Photography – Page 11 – Something Odd!

Blending RAW images

This Flickr: Technique discussion talks about blending two exposures to maximise highlights and shadows.
It’s a simple but very effective technique, and of course if you use RAW files then you’ll already have an advantage over Jpeg.

"Us" in Ireland

Ray D’Arcy who presents a show on Today FM wants everyone to take photos next Saturday! The photos will be collected and printed in a book titled, “Us” with all proceeds going to charity. The book will capture a snapshot of Irish society that day.

To submit your photos, email them to us @ todayfm.com on Saturday. Photos will not be accepted before that date but I think they will accept contributions afterwards because not everyone has access to a computer at the weekend.
They’re targeting the mobile phone brigade too, and I’m sure Vodafone, O2, Meteor and 3 and ringing their hands in glee at the prospect of so much gprs data being transmitted across their expensive networks!

One issue I haven’t heard mentioned is that of model release forms. A release form is required if a photo is to be published commercially (although news items differ I think?). I emailed them about an hour ago but it was near the end of the show. Hopefully they’ll respond tomorrow.

I’ll be out taking shots on Saturday around Cork City, and perhaps elsewhere. I’d love to have a photo published! 🙂

Later… looks like they ignored my email and text about model release forms. Hope they don’t get into trouble over that.

Anatomy of a Photograph

A picture is worth a thousand words. What if that photograph doesn’t tell the whole story? Interetsting analysis of how a photo can convey a publisher’s bias.

Little Channel Mixer Tip – enhanced green grass

Load up an image with a lot of greenery.
Fire up the Channel Mixer. I don’t know where it is in Photoshop, but in the GIMP it’s in Filters->Colors->Channel Mixer.
Slide the green bar down a small bit and move the blue bar up a bit. Values of 100, -33, 47 worked for me.
Green grass looks much more vibrant and healthy!

I tried this on a portrait of the local camogie team.

Girls Girls Girls!

Mutton Lane

Mutton Lane, Cork

In the Taxi Rank

Today, over 60 traders set up stalls on Patrick’s Street as part of the Slow Food Festival. Not everyone had a good day today though..

Martial Arts Demonstration in Midleton

A few weeks ago we went down to Midleton for their Food and Drink Fair. The place was packed with people and I got lots of shots. Here are a few of the martial arts demo we passed near the end of the day:
I wish my camera recorded milliseconds. All shots below were taken at 15:49:45.. The Canon 20D rocks!

Converting RAW files to Jpeg, Nautilus Style

Further to my previous attempts to convert RAW files to Jpeg, here’s a Nautilus script based on this script. How do you use it? The g-scripts FAQ has more, although in Ubuntu I had to copy the script into ~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/
This script uses “Zenity” to display a nice progress bar while the conversion takes place.

#!/bin/bash
(while [ $# -gt 0 ]; do dcraw -c -a -n -h $1 | ppmtojpeg > `basename $1 cr2`jpg echo $1 shift done) | zenity --progress --pulsate --text "Converting RAW files to Jpeg"