The top commentator for mid November was the Photographer Forrest Croce. For some really awesome Photography tips and lessons, you should check out Forrest’s Fine Art Photography site.
Forrest also has a blog were he offers up some Photography tips. In his post, Vivid Color in Photoshop, Forrest relates some of the methods he uses to create vivid life like colors using both common sense and Photoshop.
Two of the common sense methods or maybe not so common sense methods for outdoor photography he suggests are:
- Shoot outdoor photos in the hour before the sun is going down or in the “Golden Hour”.
- Shoot just after it has rained.
Photoshop tips
Several Photoshop tools that he suggest using in the post are;
- Using the Channel Mixer to fine tune the color saturation.
- Using the Color Balance tool to create more natural colorization options.
In addition to telling how he adjusts photos manually, Forrest also offers some down loadable tools to automate the procedures that he discusses.
Below are before and after pictures of a Lake Pontchartrain Sunset I took on our New Orleans trip that I edited with Photoshop using Forrest’s techniques.
Before Editing |
After Editing |
Be sure to check out Forrest’s site for some tremendous photography resources as well as his photo galleries.
Written by Pixelhead on November 23rd, 2007 with 7
comments.
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The other day I posted my 2000th Flickr pic which ended up being the tin penguin you see to the left. Lizzie and her friend, who is acting as our Real Estate Staging Professional, were out shopping for staging props, and this little guy was one of the finds.
2000 pictures on Flickr just seems like some sort of milestone that I should remember in some way. I know that I did not mark my 1000th picture, and really don’t want to try and find out, because the only way I know of finding out is by counting back through all those pages.
Currently, I have 2024 pictures and 42 different sets of pictures. All of my pictures together have recieved 6,692 page views.
I have been selected!
In addition to my 2000th Flickr pic, I was also informed that three of my pics were selected to be in the fourth edition of the Schmap Philadelphia Guide:
- A picture of art work in the Philadelphia Convention Center .
- A shot of a Marathon Grill in Philadelphia.
- A shot of the top of a Cuba Libre, a restaurant/club in the art district.
Since the majority of my pics are travel related, I guess it was a matter of time until some of them were picked up by a travel site.
Where are your photos?
Stop in and check out all 2000 of my pics(just kidding). Well take a look at a few and let me know if you find any you like. Do you have a Flickr account or pictures hosted somewhere else? Let me know, I’ll try and check them out.
Flickr related posts:(will add to this list as I find good Flickr posts)
Written by Pixelhead on November 15th, 2007 with 12
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Prior to going on our trip to New Orleans, Lizzie got me a Canon S5 IS Digital camera, which is the camera that I had been 
checking out at the local stores. The Canon S5 IS is a medium sized camera, at just below a pound and maybe an inch shorter in length than Canon’s Rebel. The S5 has lots of great features that make it a solid camera that does not require the purchase of extra lenses. Throw in the 4 AA batteries and you are ready to take pictures. The camera also comes with a 32megabyte SD memory card, but I swapped out the 2gig memory card in my other camera. Note:Must remember to reformat the card.
Features I have used thus far include:
- Add sound bytes to a picture. This is great for adding reminders about pictures such as where the picture was taken, notes for future blog posts, names of people in pictures, pronunciations of words that may relate to the pictures, etc…
- Movie mode with zoom during movie. I used to hate not being able to zoom in and out while making a video.
- Various settings for night photography. I really need to sit down and work on this, because frequently Lizzie and I are out at restaurants that have “mood” lighting, and I want to take pictures of our meals.
- The color filter allows you to take black and white pictures while filtering out or in certain colors. So if I want to take a picture that highlights a red rose, I can make everything else b&W and leave the red rose red.
Well at any rate, there are lots of cool features on the S5 that should keep me busy for quite a while.
Check out the New Orleans Picture set to see the photos I took with the Canon S5 IS.
If you have an S5 or another camera that you love, let me know. What features of your camera do you love or hate?
Buy a Canon S5 IS
Written by Pixelhead on November 8th, 2007 with 17
comments.
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We are headed out to New Orleans this upcoming weekend and as Lizzie has said this should be a prime opportunity for 
taking photos. It sounds like it would be a good opportunity to buy a new digital camera. My current Kodak EasyShare C643 is an Okay basic point and shoot camera. My biggest gripe with it is that I miss too many shots because of the delay.
I had been to BestBuy the other day and was window shopping(big mistake) and decided I liked the Canon Digital camera that had 12x zoom. I didn’t have anything to write with, so I am not sure what the model was that I was considering.
I had also seen a Sony Digital Camera that I thought was great, but then Lizzie and I are a little scared of putting Sony Software on my computer. I have learned to be cautious of downloading software from Sony.
But this morning, Lizzie was online comparing Cameras and she came up with several cameras that I could pick from which included:
Neither of these cameras was the one I had seen, but of the two, I think the S3 would be a better camera for my needs(wants).
The camera that I saw I believe was the Canon PowerShot S5 IS, which is also pictured above. The Canon S5 is still a point and shoot camera, but it does have some more advanced features that I believe I would love to learn to use.
What Camera do you recommend?
I am looking at Point and Click models, and don’t want to be changing lenses at this point in time. Does anyone have any opinions on these cameras, or recommend another Digital Camera?
Buy a Canon S5 IS
Written by Pixelhead on November 2nd, 2007 with 9
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No I am not really adding a blog to my Flickr account, but I kind of think that would be pretty cool. What I mean here is I want to add a blog to my list of blogs, so that I can write a post about a Flickr pic that I come upon without logging onto my blog.
Why do I want to do this?
I browse through Flickr a lot, and often I will see a picture that would be appropriate for say my Pet blog, but at the moment I am not logged in to that Wordpress account. This allows for a quick little post, which can then be edited from the blogs wysiwyg(What You See Is What You Get) editor.
How do You add a Blog to your Flickr Account?
This is a little confusing, because it is not an option that appears in any of the drop down menus at the top of the screen.
- Click the “You” tab at the top of your Flickr homepage.
- In the drop down menu, select “Your Account”.
- Across from the big red words “Personal Information” click on the blue “Extending Flickr” link.
- If you have not added any blogs yet, click the “Configure your Flickr-to-blog settings” link.
- Click “Set up your blog” .
- Then Choose your Blog platform.
- Enter in your blogs login info such as login name and password. You will also need an type in the API info, which should be the url of your blog plus /xmlrpc.php. The hardest part about this is making sure your username and password are correct.
- Flickr then asks you to make a custom posting template, which will be the format that your posts will be in when posted to your blog. There are five standard options that you can choose from. If none of these grab your fancy, clicking on one of them will bring you to the next screen where the option to either Use or customize your own layout. Only do this if you have a bit of understanding of html/css.
Posting To Your Blog from Flickr
- Find a suitable picture for your particular blog.
- Look for a grey “BLOG THIS” button at top of the photo. Some photos may not have this, depending upon if the person who posted it has the feature turned on or off. I believe that it is an option if you don’t wish for people to blog your photo’s. I have it enabled for all of my photos, so please feel free.
- Keep the title of the pic as your blog post title or add a new title to your post.
- Type in the description. You may use html, but you can also edit with your blog’s WYSIWYG editor later.
- Click “Post Entry” and you have successfully posted to your blog from Flickr. Congratulations.
I hope this Flickr tip is useful, let me know if you have any questions or advice or other Flickr tips.
Written by Pixelhead on October 11th, 2007 with 10
comments.
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Last week I posted several tips in my Flickr and Photoshop Tip post, which was also my first Graphics/photo Thursday post. I had quite a few good tips from readers in response to the post.
The best being the tip from Dennis of Santorini Views, a blog about the Greek Island of Santorini. Not a good blog for Lizzie and I to be looking at, since we both are itching to travel. Thanks to Dennis’s new Santorini blog, we have added the little Greek island to our travel wish list.
Anyway the Photoshop tip that Dennis left in his comment was seriously much easier to use than the one that I posted. So here it is in step by step.
Using the Measure tool to align to Horizontally or Vertically.
- select picture by going to file, select open and navigate to the file you have your pictures stored.
- Right click on the eye dropper in the Photoshop palette toolbar.
- Choose the Measure Tool, which should be the last option.
- Left Click and hold on one corner of the object you would like to align horizontally or vertically.
- Still holding the left button down, drag the cursor to the other corner of the edge of the object. You should see a line on the objects edge.
- Release the left mouse button.
- Go to Image at the top of the Photoshop screen. Go down to Rotate Canvas and then choose Arbitrary in the drop down menu.
- A little box will appear, which will rotate the picture a number of degrees clockwise or counter clockwise. The appropriate box should be automatically chosen. click OK. The Photo should now be rotated so that the object is now aligned horizontally or vertically.
- I then crop out the desired section of the photo, but photo cropping is another photoshop tip.
Let me know if this tip has been helpful, or let me know of any tips that you use which I could add to my Photoshop tool belt. Thanks again to Dennis of Santoriniviews.com for this Photoshop tip.
Written by Pixelhead on October 11th, 2007 with 7
comments.
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