My First Animoto Slide Show

Speaking of Animoto (read the post that follows this one), here's a slide show I created when I first heard about Animoto. This video was created in January of 2008 when Animoto was charging $3.00 per video, or $30.00 a year for unlimited videos. Now they're charging $249.00 a year, which is a pretty darn steep increase! My first post about Animoto can be found here.

5 Essential Sites for Professional Photographers

Jeana Lee Tahnk of Mashable has compiled a list of "5 Essential Sites for Professional Photographers". Her original post is located here. The five sites she recommends are:

1. LiveBooks - Custom-designed or pre-designed web sites
2. ShootQ - Web-based studio management for photographers
3. Animoto - Turn photographs into dynamic video presentations
4. LicenseStream - Keep tabs on all licensed content
5. LabPrints - Links to professional labs around the country

Behind-The-Scenes With The Lightroom Team

Julie Kmoch, Lightroom senior development manager, shares secrets of the Lightroom development process, her favorite Lightroom time-saving tip and some of her wildflower photos.

Lightroom 3 Learning Center

Most of you have probably heard that Adobe has released a beta version of Lightroom 3. They have also made this beta available to the general public, for free, until April 30, 2010, which is when the beta expires. There are a bunch of mouth-watering features, including new algorithms that allow for more accurate and sophisticated editing of images. You can download the new beta here. For some great video tutorials, check out NAPP's Lightroom 3 Learning Center and Adobe's own video tutorials.

Ashley & Mike's Wedding

I've posted a few photos from Ashley & Mike's Wedding. They were married at Red Rock Crossing in Sedona, Arizona. Susan Perry of Weddings in Sedona was the minister.

Merry Christmas!

50 Beautiful Free Icon Sets For Your Next Design

Click here to see 50 Beautiful Free Icon Sets For Your Next Design.

Mr. Hitler Not Happy About The Canon 7D...

Popular Science: The Year's Most Amazing Scientific Images

View all 61 images here.

Orangutan Photographer A Hit Facebook

PHOTOS TAKEN BY AN ORANGUTAN PROVE A FACEBOOK SENSATION
Daily Mail
December 3, 2009

Original Link

A 33-year-old photographer has become an online sensation with pictures of her daily life at a Vienna zoo enthralling thousands of fans.

But Nonja is no ordinary snapper -- she is an orangutan.

Her pictures have won over more than 8,500 fans on Facebook since the zoo launched an online photo album of her work on Tuesday.

She is proving so popular that hundreds more fans are becoming her online 'friends' each hour.

However, the blurry images of Nonja's climbing rope and food and her companion's shaggy red-brown fur have won lots of admiring comments from fans, the photographer herself appears not so interested.

Using a specially-adapted Samsung ST 1000 digital camera, Nonja is rewarded with a raisin that drops out of the equipment each time she takes a snap.

The Vienna Tiergarten zoo set up the project to help keep Nonja and her three hairy ape friends entertained in their enclosure.

'Of course the apes don't care about the pictures, they are just an accidental side product,' zoo spokesman Gerhard Kasbauer said.

'They just know that when they press the button, a raisin pops out.'

The popularity of Nonja's online album means she is now on her way to becoming a fully-fledged orangutan icon.

Her photos can be seen on her Facebook page here.

Photos: 2009 World Animal Day

Here are a few great photos that the Boston Globe collected from the 2009 World Animal Day. To see more photos, go here. To find out more about World Animal Day, go here.

25 Places To Become A Photoshop Expert

The folks at Design River have created a page with links to 25 of the Net's best websites to become a Photoshop expert. Click here to see the Photoshop gurus they recommend.

2010 "Ancient Sedona" Calendars Now Available

I've been photographing Sedona's ancient ruins and rock art for years, itching to turn these inspiring sights into products that other people could enjoy. Thanks to Lulu, an online publishing company that allows you to print (and sell) a wide variety of products on demand, I finally took the plunge and created a couple calendars. You can check out my first creations here. And find out more by visiting my Ancient Sedona website. These 2010 calendars make unique (and inspiring) gifts for the upcoming holiday season.

Los Angeles Sheriffs Unlawfully Detain Photographers' Rights Advocate

3,000 Images Combine For Stunning Milky Way Portrait

3,000 IMAGES COMBINE FOR STUNNING MILKY WAY PORTRAIT
Space.com
October 30, 2009

Original Link

A new panoramic image of the full night sky -- with the Milky Way as its centerpiece -- has been made by piecing together 3,000 individual photographs. The panorama's creator, Axel Mellinger of Central Michigan University, spent 22 months and traveled over 26,000 miles to take digital photographs at dark sky locations in South Africa, Texas and Michigan. "This panorama image shows stars 1,000 times fainter than the human eye can see, as well as hundreds of galaxies, star clusters and nebulae," Mellinger said.

To combine these images, a simple cutting and pasting job would not suffice. Each photograph is a two-dimensional projection of the celestial sphere. As such, each one contains distortions, in much the same way that flat maps of the round Earth are distorted. In order for the images to fit together seamlessly, those distortions had to be accounted for. To do that, Mellinger used a mathematical model -- and hundreds of hours in front of a computer... Mellinger used data from the Pioneer 10 and 11 space probes. The data allowed him to distinguish star light from unwanted background light. He could then edit out the varying background light in each photograph and fit them together so that they wouldn't look patchy... The result is an image of our home galaxy that no star-gazer could ever see from a single spot on earth. Mellinger plans to make the giant 648 megapixel image available to planetariums around the world.

Read complete article here.

45 Dual-Screen Wallpapers

From Six Revisions:

If you have two monitors in your work environment -- a common set up amongst design and development professionals -- you can use a desktop background made for users who have multiple screens. If you would like to find out about tools that give you the ability to use multiple monitors and computers, you may be interested in reading about five free tools for multi-monitor computer set-ups.

Click here to see all 45 dual-screen wallpapers.

Large Photo From Recent Sedona Hike

Here's one more photo from the recent hike I took with my youngest daughter, Rayel, long-time family friend, Douglas, and two friends of Rayel's, Myles from New Zealand and Matt from Zimbabwe. You'll need to click on this photo to see a larger image which, in turn, will let you see where the hikers are (and how big the rocks are). Before you click on the image, can you guess where the hikers are? There are some impressive Native American ruins immediately in front of the hikers, just around the corner to the left...

Photos From Recent Sedona Hike

Here are a few photos from a recent hike I took with my youngest daughter, Rayel, long-time family friend, Douglas, and two friends of Rayel's, Myles from New Zealand and Matt from Zimbabwe.

Are New Image Sensors About To Revolutionize Digital Cameras?

Cheap Naked Chips Snap A Perfect Picture
By Paul Marks
New Scientist
October 7, 2009

EXCERPT:

How can image sensors -- the most complicated and expensive part of a digital camera -- be made cheaper and less complex? Easy: take the lid off a memory chip and use that instead.

As simple as it sounds, that pretty much sums up a device being developed by a team led by Edoardo Charbon, an engineer at the Swiss Federal Polytechnic Institute (EPFL) in Lausanne. In a paper presented at an imaging conference in Kyoto, Japan, this week, the team say that their so-called "gigavision" sensor will pave the way for cellphones and other inexpensive gadgets that take richer, more pleasing pictures than today's devices. Crucially, Charbon says the device performs better in both very bright light and dim light -- conditions which regular digital cameras struggle to cope with.

Read complete article.

Sedona Celtic Harvest Festival - 2009

Here's a short video from Sedona's first annual Celtic Harvest Festival. The Festival took place Saturday, September 19, 2009 in Sedona, Arizona at the Hilton Sedona Resort & Spa and Tequa Festival Marketplace. To watch another video and find out more about the event, go here. To see photos from the Festival, go here. To visit the Festival's website, go here. The theme song for the video below, "Feel So Near", is sang by Steve Colby and John Good of Oceans Apart.

Sedona Private Guides

On September 16, 2009, I headed down to Red Rock Crossing with Eric, Dennis, and Nathan of Sedona Private Guides for a photo shoot. The light was perfect — cloudy with sunlight breaking through in waves of cinematic perfection. You can find a few photos from this shoot posted here. Sedona Private Guides called me because Dennis Andres, the owner of Sedona Private Guides, was happy with a portrait session we did together last year. You can find a few photos from the session Dennis and I did together posted on his website and in my portrait gallery.

Mac OS X v10.6: About Gamma 2.2

Gamma is a numerical value that describes the relationship between the varying levels of brightness or luminance that a monitor can display or a digital camera or camcorder can capture. To better serve the needs of consumers and digital content producers, Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard uses a gamma value of 2.2 by default. In versions of Mac OS X prior to 10.6, the default system gamma value was 1.8. Using the capabilities of ColorSync, the gamma value of 2.2 is automatically applied and seamlessly transitions your display, images and videos to the new gamma value. If you are a graphic or video professional, click here for more information.

............

EXCERPT:

Some images that do not contain color profiles might appear darker in Mac OS X v10.6 than they did in earlier versions of Mac OS X. Adding the sRGB IEC61966-2.1 profile or Adobe RGB (1998) profile to these images lets them display correctly.

You can use Preview to add or replace a color profile to your images. Follow these steps to add or replace a color profile to your image. For batch processing of images, see "Using Automator..." in the below additional information section.

Note: When replacing the color profile, once saved there is no way to undo this process other than by restoring an earlier copy of the image. Make sure you have the proper color profile selected. If you are not sure, duplicate the images or make a backup copy of the images. Tip: Time Machine is a great way to keep an automatic backup of your images and other files.

1. Open your image in Preview.

2. From the Tools menu choose Assign Profile...

3. From the "ColorSync Profile:" pop-up menu select the appropriate color profile.

4. From the File menu choose Save (or Save As to save a different copy).

Great Images From The Sacramento Bee

Great images from the Sacramento Bee's multi-media staff.

Sky Above Cathedral Rock On Fire

A powerful storm passed over Sedona late this afternoon. After unloading a lot of rain, the storm passed and set the sky on fire as it left. Here's what I saw on my drive home this evening (Photoshop enhanced)...

Stephanie & Travis

Here are a few photos from a recent wedding in Sedona.

Pulse

This website has pretty much nothing to do with photography. It does, however, have a fantastic collection of daily news, breathtaking videos, mind-tweaking books, cutting-edge links, and some of the best "Twitter Dynamos" in the Twitterverse. Oh, and it's run by yours truly. Come check it out. Here's an example of the kind of videos that can be found in the video section of this website:

Curious Squirrel Becomes Famous

A squirrel who appeared in Melissa Brandts' holiday photograph at Lake Minnewanka in Banff National Park, Canada. Read more here.

Video & Stills: The Longest Way 1.0

The Longest Way 1.0 - one year walk/beard grow time lapse from Christoph Rehage on Vimeo.

Nikon Announces D300s & D3000

For information about Nikon's new D300s, go here. For information about Nikon's new D3000, go here.

Concerning the D300s, Scott Kelby writes:

"As expected, it has lots of video features, including built-in HD video capabilities (720p), a stereo mic input, in-camera video editing features, auto-focus, and it has a dual card slot so you can shoot stills to a Compact Flash card, and send your video to an SD card.

"On the still side: it shoots more frames per second (7 fps, or 8 with the battery grip); it has dedicated buttons for Live View (great for switching to video quickly) and the Info Screen (like some of the Nikon’s recently released models), and a 'Quiet Drive' mode for shooting in situations where you want the camera to make as little noise as possible (weddings, wildlife, etc.). Also, the D300s got the same Multi-Selector wheel as the D3/D700, which is a step up, and it includes the Virtual Horizon feature from the D3/D700 as well.

"You can resize and process Raw images from within the camera (it comes with four built-in presets), it has built-in sensor cleaning, and a few other bells and whistles...

............

Ken Rockwell on the new D300s

Great Photographers: Matthieu Ricard

Matthieu Ricard is a Buddhist monk, photographer, and author. He has lived and worked in the Himalayan region for forty years. His website is dedicated to his photographs and his books, and to sharing some of the inspiration he received from his spiritual masters. Matthieu donates all proceeds from his work and much of his time to thirty humanitarian projects in Asia: www.karuna-shechen.org.

From Joe McNally's Blog...

Here are a couple of cool, creative images from a recent post on Joe McNally's Blog...

The Nikon D-Movie Screening Room

From Nikon's new "Nikon D-Movie Screening Room" website:

"The Nikon D90 and D5000 deliver stunning HD-quality movie clips with beautiful image quality and sound. Both accept a wide range of interchangeable NIKKOR lenses, providing outstanding optical quality allowing for a variety of cinematic perspectives. Nikon’s D-Movie function can open new channels of creativity for everyone. In the hands of a professional cinematographer, D-Movie has the power to move and inspire."

50 Photo Apps For Mac Users

50 Mac-friendly applications for various areas of photography: organizing, post-processing, geo-tagging, panoramas, HDR images, uploading/sharing images, and more.

Top 10 Wired Reader Macro Photos (from 2008)

Original Link

Paparazzi Shots From Sedona Wedding

A few paparazzi shots from a recent wedding in Sedona. Click on the photos to see a larger image.