tim merritt [dot] net

Things you never thought you could do with your camera | MetaFilter

Yow – apparently amazing things can be done with a hacked Canon point and shoot.

This slide show at the New York Times shows the immediacy of Capa’s work, and explains why this is a huge find in the world of photography. I’ve always been drawn to photojournalism and street photography, less to the more obviously contrived fashion and fine art. Capa’s work is important, and not among my favorites, but deserves its high esteem. It will be interesting to see if the negatives resolve the questions about The Falling Soldier.

Via PopUrls.com, 60 Advanced Photoshop Tutorials – Top Web Resources. I love Photoshop tutorials. The more I learn about Photoshop the more I love it.

Eric posts a photo a day of Paris. We’ll have to meet him when we go back!

It’s shortly before the post-lunch session on day 3 of the conference. I have learned a lot, have a book of workshop handouts as bigg as a phone book, and there’s much more to come. Among the important things I’ve learned here: shoot a lot; shoot RAW if possible, thought JPEG isn’t filthy awful rotten if that’s all you have; there are several subtle techniques for sharpening detail and correcting exposure; there several others for processing to black and white; carry your camera all the time (note that I haven’t shot a single frame here, though I have experimented on several from Grand Canyon and Avignon, which I may upload tonight rather than attend evening sessions); print print print; and much more.

My principal conclusion from this is to think like an artist as much as possible rather than thinking like a technician, and to foster that I need to practice technically with the camera rather than at the computer. By that I mean I need to use the computer for evaluating the work rather than endless noodling with Photoshop.

To that end, I’m trying to spend most of my remaining time here listening to photographers as they discuss their work rather than cramming in more adjustment layer tips that are recorded in the handout tome. This session is by Rick Sammon.

Ellen and I are in the Air France arrivals lounge after a remarkably good flight. Business class is all it’s cracked up to be. The French keyboard on this iMac is quite different from the American layout. Odd. I hve to use the shift key to type a period, the a and q keys are switched, and other peculiarities.

Updates will be rare, as internet access is not assured for the rest of the trip. Count on many photos, however, when we get home, and exhaustive reports about food and wine (and hangovers, probably).

A bientot.

I have my hosting for this site and some others at Textdrive, which has an active, informative, and entertaining forum. I’ve learned a lot there about hosting web sites from the generous and talented people, customers and employees, that post there. It is a real community. I particularly enjoy the off-topic area known ast Textdrivel, where member Besonen started this thread with the post below.

You’ll be glad you watched this.

It’s a Flash video; you may hate Flash video. Take a chance on it. I know I’m glad I watched.

Pass it on.

Click to find out why this man is running away. Simple rules, simple pictures.

Shoot First, Eat Later | Food & Wine

Here, a user-friendly guide to taking perfect food photographs, from great cameras to simple techniques (use your water glass as a tripod!)

I like taking pictures of food.

The Reality of Resizing: Changing Image Resolution without Changing Quality | Layers Magazine

Possibly one of the most confusing aspects of dealing with digital imagery is resolution-specifically, what it really is and how changing it affects an image. You’d be shocked at the number of brilliant designers who don’t know how to change an image from 72 dpi to 300 dpi-without turning it into a pile of pixel mush. That is, until now.

Today we’re going to talk about the relationship between resolution and pixels, and what it means to you. We’ll discuss the difference between upsampling-a rather evil practice of increasing the resolution (and thereby the number of pixels) in order to make the image larger than it originally was-and changing the resolution of an image without changing pixel data. First, let’s chat briefly about resolution in general.

I’ve never adequately understood this, neither to I know what it might have cost me in image quality. Good to find this resource.

Via.

Came across a pointer in the TextDrive forums to this very cool looking online lens rental service, ZipLens.

I want to try out a fast normal lens, like this Sigma 30mm f14. It would be $25 for a week, and they’re offering $5.00 discounts through the end of the year.

In Paris, Photographing a City That Has No Bad Side – New York Times

More Paris travel coverage from the Times. I plan to photograph that city.

A Photoshop tutorial on Making Your Own Passport Photos, found via LifeHacker.
The State Department has specific guidelines for photographers too. Should I post a copy of my passport photo here?

With the D50, I’m trying to figure out the color space settings, and it looks as though I need to do things differently if I’m going to print and if I’m going to the web. Sensible… but a clear explanation (or more precisely, choosing a search query that reveals a clear explanation) has been hard to come by. This article – Color spaces and you – seems a good start.

Instructables has a Camera Zip-lock tip; I tried it at Taido Camp, but didn’t think much of it. It made the camera very tough to hold, and the perspiration on my hands made the plastic slippery. I wanted it to work for me; I’ll just have to be careful in sandy environments.

Photos de Paris, ville lumière
“Photos of Pairs, City of Light” – high-resolution 360º panorama images of Paris at night. They’re only just beautiful. I want to go.

New photos up top: the fountains at the Bellagio, dancing to Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man, an excellent introduction; and the gondolas outside the Venezia.

[Update: Nah. Got up this morning and didn’t like those. I’ll find uses for those and other images from Las Vegas, but I like these from Grand Canyon: three condors photographed at Plateau Point, in the canyon, and a pine cone at the South Rim. I showed them to Will and he said they’re kind of clichéd. He’s right, but they’re our clichés. So I like them.]

Found via Bill Bumgarner: PhotoFiltre, a shareware image editor; no time to look at it now (ought not to be blogging her from work, but had to put it somewhere and didn’t think it was right for DV4T.

bbum’s weblog-o-mat » Blog Archive » Nature Photography

Good advice.

Two Designers walk into a bar (A.K.A. Contrast Masking) | creativebits

Two designers walk into a bar and sit down with their Powerbooks. One designer says to the other, “How much you want to bet I can correct the highlight and shadow of this image without using any adjustment tools or filters directly on the image?

The other designer takes him up on the bet and a minute later begrudgingly hands his associate $10.

How did the first designer win the bet?

The designer used a contrast mask to adjust his highlights and shadows. You can too by following these simple steps.