August 2008 Archives

This past weekend was packed with photowalking events. The first was organized by Trevor Carpenter from photowalking.org fame. There were over 50 people who meet on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial for a sunset walk down the National Capital Mall. This was my first night time photowalking event and it was a blast. I'm thinking one of the future photowalking events I will host needs to be at night (maybe Christmas lights?)

It was nice to see some familiar photowalk faces and to meet some new local photographers. A group photo and additional information can be found at the DC Photo Guide website.

Here is a slideshow from the Friday night photowalk at the National Mall in Washington DC.



The next morning I headed out to Old Town Alexandria VA to attend Scott Kelby's World Wide Photowalking event. The local host/leader of this walk was Jeff Revell and the entire day was a great sucess. He wrote up a recap post on his PhotoWalk Pro website and he also includes a group photo from the two walks he hosted that day.

There were many familiar faces from the night before and I was finally able to meet some Flickr/Twitter friends in person as well. Both Patty Hankins and Shawn Duffy have recap posts on their respective blogs from the morning event. Scott Kelby also wrote on his blog about the success of the event and has decided to make it an annual event.

Here is a slideshow from my photos from the Saturday photowalk in Alexendria.

Last week the family went on a Disney cruise with some family friends. The main priority of the trip was to relax and forget about work. In preparation of this trip I brought the Canon WP-DC21 Underwater housing for my Canon G9 and planned to use it while snorkeling on Disney's Castaway Cay island. On my last cruise I brought my Canon 5D and was able to get up early each morning to wander the decks to take some stock photos. Some of these photos happen to be my best sellers for stock.

For this trip I decided to bring both my Canon 5D and the Canon G9. I think I took a total of 5 photos with the 5D for the entire week. The G9 just always seemed like my go to camera on this trip. I loved the portability and its ability to shoot RAW. I'm not sure if the files from the G9 would be good enough for stock sales, but it was great for the needs of this trip.

This post was not meant to be a review of the G9, but I feel confident that on future family trips I could comfortably leave my DSLR at home.

The underwater housing for the G9 also worked great. I did find that the shutter lag  common to point and shoot cameras was difficult to work with underwater. But after a while I was able to workaround the lag by anticipating the shot. Normally you can by pass the lag with a half press of the shutter to lock focus. But, I found the housing made it difficult to do the half press trick. I may just need more practice with the feel of the shutter and the housing.

On this trip I also discovered I loved being underwater with the fish and taking pictures. I have subscribed to several underwater photoblogs (echeng.com for example) for a while and I can now see the allure of this type of photography. What I discovered is the 30-60 seconds you have underwater during each breath was just not enough and it made me seriously think about taking scuba classes. 

Here are a selection of photos from the trip. I may try to submit a couple of the underwater photos to my stock agency just to see if the G9 is able to keep up with my 5D.

Those that can't do, teach... and those that can't teach ... teach gym. - "School of Rock" Jack Black

About a month ago I offered to teach a class to one of my photoclubs on Lightroom. I'm finding that many people are afraid to try new software and workflow processes. Most people are just not adventurous to try new software. These are the same people that don't shoot RAW or are using programs like Elements. I have nothing bad to say about the low end of  software spectrum. It suits the needs for the majority of the public photographic needs.

However, the people I'm talking to are advanced ametures or even semi-pro/pro photographers. They are constanly running into the limitations of the low end software and are asking for workarounds. Well the work around is to get a real photographic workflow tool. I have been helping people come over to the "light" for the last couple of months and I figured it was time to hold a class.

Since I work in the technology field, part of my job is to try new software, so I'm always checking out the latest and greatest tool. I jumped at the chance to be part of the beta of Lightroom when it first came out. LR has been out for over a year and has been completely integrated into my photographic workflow process. I was a firm Bridge/Photoshop/iView Media user for several years. After giving LR a try during the beta, I knew I had a new home.

Well this week I was preparing my notes for the class and I was going to touch on the new features of LR 2 that were under beta. In my notes I was constantly saying "but wait, when they release LR2 this will become much easier."

Well, thanks to Adobe I'm now teaching a Lightroom 2 class tomorrow morning rather than just a Lightroom class. The new version of the software shipped this week and this new version adds many features that make it an even better workflow tool.

 I'm excited about teaching my first class and I'm excited about sharing the new features that are available under LR2.