Clients from Hell: anonymous submissions from the world of independent contractors showing how unrealistic expectations or bad communications can make life hell for both sites… Funny, in a really sad way. One in particular caught my eye: $1,000 is very expensive, you know. We only want a simple website with our current contents, and contact form as well. And don’t forget about CMS features. We want to add or edit content on our own. (and it continues on from there, until you get this massively complex project). it reminded me of a scene from Two and a Half men where the brothers were discussing hiring a prostitute for Alan. “What can I get for $200?” “Crabs and a stolen wallet”. But unfortunately, until the wallet gets stolen, many times they won’t believe you…
Twitter’s new privacy policy: is a joy to behold. It’s short. It’s sweet. It’s in english. Not lawyer English, real English. And it’s intelligible. They deserve serious recognition for keeping it real and simple here.
Picture Taker or Image Maker: Scott Bourne talks about an important aspect of taking your photography to the next level. One of the things I’ve been working on this last year is consciously thinking my way through what I shoot, more scouting, planning and timing a shot as well as looking at how best to take advantage of what’s given me. On my recent Morro bay trip, my rock at sunrise shot was scouted and planned in advance and turned out very much as I wanted, while the otter silhouette was a case of showing up and seeing the pre-dawn light coloration and realizing that silhouettes was the best possible use of the shooting situation, which led me to shooting in that mode the entire morning, of which this morro bay at dawn shot was one of the better ones. Ultimately it’s about who’s in control,you or the camera; the more you take control instead of deferring to the judgement of the camera (as good as they are today), the more reliably you will take high quality photographs, and more importantly, take the photo your inner eye sees. I don’t see “take control” as “shooting in manual”, by the way, unlike some photographers. Instead, I see it as knowing how to get the camera to take the image you want to take instead of the one it’s programming wants to take. Sometimes that’s manual mode, but many times, that’s simply adjusting the settings to bias the camera’s decision; it’s about knowing your gear and being active in managing it instead of standing back and mashing the shutter.
Gary Crabbe: I need more space. This is, really, a photographer’s variant of my bad birders comments.
Smashing Magazine: Designing Social Interfaces – Overview and Practical Techniques
Mashable: ten wordpress plugins to help build community
Kirk Tuck: anatomy of a corporate shoot. A great description of a corporate shoot and how to make it work.

Stuff You’ll Like

chuq — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 02:00:26 +0000

A weekly compendium of stuff I found I thought you’d like. If you do, let me know, so I know to find more of it for you.

Weekend Sherpa: Falling for the Coast.
Another Cause of Obesity: The Bacteria in your Gut?
Paul Nicklen’s Leopard Seal Encounter: fascinating. The seal decided he needed to be taught to hunt.
OC Birding: birding by Google Maps. A useful way to find unexpected places to bird.
Leah Culver: A combined Log-in/Register form design. Very nice. (via Daring Fireball)
ASMP: Photography workflow best practices with dpBestFlow. The American Society of Media Photographers has created a web site describing what they say are the best practices for your workflow. Definitely a must read.
Joe Decker: Communicating Immensity
Joe McNally: Letter to a Young Photographer
Steve Berardi: How to check Sharpness out in the field
Mashable: how the SF Zoo uses Twitter
Petapixel: Extracting the color of a photograph (this is really cool, because I’ve been thinking about automating setting a photo’s frame to a dominant color, and this is the code to do it; make a nice wordpress plug-in if done right)
80 in 107: learning all of the rules of hockey before the winter Olympics in Vancouver. do they realize the Olympics rulebook is different than the NHL rulebook?

Stuff You’ll Like

chuq — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 20:00:54 +0000

A weekly compendium of stuff I found I thought you’d like. If you do, let me know, so I know to find more of it for you.

Audubon California: Water Deal is a big win for California’s migratory birds.
Mockingbird: a web-based wireframe/mockup tool for web design, written in Cappucino. At first glance, looks really impressive. (via Ajaxian)
The Art of Community: Jono Bacon’s new book on building and managing communities. I’ve been (slowly) reading the book, and it is very well written and informative. (available from O’Reilly via Amazon.com, also as a free download)
Cocoa is my Girlfriend: Why version control is important for solo developers. (chuq: this is true also for web sites and web design, stand-alone writing and all sorts of other things. Note: do what I say, not what I’m doing. I need to really get this set up right before I start my next projects. If RAID doesn’t replace backups, Backups do not replace version control. Really)
Gulls Winning Wetlands Battle: a look at the challenges of managing the wetlands here in the bay area, because the California Gulls are moving in and starting to nest in large numbers.

Stuff You’ll Like

chuq — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 02:00:11 +0000

A weekly compendium of stuff I found I thought you’d like. If you do, let me know, so I know to find more of it for you.

Better Habits for Better Photography: Today over on twitter someone reminded me of something Galen Rowell taught me many years ago, and I realized the subject required more than 140 characters to explain. The basic idea sounds simple to start with: Essentially, after you shoot, the idea is to leave the camera back at some “default” set of settings. In my case, that’s typically auto-focus, ISO 100, aperture-priority, f/16, RAW, mirror lockup enabled. (Except when it’s something else.)
How to get better control of autofocus: Normally, your camera will auto focus when you press the shutter button halfway, but with back-button autofocusing, you have to press a button on the back of the camera instead, giving you complete control of when autofocus is initiated.
How to be Lucky: 3) don’t blow a great shot with technical issues – that’s just mickey mouse – get that crap out of the way through lots of practice and careful routines, even check lists and being careful – and if hand holding under borderline conditions, take several shots so at least one will be sharp.
Advice: Style is a voice, not a prop or an action. If you can buy it, borrow it, download it, or steal it, it is not a style. Don’t look outward for your style; look inward. Never apologize for your own sense of beauty. Nobody can tell you what you should love. Do what you do brazenly and unapologetically. You cannot build your sense of aesthetics on a concensus. Learn to say “I’m a photographer” out loud with a straight face. If you can’t say it and believe it, you can’t expect anyone else to, either.
Birding at the Edge of the Bay: I’ve pointed to birding location guides for a number of counties, but never Santa Clara County for some reason. Gordon Barrett has done a nice job of building one for Santa Clara County with his birding on the edge of the bay maps.