TiltViewer

Airtight Interactive (makers of SimpleViewer), have a really great Flickr browser (photos are pulled from the Interesting) with lots of eyecandy called TiltViewer.

While it's definitely a very cool Flash application, I don't think it's going to revolutionize the way we look at photos, especially because most photos do not require that you look at them any other way but straight on. However, I could see Apple coming out with an extension to iPhoto which uses Core Graphics to do some sort of photo browser, or perhaps it'd fit better into Front Row. I think this is doubtful.

Be sure to check out the argyle patterned French bulletin board you can make out of a pumpkin. This is a great way to show off some photos during the harvest season.

Gimp 2.4 Released

The Gimp has reached a version 2.4 release.

Developers, artists and user interface designers from all over the world worked together to make GIMP more powerful and easier to use than ever. The changes from version 2.2 are too numerous to list here, please check the Release Notes to get an overview.

This is exciting news, and with it comes a new look for their website, which looks really good. Thanks Gimp Team! So, if you're a user, it's time to upgrade.

Two links in a row about The Gimp; it's obviously a Gimp news day.

In Photos.org has posted a Gimp plugin to simulate a Lomo. I played around with it a bit and it's pretty neat.

Photo.net in My Inbox

Superstar photography website Photo.net, has finally started sending out newsletters via email. I say finally because I've never been able to keep up with the site as a casual reader. There's too much new stuff going on there, all the time, especially in the forums and critiques.

Really, if you want to become a great photographer, you should probably just read every word on that site as scripture and create some sort of critique dependency graph to follow before you take a photo. I guess the idea there is that if you learn to avoid the pitfalls that make bad photographs, you can make good photographs.

What do I mean by "critique dependency graph"? It's actually quite simple. Imagine taking a picture at the beach. You personally have a few things in mind about how you want the image to look, but you've also absorped a bunch of suggestions from the critiques you read. The "dependency graph" tells you how you should apply them to get the great shot. You saw Joe state the the rule of thirds should not be broken, so you decide you will compose your shot with that in mind. John has stated that the use of a polarizing filter can make the blue sky bluer and the white puffy clouds whiter. One of Jill's past critiques delt with a shot where the subjects head was below the horizon, making the subject look dwarfed. Which do you consider first? It seems obvious to me, that you would have to find an angle where the subject will be partially above the horizon before you can compose with the rule of thirds. However, you could have placed the polarizer on your camera before you composed, or before you found the shot angle.

Anyway, the debut newsletter (they're using a newsletter service), is pretty much what you'd expect out of a newsletter. Short intros to this months featured articles, product reviews, current photo of the week and of course this months projects.

If you didn't get the newsletter but would like to be reminded of photo.net monthly, you might as well subscribe.

JPG Magazine Blog Overload (But good!)

JPG Magazine has been quite active with their blog as of late. In late September, a Featured Member post was written with this to say:

"With so many amazing photographers on JPG right now, we thought it would be nice to make a few introductions. Here on the blog we'll be featuring some of the talented JPG contributors..."

Then in early October another post:

"With thousands of photos submitted to each issue, it's incredibly difficult to pick just sixty or so for the issue. Excruciating! We've been searching for ways to encourage people whose work we really admire who don't make it into the issue..."

Since then, there are have been lots of posts featuring photos from different themes, via the blog, as well as the addition of Featured Outtakes for different themes available to logged in users via the downloads section. Featured Outtakes are the photos that didn't make the cut for a given theme in the print magazine, but are photos that would have made the cut if the magazine was, say, 50 pages larger.

As far as I'm concerned, I'm happy to see this stuff sitting in my feed reader. I've been busy as of late, and in general browing galleries and surfing sharing sites (as well as voting on photos for themes) has not made it into my day in quite some time. However, with this new stream of posts, browsing comes to me, even if it is just a quick glance. Thanks JPG!

Your Awesome New Camera Bag

Aside from a few buttons and some pocket holes, sewing and I have not crossed paths since I was in seventh grade. The stuffed electric guitar made for an excellent "axe," even though the dowel rod supporting the neck snapped well within the first imaginary stage performance. One or two times since (I'm 25 now), I've thought about the things I could make if I only had access to a sewing machine.

I've always thought that the fleecelike blankets they used to give you on flights would have made an excellent liner for a laptop sleeve, and now that I've found plans for a wicked cool Camera Bag (I'd use different fabric, but it's super simple and doesn't look stupid!), the desire to make my own reminds me of the Crumpler 7-Million Dollar Home that I own, love and could never replace (it fits a ton, is comfortable and looks great). So, despite the urge to create something great and useful, I'll have to defer that pleasure to you.

If you've created one of these bags contact me; I'd love to hear your experiences (and see pictures).

This post, Improve Your Photos in 60 Seconds, takes a lot longer to read than 60 seconds, but the tips in there may just improve your work.

Science Tattoo Flickr Set

I'm not a huge fan of tattoos (that is too say, I don't think I'd want any), but I do have an appreciation for them. I'm also a fan of science, and a fan in general of nerdy things, of which I think science tattoos fit into. These photos aren't of high quality, nor are the composed well, but they at least have some technical merit—just not the type of technical merit this blog usually talks about.

Latest News RSS URL Change

I've switched the "latest news" RSS feed to point use FeedBurner. This shouldn't cause any problems, but if it does, please update your reader to use the url: http://feeds.feedburner.com/photub/latest-news . No other feeds are affected by this change at this point, but I'll let you know otherwise if there's a change. Thanks!

A Million Little Pictures

Art House Shop is asking you to help them out (yes, you in that corner over there--no *you*). What do they want you ask? They want you to join the A Million Little Pictures project. All you have to do is send them $16 and shoot the film in the disposible camera they give to you. The theme is "adventures," the best photo overall wins a $200 gift card, and all the photos are featured in an exhibit in a city yet to be determined. The city will be determined by finding the city with the most participants.

Update: When signing up, I got an error, though it actually signed me up...odd. Hopefully they'll fix it and you'll have no problems.

Getting Exposure from Flickr

It's no joke that Flickr is popular, and with it being popular is a great place to be found. Thiru Murugan has posted 5 Tips to Get Into "Flickr Explore."

Twelve Essential Photographic Rules from PopPhoto.

Free JAlbum Hosting

I've mentioned JAlbum before, a super customizable cross-platform photo album creator, but there's some new and exciting news from them:

Today, JAlbum releases a free hosting alternative for your pictures. With 8 million published albums, the free JAlbum software is one of the most popular tools in the world for producing web photo albums. Up until now, users have needed to have their own web site to put their albums. This new service makes publishing stunning photo albums easier than ever.

So, what are you waiting for JAlbum users, go try it out!