New PhotographyBB Issue (Issue 4)

Issue 4 of the online photgraphy magazine PhotographyBB is out and I've promised them I'd read it all this time. The articles in the past issues that I have read have been of great quality and on interesting topics, so when I see stuff like:

Regarding this recent release, Dave Seeram - Editor and Publisher says, “Issue 4 is here and fully stocked on our digital shelves! Although we had to delay this month’s issue by one week, this month’s issue is by far our best issue to date! This month we’re taking it to the next level by including photographic shooting techniques, a trip to Vancouver, and even more tutorials than last month, including Photoshop, Elements, and even a Dreamweaver (for the photographer) tutorial!”

in the press release for issue 4, I know for sure that there is good stuff contained within the digital pages.

Now, if only I had a super fast color printer and ink was dirt cheap, I could start reading it on the bus this morning...

EDIT: Incomprehensible dribble fixed.

Photoshop Express has added Flickr integration. It's adding features like this that will kill off those other up and coming online editors.

Philadelphia Trash the Dress. Looks like Philadelphians are getting excited about this type of wedding photography.

FILE Magazine Rediscovered

FILE Magazine is something I've mentioned before, but it's also something I have to say I've forgotten about. They've got an RSS feed, so there's really no reason for me to forget them. Anyway, my recent trip to the site led to finding some pretty interesting projects:

1. The Illuminati Young people illuminated by electronics.
2. Night Aerial Photography
3. Workspace Photos of workspaces. You'd think the photos would have no focus, since workspaces can be quite messy, but these photos have great composition that wonderfully captures where you work.
4. On Coal and Appalachia

Picture This

You're deep within the confines of a government-run camp of football fanatics, deep within the jungle without your camera. Suddenly, you find a block of wood with a small pin-sized hole in it, a roll of black tape, two pieces of black cardboard and a canister containing 1 roll of Kodak Tri-X ISO 400...

It doesn't look like the projects are that extreme, but Picture This sort of seems to work this way. They setup a weekly project, you read the brief summary, grab your camera and interpret it however you want and then upload your best shot. The Picture This community critiques your work and you continue to improve your shot building your portolio in the process.

Oh, and it's powered by Flickr, which makes it even easier to get involved with.

Life Before Death

The Guardian has an interesting gallery up on the web.

This sombre series of portraits taken of people before and after they had died is a challenging and poignant study. The work by German photographer Walter Schels and his partner Beate Lakotta, who recorded interviews with the subjects in their final days, reveals much about dying - and living. Life Before Death is at the Wellcome Collection from April 9-May 18

Adobe Joins the Online Photo Editing Bandwagon

Adobe lovers rejoice! You no longer have to use more powerful software on your personal computer where you store your photos! Now, you can upload your photos to Adobe and edit your files from anywhere using a less powerful Photoshop Express!

It was bound to happen. The online photo editing scene has been taking off and lots of sites now allow you to upload a picture and make some adjustments to it and save it back down again. Adobe has been mysteriously absent until a few days ago when they released PS Express. The great thing about it, is that it works really well and provides you some simple tweaking. It's probably one of the nicest Flash/Flex applications I've ever seen. The photo management portion of it reminds me of Light Room's browser and the editor is probably more like Elements than Photoshop, but that's only because you're not getting tools like the lasso, the pen tool or curves. My guess is that we'll be seeing some more improvements and maybe even some other software packages come to life online from Adobe.

Highslide for Web Galleries and Blogs

So, you've got a few pictures you wanna add to your blog, or some other gallery, and you're going to use LightBox to display them in a nice way when a visitor clicks on them. Well, don't. Try Highslide. Let your visitors open up a few side by side and compare. Best of all, it's free for personal use (like all good software should be). (Note: I have nothing against LightBox, I just think this is cooler)

PictPicture

"PictPicture is a place for photographers to upload their work to be voted on by the community. Once an image receives enough votes it graduates from the upcoming page to the front page of the site. It's a great way for photographers to get their work seen and their sites exposure. Photographers just have to register and create a profile to start submitting images."

Basically, it's a photo centric reddit. Not that there's anything wrong with it, it's just not that innovative, at least at first glance. When you think deeper about what it is, it's really a different way to do critiques, but will it work? Obviously more people are going to vote on images that are popular, because they're put right in front of them. I'd love to see PictPicture, focus their attention on creating a great photo browser that changes the way we view online pictures. Something where, PictPicture becomes the definitive way to do community driven critiques.

Tagmee

Ok, so real quick Tagmee is a new photo sharing platform (in the spirit of Flickr), which judging by the few blog entries I read has some great ideas. One, is the Active Footer, which helps you discover new photos and photographers by providing something new on every page load. Check it out and don't get scared—it's alright to try other sharing sites besides the mainstream ones. Who knows you might just like them better. (Disclaimer: Ok, Ok, I'm not yet practicing what I preach. My time is still being occupied by numerous other things.. I will try Tagmee out though, and maybe give it an actual review at some later date)

StudioCloud

StudioCloud is a web based photography studio management system which includes scheduling, invoicing, reporting, inventory management, client management, and financial capabilities that are all integrated with in studio and online galleries. The application is written in Adobe's Flash (the demo of StudioCloud is probably the most extensive Flash application I've ever seen), and has been showcased by Adobe. I'm not sure how many Photub readers will find this interesting, or useful, but if nothing else, it's a great example of what can be done with Flash.

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!

Shashin

A coworker of mine uses WordPress and Picasa for his personal blog and to share his photos. Naturally, being a programmer he merged the two together via a WordPress plugin. Check out Shashin, which just hit it's 1.0 release.

Pixpa

Pixpa delivers professional flash based websites that allow creative professionals: artists, photographers, designers, studios and galleries to showcase their work online in a new and exciting way. Get instant exposure and showcase your portfolio. Pixpa

Photo 2 Text

Photo 2 Text is a way make your photograph a piece of ASCII art. This isn't actually a new idea, and you can find tons of tools and libraries to do this if you search, but this site is a quick and easy way.

A few years ago, I wrote a program to do something similar given a bunch of text. It worked best on smaller images and produced color output by way of HTML. A sample of it's output using an outdated version of my resume can be seen as an image of Tux the penguin.

Original Founders Leave JPG Magazine

Being a watcher of JPG Magazine's community, (and recently a contributor) it was interesting to learn that the company who runs it, 8020, has lost the 2 founders Heather Champ and Derek Powazek. This seems to be due to differences in the back story of the magazine, though it seems as though the JPG's about page has very briefly summarized Derek and Heather's involvement in the beginning of the magazine. I think it's important to read the real story and understand where the magazine really came from, but not let the situation destroy the magazine. Let's just hope that 8020 doesn't further ruin a great thing.

It wouldn't be fair to not mention 8020's response to the whole thing.

Update: JPGMag's Unofficial group on Flickr, has some interesting comments. Most notably the number of "I'm cancelling my account." Obviously, they don't realize that Derek still owns a portion of JPG and won't benefit from this at all...

Also, The Wayback Machine has the old About page.

Top Photography Blogs

If you're just learning about digital photography (or film) in your spare time, as I am, or are a full time studio shooter, traveler, or other paid camera-slinger you undoubtably subscribe to some photography magazines. I for one keep getting Outdoor Photographer even though my subscription ran out; thanks! I also subscribe to ShutterBug. I find that ShutterBug is insightful for thinking about new techniques and equipment to buy, whilst Outdoor Photographer is mostly just inspiring with some sprinkles of technique. Both magazines, I think are geared more towards learning than say, American Photo or any of those artsy or journalism ones. (Note: I love "artsy" photography, I just don't subscribe.)

However, the purpose of this blog isn't necessarily to point out good magazines that you can get in print, although I guess that might not be a bad idea for a future article about off-screen learning, but in fact it is about the numerous resources of the World Wide Web. There are many great blogs out there that update their content much more regularly than I, and in fact with much more insightful and useful tips and articles. That isn't to say that you should stop reading Photub of course. If you've been a reader of Photub for any length of time, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

The blogs that I am listing in this post, are blogs that I consider great additions to your RSS subscriptions—those blogs that probably have enough new content for books or bi-monthly magazines in themselves:

In no particular order...

1. The Online Photographer: The Online Photographer packs a wallop of new commentary, reviews, techniques and personal adventures into a blog that is updated fairly frequently.
2. Photocritic: Perhaps one of my favorite blogs, is this one. The authors always have something interesting to share, and do a good job presenting it. The critiques that are occassionally done are quite helpful to new and upcoming photographers, and the DIY attitude helps create some really useful and fun tools. Of note is the DIY Pringles can macro lens, that I have been wanting to try out.
3. Strobist: Everything you'd ever want or need to know about effective flash photography is right here in this blog. Literally courses of information are contained on the pages of this blog. It's also not all about flash photography. Consider the recent series about Flickr and what it can do for your photography career. Insightful articles, interesting topics and amazing techniques make this truely one of the best photography blogs on the internet.
4. Photojojo: While not really a blog per se, Photojojo's unique style and unique media (email newsletter), make it in a class of it's own. I include it in this list because they do have an RSS feed, making it "blog like." I have just one complaint about Photojojo and that is that they often seem to post stuff late, after it's already been posted elsewhere. Nevertheless, Photojojo has knocked my socks off more than a few times with interesting ideas, it's creative writing style and overall growth.
5. Digital Photography School: Anyone looking for tips can always find something at DPS. Choose a "Random Tip" or read them all. It's easily becoming an encyclopedia of techniques, buying tips, etc. for the beginner, casual student and the advanced amateur.
6. Andy Frazer's Night Photography Blog: Taking pictures at night can yeild some extremely interesting results, but not many will give you insight on creating breathtaking images at night without the flash. Andy Frazer does. You'll see lots of examples of compelling night imagery, if nothing else.
7. After Capture: The only site listed here, that actually is a monthly publication, actually has a decent blog. The blog talks, interestingly enough, about post production of your images. Becomming a "post production prince" might not happen overnight, but it'll probably happen faster with the reading of some of the articles here.
8. DIYPhotography.net: Face it, photography equipment is expensive, and we see time and time again, that a cheap light tent provides excellent results. DIYPhotography.net is all about creating cheap equipment to aide in the creation of great photographs. It's a wonderful collection and continues to grow.

The web is full of great content, and with RSS being used by nearly everyone, there certainly isn't any reason (other than time) that you can't be informed of the latest photography happenings, techniques and ideas every 15 or 20 minutes. Surely there are other great blogs out there that I did not address, but these are the ones I read on a semi-daily basis. If you think your blog should be on this list, please submit it for review, and I'll take a look.

Wallhogs—Prints That "Hog" Your Wall

Wallhogs' Blog mentioned Photub in a recent post. Wallhogs specializes in printing your pictures large. Seems as though their name is quite fitting—large prints that hog your wall. Though I can't vouch for quality or service, having never dealt with them personally, their prices seem fairly good, and you can print to a poster, canvas or reusable vinyl. Might make a good gift for Mother's day.

FILE Magazine

At FILE magazine, they publish images that treat subjects in unexpected ways. "Odd angles, unconventional observations" fill the galleries and I must say, some of it is awesome. Be sure to check out local Philadelphian Jason Santa Maria's "Cornell House" and Sixteen9 by Keith Kin Yan

Buy Not From Shopping Search Engines

DSLRBlog explains to us why we shouldn't buy photography gear from online shopping search engines. To summarize, he mentions the "If it's too good to be true" rule as well as discusses how some of the scammy online stores work. He then offers three tips for buying camera gear, which I think are pretty good.

1. Buy from brick and mortar stores. You can test (usually), hold and get a feel for what you're actually buying.
2. Talk to others who you trust for recommendations about buying through online stores.
3. Credit cards offer you a bit of protection, so pay with them if at all possible.

These tips are great in the realm of photography, but I think these are generally good rules to follow.

Camera Compare

DPReview Side-by-Side: "It's like diff(1) for cameras." Ok, UNIX nerdism aside, DPReview.com has a really cool comparison tool that I just found. Select one of the many camera models that they have stats for, and then select a bunch more to compare stats with. I've seen other tools like this in the past for various other items, but with DPReview's reputation and insanely large library of reviews, this one is probably the best camera comparison tool available. I'm not currently in the market for a camera, but when I was buying a small point and shoot for my mom, this would have been great.

Voting has finished for this years Photography of the Year on Photography Corner. Congratulations to the winners!

Scrapblog

Today is definitely the day we're talking about putting your photos online. If you're still looking for ways to do this after the article I published earlier today, then maybe Scrapblog can help you. From their site:

"If you love sharing photos like we do, you'll love Scrapblog. With Scrapblog, you can easily create stunning multimedia scrapbooks featuring your photos, videos, audio and a bunch of creative elements. We made Scrapblog drag-and-drop-easy so that everyone can tell their stories and share them online or turn them into high-quality photo books and DVDs. Best of all, it's free and there's nothing to download."

Update: Of course, it'd be helpful if I helped you get to Scrapblog. Link fixed.

Plogger for Photo Albums

Plogger is an open source gallery system that runs on top of MySQL and PHP. It looks to be a serious contender for those looking for a photo album online.

Fauxto

Finding Fauxto this morning was a bit of a shock. I'm not one for this whole revolutionary phase where we put huge applications online and use them over the web, especially a real image editor like Photoshop or The Gimp. I'm also not a huge fan of things written in Flash, and Fauxto is that as well.

Though it's in it's beta form, the early release of Fauxto is pretty impressive. It looks and acts like a real image editor. It's definitely one of the most impressive Flash apps I've seen in recent history. Check it out. Also be sure to check out there blog.

Tabblo Books Beta

Tabblo, a great way to tell a story in pictures, just launched Tabblo Books. The books are available in 2 sizes 4 x 4" (at $9.99USD) and 9.5 × 8* (starting at $29.99USD).

Like other parts of Tabblo, Tabblo Books brings with it a nice, in browser, dynamic interface. And, of course they have ready made templates.

LifeHacker has a look at setting up Gallery2, a popular, open source web-based gallery script. Read it all at LH.