Category Archives: photography

HD Photo will be awesome… In 2010?

John Nack’s post on HD Photo reminded me that I wanted to write something about this. HD Photo is part of Vista and used to be called Windows Meda Photo. It’s a new file format for representing images, which looks to be superior to JPEG in every way except one. Apparently, Microsoft holds some patents on HD Photo which don’t expire until (at least) 2010. That means that it won’t be possible to build open source implementations of HD Photo. There is a lot of code out in the world that relies on an open source JPEG decompressor, and that code isn’t going to be able to do HD Photo for quite some time.

Technically HD Photo sounds great, and as a photographer I can easily appreciate the benefits of the new format. But this reminds me of the whole proprietary RAW format issue. People are recording their life in their photos, and it’s important for them to know that they will be able to bring those photographs forward with them no matter what file format they chose. I think that Microsoft could set themselves apart as a leader here by changing the licensing of HD Photo. They’ve already done it once.

Adobe opened up PDF this week. It would be awesome for photographers and the users of digital pictures if Microsoft would do the same for HD Photo.

Social social networking

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It seems like I’ve been doing a lot of stuff involving social networks recently.

Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/twleung)
Most of the fun activity in Flickr revolves around finding people that inspire me or who share some common interest. Sometimes that is even extending into the real world, as it did during last week’s SFlickr meetup.

Upcoming (http://upcoming.org/user/12327/)
Also last week was the first time that I really used Upcoming.org in any major way. I got an account when I went to the SFlickr meetup last May, but besides that use, I hadn’t done anything – no friends, no nothing. Since Macworld turned out to be the same week, I ended up following a number of the events at Macworld using Upcoming. I took the trouble to add friends, and subscribe to a few Upcoming RSS feeds, and this gave me no shortage of options for activities during the week. The combination of friends and locations seems to be a good fit for the way that I’d like to find out about events, especially while I am travelling.

LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com/in/tedleung)
Guy Kawasaki has written a pair of great posts on how to use LinkedIn more effectively. Of all the job or professional social networks, LinkedIn is the only one that has actually been any good for me. I’ve had several solicitations for contract work (even though I am not consulting any more) and I’ve seen some reasonable jobs go by (not that I am looking). I definitely feel that it is worthwhile to maintain my LinkedIn information, and to add people to my network. I’ve been much more stringent about letting people into the network, particularly since I’ve been asked to recommend people to each other, and I want to feel comfortable about doing that.

Twitter (http://twitter.com/twleung)
The most recent of the social applications is Twitter. Twitter is an app for letting you put your status out into the cloud. Your status will be recorded on a web page that people can see, and it will also be pushed to people via IM (I was having terrible luck getting IM notifications until I switched to the Jabber IM bot) or SMS (I turned this off early on before I exceeded my text message limit). You can also post status updates via the web, IM, or SMS.

It might seem like IM status messages would be enough, but they turn out not to be. At OSAF, we have a decently distributed staff using a number of communications media: IM (on multiple networks), IRC, and Skype. When I go away from my computer for lunch or an errand, I want to let people in the community know. Today, I have to go update the status of all those media. Also, in some of those media, your status information could turn into a message that scrolls off screen and gets missed. The fact that Twitter archives your updates on a web page is a great thing. For distributed working groups it provides a kind of status glue that makes up for some of the lost in person interactions. Up to a point — I’ve noticed that some people are using Twitter as if it were IM, having entire conversations through it. If you are using some kind of realtime monitoring, like IM, then this turns annoying very quickly, as you are privy to all kinds of conversations that don’t affect you, complete with IM notification sounds. If Twitter had the ability to send Tweets to groups of people, that would really help a lot. I also wish that it was easier to find people. The little pictures of people are cute but hard to read, and having to mouse over them individually to get more detail is RSI inducing.

There’s a small ecosystem springing up around Twitter. There are Ruby command line tools (sadly, I couldn’t get them to work because Ruby Gems is messed up on OS 10.4), Python/Growl notifiers (works, but high maintenance), and shiny Mac tools like twitterific. Someone has even written an Applescript Quicksilver action, Tweet, for posting. There are still a few things on my wishlist: 1) for Twitterific to both have it’s little history window and to deliver changes via Growl, and 2) to be able to set my status in Adium, Snak, and Skype based on Tweets.

Technorati Tags: twittterfeedback

SFlickr 20070111

Photoshop and Switching

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For the most part, I’ve been very happy with Apple’s Aperture photo post production app. Of course, it’s also the only such program that I’ve ever used. When I got started in photography, I was convinced that I was not going to modify my pictures in a computer, and therefore I wasn’t that concerned with the image modification capabilities of Aperture.

However, as I’ve learned more about the art and craft of photography, I’ve also learned that many many modern photographs were altered in the darkroom, or with filters, or by some other means. One particularly important moment for me was a scene in the movie War Photographer, where James Nachtwey is working with someone in a darkroom on how to print a photo. The scene shows the actual dodging and burning being done to a wall sized print. So as I’ve learned more, I’ve accepted that someday I was going to come to the point where I would want a program like Photoshop, which could perform edits and modifications to portions of a photograph, instead of all of a photograph.

Funny thing is, that I already have a copy of Photoshop, or should I say, had. Back when we lived in Silicon Valley, I won a copy of Photoshop at a trade show. I took it home and installed it on my WIndows box, but I didn’t really have the interest or pressing need to learn how to use Photoshop. Of course, that’s all different now. And now I am back on the Mac, not on WIndows. So that copy of Windows Photoshop wasn’t really doing me any good.

I figured that I would be stuck buying a brand new copy of Photoshop once the Intel Mac version came out. On some of the photography forums that I read, some people were saying that they had convinced Adobe to allow them to upgrade a Windows Photoshop to the Mac version. I took heart from this, but didn’t do anything about it. When the Beta of Photoshop CS3 came out, I learned that Adobe was going to restrict the set of versions that would be allowed to upgrade to CS3, and version 5.5, the version that I had, was going to be dropped from the list.

I figured that two upgrades of Photoshop were still cheaper than buying a brand new copy, and finally picked up the phone and hoped that Adobe would let me upgrade. It turns out to be ridiculously easy. I called the Adobe sales phone line listed at http://www.adobe.com/buy/. The person that I talked to was very helpful and there was a clearly defined procedure for doing what I wanted. In addition to my order information, I had to fax back a form where I promised to get rid of my copy of the Windows version – no problem there. After that I was all set. Yesterday my copy of Photoshop CS2 arrived, and I installed a copy of CS3 as well. I haven’t had any time to play with them yet, but I figured that there might be a few people out there that might benefit from my experience.

Props to Adobe for making this possible – in fact, you can do this for any Adobe product that has a Mac and Windows version, and you can do it the reverse direction as well. I wish Microsoft would let me do the same from an old Office for Windows version.

2006 – A photographic review

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Following in Ryan’s footsteps (although not his skill), here are some important moments/photos from 2006.

January

Bainbridge Island had it’s first Chinese New Year’s celebration, and I spent a rainy afternoon with the festivities. I’ll be doing this again this year.

This photo of (part of) the Mac Geek contingent at Microsoft’s Search Champs event is my most view photo on Flickr.

February

Flower portrait season started early

This shot happened accidentally on the way back from lunch during Northern Voice 2006. It was a reach out and grab you photo moment for me.

March

The flower portraits come easily to me, and I enjoy them. For the first time in my life, I actually appreciate flowers.

April

A portrait of chives in our front yard, a great memory of a warm spring afternoon with the family.

Pike Place Market is a beautiful place – we were there for a tourist visit with my brother who came to visit from the East Coast. There was some very good eating that night.

May

2006 was also the year of Strobist. The little that I know about flash photography, I’ve learned from David’s great blog. I still have a lot more to learn, and a bunch more practicing to get consistent, but I’ve definitely made the transition from “natural light only, I hate flash” to “I know that this could look great if I can light it right”.

June

We spent the beginning of June at Gnomedex 6.0, where Chris and Ponzi asked me to do some shots for them. It was a great learning experience for me.

Also in June, Abigail had her annual dance recital. That isn’t her above, it’s one of the older students. I still remember this shot. There was a lighted window frame being projected onto the floor, and dancers were cycling through that patch of light. I remember scrambling to try to get one good shot…

July

July is OSCON month, and the camera went with me, as usual. The picture above won the OSCON photo contest — a great honor for me. This shot was also one of the few shots where I actually asked someone if I could take their picture before I did it.

Also in July, one of my Strobist Boot Camp Assignment shots caught David Hobby’s eye. My friend Paul and I had a great time doing a bunch of these shots in his painting studio.

August

In August, we discovered the band Late Tuesday at the Bainbridge Island waterfront park concert series. Sadly for us, this is their last year playing together.

September

Abigail caught a snail, and we subjected it to the photographic treatment.

October

In October I went to Austin for ApacheCon. Austin was a great location for ApacheCon, with plenty of evening activities. I spent more time shooting evening activities than I did actual conference sessions.

November

Yep, snow in November. On Bainbridge Island, no less. I hope our weather is better in 2007…

December

The biggest event in an action packed December was Chris and Ponzi’s wedding. Julie and the girls were in the wedding, and I was shooting all over. It was all the benefits of shooting a wedding, and none of the scary responsibility. It was Chris and Ponzi’s day for sure, but being at a wedding always makes me think back to mine, so it shouldn’t be any surprise that this is my favorite.

Ok, that’s all the year in review or year to come type stuff you’ll be getting from me. I promise to resume technology blogging in short order.