CogBlogged Tagged ‘photography’

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by Capture Queen ™ I find myself surprised to see people expecting rules and structure when not explicitly there- are we that “trained” to act by rules and expect rule makers? Huh? I am talking about the Daily Shoot, man. Frequent CDB readers will know I am an addict to the daily camer assignments- I’ve done 432 of ‘em (hey, did you know you get your own gallery on THEIR site? cool!) I love the challenge, and have ventured that is a supreme model of informal learning, of learning by doing, of working the 10,000 hour gig. But I hear whinging (maybe I have muttered it myself) when assignments are repeated, even people saying it has caused them to quit. For example water- it was featured in number 9, number 51, number 293, number 479. Keep in mind that just because YOU [...]

cc licensed ( BY NC ) flickr photo shared by Derek K. Miller I had way, way too much fun (as if there is really such a measurement) with my presentation yesterday for the ITC 2011 conference here in Florida. On the beach. Under the sun. Maybe it was because this was all brand new material- or just it was because I got to talk about my favorite subject, photography. I called this “Through The Lens” and you can find the various bits and links and slides and audio at http://cogdogblog.com/stuff/itc11. Thru the Lens View more presentations from Alan Levine. Through the Lens (audio) The things I tried to aim for were some really weak metaphor comparisons between both mechanics of cameras (aperture as being breadth of attention, shutter speed as time spent, iso as sensitivity) and the artistic ends (snapshots versus good photos, cropping, composition) etc and learning. I [...]

cc licensed flickr photo shared by Adam Melancon I’m doing a presentation at ITC 2011 on some parallels between photography and learning- a piece of that is using the independent learning, feedback, and regular process of The Daily Shoot is an example to look at. In one part, I would like to show some examples of people who’s photography skills have improved just by the regular practice of doing daily photography via the Daily Shoot. If this is you, I will be looking for a URLK for a “before” shot (e.g. your early dailyshoot stuff) and an “after” shot (something more recent that shows how your photography has gotten better. I cannot offer anything but a little sunshine, and I will become one of your best friends in flickr. If you can help, just drop some info in my form at http://bit.ly/better-via-ds

Note: Updated December 7, 2010 for use of new theme…. Nothing like a little WordPress hacking to get back in action. A few months ago I registered the domain barkingdog.me as a place intended to set up a photo gallery, but decided today to finally get around to hanging something for real there. My goals were to have a clean site with ginormous images, and also something that would be little fuss to add. On my NMC work in creating the MIDEA site I had set up an account to have access to the Graph Paper Press themes — yes, these are paid for themes, but are very elegant and sophisticated. I did moderate hacking to the Modularity theme for the MIDEA site, but was liking their photo gallery themes, and landed on Widescreen Fullscreen. With a few hours tweaking and adding one moderate hunk of code, I have what [...]

cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog No matter how many titles I created for this post, all of them went the wrong way down innuendo lane. This morning, at 1:00 AM local time on Brisbane, Australia, I gave an online presentation for the KU Village conference… from bed. I agreed to do this almost 9 months ago, not knowing I was going to be over here- at home it would have been a more humane 8:00 AM slot so I would have managed to be sitting at a desk. But really, with all the trite sayings of working online and sitting there in your underwear… this is pretty much true. Suit and tie not needed. I can say this is the first presentation I have done from bed, and it is pretty comfortable (thanks to Phil Long for hosting me and providing the podium in his guest room). And [...]

cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog Wow it has been so nice to be lazy, to be spending what feels like more time offline than online. All of the tech todos on my list for the holiday vacation remain undone (the list crumpled up and is burning in the wood stove now). The plan to to the Epic Year End Blog Reflective post? Never drafted. The list of predictions, dreams, resolutions for 2010? Not happening. But without dropping the intent to do something to wrap the year in a bow, is to say that the 2009 thing that has kept my sanity and sense of purpose on track has been for a second year doing the Post a Photo a Day Thing on Flickr started in 2007 by D’Arcy Norman. People like D’Arcy and Dean are resilient enough to put their 365 photos into video form; I’m too lazy, [...]

I’ve had fun following D’Arcy Norman‘s tweets as he experiments with an old Pentax film camera he got from his Dad. It got me thinking that I’ve had a string of cameras, but have never bothered to document my camera history. Not that anyone would care,, this is a blog post for me as an audience. With some fiddling in flickr I was able to find the number of photos I took for cameras that are matched when you upload photos(find the camera, do a search on that model, than change the search results to search your own photos, check the number at the bottom of the search results). I start with the genesis of my interest in photography, when in my last semester at University of Delaware (1986), needing an art elective, i chose a photography (a darkroom course). I cannot even remember why I chose it, but it [...]

cc licensed flickr photo shared by Fenchurch! November was a month of taking on more of the “do something every day” type projects, and I think the madness needs to stop. I’ll stop every day. This of course, is not a promise I intend to keep. I find these challenges very rewarding, especially the ones that you convince yourself that you can’t do before you try. How common is it we defeat our efforts from the start? For a recap… 2009/365 Photos I’m in the second year of the informal group that spring up over the idea of trying to take photographs every day, and posting our best to flickr, sharing in the 365 Photos pool. This is one of many things I file under the strategy of Do What D’Arcy Does. In 2007, this idea was a solo project of D’Arcy Norman; I chimed in 2008, and we started [...]

It’s been a while since I shot or even explored Gigapan, the amazing photo exploration tool that lets you see a wide range of zoom detail in a scene. I have not even captured a scene in a while (see my old ‘pans). But by sheer accidental link clicking from my RSS Reader (am I the last person on earth reading feeds while everyone else tweets their lunch?) I found on a neat site (see below) that you can now embed a gigagpan image.. So here goes one I took in November at the foot of the volcano Hekla: If you are interested in some applications of the gigapan I can think of few finer that the Geology ones by Ron Schott lots of structures and outcrops to study at many different scales. The thing that got me (linktribution to David Weinberger) here was a blog on Nano Gigapans, where [...]

Lifehacker’s Top 10 DIY Photography Tools is a mine of nifty gems for photographers to up their own photo mojo. Besides what I learned (see below), I am finding myself thinking more about the rise of the DIY (Do It Yourself) culture on the net- there surely is a future blog post relating that to education. Or maybe some crazy dude will write it for me. But back to cameras. I am going to ASAP try 9. Make a remote camera trigger by modding a $3 cell phone hands set (looks like a matter of disabling the microphone). There is a very clear instructables bit to walk you through it. What I am looking for is the ability to take long exposures Make a remote shutter release for your canon digital camera (and some other brands such as Pentax, sony, and some nikons) for about 3 bucks in under 5 [...]