Written by Eric W on February 8th, 2010
Seriously, just stop. You’re going somewhere – the the store, to a friend’s, to work. You see the light, and it’s beautiful – say, a cold sunny day, but clouds building on the mountains to the east. The clouds pool, like a living mist. It’s beautiful, you should stop. But you keep going – it’s cold, you say. Don’t have the right lens, you say. You move on.
Too late, you’ve missed your chance. Click to continue »
Posted in Observations, Photographs | No Responses »
Tags: photograph, thoughts
Written by Eric W on February 4th, 2010
A Photo Editor popped up on my radar again. Seems this happens weekly. This time it was just a quote, about how blogs will drive more business to photographers than websites.
This is certainly true, if not a bit obvious to many of us. And as I alluded to in a comment there, it’s not a black-and-white cutoff: static pages are fine for static information. Reference sheets, historicals – all good. But the freshness of a blog? Static sites can’t compete.
Something I’ve noticed, though – as the owner of my own business where I provide a certain amount of web-based services: a lot of my recent work has involved setting up blogs. Not just for business clients, but for personal uses as well.
The future is here, which means it’s passé. What next?
Posted in Observations, Small Talk | No Responses »
Tags: off-topic
Written by Eric W on February 4th, 2010
It now starts by loading my personal most recent favorites. After only a few days, I came to the conclusion that starting with a blank entry was… Um, lame.
So this is the new it. Such as it is.
Posted in Projects | No Responses »
Tags: off-topic
Written by Eric W on February 3rd, 2010
I’m definitely late to this party, but I’m just now starting to read Within the Frame
by David duChemin. Back when it first came out, it was getting rave reviews by pretty high-ranking photogs: Joe McNally, Scott Kelby, virtually everyone I follow in my RSS feeder. Well, I disregarded that to a certain extent: all these folks are ultimately tied together by Scott Kelby’s mighty empire, so I figured it was 60% marketing, 40% truth.
On review, it looks like Mr. duChemin has quite a bit of backing. Barely two chapters in, and I’m already excited about reading the rest. To steal and paraphrase a line from the book: finally, a why-to book, instead of a how-to!
Posted in Authors | No Responses »
Tags: book
Written by Eric W on February 2nd, 2010

Flickr Favebrowsr
Meet the Flickr Favebrowsr.
I wasn’t in too creative of a mood when I named it, but I was enchanted by the concept. I forget where I saw it, exactly, but someone had built a beautiful way of surfing between user’s favorites. It was wonderful, but: it required giving up personal info (email address, or logging in) and the images in all screens were too small for my tastes. Some of the behavior wasn’t all that I wanted, either.
So I built my own.
You see the results to the right – and the link to the far right.
Click to continue »
Posted in Projects | No Responses »
Tags: browser, favebrowsr, Flickr
Written by Eric W on January 31st, 2010
It’s not your camera. It’s not your lens. It’s not the paper, or the printer, or the print lab.
It’s your post processing. Click to continue »
Posted in Photographers, Post Processing | 1 Response »
Tags: photograph, photoshop, Post Processing
Written by Eric W on January 29th, 2010
OK, try to follow this: I was reading A Photo Editor’s recent “I.D.’s Executioners” post, which linked to a post by Julie Lasky on The Design Observatory’s site, which linked to a photo by David Wojnarowicz of buffalo being driven over a cliff.
OK, got all that? Take a look at that pic again (and soon, it may go away!).
I’m not sure why, but this picture really speaks to me. What does it say to you?
Posted in links | No Responses »
Tags: links
Written by Eric W on January 27th, 2010
I normally don’t like making inflammatory comments, but I think that this story may just be worth it.
Summarizing from that link:
Uzbek photographer Umida Akhmedova is awaiting trial and is facing a potential sentence of six months in prison or three years forced labor. At issue is a 2007 work called Men and Women from Dawn to Dusk that contains approximately 100 of her photographs of life and customs in Uzbekistan.
I missed this when it was initially important, but fortunately Mike Johnston at The Online Photographer won’t let me forget. He posted a further link today, which has entertaining comments and a link to another 50 pictures from this lady.
Personally, I don’t see anything degrading. I suppose if I were raised in Uzbek society, I might have a different perception. But I wasn’t, and now I don’t think I’ll be going there any time soon.
I suppose they don’t want me there, either.
Posted in Observations, links | No Responses »
Tags: links, politics
Written by Eric W on January 26th, 2010
When I originally created this composition, I made it pretty clear that it’s a composite. Two images, completely unrelated – but from the same general time and location. This took only a few minutes to make, and that had a few people asking how.
So, for starters: the two images.
 Original Treeline |
 Moon, correctly exposed |
Click to continue »
Posted in Photographs, Technique | 1 Response »
Tags: composite, photograph, Post Processing
Written by Eric W on January 24th, 2010
Completely unrelated to anything photography, other than the source. A commenter on a lovely young lady’s photostream pointed out the difference between cats and dogs (in response to the idea of cats having delusions of grandeur):
if dogs were 5 times their size, they’d still lick us.
if cats were 5 times their size, they’d eat us.
it’s not so much delusion as a problem of proportion (but then that’s exactly a delusion of granduer)
I found the observation both witty and likely accurate.
Check out her pics – she’s doing some interesting things with self portraits!
Posted in Small Talk | No Responses »
Tags: off-topic