Nate sitting in a teepee found in South Mountain

Nate looking for Jelly Fish

Based on the initial buzz surrounding Google’s recent update to their Image Organizing/Editing application, Picasa 2, I was eager to check it out.

However, what I hadn’t read about before downloading, and was pleasantly surprised to discover, was that the Picasa update supports viewing and editing photos saved in my Canon 300D’s native CRW RAW file format! Awesome!

Apparently the update also supports Nikon’s NEF RAW format as well.

I still will probably use Photoshop for its much more advanced image editing capabilities, but for quick cropping, level adjustments and black and white conversions (with color filtering) I will likely stay within the Picasa 2 environment.

Sometimes I like to quickly troll the raw link feed from del.icio.us because you never know what gems you might find.

For instance, I caught a link to imgSeek, which is a photo collection manager with content-based search. Basically this means queries can be express as a rough sketch or you can start with a single image and find similar images in your collection. For example, select a sunset as your starting image and imgSeek will find images with alike characteristics. Very cool!

Another Photography-related link found via /. points to a recent post on the Digital Photography Blog where they have assembled a collection of Photography Composition Tips found on the net.

Most of these are obvious to the professional photographer, but being that I’m not, I found many of the tips helpful.

Like for example, these tips on taking night or low-light digital photographs. (which, BTW makes me want to apply the Firmware Hack to my D300 so I can “enable” ISO 3200 ;-)

UPDATE: June, 16 2004: New beta version B7.1: download here

Yesterday the news of the Russian Canon EOS-300D Firmware Hack hit /.

Spurred largely due to the 300D’s similarities with the 10D, rumors of the potential for hacks have been widely discussed in the forums on DPreview.

I’ve been passively following the 300D firmware hacks for weeks to get the skinny.

Yet I’m still on-the-fence with regard to installing a hacked firmeware upgrade due to the fact that it will void my warranty.

Alain Briot, described as one of the most successful landscape photographers working in the U.S. today, takes his Canon 300D Digital Rebel to Paris and details his intriguing conclusions on Luminous Landscape, such as the following:

“In evaluating the final results from my two weeks photographing in Paris, and while actually looking at prints done from my 300D images, I find these prints to be comparable to 4×5″, in terms of sharpness and overall image quality, in size up to 11×14 and maybe even larger”

Nostalgia: In the mid-80’s the Sunday Matinees were sweaty, smelly, sometimes scumbag filled Slam Dance Fests, but man… were they fun!

Lately, I’ve been doing some research into the latest crop of Digital SLR cameras from Canon. Of course, I’d be nowhere without the help from my friend and coworker Les, who needs to get his weblog/photolog online ASAP (but that’s another story).

Anyway, initially I was led to the Canon EOS 10D, by Anders and Les, which is an awesome pro-consumer camera, based on the reviews and sample pictures that that I’ve seen.

Although, at roughly $1,200 – $1,500(US), the price of the 10D is still way more than I want to spend (even with the imaginary money I’m willing to put towards a new digital camera to replace my aging Olympus 2020-Zoom.)

Expressions seems to be filling an up-and-coming blogging niche and at $2.50 per month, it’s certainly reasonably priced.

More here…

“Expressions! is a hosted media blogging system that makes it easy for anyone to create and maintain their very own photo or media blog. It has been designed and developed by fellow photographers, artists and bloggers to meet your specific needs.” (via Ben)

This could be fun…

“If you live in the US, have a digital camera, an email address and a
passion for telling stories with pictures, we invite you to take digital
photographs from May 12-18, 2003 and submit them to the
America 24/7 web site.”

I finally updated the gallery of photos Catherine and I have taken over the last 4 years of our dog Pinto, who we believe is a mix between Great Dane, Fox Hound and American Bull Dog, but feel free to make your own guess … He’ll always be a 90-plus pound puppy to us.

Derrick Story starts his first in an ongoing series of photo essays demonstrating how to get the most out of your digital camera (Thanks John)

I find it so inspiring to peruse the Photo Blogs indexed @ Photoblogs.org. It makes me want to take more pictures…

My sister Susan took some great pictures at our wedding. Here’s an Ofoto link to the first set of pictures.

An Ofoto link to pictures taken during our (Dave, John and myselft) ride in South Mountain.

After reading Top Ten Digital Photography Tips on O’Reilly I picked up The UltraPod II tripod and I must say that it is indeed a “compact, versatile, ingenious device”. In fact, I stuffed it into my CamelBak and took it on our ride in SoMo yesterday, where it worked very well.

Eric Myer Photography: Stereotypes

My cousin Kim sent me this… very funny …

Rob sent me this Ofoto link to the pictures he took during Bike NY 2002. This marked our 4th year of attendance and the largest group with 13 people riding in “Team Betty”. I think I speak for everyone that we all had a blast! I even was able to get Catherine to ride this year (thanks to Heather) However, I think the saddest moments were on the ferry ride back to Manhattan and our unplanned bike tour through ground zero. Such a devastating sight.

Well, this year I finally rigged my camera bag so that I could easily get to the cam while I was riding, because everyone who has ever ridden with me knows how much I like to stop :-) However, the downside is that none of the pictures are of me … (well, that was a bit by design!) anyway, here are the pictures I took during Bike New York 2001

pictures of Pinto playing in the snow at South Mountain Reservation in Essex County, NJ on New Years Day … it’s easy to see that he was having a blast!

Some pictures from new years 2k+1. the pictures are a bit blurry because i hate using the built-in fash. however, the subjects … truman and sophia (friends: ted and anna’s kids) are worth a look … note the pictures were taken at our friends john and denise’s house in maplewood, nj.

View pictures from our SF visit and hike up Mt. Tam

Pinto and Pongo … Ok, yes, we are pet people :-)

look! up in the sky!
… it’s a bird!
…….. it’s a plane!
………… it’s a flying pinto
ok, i had to get at least one picture of my dog in here :-)