Archive for December, 2007

Here we are! Transport regulation authorities added the Lithium batteries to the list of banned objects in carry-on luggage in planes.

Of course, Lithium batteries can explode. But they took the additional step of prohibiting them when they are out of the device and contain more than 2g of Lithium…

Photographers leaving for a long trip: Put them in the checked luggage if you do not want to see them ending with fire-arms, knifes, cutters and mineral water bottles (in the junk bin).

I find that it is possible to improve yourself by looking at your own pictures like any outside critic would. For this, because it is often hard to make this schizophrenic move, I developped a number of questions I ask myself when I look at my own photos.

While some questions can (and should) be asked when shooting a picture, some others cannot be corrected at this late stage and must be asked just before pressing the shutter button on the camera:

1. Am I close enough? Too many photos are hopelessly bad just because the photographer chose to include too many things and moving closer would have brought attention to the important items. Do not think that this can be corrected later (using Photoshop). It’s not only a matter of pixels, but a question of diving into the subject.
2. Where is the light coming from? Photoshop will not help correct gross lighting errors like I do on a daily basis. We must check that the interesting parts of the model are correctly lit, that dark shadows are not cast without elegance, that hard light does not crush all details or force the model to blink. Often, it’s only a matter of waiting more a better light or moving around the model (moving the light or moving yourself).
3. What about the background? So many photos are lost because of ugly backgrounds. Using the lens aperture of your bridge or SLR to either bring background in (closing the diaphragm – large aperture values) or to smooth it out (opening the diaphragm – small aperture values) is the thing to do.
4. What about the foreground? You’d think this is the opposite, but not completely. In some case, the foreground is bringing depth of perception to your photo. This is particularly true of landscapes. Nearly all great landscape photos (including panoramic ones) take into account the need to have elegant and complementary foreground elements. If you’re in landscapes, it’s probably the most important issue to keep in mind while shooting.
5. Would a change of perspective improve the photo? Quite often, just moving around will make the photo different (and better). Move up or down. Move right or left. Move forward or backward. Your model will look different. For wildlife digital photographers, I would suggest to shoot one image from where you are, just before moving (most animals will not tell before leaving completely the scene; Be sure to have one medium-quality image before reaching for the day’s shot – I often take 10 or 20 progressively better images of the same animal model before complete satisfaction and I keep one of the last 2 or 3).
6. Should I hold the camera differently? Don’t overdo it, but with the LiveView feature of this year SLR cameras and nearly every point’n-shot cameras, you can easily move your camera around (above the croud or under your knees). However, you should always ask yourself about turning your camera to get a portrait/vertical image rather than the usual landscape/horizontal format. This goes hand-in-hand with correct framing. And it could save a just decent image at sleection time on your PC.
7. Where is the focus? What are the in-focus parts? out-of-focus parts? Choose wisely. For wild life and many model portrait photographers, the best is to put the eyes in full focus. For many landscape photographers, the focus should not be at the infinite end of the range, but a little in front taking advantage of a closed aperture to have a lot of crisp in as many parts as possible. At selection time (on the PC), I find that this is impossible to usefully correct, and this is the number one reason for dumping one of my shots (not crisp enough, out-of-focus, wrongly focused, etc.)
8. Are the colours right? As far as the forms of the subjects can go, the colours should be right: Either complementing themselves or strongly opposing themselves to help story-telling.
9. Are the surfaces right? It may come from my black & white background, but even in colour photography you should always look at the surfaces. Their structure has a lot to offer: stripes, angles, dots, lines, etc. A wood plank will only be meaningful if its surface is rich in forms and lines, be it in B&W or in colour.
10. What story is the photo telling? The people, the houses, the plants, the mountains in the photo must be building together a single coherent story that will pop to the eyes of the viewer. For wildlife photo, I often find that this question leads to waiting a couple of minutes before snapping the photo to allow another animal to move in or change its posture.
11. Where is the focal point? The eye will be attracted to strong/active locations in the image. Think about positionning interesting elements into one of the focal points according to “the rule of the thirds“. The eye will easily go from one focal point to the next and see (or not) the most striking elements of your photo.
12. Is the framing strong enough? This is something that can often be improve at the last stage taking advantage of the plentifulpixels of today’s cameras. A little re-framing is often good to remove unwanted elements, to emphasize focal points, to make the model the real hero of the snapshot.

Later, when developing the picture (on your PC) or even when selecting what pictures to keep, you can ask the same questions. But it may be too late. I try to keep these in mind and I observed that it increased a lot the quality of my photos.

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Don’t you wonder how the small bird did not fly away?

Thanks to all visitors! This year 2007 saw a near-doubling of the number of visits and the start of new article categories. Arguably, you were pleased, but we’ll try to make it even better. I start immediately.

Happy new year 2008.

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Black-collared Hawk (Busarellus nigricollis, Buse à tête blanche).

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Limpkin (Aramus guarauna, Courlan brun).

Shot in Brazil, October 2007.

We learned this week that Warner Music and AMazon are going to gang in in order to sell DRM-free MP3 files. This is the third music major to stop and listen to its customers who did not want to suffer the indignity and incovenience of this kind of digital rights protection.

EMI and Universal had already gone this way. The only big one missing is still Sony BMG (Do you remember? They were the authors of the famous rootkit installed on some of their CD to protect them and that breaking havoc on their customers’ PC machine).

Complementary information: With this annoncement, Amazon will reach nearly 3 million DRM-free MP3 files (up to now, the record was held by iTunes with -only- 2 millions).

This is the definitely interesting story from LifeHacker. It’s difficult and long but you can get Leopard running on a PC-made-a-Mac.

Source: Build a Hackintosh Mac for Under $800 [Hack Attack].

Do you remember my newsbit about LightZone for Linux? Unfortunately, you may also have noticed that some time later, LightCrafts had stopped distributing it.

However, after a petition on the forums, things changed again and version 3.3 beta of LightZone for Linux is again available for download.

It is still difficult to be sure if the final version 3.3 will be freely available, but I feel that it would still be a good way for LightCrafts to widen the paying distribution of this very good tool for digital photographers: LightZone.

Visibly, in 2008, scammers and spammers start early: The sheer number of emailed wish cards seems to have increased to very high levels. Only one advice: If you receive a “best wishes” electronic card from somebody that you don’t know, don’t even spend time (and computer security) checking it. It’s most probably a mean to insert a worm, a Trojan horse or a virus in your computer.

And, keep your anti-virus software updated.

As the US dollar drops in Stock Markets, there are some unexpected victims. As many other companies whose customers pay in US dollars, many bloggers using advertising services are being paid in US dollars (or in Euros converted from US dollars). While the green bill currency was dropping through the floor, bloggers earnings dropped too because unit prices of ads did not climb as fast.

Some are said to have lost 20% compared to last year.

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Plumbeous Ibis (Theristicus caerulescens, Ibis plombé). Shot in Brazil, 2007.

BestPriceCameras.com on-line photo seller is trying to get some cheap money out of the rumours around the upcoming replacement for the Canon EOS 5D: They opened a product page for the Canon EOS 5D Mk II.

However, they appear to be one of the most despised shops on the web with low customer rating, plenty of horror stories (look in Google). The fact that the page is not even removed after publication probably means that this was fully intentional and they don’t want to loose an opportunity to grab money from gullible web photographers.

When looking for factual information about batteries, the journey of the Internet user is full of traps. Fortunately, I found a detailled, very readable and facts-based web site. It named BatteryUniversity.com. I like a lot the 3-part articles with a lot of details (and with German translations). You will know everything about all battery technologies, learn what the memory effect is and is not, about applications (including details about hybrid cars and plug-in hybrid cars).

Just check Part 2 of the associated book, to get information about how to prolong battery life. Worth bookmarking.