I'm not a photographer. On a good day I'm taking nice snapshots, on a bad day I do a disservice to the 2 meg camera in my iPhone 3G. The only real "photographic" rule I follow is to try and crop the shot the way I want it. After that I honestly don't know enough about things like f-stops to chance switching over to manual mode, especially if I know there might not be another chance for the shot.

So the way I compensate is by shooting in RAW format. Currently I own a Canon Powershot that I was able to modify to shoot RAW images. I like to use RAW formats so I will have as much color space as possible to work with. A RAW image from your camera should have a much larger gamut than the typical JPEG camera capture, and if you edit images in something like Photoshop it's a major plus.

Thanks to Donnie Hoyl I'm on my way to PhotoShop "averageness."

Donnie has a series of five minute PhotoShop training videos including: You Suck At Photoshop Episode 1: Distort, Warp and Layer.  

Check it out at Babelgum.  (Some Sophomoric PG Language)

If I entered a drawing contest with preschoolers I would come in last place.  My best entry would feature a stick figure, a trapezoid looking sun and a bunch of lines and scribbles that might pass as a tree.

However, thanks to Sketch2Photo maybe I have some hope. Sketch2Photo is reportedly an "Internet Image Montage" project from five Chinese Computer Science and Technology students at Tsinghua University and the National University of Singapore. In three steps you can go from scribbles to finished product.

Step 1. Draw the outlines of the figures you want in your picture.

Step 2. Add labels for each of the items, as well as for the background.

Step 3. Sketch2Photo will then find real-life images to match your scribbles.

Check out a video about it posted on Vimeo.

Their site is currently down but look forward to checking it out. Is it real, vaporware or a fake altogether?

 

I just recently downloaded and installed the free Photoshop.com iPhone application. I know not everybody has an iPhone, but this is a pretty neat little application, and it's also supported on the iPod Touch. The app is very simple and allows you to take a snapshot and edit it directly from your device, then upload and share to your Photoshop.com account.

I'll quickly note here that you can get a free, basic Photoshop.com account that allows 2GB of storage or an upgrade to 20GB of storage (for a fee). Below I quickly listed some of the features that are included in the application. Also, the controls are very simple, you literally drag your finger across the screen to control each feature. Fun stuff for your photos!

• Crop, Rotate, and Flip your image
• Adjust Exposure, Tint, Saturation
• Convert the image to Black & White
• Turn your image into a Sketch or add Soft Focus
• Add Effects
• Vibrant
• Pop
• Border
• Vignette Blur
• Warm Vintage
• Rainbow
• White Glow
• Soft B&W

This is a public service announcement from yours truly...

Okay, I admit it, I have been one of those annoying people who probably spends far too much time posting pics and video to Facebook; but hey, my family lives in Michigan (I’m in Oregon), and I have friends all over the world that I want to share my life with through photos. Come on, the photos are usually what people want to see most!

So, I’ve spent an embarrassing amount of hours creating my albums and uploading them to my Facebook page – eagerly awaiting the comments. Since I travel for work, I often take photos and video using my iPhone, which I promptly delete from my phone once they’re posted. Because I didn’t have any reason to worry about my precious photos, right? WRONG!

Got back from Photoshop World last week and still trying to catch up. So I am keeping this week’s blog brief.

I’m going to make some recommendations on a topic I know very little about: Starting up a photography business. I'm pretty sure many of you who digitally watermark are trying to do this and I should try to understand your concerns.

Having never done it, I'm not speaking from experience, but I have been reading the series on Photojojo about starting up a business. Then I saw a really nice demo at Photoshop World that made the administrative side of running a photo based business seem feasible.

For those of you who’ve been thinking about getting your photographs to pay the rent, check out Photojojo’s series on starting up a photo biz.

In the past, I have done freelance and even ran a couple small companies. I always found that the business side of things — estimates, contracts, invoicing, checking to see if you actually made money — to be the time suck that turned me off of self-employment. As I watched Alyse from Blink Bid run through their software, I was wondering why it wasn't around when I had to do that stuff. They've boiled it down to a simple workflow with a clean interface that appears powerful enough under-the-covers to do the job. I'll download the free trial in a few days and write up a more detailed review. If you feel inclined to check it out as well, please drop me a line about your experience.