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EVENTS | CLIENT AREA | SERVICES/CONTACT <— go to the various pages over at SmugMug. I’m changing weaver.net. I used to have a basic landing page with links to the work I have over on Smugmug. There is a lot of work that people have bought and are interested in looking at and (hopefully) buying. I have not, unitl now, made that work available over the web. I’ll just say I’ve been busy. Sure, it’s just an excuse so I’ll build the site that I’ve had requests for and I might even blog from time to time about business and photography. Here are the links from the old landing page so you can still get to stuff. EVENTS | CLIENT AREA | SERVICES/CONTACT <— go to the various pages over at SmugMug. Cheers! David This is a mini “what is in my bag post”. I’m tough on gear. Between all my bodies I click about 60 to 80-thousand shutter releases a year. I currently shoot with Nikon D300 bodies. I have 3. Two of them are with me all the time and I have a backup when I need to send one off to Nikon repair. The ’spare’ is currently dedicated to a Sigma 8mm lens and that whole rig is attached to a Nodal Ninja pano rig and it’s set up for doing pano photography. My main numero uno glass is a Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 lens DX. I shoot 80% of my shots with this lens. It is a great and very sharp lens. I use this lens over the Nikon 17-55mm because it seems as sharp wide open. It has fewer aperature blades which is not a bother wide open (or even stopped down for me), and I can hose (break) 3 of these lenses for the price of the Nikon. I like this lens so much that I own two for when I need to send one in for servicing. Did I mention that I’m tough on gear. My second lens that is a Tokina DX 11-16 wide zoom. I generally shoot this at 11mm but sometimes zoom it to 16mm. I can’t remember shooting this at any in-between zoom setting. It’s either 11 or 16mm for me. I have used this lens so much that I took it into Precision Camera (where I bought it in Austin) to get them to tighten up the front mount ring that had worked loose from use - the lens is only 6 moths old, but I’m tough on gear. The third lens I keep in my bag and I shoot with a lot is a Nikon 80-400mm VR lens. This is somewhat compact (aka: fits in the bag). This lens is a ton lighter than the Sigma 120-300 f/2.8 lens I own. The Siggy is super bight and super sharp but it is a big lens and doesn’t suit me for most of my daily work. The Nikon telephoto isn’t the fastest at zooming but I don’t find that a bother and it does a fine job in low light. The VR is essential as I hand-hold this lens about 90% of the time. I get solid results in very low light with the ISO cranked up and the shutter set at 1/200 with the lens zoomed out to 400mm. (effective 600mm on the DX sensor). So two camera bodies. One with the Tamron 17-55mm f/2.8 on one body all the time. One body with the Tokina 11-16mm which I will switch out for the Nikon 80-400mm VR. That way I always have the 17-50mm at hand. That’s my day bag glass. Simply asking your subject or subjects to move a few feet so you can change the background lighting and dramatically improve your pictures. Photography is all about light. Understanding all the light around you can really help you when shooting. We generally know where the sun is when shooting outside during the day. It’s probably harder to do when the sun isn’t out as your background lighting, if available, changes as you move. There was a lot of light coming from the stage in this arena and that lighting was changing a lot.  2009 Future Fest in Austin These two subjects were originally framed away from the stage lighting at this event. A shot of them would have been with a black or very dark background. I simply got them, using hand gestures as it was far to noisy to talk to them, to move a few feet so the stage lighting would provide a better backdrop of light. I knew the lighting was changing quickly and I had some feel for the pattern. Using available background light can really add to a picture. You should be aware of it constantly. Part #2 is designed to help you play around and better visualize what Flexify can do in the creation of stereographic projections from equirectangular panoramic images. This part is specific to changing the FOV (Field Of View) in the Flexify control panel Let’s start with this image I built in Photoshop.  Basic Grid - ratio is 1:2 (180 x360) This is the 180×360 panorama image used in the following examples. Using the same Flexify setting we used in Part#1:  Flexify Setting for a Basic Tiy Planet Turns the grid into this:  Flexify Result A. Compare this and the original grid to this example from part#1  Bridge Pano Before and After Flexify Note that the first two rows of the grid are not even in the grid image. In the bridge image there is very little black sky above the lights at the top of the image. Numbers are smaller at the bottom and bigger near the perimeter of the grid image. The lights and support columns are bigger at the edges and smaller closer to the center. In order to see more of the sky or top of your image you need to change the FOV (Field Of View). A smaller FOV is like zooming into the image and a large FOV is zooming out to get a wider view. IF I want to see the top row of numbers on the grid I have to zoom out / increase the FOV. Changing the FOV setting from 102 degrees to 144 degress:  Incresing the FOV (Field of View) / Zooming Out Now shows the top row of numbers:  Just changing the FOV can dramatically alter the image. Applying just the FOV change to the bridge image results in this:  Basic Tiny Planet in Flexify with large FOV That’s a lot of black space for this image. If your base panorama had lots of detail in the first couple rows then you might want a large FOV. In this image a smaller FOV works better. In the next part, I’ll show what happens when you play with the Lattitude control in Flexify. The Flexify plugin for Photoshop, and other programs, is a very interesting and remarkable tool. As with any tool it can be put to both good and bad use. There are a lot of options for Flexify. For this post I’ll show some interesting things that you can do with Flexify and I’ll show some of the behavior of Flexify as it pertains to creating Tiny Planets and some other things that can be done with a panoramic image. Many panoramic pics are 360×180 degree images. These images are frequently turned into spherical panoramas that are generally viewed as Flash or Quicktime images. You have probably seen these images as motion panoramas or VR tours of real estate. Some great examples of panorama photography and the resulting Flash output can be seen at Moss Creek Media. While it is a lot of fun to play around with the Flexify tool, it’s more important to understand what the tool can do. Being able to visualize a final image before it is shot is very important to most photographers. It is not an easy task to visualize what Flexify can do to a scene. I hope this post helps us do that better. Here is a panorama of the Pfluger Pedestrian Bridge in Austin as an equirectangular output from a panorama program (such as AutoPano Pro or PTGui). The output of a 360×180 degree pano is an image with a ratio of 2-to-1. So your base pano is twice as wide as it is high. It’s really not all that interesting to me. But I didn’t shoot this to be a straight VR pano. The image above is just an intermediate step. I shot this so I could use Flexify to transform it into something that I would find compelling. In these examples, Flexify is set up for an equirectangular input and a stereographic output. There are many more setting available in Flexify, but for beginning Tiny Planets it’s best to limit your adventure to these input and output settings. My basic first attempt is to create a Tiny Planet. This is a remapping of the coordinates of the image which essentailly takes the bottom (center of the ground) and makes it the center of the image. It takes the horizon and maps that as a circle surrounding the center. To do this in Flexify you set the it up as such:  Flexify Settings for a Basic Tiny Planet Image Varying the Spin and FOV (Field Of View) gets to this:  Basic Tiny Planet in Flexify I find this to be a much more compelling picture. This is the output from Flexify and it still needs a tight crop, IMHO. Understanding that your highest elements in the horizon are going to be seen in the exterior edges of the circle created from the remapping is important. For me, it’s important to know that a picture viewed as a boring panorama might make a very interesting image when remapped in Flexify. The bridge was shot with the expectation that I would remap it in Flexify and create the above image. Knowing what I can do with a little bit of Flexify allowed me to sell a client on an image and photo shoot where a Tiny Planet effect is going to be used on the actual CD. Here is a work in progress image for the CD project:  Sample image for use on a music CD On the next post I’ll provide some examples and a file you can use that may help you visualize what Flexify can do in the creation of stereographic projections from equirectangular panoramic images.  Scrabble at the Beauty Bar Dear Friends and Followers, Should I go get my MFA in photography? My major thoughts on this: It’s important to love what you study and practice. I’ve been shooting since I was six or seven years old. My first major publication was in the Los Angeles Times Home Magazine when I was 17 or 18. I love the art and science and history of photography. I’ve been semi-pro on and off for years. I taught underwater photography 20 years ago in the Cayman Islands. I went all pro 3 years ago and if you include my stint at Club Photo I’ve been solidly involved in the industry for over 5 straight years. I’m not a corporate cubicle guy – in retrospect, I’ve been happiest when shooting and involved in the art and industry of photography. Two Masters’ degrees? I have to be an entrepreneur as well as a photographer in order to make a living doing what I love. It sure helps having the training and experience the MBA brings me. As an MBA, I loved certain aspects of business and have been able to do solid work for many companies. The MBA also allowed me to teach business courses. I loved teaching business in collegiate settings and I loved teaching photography even when underwater. A major goal of the MFA is to allow me to teach photography and a lot more. The MFA education will provide me two distinct benefits. One, I’ll become a better photographer. Two, I’ll have the ability to teach at a collegiate level. As an MFA/MBA I would bring substantial experience and educational ability to the classroom and my own practice. I have a particular interest in teaching crossover business courses to artists. Many MBA programs are really good at teaching courses to people that want to be entrepreneurs but don’t know what business they want to create. Many artists are wannabe entrepreneurs that lack the business skills to live a good life doing what they love. I’d like to help correct that. I’d happily teach a class on cost estimation one hour then go teach a class on lighting techniques or camera basics the next hour. Teaching and practicing pro photography would be the best balance in life I could see for myself over the next 20 years. Now, my good friend Kirk Membry, who specializes in pano photography and design (his panos here), made a great point when he said “Why don’t you just get your Adobe Instructor Certification? That MFA is really expensive.” Good points. Maybe I can sate my appetite for teaching by doing that and I can save $50k at the same time. Wow, that is a compelling reason to really think about it. Which I did for a couple days. Sure, I could do that. Becoming an ACI It doesn’t force me to study photography and really delve into the art. I want to broaden my exposure and find new areas to develop depth. The MFA experience should be an emmersive journey in addition to mastering tools and techniques. It looks like I have a successful update from WP 2.7.1 to 2.8. I read and re-read and re-read the simple instructions at the Codex. Read the upgrade notes carefully! Especially important is this bit:
This is a big deal. Maybe it should say DO NOT COPY THE WP-CONTENT FOLDER OR THE SUBFOLDERS! Copy the files in each directory/folder, but dont copy the folders. This will preserve your settings and it will keep all your plug-ins too. Reading and following the istructions took more time than updating the code. I’m a Joe McNally fan. If you are not familiar with his books I’d say go get them but wait… Joe is a seasoned veteran in the biz. His books are great IF you are the right audience. A newbie or pro-sumer that does occasional work for friends or family might be disappointed in his manner and lack of detail in cookbook recipes for shooting. His books are for those that have well-mastered the basic techniques of their gear and are looking for inspiration in the next great thing to do. At least they are for me. Shooting for the A-List at http://www.austin360.com doesn’t allow me a lot of freedom to place strobes and get the best shot. I still try for best shots and can get them as the opportunity presents them. Sometimes I feel that I’m out of control when shooting. It happens more than you would think. Fortunately I shoot so much I’m not bothered with thoughts of “am I getting this right” or “let me make sure I have everything dialed in correctly” when I’m in a fast shooting environment. There is something to be said for getting camera settings close to what I want because I’ve been shooting for so damn long! I do tons of shots for the Statesman’s entertainment website (Austin360.com) with the flash mounted on the hot shoe of the camera. I keep a diffuser on the strobe about 99% of the time too. They published about twelve-thousand of my pics in 2008. Hopefully, I’m doing something right. Many people talk about taking the strobe off the camera and placing it somewhere else. This is great advice if you have the time to do it. I don’t have the time for most assignments. I’m shooting lots. I capture moments at events. Even if I had an assistant I wouldn’t be able to parse out instructions fast enough to get them in position to help light a shot. I work by myself in creating thousands of images. Lots of pics I take suck. I’ll blog about that soon. I try not to send sucky pics to my editors. I do have a reputation to maintain….don’t I? Do I love having a strobe on-top of the camera? Well…yes and no. There are lots of reason for moving the strobe ( go read one of Joe’s books) On the camera mounted flash situations I do make the quality of light better by diffusing it and getting close to my subjects. I love to shoot as wide as possible when doing event pics. Shooting wide allows me to work in very tight spaces and get the light close to my subjects. Diffuse and close light is a great thing in many cases. It doesn’t matter if it is only diffuse a foot or two around the center of the camera. I can deal with falloff. It is diffuse and it is close to the subject. I can get good results with that. I’ve learned to love how to use what I have to use, as should you. I can teach a cell phone camera user how to take better pics – just understand the limitation and love what you have. I will go on about shooting in controlled lighting situations later when I have time, which I don’t for most assignments. I enjoy studio work and the control I have over lighting. It is just not the bulk of my paid work. I have to love the set-up I’m stuck with. I know how to control the light and can kiss the subject with just enough light to make a good pic once in a while.  Shooting with matrix metering shutter priority: ISO 6400, 1/25th, f/7.1, Flash at -2 ev to add a touch of fill For this shot I chatted up the subject briefly. I asked him to turn sideways as that would allows the strong available light to backlight his hair. He lit up a smoke and I got the pic. This was shot in shutter priority mode at 25th/sec and matrix-metering as I am after getting available light into the shot and I trust the Nikon metering system to do its job. The SB-800 flash was dialed down to -2 ev as I quickly composed the subject and then blam! – one shot, that works. I have plenty that failed. Keep shooting! Just as the title says, here is my todo list. Upgrade to Wordpress 2.8 Validate the website, http://codex.wordpress.org/Validating_a_Website Get an affiliate agreement and a nice looking SmugMug affiliate logo and place it in a sidebar. I’d actually like to have it automatically show up in posts where I mention SmugMug. ISP Wishlist/todo
Verify that Google Analytics are working for the site. Add AddThis to the site. Find a tool to help me manage a “Sign up for my quarterly email newsletter.” Also find a service to manage that. Constant Contact / Ask Emma. something like that. Shopping Cart (aka: eCommerce solution for selling fine art prints) I already use SmugMug for all my event work. Look into multilingual support, not so much for this site but for the one I’m building after this. Needs to be German/English compatible. Add robots.txt for SEO use, probably with KB Robots.txt Since I’m using WP at the root of the site this plugin will probably work well for me. More documentation on setting up this site.
You can get plugins at the Wordpress Plugins Directory Installation notes for plugins. It’s best to check the ‘readme.txt’ files and installation instructions for each plugin. I’m adding excerpts of the basic stuff that I found useful. Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator for WordPress From the Readme.txt:
KB Robots.txt == Installation == 1. Upload `kb_robots-txt.php` to the `/wp-content/plugins/` directory. == Limitations == Note that robots make only top-level requests for robots.txt files. If you have Wordpress installed in a subdomain (e.g. http://blog.example.com/) or in your root (e.g. http://example.com/), this plugin will work as intended. |
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Copyright © 2009 David Weaver Photography - All Rights Reserved |
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