PhotoWalkPro

Hi everyone.  Due to circumstances beyond my control I am going to have to skip the blog post for today.  I’ll be back tomorrow but I don’t want to leave you empty-handed.  If you haven’t been to the NAPP site lately you should pop on over and check it out.  They have revamped the site and everything is much more organized and easier to navigate.  I especially like the Mac-like landing page that has icons that move and grow as you hover over them.  Very cool.  You can check it out here and I’ll see you tomorrow.

This Contest is now CLOSED – Thanks for entering

This weekend I ran a little Twitter contest and gave away 3 copies of my latest book, Nikon D5000: From Snapshots to Great Shots.  I don’t want my blog readers to be left out so today I am running another giveaway.  A couple of weeks ago I got some copies of Scott Kelby’s Digital Photography Book, Volume 1.  This is the all new, updated version so all the camera and flash info is current.  If you didn’t know, the book was first released in 2007 so a lot of the camera, flash, and printer technology was getting pretty outdated.  But these aren’t 3 year old books that I have.  They are the latest edition, hot off the presses with all the latest camera and photo gear.  Just to make it interesting, I also have some copies of Scott’s latest Volume 3 editions.  And what the heck, since it’s the last day of August, let’s finish off the summer by throwing in a copy of my latest book as well.  That’s 3 books up for grabs and I will give away 2 sets.

So here is all you have to do.  Just add a comment to today’s post and say something like “Make me a winner”, or “Show me the money”, or “Badges, we don’t need no stinkin badges”.  I don’t care what you say, it’s really up to you.  Just make sure you add your comment and don’t forget to put a valid email in the email section so I can contact you if you win. Don’t worry, no one can see your email address but me and I won’t sell it or give it away.  By the way, if you don’t see your comment right away, don’t worry.  I moderate all comments so if you don’t see it, it just means that I haven’t gotten around to approving it.  It will definitely show up with all the other comments later in the day.

So that’s it, just make a comment and win the loot.  I’ll announce the winners in tomorrow’s post.  It’s just my way of wrapping up a great August and letting you all know how much I appreciate you reading the blog.

By the way, I just found out last night that my latest book is available in a Kindle version from Amazon.  How cool is that?  I really need to get me one of those.

I’m sure that many of you read the post yesterday over at my friend Scott Kelby’s blog.  I was all set to write a full blown rant about the situation but there’s really nothing more that I could say that hasn’t already been written in the 300+ comments.  Instead, I thought I would share a thought that I had after reading all the venom.  I think that the folks at Sport Shooter that had so much trouble with the idea of a contest winner sharing the sidelines missed out on a golden opportunity.  It’s the same idea that I believe inspired Mike Olivella to come up with the idea in the first place.  It’s the idea that those of us that are lucky enough to be living our dreams should try to inspire and mentor others.  Mike thought that giving an amateur a chance to experience his world might inspire others to chase a dream.

So how does that relate back to the angry photogs who started this all?  Well, in my mind, they missed out on the idea that they could be influential in the life of another aspiring photographer.  I’m sure many of them are gifted in their craft and could take that talent to mentor someone with the desire and ambition to follow in their foot-steps.  Perhaps they could have offered to give critiques to the winner of the contest.  Maybe the could have offered to partner with Scott and Mike to create an event that would have fostered more positive light on their profession.  Instead they chose to react in a manner which threw a spotlight of anger and disdain upon themselves.  In the end, they missed out on the opportunity to inspire and encourage and left many with a bad taste in their mouth.

“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent…  No person was ever honored for what he received. Honor has been the reward for what he gave.” –

Calvin Coolidge

I thought I would throw out a reminder that today is the last day to grab the early bird special for the upcoming Photoshop World.  If you are planning on going and have yet to register you only have a few hours left to save yourself $100 off the registration price.  I don’t know about you but I could probably think of something to do in Las Vegas with an extra C-note in my pocket.

This one is strictly for fun.  I was playing with one of my favorite browser apps, StumbleUpon, when I found a fun little site that let’s you take an uploaded image and place it into different scenarios.  As you can see, I decided that my face should be up in the bright lights of Time Square.  Of course I could have selected about 104 different scenarios at Photo505.  Finding this site got me to wonder if there were some others out there where I could create even more online masterpieces.

My search led me to ImageChef.  Another fun site where you can upload images into existing image templates like the one below.  They also have other fun things like a sketch pad, poetry blender, and a word mosaic maker.

Another cool site for making photomontages can be found at WriteOnIt.com.  They have some cool choices including one that  turns your image into a sketch that is being drawn.

Maybe you just want to see your face on the cover of a fictitious magazine.  Then you want to take your image to MagMyPic where you can do just that.

These are just a few of the sites I found and I’m sure there are many more out there that will keep you busy making novelty pics of yourself with Johnny Depp.  If you find any cool ones, be sure to drop me a comment and let me know.  I’m a sucker for the simple things.

Are you one of those people that just can’t seem to pull the trigger when it comes to shooting RAW files in your DSLR?  Don’t feel bad, there are a lot of people out there who shoot JPEG and get great results.  One of the real keys to getting better looking JPEGs is to make sure you are using the right settings in your camera.  I’m not talking about choosing the right JPEG format (hopefully you are using the highest quality setting available).  What I’m referring to are the custom settings that are included with most DSLR cameras for applying a certain “look” to your images.  Nikon calls them them Picture Controls and Canon refers to them as Picture Styles but whatever the name, the goal of these settings is to apply specific scenario-based post-processing to your images.

Canon’s Picture Styles include 6 different presets including Standard, Portrait, Landscape, Neutral, Faithful, and Monochrome.  These settings are pre-defined to improve the look of your image depending on the subject that you are shooting.  The great thing about these styles is that they can be customized to your particular tastes.  If you dig into your menu, you will find that you can make changes to things like sharpness, contrast, saturation, and color tone.  In the case of the monochrome setting you can even add filter effects (yellow, orange, red, green) and toning effects such as sepia toning.

Nikon has similar settings that include Standard, Neutral, Vivid, Monochrome, Portrait, and Landscape.  And just like Canon, you can make adjustments to the controls to customize the final image to your liking.

Whichever camera system you are using, you should take some time to explore the preset camera styles to add more creativity and control to your JPEG files.  Another great feature of these settings is that you can save the customized styles as your own presets.  By spending a little time in customizing your camera, you can be sure to get some great looking images right out of the camera with no need for post-processing.