Since we’re on the subject of wildlife and animals in general today, I came across some more inspirational photos over at Boston.com’s Big Picture site. These world animal day photos are something to marvel at. As always with Boston.com’s Big Picture, the photos are large and in charge and always worthy of viewing.
2009 World Animal Day
The Veolia Environment Wildlife Photographer of the Year and the Veolia Environment Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year have been announced over at the Natural History Museum in the UK. For some inspirational images, check them out here.
Birds on the Wires from Jarbas Agnelli on Vimeo.
“Reading a newspaper, I saw a picture of birds on the electric wires. I cut out the photo and decided to make a song, using the exact location of the birds as notes (no Photoshop edit). I knew it wasn’t the most original idea in the universe. I was just curious to hear what melody the birds were creating.”
NEC has announced their new 43″ curved monitor with a 32:10 aspect ratio. Did I mention curved??
I can only imagine how nice this would be to process photos, play games and watch an occasional movie on. If it wasn’t for the steep price tag, I’d love to have one!
The New York Times has come out with a photo blog earlier this week called “Lens“. This might be an interesting format to read online newspapers. Just hit the next button to see the next article. Simple as turning a page in a real newspaper. Of course, this is mainly for viewing photos at this point which works great. Especially the full screen option.
New York Times Photo Blog
If only I had a Canon 5D Mark II, I could really get into making these type of videos. I love the cloud formations and balloons in this first video. The 2nd video just plain rocks and I can appreciate how long this must have taken to produce from start to finish.
A very cool use of a tilt-shift lens to make everything look all model-like.
And still one of my all time personal favorites.
More and more web applications are coming out that allow you to edit and process your photos online. I’ve always been partial to using software installed on my computer to process my photos, but I certainly understand not everyone can afford some of the more expensive photo editing software such as Adobe’s Photoshop. For some, Adobe Photoshop may be too complicated, as it does have a steep learning curve for most. Plus, what if you are traveling and don’t have access to your favorite photo editing software to process a photo? Whatever your circumstances might be, thankfully you can do it online these days. Check out this list of 10 online photo editors.
Be sure to read the comments, as there are several sites mentioned by others that are not listed in the main article.
Cheers!
Good thing I bought a Drobo instead of the Pocket Wizard Plus II, like I was itching to get. Now I want these.
It’s been a while since I’ve been able to sit down and write much about the goings on around here. Today is no different, however I wanted to make a quick note. If you’ve been watching the main page, you’ve already seen quite a few photos from Monument Valley. I finally finished going through them and processing the ones that were worthy of spending time with. The last of the Monument Valley photos will post on February 2nd.
Now, the main reason I wanted to post a quick note. I’ve always known the importance of this, but I got bit hard, and I do mean hard. It’s not only important but it is vital to make sure your sensor is super clean before taking a special trip for photography such as the one I took to Monument Valley. Had I known that my sensor was this dirty, I obviously would have had it cleaned and it would have saved me HOURS of cleaning the dirt out of most of my Monument Valley photos. The odd thing is, during the normal hours of the day, the dirt wasn’t as noticeable. A few of the larger spots that were easy to clean/fix showed, but the little spots were mostly invisible. The bulk of the dirt/dust appeared to showed its ugly head in low light situations (early morning and evening). Below are several cropped sections of just one unprocessed photo. This shows you just how bad dirt/dust can be.
The sad thing is, on the original, these spots are much more apparent than what you see in the photos above. Needless to say, I just got my camera back from Tucson Camera and I’m happy to say my camera is clean again. While I may be $45 lighter in the wallet, my time will be better spent taking photos and not processing out dirt in every one of my photos.
So, take it from me. Get your camera cleaned before a momentous photography trip. It’s money well spent instead of spending 20+ hours processing dirt out of your photos.
