Dave Nelson

On Saturday August 23rd I spent a beautiful night participating in Scott Kelby’s Worldwide Photo Walk in Atlanta Georgia around the Buckhead - Lenox area. At 7:00 pm about 45 photographers gathers in front of the Terminus 100 building at the corner of Peachtree and Piedmont eager to attack the neighborhood.

I did not really feel inspired until I got to Dante’s Down the Hatch where I stepped inside and got a couple pics of the crocodiles inside. The energy inside the restaurant and seeing the reptiles fired me up to get out there and take a lot of photos.

But even then I did not start capturing photos that made me happy until the light started to fade and the street lights turned on. Using a tripod very close to the ground along with a remote shutter release I took many photos with the lights from cars and trucks blurring across the image.

I think may favorite image is of the fire hydrant. It is an atypical image for me, just not the kind of image I think about.

After being rained on for a bit and another trip up and around a parking deck I returned to where we started and entered the restaurant Bricktops where many of the photographers were enjoying food, drinks, and conversation.

We spent about an hour talking about scanning services (http://www.scancafe.com/) Microsoft Pro Photo Tools (http://www.microsoft.com/prophoto/downloads/tools.aspx) and one of us spent the night taking photos of the food and drink.

I would like to thank Judith Pishnery for leading our band of photographers. She can be found at www.pisconeri.com and her blog is at www.pisconeriworkshops.blogspot.com.

It was a great experience and I hope to participate in another photowalk soon.

Links

• Scott Kelby’s Worldwide Photo Walk: [Atlanta/Buckhead] Flickr Group
• Scott Kelby’s Blog
• Dave Nelson’s Photos from the Photo Walk

Tags: Happy, Photography, Pictures // Add Comment »

It is almost that time again, DragonCon is less than a month away. I am a staff photographer for DragonCon and have 7 years of DragonCon photographs on my web site.

This year I am most excited about meeting Hayden Panettiere, James Kyson Lee, and George Takei of Heroes, Sean Astin and Brad Dourif from The Lord of the Rings, Gareth David Lloyd and James Marsters from Torchwood, Beau Bridges from the upcoming Max Payne movie, Joel Hodgson the creator and host of MST3K, James Callis, Aaron Douglas, Michael Hogan, Tahmoh Penikett, and Katee Sackhoff, from Battlestar Galactica, Jewel Staite and Morena Baccarin from Firefly and Serenity, Randal L. Schwartz computer geek extroidinaire, and my favorite science fiction author Mike Resnick.

Come back after September 2^nd to see pictures of the guests listed above along with costumes, fans, and events from DragonCon 2008.

Below are some of my favorite pics from previous years.

Tags: Happy, Photography, Pictures // 1 Comment »

I have had my suspicions for a couple of years that Photoshop had been stripping out the EXIF data that I inserted into my images with Exifer, and now after a bit of testing I have discovered that Photoshop CS3 does indeed remove EXIF data when saving JPG files.

Here is the workflow that I have been trying out lately.

1. Take pictures in JPG format
2. Use Exifer to add EXIF and select IPTC data
3. Use Microsoft Pro Photo Tools to add GPS and address information (geotagging)
4. Copy all images into an “Originals” folder
5. Edit the images being very selective as to what pictures are to be Photoshopped and shared with the public
6. Publish to SmugMug, Facebook, Flickr, and/or my blog.
7. Copy images to the Storage Area Network device

Meta data in the form of EXIF and IPTC information makes it much easier to search for files years later and web sites like SmugMug will take the EXIF data and use them for descriptions, locations, and more on their web site.

But I now have proof that during step 5 Photoshop is replacing the EXIF description with the IPTC description and if there is not an IPTC description then the EXIF description is now blank. If the IPTC Description and Author Name are filled out they will be copied to the EXIF fields when the file is saved in Photoshop.

I originally thought that this issue also affected the geotagging location set using Microsoft Pro Photo Tools, but after testing it on a couple images that does not appear to be the case.

EXIF data is very important to me and is used to search through thousands of files using web based and software based tools. I find it very disappointing that Photoshop would manipulate the EXIF data without the user explicitly requesting to make a change. From now on I will be adding both EXIF and IPTC data in Step 2.

Related Reading
http://www.exif.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exchangeable_image_file_format
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPTC
http://www.iptc.org/pages/index.php

Tags: Photography, Software // Add Comment »

Almost every day I use Google Reader to read RSS feeds from many different web sites, 44 of them today, and I would like to share the photography feeds.

The Big Picture

The Big Picture is a blog over at boston.com where they post some of the most amazing pictures of the week. These picture regularly inspire me to get out there and do that thing that I do.

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/

Blue Pixel Musings

Blue pixel is a site billed as “Inspiring and Educating Photographers Worldwide” and I learn something from them every post.

http://www.bluepixel.net/

Hyperphocal

Hyperphocal posts tend to be pretty basic stuff, but I like the subjects they choose and I find something interesting in every post.

http://hyperphocal.com/

News: Digital Photography Review

DPReview covers everything that is new in photography. It is a great place to learn about new and upcoming cameras.

http://www.dpreview.com/

Photo Attorney

Photo Attorney is written by Carolyn E. Wright is an attorney who works for photographers. The posts are always relevant to photographers and photography. This is a great source of information on the war against photography.

http://www.photoattorney.com/

Photo-Resoures.org

Photo-Resources is full of posts similar to this one, bringing attention to other web sites and resources with every post.

http://photo-resources.org

Photo Permit

Photo Permit is a great blog to keep you on top of what is happening in the war on photography.

http://www.photopermit.org/

Photoshop Insider

This is Scott Kelby’s blog about Photoshop and photography. It is also where you can keep track of the worldwide photo walk (http://www.photoshopuser.com/photowalk/).

http://www.scottkelby.com/

Rob Galbraith DPI

This blog is usually very short posts about anything that may be happening in the world of photography from photo slideshows to new equipment reviews and announcements.

http://www.robgalbraith.com/

Sisters

Jason Lee is a great wedding photographer who has made a project out of taking and manipulating photos of his two daughters. The results are amazing an fantastic!

http://kristinandkayla.blogspot.com/

Strobist

The Strobist has a cult-like following for the great posts about lighting and photography. There is a lot to learn as it is not just a blog but also includes tutorials about off-camera lighting.

http://strobist.blogspot.com

StudioLighting.net

Studio lighting dot net contains a lot of tutorials and the blog feed contains new camera and accessory announcements.

http://www.studiolighting.net/

TWIP

I have written about This Week In Photography as a podcast before, but it is also a great blog with tutorials, product reviews, and more.

http://twipphoto.com/

Zack Arias

Zack is an Atlanta based editorial and music photographer who also produces DVD tutorials. I like the photos that Zack shares via his blog and the local Atlanta flair appeals to me.

http://www.zarias.com/

Vincent Laforet’s Blog

Vincent is in China shooting the Olympics and is planning to blog about it all along the way. Including an awesome post about what he has packed to capture the event.

http://vincentlaforet.wordpress.com/

Sports Shooter

I do not look at Sports Shooter every day and do not subscribe to a feed from them, but I do recommend checking the site out on a regular basis for lots of great information about being a professional photographer.

http://www.sportsshooter.com

Tags: Photography, Website, blog // 1 Comment »

The Hollywood Stock Exchange (HSX) is a web based stock trading game that trades in the success and failure of movies. The game is free to play and can provide some real insight into how a stock exchange works and what makes for a successful movie.

By creating an account you receive $2 million HSX dollars to buy and sell stocks, bonds, and funds with.  It is plenty of money to jump right in and create a portfolio that can take off but not so much money that you cannot lose most of it in one bad weekend.

On HSX you can trade in stocks, bonds, and funds. Stocks are holdings in specific movies, bonds are holdings in credited actors, and funds are managed groups of stocks and bonds that have been brought together to create a single investment.

The most powerful feature of HSX is the community forums, here you can learn about what movies are in development, who’s career is taking off, what the next big movie is going to be, and more about movies than anywhere else.

I really enjoy playing the Hollywood Stock Exchange game. It keeps me informed about upcoming movies and how well the HSX community thinks they will do at the box office.

My Username is Phrop, look me up and let me know what you think about the game.

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We really enjoyed ourselves at Stone Mountain Park Thursday night with the laser light show and fireworks display. I get excited about any opportunity to take pictures of fireworks and this night proved to be exceptional. I didn’t get a lot of pictures, but having the carving at Stone Mountain as a backdrop to the fireworks makes for some wonderful pictures.

Tags: Photography, Pictures // Add Comment »

About four years ago I found myself deep in debt to the point that I spent many nights laying awake worrying about it. I was making enough money to pay the bills that came in the mail every month, but there wasn’t a lot of money left over for having fun. I was fed up and sick of it all.

I sat down with my computer and worked out a written budget, I included everything I spent money on every month, all of the bills, food, gas, rent, etc… Putting everything in a spreadsheet where I could see exactly where the money was going made it much easier for me to funnel more money to my largest bills. After two years I had made a very nice dent in the mountain of debt.

Then I heard this guy on the radio telling people that they needed to have a written budget and to spend every dollar on purpose. This rang true enough with me that I started to really listen to him and tweaking the way I was working my plan.

His name is Dave Ramsey and over the last couple of years his plan has helped thousands of people make a real difference in their lives, including mine. Dave’s message is now available on the radio, television, multiple best selling books, and Financial Peace University.

About a year ago I married my beautiful wife; we owed money on two cars, credit cards, and a student loan. Over the past year, following what we learned by reading “The Total Money Makeover” and “Financial Peace Revisited” along with taking the “Financial Peace University Online” course, we not only paid off all those loans, but we were also able to pay cash for our wedding, buy a new camera, pay for a broken timing belt, and many other surprises that were no big deal because we had a plan.

What we have learned from Dave Ramsey over the last two years has not only changed our lives but will have repercussions for our entire family tree for generations to come.

For more information about Dave Ramsey and FPU:

• http://www.daveramsey.com/
• The Truth About Debt
• Scriptures on Finance
• Financial Peace University

We are holding FPU at St. Michaels in Brookhaven August 19^th to November 11^th on Tuesday nights. Contact Neal Marwitz at franklin-mcnealofg@comcast.net for more information or to sign up.

Tags: Happy, Website // Add Comment »

It was a great game and want to thank Sam for the opportunity to come out and take photos. Head on over to SmugMug and check out the pictures of Raptors T-Ball action.

When taking pictures of children playing sports I prefer to be at eye level or lower to the players, with the Raptors I was able to sit on the field and get the type of shots that I really like. I am making a lot more pictures available than I normally would since I probably won’t have a chance to shoot another game this season.

Please don’t get to distracted by the slideshow, there are much larger versions for viewing and for sale over at SmugMug.

Tags: Happy, Photography, Pictures // Add Comment »

I learned about Microsoft Pro Photo Tools a couple of months ago when researching ways to geotag my photos. Version 1.0 of the software allows you to easily edit the EXIF and IPTC meta data of your JPG images.

After using the tool for a couple of months I have reverted to using the tried-and-true Exifer to add copyright, contact, and descriptions to my images. I feel like Microsoft Pro Photo Tools does not make it clear exactly what it is I am editing, EXIF or IPTC.

But what this software does excel at is geotagging. Under the Map Browse tab is an interface to Microsoft Virtual Earth that allows you to select one or more images and place them on the map which assigns latitude and longitude coordinates to the EXIF data. Very quick and easy compared to other tools I have tried on WindowsXP.

The geo info tagged in the EXIF data allows services such as Picassa, SmugMug, Flickr, Panoramio, and many more to place your photos on maps for users to find them by browsing maps. I highly recommend checking out the new “More… Photos” option in a Google Maps search.

Tags: Photography, Software // Add Comment »

I’ll give the new Hulk movie a 6 out of 10, better than average. I really enjoyed it, it was nice that it was a continuation of the first movie without feeling like a sequel. The action was clean and plentiful but not relentless and the slower parts were full of character development. The tie-in with the Avengers movie was awesome.

The Incredible Hulk (2008) 6 out of 10

Tags: Movies // Add Comment »