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Red All Over
brian on 2008.08.30 at 04:51 pm
Talk about the Red camera has really shaken up people in video circles. If you haven’t heard about it, and especially if you have, you’ll really want to read the biography of the RED camera that Wired has written.
You may be interested that Red was founded by the billionaire founder of Oakley optics, Jim Jannard. It winds up that he’s a passionate and fascinating figure, not unlike a Steve Jobs, who is entirely driven by innovation and making the ideal solution. He has been intimately involved in the design and construction of the product.
A good read. Plus, check out the bottom line of Red’s web site.
Posted in: Movies · Photography
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Photoshop Express
brian on 2008.04.03 at 08:14 pm
I’ve made an account at Photoshop Express and have been playing with Adobe’s online photo editor. It’s pretty cool. However, is it just me, or does it muck up your photos? The first image is from Adobe, the second is the same photo I posted on Flickr. Why does one look better than the other? Neither have any editing applied!
Click through for larger images.
Let me know what you think!
(PS- the photo is through a window, so it’s not stellar to begin with, but it seems to have been really uglified through Px!
Posted in: Photography · Web
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Almost Famous
brian on 2007.04.03 at 10:19 pm
Today, General Motors selected one of my pictures of a classic late 50s Saab 96 as their “Picture of the Day” on their FYI blog.
Cool. I’m flattered.
Here’s the full Flickr Set, Saab 96
For those of you who don’t know, I’ve owned Saabs since I was 17, and even attended the 1997 50th Jubilee Owner’s Convention in Waterville Valley, New Hampshire. (Best link I could find on the 97 convention, sorry)
Posted in: Auto · Photography
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There's Only One.
brian on 2007.02.03 at 09:00 pm
There’s Only One. Jake.
Posted in: Photography · Travel
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The journey home: Trip to AU/NZ Part 3
jake on 2007.02.03 at 01:20 am
Now that I’m home it’s not so easy to find time and motivation to write thoughts down. Probably because the stories are orally regurgitated many times. There are still plans to record chunks of activities in future posts.
Click
It also doesn’t help that I took 500+ photos. I sifted down to 260 and just today completed tagging and organizing all of them on flickr. One thing that’s always forgotten is that while the scenery and locations are exciting and new the people are also a large influence. I never take enough photos of the people surrounding me. I had a phenomenal traveling companion and the group we went through New Zealand with was great. There’s no issue with the pictures I returned with. I only would love even more shots of the people involved with the trip.Maybe someone else who took some more people pictures will upload theirs.
Another 48 Hours: The return home.
Leaving the lovely company and the lovely weather was very difficult. Even more so than the extra traveling. In the past I’ve always had issues with planes. Now a little anti motion sickness medicine and my hang ups have disappeared.
A short hop to Sydney and I was off for the states. A couple hours after take off, and shortly after I became accustomed to the little boy flailing his elbows around, the captain comes over the intercom. The sensors indicate a fire in one of the cargo holds. Stand by for more information.
Within five minutes he has returned with a new message. There did not seem to be an actual fire. Safety required him however to fire the extinguishers. And that required an emergency landing.
Hello American Samoa…Our luggage will be left behind. We sit and wait for eight hours. I read a bit. I try not to sleep since I’m going to be dealing with jetlag when I do finally get home. This is made more difficult by the hot, humid weather and lack of air conditioning.
Onward to Hawaii we go. Our captain informs us that a drunken police officer whining about customs held us up a couple extra hours. Things are now becoming less eventful. After calling Kate to fill her in and my parents to let them know I won’t be in New York as scheduled I go information gathering. I also started making friends with my fellow refugees which relieved some stress.
I find out that there will be no more flights that day once our new crew and new 747 arrive in San Francisco. Instead I will stay overnight and fly out at 6:10am first class. Now that doesn’t sound so bad.
In San Francisco I finally get to shower and I hang up my clothes to air out. Three hours of sleep later I’m back on the shuttle and off to New York first class. First class was fairly disorienting. My day old clothes did not mesh with all the passengers who paid for their tickets. The thing appreciated the most was the personal DVD player that allowed me to pick a couple movies I actually wanted to see. Thank God I didn’t have to sit through The Guardian again.
My dad picked me up at JFK, almost as planned originally. And based on the return time it was roughly 7am back in Hobart. Considering I was sent off on a shuttle at 8:25am. That meant just about two full days of travel.
In the next installment I will be going back to the beginning and moving a few days at a time with each new post. At least theoretically anyway.
Posted in: Holiday · Photography · Travel
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More Flickr to love
brian on 2006.12.16 at 05:29 pm
Hey, great news for Flickr fans!“the two gigabyte monthly limit is no more (yep, pro users have no limits on how many photos they can upload)! At the same time, we’ve upped the limit for free account members as well, from 20MB per month up to 100MB (yep, five times more)!”
:-)
Posted in: Photography · Web
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Earth Wallpapers
brian on 2006.09.14 at 01:13 am
Posted in: Photography
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Flickr Maps
brian on 2006.08.30 at 05:33 pm
Have you had a look at Flickr maps yet? I have. And I’m impressed. It’s fairly simple to add your pics to the map (drag and drop them in the Organizr), although it’s not perfect. For example, when you drag a picture, the image that follows the mouse is a thumbnail, which has a point at its bottom. Cool idea, except when you drop the image, the point that’s created isn’t where the point of your mouse was. So it’s somewhat difficult to align it nicely. When dragging, the arrow that is going to pinpoint the map location of your picture should be centered on your cursor’s point, with the picture thumbnail growing out of that… picture using a quill… the thumbnail would be the feathery part, the point is where your make your mark in ink.
Check it out. Geotagging for the masses.
Posted in: Photography · Web
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Winter Desktops
brian on 2005.12.22 at 05:24 pm
Winter is my favorite season. Pray for Snow!
Today, I went and grabbed some images from the web for my desktop. Inspired to look by my blushing (soon to be) bride, I found some great images of Montana under snow from Chris Lombardi via Flickr. I combined these with three from Mike Matas (all in the corporate family, I suppose). And one image of a lit (Maple?) tree from Canada from a gentleman who posted in the winter tag.
Thanks all.
Enjoying.
Posted in: Photography · Weather · Web
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A look inside North Korea
brian on 2005.11.22 at 03:20 pm
There’s an interesting interview with a Time Magazine photographer on WBUR.org He received rare access to the closed country, termed the Hermit Kingdom in the story.
Posted in: Media · Photography
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Adirondack Images Posted
brian on 2005.11.03 at 05:05 pm
Finally posted my images of our short trip to the Adirondack this October. You can find them in two locations:
Total set —
Limited, higher-resolution size set with CC-license —
The Flickr set has a resolution up to 1280px so you could use as a desktop picture, should you choose.
Enjoy.
Posted in: Nature · Photography
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Citizens Respond to London Attacks
brian on 2005.07.07 at 01:41 pm
In light of this morning’s bombing attacks in London, you may be interested in the web community’s reaction, and one place to look would be on Flickr. There is a London Bomb Blasts group with (at this moment) 200 pictures.
It kinda sucks that a good number of the pics are TV captures and web page screen shots. But it’s the in-betweens that are golden citizen photographic journalism.
One interesting pic that is a screen shot is this one
Well, the picture is uninteresting, other than the BBC site is swamped… but the comments are cool… BBC employees are responding to the picture, and commenting on server load.
You’re not going to get this on TV, radio or in newspapers.
Update: See also WikiNews and WikiPedia for more outstanding citizen-based reporting.
Posted in: Media · Photography · Recent Events · Web
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Parkman Street Flowers
brian on 2005.06.13 at 07:30 pm
One of the nicest thing about living in Brookline has been the great pride our neighborhood took in its landscaping. I missed an early opportunity to photograph some beautiful flowers early this spring, when we had spring for a few days, all the flowers bloomed, then we dove back into cold and then rain for two months.
Today, I’ve captured some of the newest blooms on the street. I am unfortunately beyond useless when it comes to knowing the name of flowers. If you check out the page and know the names of the flowers you see, please leave a comment here and I’ll gladly put the proper names up. Please reference the flower by its file name, and if there are multiple pics of the same flower, do note that as well.
We’ll miss our street when we move to Medford later this summer, but change is life’s only constant.
[PS – don’t read too much into the fact that my last post was about a war and this one’s about flowers. Just a coincidence.]
Posted in: Photography
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I heart Google Maps (Satellite)
brian on 2005.04.13 at 01:27 pm
I’ve really enjoyed digging around Google Maps new Satellite views. Apparently I’m not the only one. Check out Google Sightseeing and Globe Trotting for various collections of interesting things to look at through Google’s eye in the sky. Groom Lake, Nevada is pretty cool, I’m surprised they have pictures as good as they do, considering it’s home to lots of top top secret military stuff.
Posted in: Photography · Technology · Web
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Well-Formed iPhoto Export
brian on 2005.03.15 at 11:47 am
I love iPhoto. However, there are times I wish I could use it to produce photo galleries that I could style on my own, using CSS.
Now I can, introducing Well-Formed , from All That is Solid. And, not only does it produce xHTML and styles in CSS, but it can also produce XML and SQL. Excellent. Additionally, there is an “extras” section which includes a simple Flash gallery, to boot.
Unfortunately, right now, the javascript-powered pop-ups in the simple xHTML gallery are crashing Safari, and in Firefox, they don’t pop, but do forward you to larger pic in the same window at least. Also, it seems the Flash gallery is broken as well. (This last part may be me, I’ve sent both bug reports to the author).
At very least I have something that’ll export the thumbs, web-sized pics and a bare bones gallery for me to style on top of. That’s outstanding.
Posted in: Photography · Software · Standards · Web
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Blizzard Post #3 - Pics
brian on 2005.01.26 at 12:40 am
So, as threatened, I’ve posted some pictures on Flickr.
Here’s my set of pics I took on the way to the ceremonial digging out of the car. Now featuring car-roof-high snow drifts…
Posted in: Photography · Recent Events
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Blizzard Post #2
brian on 2005.01.23 at 04:47 pm
We’re still snowed in here in Brookline. We’ll brave the blizzard in an hour or two to start digging out the car. We may not need the car tomorrow (see the next sentence) but we want to start working on it. Amanda already has the day off tomorrow as her school district called the morning to inform her. I am surprised enough that I have today off, that the wheels of American commerce have ground to a halt for a day. We’ll see about tomorrow. The city of Boston has already called school off for Tuesday as well.
I’ve been looking at a lot of pictures of the storm from the surrounding area, and a good deal of them are posted on Flickr, a free, online photo site, which has attracted the attention of bloggers of late. I decided to sign up for an account to play around with it. The biggest thing people have been loving recently is the “tagging” feature (meta data, ‘folksonomies’) where if you put, say a ‘Boston’ tag on a picture, you can see all the photos on Flickr that are Boston related. You can also cross reference, like ‘Boston’ and ‘Snow.’ Very cool. I currently post all my pictures online via my dotMac account, which is an enjoyable experience, from the stellar iPhoto experience, three clicks and you’ve got a pretty gallery.
Recently, I’ve been thinking about doing something with a better integration with the weblog. All I can do with a dotMac gallery is link to it, and I cannot link directly to any one picture. Also, the code, while robust, is terribly heavy… and I cannot edit the layout or code.
With Flickr, you can integrate RSS/Atom feeds and other direct links to your blog. However, everything is Flash based for display, which is great for cool transitions, and may be slightly lighter code. Good and bad, too. But has a community aspect… Also, Flickr has an upload utility for Mac OS X, and someone has made an open-source plug-in for iPhoto 4
I think ultimately, I will have to build my own gallery. I’m trying to find something that can integrate with Textpattern, something I’ve installed on my own domain, which I’m trying to build up some personal, online stuff. I think I’ve figured out the theory of TXP, which is a little complex, but that means power in the long run. Plus the code download is tiny. Tiny is beautiful.
And speaking of beautiful, I certainly hope my attempt will look half, half as good as this gallery. Phenomenal.
Posted in: Photography · Recent Events
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Looking for a miracle... Cameras4free.com
jake on 2004.11.29 at 10:40 pm
Well actually, you could probably make a case for it not being a miracle considering I'm not looking for a 20D or something.
But just the same I'm taking a stab at getting myself a free Canon A95 from cameras4free.com. You simply sign up and take part in one "free" offer to give me a referral and start up your own bid for a free camera. Most of the offers are free trials, and you just cancel before they make you pay, not too shabby.Here's a list of the choices.
- Canon A95
- Canon S1 IS
- Sony DSC-W1
- Sony DSC-P100
- $325 cash - just in case you don't like any of the cameras
There's also some bonus offers like a 512MB Sony memory stick or 512MB compact flash card or more money.
I'm still using a 35mm SLR camera and would like a chance to play with something digital. Thanks everybody.
Cameras4Free.com (From: Forever Geek)
Posted in: Photography
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More trip pics
brian on 2004.09.10 at 01:14 pm
A while ago, I posted a link to the first of my cross continent road trip pictures. Now I've completed the task, putting 343 pictures online for your viewing pleasure.
Enjoy.
Posted in: Photography · Web
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Cross Country Pictures Take One
brian on 2004.08.31 at 02:58 am
The summer lull in posts here at the Recently compound was in large part due to my trip across the continent for two and one half weeks with Amanda. (The other part is sheer Jake-laziness ;-) j/k)
As for that trip, I've posted the first 150 pictures online for your viewing pleasure.
If you were expecting an email with this link, and you're a personal friend, you'll get one soon enough, but I'm more surprised you're reading our site. I didn't think I personally (that is, in the flesh) knew any of our readers...
Posted in: Photography
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Views of Boston
brian on 2004.06.29 at 06:12 pm
I've released my latest set of pictures, a pictorial of my bicycle commute along the Charles River, and a few bonus pictures of the Brookline Farmer's Market. Enjoy.
Boston Views: The Charles and Brookline Farmers Market
Update: At the time of posting, according to Apple, "All .Mac services are currently unavailable. We apologize for the inconvenience." If you get nothing from the above link, you can see the status of the dotMac realm here.
Posted in: Photography
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Back from Bah Hahbah
brian on 2004.05.31 at 02:23 am
Amanda and I just returned with pictures from Mount Desert Island, Maine. The focus of our trip was Acadia National Park. We stayed at a B&B in downtown Bar Harbor.
Posted in: Photography
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Travel Pictures of India and Europe
brian on 2004.05.20 at 02:44 am
A friend from work sent out an email with a link to his website with a ton of pictures from his travels in India and Europe. I thought I'd share them with you all. Thanks Ben.
Posted in: Photography
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Tab clean-up
jake on 2004.05.02 at 03:28 am
- Firewire mandatory — I just read something about how this was supposed to disappear in a couple years, but apparently it’s mandatory on cable boxes, so it can’t go away too quickly.
- Light, flexible armor — Even if this doesn’t stop everything, it’s a nice addition to protect the rest of the body.
- Disposable camera hack — I’ve been interested in trying this out sometime.
- Lack of special features on DVD’s — Somewhat related… what the hell is the deal with Master and Commander releasing 2 editions simultaneously; one with 0 special features, and a second for 5 bucks more with all the special features you would get with any other disc?
- Internal drive upgrade for Powerbook — I wonder whether this is worth it. I’ll have to keep an eye out for any type of review.
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Pictures from the Left Coast
brian on 2004.04.26 at 06:47 pm
Hey kids, I haven't been posting much since I don't have an internet connection at my corporate housing (at least a free one). But today, I took some time to post my pictures thus far from my Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Redwoods trips.
San Francisco:
Henry Cowell Redwoods:
Posted in: Photography
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Morning Reading
brian on 2004.03.21 at 03:54 pm
Things I read this morning (unrelated):
Economist: "Lessons of Madrid." Will the Spanish change in government be the first of four in the coming year, as a reaction to administrations who championed the controversial war in Iraq? Will the people of the US, Australia and the UK follow the lead of their Spaniard counterparts?
Rocky Mountain Views: Rocky Mountain Scenery. Not much reading to be done here of the "letters" and "word" kind. Just beautiful imagery of the American West. Brings back lovely memories. The site's design is reminiscent of early 90s design, but the pictures are timeless.
Posted in: Photography · Politics
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Philips Fluid Lens
jake on 2004.03.04 at 03:14 pm
This morning PhotographyBLOG had news of a new fluid lens from Philips. The lens is super small and can provide good focusing from 5cm to infinity. I'm sure this would help the camera in my phone. Very cool news.The photo is provided by Philips.
Posted in: Photography · Technology
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Polaroid x530 - First Foveon Sensor in a Consumer Camera
jake on 2004.02.11 at 06:30 pm
I have a few links about this topic down below. I've been a big fan of Foveon's x3 chip for a while now. But the only way to get it was from a Sigma SLR which can cost a pretty penny.Now Polaroid is producing a camera at the mid range consumer level. I'll have to wait for some reviews before knowing if it's something I'm interested in (I'm a fan of high end cameras, but I can't afford the $1,000+ price tag & lenses just yet). But I like the trend of bringing this beautiful technology to to this level. Plus based on the numbers, this looks like it's 4.5 megapicels versus 3.4 in the Sigma, of course that could be missleading since the x3 isn't the same type of sensor usually compared by megapixels.
Foveon
NY Times (from Gizmodo)
PhotographyBLOG
PhotographyBLOG 2Posted in: Photography · Technology
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Raw vs. Jpeg
jake on 2004.01.23 at 06:17 pm
PhotographyBLOG has 2 articles about jpeg vs. raw for digital cameras.
JPG vs RAW vs TIFF: Get it Right the First Time by Ken Rockwell is absurd. He makes very few good points in the article. He actually believes that a lossy jpeg is just as good as a large raw file. Maybe for the Internet, or comp work.
I just look at it by taking it from a similar musical subject. If I take a large mp3 and a wav file of the same very elaborate music (something with lots of highs and lows) and compare them, the mp3 may sound good, but it's definitely muddy compared to the full wav file as soon as you listen to it from a good system at a good volume.
Bringing it back to the image, as is stated in the second article (which I'll link to in a second) as soon as you try to blow the image up, even with a good camera, you can notice the compression's effects on the image.
Sermon From A Raw Convert by Petteri Sulonen is written from a more objective view point. He explains how Raw isn't always the way to go when you shoot, but in most circumstances it's flexibility raises it above jpeg.
Posted in: Photography · Technology
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Sigma SD10
jake on 2003.11.04 at 06:29 pm
Sigma is releasing an updated digital camera similar to their SD9 body. Using an updated Foveon Chip it looks like a promising camera. Their is a SD10 preview at Digital Photography Review.Also a group of reviews at PhotographyBLOG
Posted in: Photography · Technology
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Exactitudes
jake on 2003.06.06 at 07:09 pm
a contraction of exact and attitude
Begun in 1994 Exactitudes is a photo project where the artists were inspired by the concept of similarities within social groups.
I've always been amused by how even the social "outsiders" all look alike and act alike a thus are not actually as unique as they claim. When you can buy things that were obscure and commonly found at places like Salvation Army or made by your own hands at a store in the mall, the war is over. You have been assimilated into the Capitalist mainstream culture.
Exactitudes [from Boing Boing]
Posted in: Art · Photography · Rant
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The Photographer's Right
jake on 2003.05.30 at 07:29 pm
Kottke posted about this a few days ago. Bert Krages has posted a downloadable flyer about what to do if you're confronted by someone while taking pictures in a public place.
The right to take photographs is now under assault more than ever. People are being stopped, harassed, and even intimidated into handing over their personal property simply because they were taking photographs of subjects that made other people uncomfortable. Recent examples include photographing industrial plants, bridges, and vessels at sea. For the most part, attempts to restrict photography are based on misguided fears about the supposed dangers that unrestricted photography presents to society.
Posted in: Photography · Service Announcement
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When Starfire is not Starfire
brian on 2003.02.13 at 02:54 am
"This is the blurriest picture we've ever taken of anything, and this is the one that makes the front page of the newspapers," Johnson said.
So how did the scientists working with the USAF's most advanced optics, which can reportedly spy on spy satellites and track ballistic missiles, come up with a fuzzy picture of a much closer object?
Starfire Optical Range engineers... had rigged up a device using a commercially available 3 1/2-inch telescope and an 11-year-old Macintosh computer
In an interview with the AP, the scientists wanted to set the record straight.
"We were not asked by NASA to do this," said Robert Fugate, the optical range's technical director. "There was no official project or tasking to do this. The people who work here are geeks. This was an opportunity to look at a rapidly moving object and try to take a picture of it. That's really all it was."
Posted in: Technology · Photography
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