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Month: August 2008

Scott Kelby’s Worldwide Photo Walk

Published August 26, 2008 by 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

HappyPhotographyPictures

DragonCon is Coming

Published August 14, 2008 by Dave Nelson

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 2nd 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.

2004

2004 2004

2004 Jewel Staite 2004 Nathan Fillion

2004 Fairy 2006 Joker

2006 Thom and Barry

2006 Anthony Daniels 2006 Kari Byron and a slice of cheese

2006 Summer Glau 2007 Robert Asprin

HappyPhotographyPictures

Photoshop and Meta Data

Published August 11, 2008 by Dave Nelson

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

PhotographySoftware

exifiptc

Photogrpahy Blogs

Published August 9, 2008 by Dave Nelson

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

blogPhotographyWebsite