The second annual world wide photo walk takes place on the 18th July this year.
I applied and was accepted as walk leader for the Galway walk. There are requirements to lead the walk, such as having lead a camera group or teaching classes. As I’ve done both, and seeing no one else had applied, I applied.

Anyway, the walk is limited to 50 people, so if you are interested, go to the page on the world wide photo walk page and sign up.

worldwidephotowalk.com/galway-gy-ie/

What is a Photo Walk? Well pretty much as it sounds, you takes photos and walk. There are prizes for the best photo of the walk, and photos get featured on the website. The idea of a world wide photo walk is the brain child of Photoshop author Scott Kelby. It’s all about meeting other photographers and having fun in the process.

I’ve used a number of products on Mac to create video/screen capture for Lightroom-Blog.com. I do have to consider my options when I purchase, but not exactly being new in the game, it’s been a case of using things as they became available. PC users, sorry, but I don’t use PC, but all I can say is, if you’re not using Camtasia, you need to start there. It’s not cheap, but it does everything.

Snapz Pro X: This for a long time was the only ball in town. If you wanted video capture with audio, this was it. There were a few freebies that did video without audio though. You could record audio, then record the video as the audio played and match them up. If you scripted, this was perfect. I don’t, or at least I should, but I tend not to. So I bought Snapz. While it’s not longer my video capture tool of choice, I do use it for screen capture. I actually own 2 licenses to this as I got a second one in a software bundle.

iShowU & Stomp: I bought these as a bundle. iShowU is a great little package for video and creates amazingly small videos, while still retaining quality. I used this until this week, and I see it used by “The Photoshop Guys”. It is great, but my needs have been changing rapidly. I’ve stopped using iShowU for capture, but I’m still squishing my video with Stomp.

Screenflow: When you’ve already spent a wad on software, you tend to be reluctant to buy something new. I’m about to do a series of video for an online training site, but they need panning and zooming. To an extent you can do this in the OS, but it’s really fiddly to do it while actually making a video. Screenflow lets you do it after. I can also save out the audio from the recording, normalise it and then import it back into Screenflow. By removing the original audio track in the timeline, I can get louder audio. Very cool. Thanks to Clicio Barroso for putting me onto this. I had it for an hour of the 30 day trial when I bought it. Besides the need to zoom and pan for a specific site, this control is something I’ve wanted for a long time anyway. I’m delighted.. Not to mention that I haven’t looked into the titling abilities yet either. Well worth the money.

Here’s a quick headshot of Hannah I did a little while ago.
For those interested, it’s a butterfly light setup, sometimes referred to as a half clamshell. Elinchrom 70cm Maxisoft Beauty dish as key from above, with silver reflector (from a triflector set) below. A clamshell uses 2 lights, hence why a single light and reflector is a ‘half’ clamshell.

When I was going to Scotland recently, I bumped into a friend that I hadn’t seen for a long time. As the flight was delayed, it gave us ample opportunity to catch up. Along with landscape gardening, (and bass playing, which is how I know him), he has started to breed horse. He’s graciously allowing me to shoot down there tomorrow, so today will be spent getting a look around hopefully.

I’ve sent in video to Phototraining4u.com on Lightroom and will be adding to that over the next while. More details as I get them. Jay, the video guy, says he can edit them no problem, so that’s a relief!

I’m in the middle of writing a new web plugin for Lightroom. While it shares some of the codebase with LRB Portfolio, it has a different enough look to be a lot of work. The way the HTML works is very different. I’m also trying out new things that are not really covered well in the Lightroom SDK. I’ve run up against lots of little niggles along the way as I make it fit together. Of course it’ll be even worse once I start testing the final version with Internet Explorer

I’ve just changed accountants. Not the best thing to be doing in May, when the first VAT return is due. The main reason wasn’t competency, it was simple lack of communication. I never knew where my business stood, or how I could improve it. As it turns out, I’ve known the new accountant for years. He also works as a videographer. You might think that someone doing two jobs might not be a good choice? Well I know that he understands the nature of my business, and that’s a big plus that easily outweighs that concern.

Anyhow, back to the grindstone.

Today has been the last straw with constant email issues. I’ve had nothing but issues with outgoing email for ages, down to the point where I was using only one outgoing server. And when my automatic credit card payment didn’t go through on my main account, I lost even that.
Still this has prompted a session of getting everything set up again and I think I’ve finally got all my email addresses working again (bar one).

Why more than one? Well besides using an throwaway address for online things that might attract spam, I like to keep my online presence a little partmentalised. My Lightroom blog has an address, as does this blog. My audio related work has an address for suppliers and clients. It’s just the easiest way to deal with different slices of my pie. I also still have my old email addresses from when I was first on the net. I still get family email on these addresses, despite telling them I don’t use it anymore!

I guess some of this stems from my pre world wide web college days, where I had 2 or 3 address for college and a home address from my ISP. I even remember logging in via Telnet via a 2400 baud modem to check my accounts and read usenet groups via nn. Now that’s a scary thought!

I had a call from someone that modeled for me as I was just learning the ropes in my own studio space. While I had done some workshops and quite a few shoots, this was where I got to try out new lighting ideas and generally messing around with being in studio. I feel I’ve come a long way since this. That said I still use some of the lighting setups used here! There’s very little in the way of post processing on these (I should really make some of the white backgrounds whiter!), but it’s nice to see where I’ve come from. I’m guessing that these were shot with a mix of Bowens Gemini 500′s and Portaflash 336′s.

I’ve just packed up and left my studio for good. In fact I had a headshot session in my apartment today, which went well. 2 of the 4 final shots I really really like, not that the others are bad, I just love these ones. I’ll post them tomorrow (if I remember and get time!). I was recommended some spaces that would’ve been great as a studio, but everything fell through, so I suspect I’ll be renting as needed now.

Just the first image I took in Scotland.

about nothing.. I’ve been laid low with flu all week. I thought I was getting better, but by 5 today I was wiped. I managed to sleep through my son getting his fingers caught in the door (didn’t hear any screaming). Poor lad. Such is how wiped I was.

Anyway I’ve been living on laptops and Twitter for the past few days. Some of the conversations on Twitter reminded me of old websites I love. The first being Ashes and Snow from Gregory Colbert. That in turn reminded me of the fabulous tonal qualities of Nick Brandt. While both are shot quite close to animals, and go for a sepia tone, the similarity ends there. Gregory’s work is about the human animal interaction, while Nick is creating an almost fantasy ‘memory’ collection of animals that may not be with us for much longer.

Elephants and Cheetahs are my favourite of all the African species. And of course it goes without saying, the swimming Indian Elephants of Sri Lanka. This is reason enough for me to like the work of these photographer. The wonderful compositions and toning cement this completely. Nick will have a new book out later this year. I know I’ll be buying it.

While Nick is keeping some of his secrets close to his chest, he still has a large press section on the website where you can learn about his work and techniques.

The other link I’ve been perusing is an absolute opposite: Fashion. It came in from Melissa Rodwell: FTape.com. It’s a great resource for fashion.

While this blog was originally a one a day photoblog, it’s progressively expanded to include other things. And it’s going to expand further. One area I don’t really cover much of anywhere online is audio. Ironically, I’ve been a sound engineer since 1988, but never really talk about it online. I did once have a tech blog called Gadget Gear Grind, many moons ago. It covered loads of gear but focused a lot on toys, audio and mobile phones. I did also have a little photo gear related blog called Photocite, which I dropped for this one, but haven’t included much of that recently. Well I now intend to add more of these in future articles and videos.