The Longest Run

Bayou City Farmers Market, Houston, March 2009 Had a long talk yesterday with a friend who is interested in taking the plunge and buying a digital SLR. I put together some notes for her about links and products I've found useful which I figured I'd share with all of you as well. As I said to her, I love talking and sharing photography, so let me know if you have any questions. Photography blogs: www.kenrockwell.com (I don't love his tone all the time, but he tends to zero in on what's really worth paying for. There's a Nikon link on his home page which will show you all his Nikon stuff. Photoshop Insider www.bythom.com (particularly good for Nikon stuff) http://blog.vincentlaforet.com/ (check out his video work - particularly a short movie called Requiem - as an example of what can be done with a digital slr with video capabilities B & H Photo - my favorite NYC camera store. Very good and very reliable - be sure you look for products with a USA w...

Photography meets surfing: Vincent Laforet's blog . You know from previous posts ( If You Have 10 Minutes..... and Photography.... ) that I am a big fan of Laforet. The blog has recently covered a project to film a surfer - Jamie O'Brien - in Hawaii. The posts are a combination of some great video as well as behind-the-scenes details on Laforet's approach to the project. Links to more links: 10 Hot Photography Tips and Tutorials from 2008 and 21 Settings, Techniques and Rules All New Camera Owners Should Know . From Digital Photography School .

I'm a big fan of the Boston Globe's Big Picture series. Check out these three posts on their best pictures of the year as there are some amazing photos. 2008, the year in photographs (part 1 of 3) 2008, the year in photographs (part 2 of 3) 2008, the year in photographs (part 3 of 3) One of my favorite pictures is this one .

...like this great shot of Fenway Park (courtesy of B Tal at flickr ) then check out 50 Beautiful Examples Of Tilt-Shift Photography . I haven't had the chance to try this yet myself, but I've found instructions for how to achieve the tilt-shift effect in Photoshop. John Nack's Adobe blog also has some tips .

Check out this video shot on the new Canon EOS 5D Mark II camera. Amazing quality for video shot with a digital SL; almost makes me want to be a Canon owner. Of course, I'd still have to work on my creative skills.....

....and you are interested in photography, check out this New York Times slideshow about photographing the recent political conventions. I came across the slideshow on my new favorite photography blog: Vincent Laforet's appropriately titled Vincent Laforet's Blog . And yes, Laforet is the guy with the fantastic Beijing Olympics photos ......

Fascinating article in Newsweek by Vincent Laforet (some terrific NYC shots here - go to Index --> Perspectives --> Summer In The City) on shooting events from above at the Olympics. Also....I went out on a ski boat with some neighbors a couple of days ago and got some cool waterskiing photos. You can see them on flickr at Waterskiing On Candlewood Lake .

Nikon announced a new DSLR yesterday - the D90. It's the first DSLR to offer a movie mode, which looks like it's very high quality. Check it out at Nikon's sample page .

The Boston Globe runs a feature called The Big Picture , featuring 'news stories in photographs'. I've enjoyed it a lot in the couple of months I've followed it. The most recent entry is a set of photos from China - Beijing mostly - in advance of the Olympics. There are some great shots you can check out here .

Joe McNally is a photographer who is well-known for the magic stuff he does with lighting. I came across a long entry on his blog today that I wanted to share with you. The entry, which is called Welcome Adorama! and concerns his efforts to maintain a group of photos he took for a project called Faces of Ground Zero, is an interesting story and has some great pictures. This post follows one from last week called Rollin' With The Pride of Midtown ; if you are interested in photography you'll enjoy his detailed description of how he captured this fantastic image of a firefighter driving his rig through Times Square. Even if you're not interested in the process you should still check out the photo! McNally published a book earlier this year called The Moment It Clicks: Photography Secrets From One Of The World's Top Shooters . I recommend it highly.

Over at Photoshop Insider , today's guest blogger - John Nack, the senior product manager for Adobe Photoshop - has a great post responding to Photoshop Insider's poll asking users what new features they'd like to see in the Photoshop product. The post is a fascinating interesting inside look inside the innovation/product development process and the tradeoff between giving customers what they want as opposed to giving them tools they didn't even know they needed. There are parallels here to book publishing as well, where there's a sense that it's the publisher's role to be a tastemaker for the consumer - to select and publish books in anticipation of interests readers might not be able to identify.

I went out this morning to shoot sunrise pictures, taking only 18-200mm and a 12-24mm lenses with me. I came across some birds hunting for breakfast with perfect morning light and still water. I was able to get some pretty decent pictures, but without the kind of detail (what exactly is the bird eating?) that would make for great pictures. Next time I will bring the whole camera kit.

The photography web site Photojojo has a cool feature - a twice a month time capsule. To participate you link your flickr account to photojojo, which then twice a month emails you a sampling of pictures from a year ago. Here's a link to sign up if you're interested, and here's a link to my latest time capsule ; these pictures were taken during last year's June visit to Chatham.

In Dragging The Shutter I mentioned a couple of photography books I've found really useful. I've now come across a book - How to Photograph Your Life: Capturing Everyday Moments with Your Camera and Your Heart , by Nick Kelsh, which I highly recommend for anyone who takes pictures and wants some non-technical, super-easy, hints and tips which will dramatically improve the quality of their photos. The book is full of interesting before and after shots, where 'before' means the way people typically take a kind of shot (for example, photographing a kids birthday party), and 'after' means the picture taken according to the author's suggestions. The photos in the book are taken with a point-and-shoot camera, so high-end gear is not required!

WARNING: there are a LOT of flower pictures. Watch the slideshow at your own risk.

I'm a pretty regular reader of Scott Kelby's Photoshop Insider blog ; one of today's posts mentioned an article in Scientific American called How Experts Uncover Doctored Images ; the article is interesting, but even better is the sidebar called Digital Forensics: 5 Ways to Spot a Fake Photo . Definitely worth checking out! While on the Scientific American site I came across an article which takes the reader inside the Amazon Kindle ; very interesting if you are interested in e-books. This piece also has a good sidebar called Inside the Kindle E-Book Reader [Interactive] .

Grosbeak 2008 Grosbeak 2007 Last weekend I took a picture of a bird that I don't see very often - a rose-breasted grosbeak; I'd only seen one once before, When I went to look through old photos to figure out when I'd seen the last one - it turns out it was almost exactly one year ago. I suppose the grosbeaks may just pass through our area on the way to somewhere.....

For those of you interested in phototgraphy, last Sunday's New York Times had a great article by Virginia Heffernan on Flickr and the emergence of a 'flickr style'. The article's opening paragraph really grabbed me: Let’s face facts: the Web, after nearly 20 years, has failed to uncover new masters of noble art forms like poetry, sculpture and the airport thriller. But it has engendered — for good or ill — new forms of creative expression. Blogs and viral videos are only the most obvious. Fan fiction, wikis, Flash animation and Second Life avatars are a few more. People don’t upload to the Web words and images they had fashioned apart from the Web; they fashion their stuff specifically for online platforms and audiences. Check the links in the article to see some terrific photos on flickr - very inspirational!

IMG_0272 , originally uploaded by aweber9 . I'd never heard of Schmaps until I received an email a few weeks ago asking if I'd be willing to have this picture of Independence Hall included in the Schmap East Coast Travel Guide. Schmap is a publisher of digital travel guides where users can customize and share itineraries with one another. If you click through to the East Coast Parks and Gardens page and zoom in to the detail for Independence Hall , you'll see that my picture is one of a number that users have taken of the building. Schmap found the photo after I posted it on Flickr with the tags Independence Hall and Philadelphia.

I don't usually read USA Today, so I was lucky to see this article in the paper left outside my hotel room this morning: In a flash, Strobist blog about lighting photos hit it big - USATODAY.com . The Strobist blog has been recommended to me before - it's very good.