We were full of big plans this time last year. We were going to learn to cook, run a marathon, and stop watching so much doggone TV. Now here it is nearly 2008, and we’re still spending every night talking back to Trebek and noshing on Tasty Bite.
Needless to say, game show marathons and shelf-stable delicacies do not a make.
So much for 2007.
And hello, 2008! We’re planning to greet it with some kinder, gentler resolutions, and you can bet they won’t involve the kitchen, the remote, or running shoes. But they will involve a shutter.
We’ve come up with 19 photo-related New Year’s resolutions that’ll have you learning more, practicing more, and taking more risks in two thousand and awesome. (What is, “Fewer eyes trained on Trebek,” Alex?)
Travel Photographer of the Year, one of my favourite photography competitions (which I always enter and never win!), recently announced the 2007 winners. This year Cat Viton, from the UK, became the competition’s first female winner and, among other prizes, won the opportunity to go to India and photograph the Dalai Lama.
Her winning photographs are beautiful, as are many of the runner-up shots, and as always with this competition, inspire me to travel to more new places. You can check them out if you feel like getting a little inspiration for your 2008 travel plans.
I recently bought my first tripod. More than a year after I first started making money with my photography, and two years after I got my first decent camera. I finally got one because I’ve been asked to do photography at several night time events over the coming months but I had resisted buying one for so long because I find them (the affordable ones anyway) too heavy and bulky to be practical. For those of you who may also be making do without a tripod here are a few other options for getting stable:
Monopods. These are little poles that you mount your camera on top of. They are lightweight and easy to move and some of them come with velcro straps so you can attach them to fence posts and the like. However they’re not great for long exposure and some monopods may not be strong enough to hold a larger SLR camera.
Beanbags. Very cheap, light weight, and easy to squash into an overstuffed camera bag. Beanbags make excellent camera supports and almost never break! Simply put a beanbag between your camera and a rock/bench/tree/car roof and it’ll support your camera perfectly.
Remote release/self timers. Even if you have your camera precariously balanced on a rock you can still avoid camera shake on long exposure shots by not touching the camera. Nearly all modern cameras have a self timer you can use or you could buy a remote release (small and fairly cheap piece of equipment) that allows you to activate the camera from a distance.
If all else fails. If you find yourself in a position with no way to stabilise your camera but you need to avoid camera shake try setting the shutter speed between 1/60th and 1/125th, holding your arms close to your body to support the camera, and shooting off 4 or 5 shots in quick succession. Hopefully one of them will come out well and you can simply delete the rest.
And if you have your own suggestions for avoiding camera shake without using a tripod please leave them in the comments section.
As part of a Christmas present I recently found myself spending a sizable chunk of my evening searching through seemingly endless folders on my laptop trying to find photographs of a friend’s son. In the end I just downloaded the photos from my Flickr account. My computer filing system is a mess, to say the least!
For those of you out there who may be similarly organisationally-challenged here is a brief guide to a simple work flow to help prevent the image chaos I’ve ended up with. It’s going to be my New Year’s resolution to try and stop just dumping DCIM folders onto my desktop and actually implement something like this!
1. Edit as you download.This requires a little bit of brutal honesty towards your photographs. The idea is to get rid of the shots you are never going to look at again before they even begin to take up space on your desktop. Keep photos of family and friends (even the technically bad shots might prove useful for blackmail in the future!) but be selective about other shots. Ask yourself if you aready have a better shot of the same view/landmark/object. If you’ve taken fifty pictures of the same thing narrow it down to your best five or ten.
2.Don’t erase yet. Back up your images before you erase them from your memory card. You could burn them to CD or DVD, put them on an external hard drive, or upload them to a website.
3. Organize! If you’re like me simpler is probably better. Organizing by date, location, or people is simplest. I also keep a folder marked “favourites” where I put anything I especially like and one called “work in progress” where I put things I like but haven’t edited to my satisfaction yet. If you are the hyper-organized type you could use a more complicated filing system but I find I never keep anything more complex up for more than a few weeks!
4. Re-edit. Go back through your old images and try re-editing a few. I find that my ability to edit photographs is constantly improving and re-editing old stuff often gives me a new, much improved photo.
5. Show off your stuff! Share your photos with family and friends. Print them and put them in a pretty album, make a slideshow and play it on your TV for visiting relatives, or upload them to a photo sharing website and let your fans worldwide see them. Just remember to show your best shots and not all 5,300 photos you took at little Madison’s stage debut as a snowflake.
Got ideas for great New Year’s Photo Resolutions? . We’re making a list.
Flickrerinos: Check out the new !
Getting started on a ? Check out from our forum.
You’ve decked the halls with miles of tiny bulbs. Your front lawn is a gleaming monument to electric lighting. Even the neighbors have taken to wearing sunglasses 24/7.
It’s the Christmas wonderland of your dreams… now if only you could get a good picture of it.
Photographing holiday lights is no easy task.
Luckily, we’ve had the Photojojo elves round up the best tips and guides to taking successful Holiday photos. Call it our gift to you… now go make proud.
Today is the last day to order some photo goodies for delivery by Dec 25th in the USA. (Orders ship by $6 flat-rate USPS Priority)
Boy, are we excited. We’ve spent every waking moment these last months cooped up in the Photojojo Labs, working tirelessly on what can only be our greatest experiment ever. We’ve finally done it. We’ve found the key to…
Time Travel.
Well, time-lapse photography. Which is basically the same thing.
So go ahead, read our guide on the ins and outs of time-lapse and start churning out your very own time-lapse videos from your photos.
Then, take up your mantle in the halls of history, beside legends such as Bernard, Hoagie and Laverne, Dr. Who, Bill & Ted, and Doctor Emmett Brown. We’ll see you there!
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Hot on the heels of our , I’ve just taken possession of another photo book from and I have to say I’m still impressed. I ordered three books on Monday and they were received by recipients on both coasts on Friday using standard shipping.
This short video doesn’t do them justice. The books are attractive, durable, and the print and paper quality are excellent. Shutterfly’s online book builder doesn’t require you to download or install anything and provides a ton of layout options including a full-page layout right to the edge that looks spectacular.
Last year I worked for a family with two wonderful children and when I left I wanted to make a photo book for them with some of the hundreds of photos I’d taken during the year. Well, things got chaotic as I packed up my life to move 3, 429 miles across the country, and in the end I simply didn’t have time to chose the photos, upload them to a suitable website, order the book, and wait for it to be delivered.
The idea came back into my head recently as I was thinking about Christmas gifts and this time I was just about organised enough to pull it off. But, man are there a lot of website offering photo books out there! So for those of you who might be looking for a quick comparison of prices here’s the little table I made while I was searching for the best deal.
Company
Book Size
Cost
Shipping
Other Info
12×12
$54.99
for 20 pages
$1.50/extra page
$9.99
25% off
extra books if you
order more than one.
8×8 or 8.5×11
$29.99
for 20 pages
$1/extra page
$6.99
8.5×11 (single sided)
$29.99
for 20 pages
$0.99/extra page
Not quoted
Requires iPhoto software
8.5×11 (double sided)
$29.99
for 20 pages
$1.49/extra page
Not quoted
7×7
$22.95 for 20-40 pages
Not quoted
8×10
$29.95 for 20-40 pages
Not quoted
11×13
$54.95 for 20-40 pages
Not quoted
9×7
$24.95
for 20 pages
$0.50/extra page or $10 for 20
extra
Not quoted
8.5×11
$25.95
for 20 pages
$0.50/extra page or $10 for 20
extra
Not quoted
11×8.5
$29.99
for 20 pages
$1.99/extra page
$8.99
8×6
$19.99
for 20 pages
$0.99/extra page
$7.99
8.5×11
$29.99 for 20 pages
$.99/extra page
Not quoted
These are the sizes and prices for hard cover books, most of these sites also offer soft cover books at a cheaper price. The deadline for Christmas ordering is coming up so if you want to put Santa’s name on a photo book you better get a move on!
And if you’ve used any of these services, please share your impressions in the comments.
