Category Archives: Photography

The iPad dirt pile

Photography, Tablets

“That a big dirt pile back there!,” says our two-year-old in-house photo critic Finn eyeing the iPad’s default background image. “How did that dirt pile get back there??” ArtInfo has the story. (Apologies to photog Richard Misrach; it really is a nice image.) [Via]

Related/previous:

[Update regarding a couple of the comments: Guys, I was just passing along a (to me cute) thing my kid said about this new device, as I’ve been doing. I’m not trying to yank anybody’s chain, and I find that we can all handle most thing better with a sense of humor. Let’s not let the enjoyment of Apple products turn anybody into a scowling Defender of Faith and Morals, eh? :-)]

Sneak peek: Puppet Warp in Photoshop

CS5, Panoramas

Russell Brown has posted a demonstration of the Puppet Warp technology being developed for Photoshop:

Cool as everyone seems to agree the technology is, I know there’s a tendency to worry that it’s kind of frivolous–maybe useful only occasionally, and then for making some extreme change to an image. Fortunately that’s not the case. Stick with the demo to see Russell show (around the 5-minute mark) how the features can also be used to make subtle adjustments to photos. (Taken together with Content-Aware Fill, automatic lens correction, and the ability to address huge amounts of memory thanks to 64-bit, I think panorama creators will be very happy with what’s cooking.)

Ansel Adams works in San José through Sunday

Photography

Photoshop tech writer Eric Floch points out that the SJ Museum of Art is hosting an Ansel Adams exhibition that runs through this Sunday. He & some other team members checked it out, and he writes:

The photographs on display are quite stunning. It’s mostly small-scale prints Adams made from the 1920s through the 1950s. You can see the full evolution Adams made from the soft-focus “Parmelian Prints” of the 20s through the sharper works to come out of the f/64 school to the “classic” cooler, high-contrast prints we’ve all seen on so many posters.

Check out the museum site (link above) for a video & more info.

Behind the scenes of the Bird book

Photography

I just picked up a copy of Andrew Zuckerman’s gorgeous Bird book, mentioned here a couple of months ago. It would be a great deal at the cover price of $60, but I found it locally for 50% off, and it seems Amazon & others are matching that price. I was reminded to mention the book when I spotted this short behind-the-scenes video shot during production. [Via] Next up: I’d like to check out his Creature book.

Haiti earthquake: 360° video

Panoramas, Photography

CNN is documenting the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake by offering 360° video clips. As the site says,

Use your mouse to click and drag around the video to change the view. You can also zoom in and out. Pause and explore at any time by pressing the play/pause button under the video to stop and look around.

Note the arrows at upper right that lead to additional videos. I find the second one most interesting in that it was shot via a person’s backpack, enabling a view that’s pedestrian in both senses. That feels to me like an interesting counterpoint to most photojournalism (e.g. the heartbreaking images on The Big Picture) which emphasizes some amount of technical excellence (composition, focus, lighting, etc.). The 360° videos are inherently more raw.

Rollin' on the River

Photography

Having grown up by the Mississippi, I often make fun of the feeble Guadalupe River (aka “The Mighty Guat”) that trickles past Adobe HQ. Then there are the days (like today) when I see why the city lavished money on a huge flood-control channel:
SJ_RAIN.jpg
The image comes courtesy of the Lightroom team’s Kelly Castro. See more of his great B&W’s on Flickr, and check out more info on his Lightroom-Photoshop technique.
— J. (who’s feeling marginally better about being forced to carry flood insurance)

Fun iPhone photo/illustration apps

Photography

Just a couple of recent finds that manipulate your images in interesting ways:

  • “Digital photography never looked so analog,” proclaim the makers of Hipstamatic. The interface is more than a little (deliberately?) wonky, but it produces some fun stuff. It even makes Photoshop PM meetings look interesting:

    [Via Geoff Badner]

  • PhotoTropedelic “draw[s] upon the colors and symbols of 60’s Pop Art to produce boldly unique art.” Far out. [Via Matthew Richmond] [Update: Apparently the app was created by Adobe’s own Larry Weinberg.]
  • Le Petit Dummy “lets you position a mouth on any photo and play back audio files as the mouth moves in sync.”
  • And, in case you missed it earlier, the LEGO iPhone app (App Store link) will render you in vibrant lo-fi.

Happy New Year

Photography


I wish you could see the moon as it appears overhead here at this moment. I’ve never seen anything like it. Pictures (mine, anyway) can’t begin to capture its vivid beauty, and I laid a long while on the driveway gazing up. And then, being the suburban dad I am, I rose & towed in the trash cans. I’m feeling very blessed.
I wish you great peace, happiness, and success in “oh-Ten” (as I’m sure to stumble and call it more than once). Thanks for reading.

Quick tip: Reviewing images as B&Ws in Bridge

Photography

I just saw a feature request for Adobe Bridge that covers something that’s already possible. A photographer requested a way to review all his images as black & whites. Here’s my simple suggestion:

  • Open an image in Camera Raw and create a B&W treatment you like.
  • Create a preset via the “Save Settings…” option in the little menu* on the right-hand side of the Camera Raw tabs.
  • Once you’ve made a preset, you can batch-apply it to images in Bridge by selecting the images, then choosing Edit->Develop Settings->{Your Preset Name}.

* Side note: I can’t adequately describe how annoying I find it that we (Adobe collectively) make this menu & similar ones so hard to see. I don’t have control over all such decisions.

Photo nerdery for a good cause

Photography

Scott Kelby has created some geeky off-camera-flash t-shirts:

If you’re looking for a really unique holiday gift for the photographer on your list (or you just want a really cool t-shirt that nobody else will have), AND you totally love the idea that 100% of the profits go to feeding and caring for kids in a orphanage in Kenya that you guys helped to build (see below), then man have I got a holiday gift idea for you!

Very cool, Scott.

"dpBestflow" aims to drive best practices

DNG, Photography

There are a million ways you can process, manage, and archive your images–but how should you? What techniques best capture and preserve your creative output?

To address these questions, the Library of Congress, working with ASMP, has just announced “dpBestflow” (Digital Photography Best Practices and Workflow). Two years’ worth of research have produced “real-world solutions for preserving the quality and integrity of digital images; proven best practices that have been shown to produce superior results; and guidelines for streamlined production workflows.”

The site is loaded with resources, ranging from a quick reference sheet* to a detailed glossary. I haven’t gotten to read the materials in detail, but the effort seems like a great response to persistent real-world issues. [Via project contributor Peter Krogh.]

* Nice to see this guidance: “Use DNG to archive raw file data… A DNG archive can be validated with a much higher level of certainty than any other image file format.”

Monday Photos: Dark n' Lovely

Photography
  • Take a look at the marvelous intricacy of Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Lightning Fields. The photographer “uses a 400,000-volt Van De Graaff generator to apply an electrical charge directly onto his film.” [Via]
  • I love the understatement of Carlos de Spinola‘s “Drive In” series. Somehow I’m taken back to driving across northern Indiana (where Gary could double as the backdrops for Blade Runner) at night. [Via]
  • The NYT tells the story behind (and features a gallery of) Walker Evans postcards.
  • To quote our little son Finn seeing whirling blades, “Makeitturn makeitturn makeitturnturn!”: Helicopter taking off–in 1949 [Via]
  • Last Suppers is “A series of photographs documenting former Death Row prisoners’ requests for their last meal before execution.” Happy Monday! [Via]

A Post-Apocalyptic "Where's Waldo?"

Photography

Bruce Haley, whose stirring war photography I’ve mentioned previously, has come up with a novel idea:

I decided to feed the industrial junkies and gamers and sci-fi nuts and add to the dialogue on dead machinery…  so I dumped a ton of photos onto my site that have never been seen before, in a section entitled “The Post-Apocalyptic World,” and also threw a contest into the mix…  It’s sort of a end-of-days “Where’s Waldo?” type of thing: Amidst all of the vast wastelands of rust and abandonment, one can find six people and a dog…  so the first 5 people who find these will get a free copy of my limited-edition portfolio.

Details about the project are in the “Contest 9-9-09” section.

Friday Photography: Shots to the Chops & more

Photography