Aerial Photographer Robert Campbell
Posted by latoga | Filed under Photographers
Today I heard about a wonderful aerial photograph book of Point Reyes by aerial photographer Robert Campbell. Point Reyes and the San Andreas Fault Zone, is a self-published book by Campbell that shows Point Reyes from an angle that the vast majority of us have never experienced. What I find amazing about aerial photography is the way a common scene can become so abstract when viewed from above, especially if low light and shadows come into play.
Campbell had an early interesting in photography and studied it at San Francisco State College. Eventually he became interested in aerial photography and became a pilot flying air frieght. After leaving the air freight business, he returned to his passion of photography. His website, while currenlty under construction, has a number of amazing aerial photographs from the bay area and northern california.
A while back I put a call out to photographer pilots after one of my comercial flights I took for business travel. It’s exciting to see some one local who might have experienced the same thing I did and is still out chasing that view from above. As previously mentioned, I’m hoping to catch some of that tomorrow in Las Vegas…
Tags: Aerial Photography, Point Reyes, Robert Campbell
Photo: Late Night Practice
Posted by latoga | Filed under Photographers, Photos
Trevor Carpenter has a new challenge up for July over at PhotoChallenge.org. Since I figured I wasn’t busy enough already, I’ve taken it upon myself to try and shoot at least 20 images during July as part of the challenge (I know I won’t be able to do this every day, so rather than set myself up for failure, I’m focusing on success). I’m using this challenge as a reason for updating my dormant Flickr account (something I have never really utilized for various reasons I can elaborate on if readers really care).
I captured this image last night on my way back to the boat (see my tweets for an explanation). It was late, I was hungry and made a drive thru run. With the smell of food in the car, I spotted a few fellows practicing soccer in this field at the entrance to the Marina. Photographer mode kicked in (driven by the nagging sense that I hadn’t done a shot for this challenge yet) and over rode my hunger pains. I pulled over, grabbed the camera and an captured this shot from the shadows at the side of the field.
Tags: Chicago, JulyChallenge2008, PhotoChallenge
User Thoughts on Photography Podcasts
Posted by latoga | Filed under Musings, Photographers
Lately I have been listening to a wide collection of different photography related podcasts. This started off initially as part of the Photo Quotes Archive. Eventually, it developed into a way to instill photography more into my daily life by thinking about photography during down times, like during my commute or workout.
One of the side effects of listening to all these podcasts is developing a keen sense of podcast usability. The best products are developed with the end user and how they will use the product in mind. This applies as much to a podcast as it does to a camera. So I thought I would put my product management skills to use and document a list of good and bad things that I have found about the various podcasts that I have been listening to. If you’re thinking about creating a podcast in the future or are creating one now, maybe you can use some of these ideas to make it as user friendly as possible for your listeners.
(Please note, my reference to individual podcasts are primarily for reader reference. I hope that the specific podcaster’s don’t take my opinion as a strike against their work…after all, I’m still subscribed to most of these.)
- Provide an Intro and Exit: Many podcasts just jump right into a conversation. This can be quite jarring for a listener. Provide a short introduction to each podcast (i.e., music, “welcome to XYZ”) to ease the listener into your podcast. Also, when you end, do the same thing to help the listener exit the podcast (i.e., statement about copyright, exit music). The exit is also very important when a user is listening to a backlog of podcasts. Some digital music players (specifically my iPod photo) doesn’t have a way to start playing the next episode when one finishes. Even worse, the player takes the user to the root menu when the episode is done, so they have to navigate back down to the episode location and the end of the list to get to the next one. The exit gives the user time to jump to the next episode quickly. Just keep both of these to a reasonable length, 10 – 15 seconds at most. Brook Jensen’s LensWork Podcast is a good example of both an intro and exit. (This is more specific to listening on a portable player.)
- Make a Video Podcast When Appropriate: Some podcasts display photos and discuss them or the process of making them within the podcast. This is wonderful idea. After all, we are talking about photography. The problem is, many of these podcasts should really be created as video podcasts, with the video being just the static display of a photo or zooming into the photo to focus on parts being discussed. Again the reason for this comes from when “listening” to the podcast on a portable player. For a podcast, the iPod will dim the screen after a few seconds to save battery power, but this makes looking at the photos very difficult at best. Also, the photo is displayed as a small image on the iPod’s screen, using just 33% of the available real estate. What a waste and challenge for the user. Turning the podcast into a video podcast solves both problems: the iPod doesn’t dim when viewing the photos and the entire screen is used. Jeff Curto’s Camera Position is one of the best examples of this. I really enjoy his analysis of photos but find it challenging to actually see the images without it being distributed as a video. This Week in Photography is an example of a podcast the uses Video Podcasts from time to time when it makes sense.
- Normalize Your Audio Levels: Don’t subject your audience to the tactics of Cable TV advertising, having times when the audio jumps up in volume. I have seen some podcasts that have harsh introductions that are much louder than the main podcast…a very painful way to treat your listeners. And when a listener is jumping between different podcasts, the variances in sound levels can get to you. The first example is something that is completely in the control of the podcaster. The second one is a bit trickier. But, there has to be some broadcasting standard that can be used with regards to defining your normalization level that can be used to ensure that most podcasts are relatively the same loudness. (unfortunately, this is an area outside of my expertise…maybe someone with a professional broadcasting background can chime in here, like the guys from This Week in Photography who appear to use a professional production studio when they record their podcasts.)
- Apple iPod Feedback: This one goes out directly to the Apple iPod product management team (related to this post, so I figured I would throw it in…). Why can I set a rating for podcasts in iTunes but not on the iPod? As I’m listening to my podcasts, I need a way to tag those that I want to reference later. The rating system is perfect for this, but I can’t set the ratings on the iPod. Why? This is something that I think used to be there but then got lost in an upgrade…very frustrating usability hole.
I hope these usability feedback points are valuable to some podcasters out there.
Tags: PodCast
Creating Unique Baseball Perspectives
Posted by latoga | Filed under Photographers
This morning I came across the article It’s In The Bag in the July issue of Smithsonian magazine that talks about Sports Illustrated photographer Neil Leifer and how he (sometimes with the help of his father) thought outside of the box and inside the bag to capture some unique images of the game of Baseball. Great story of photographic inventiveness. Sad that they don’t show the photo that was taken from the “bag cam” online, so you might have to check out a printed copy of the magazine if you find it. It’s worth the extra effort.
Tags: Neil Leifer, Smithsonian Magazine, Sports Illustrated
Photos: Bay Bridge Through the Sunroof
Posted by latoga | Filed under Architecture, Photographers, Photos
A few weeks back I was crossing the Bay Bridge into San Francisco with the sunroof open and enjoying the warm weather in anticipation for an evening shoot with Jim Goldstein and Richard Wong. I luckily had the camera on the passenger seat and hit a bit of traffic on the San Francisco side of the bridge. By just pointing the camera up through the sunroof, burst shooting a dozen frames, and skillfully avoiding hitting anyone a head of me, I was able to capture this sequence of images (sun flares and all). After working on them in color, I felt the lighting on the underside of the tower cross bracing made for a much stronger black and white series of images.
Click through on each image to view a larger version…
Tags: Bay Bridge, San Francisco
