Image Bookmark Site

I just found this neat little website that allows you to bookmark and catalog images you really like on the web, since we will be dealing with images when we start using the more creative tools of Photoshop this would be a good resource, remember however images you want to edit should be not copyrighted, you can use creative commons images if you provide acknowledgement. Here is the url. http://vi.sualize.us/

If you cant say something nice...

Remember your mother and teachers telling you if you cant "say something nice, don't say anything"? While most people try to follow such advice, it shouldn't include constructive criticism. A good blogger not only has a responsibility to produce interesting content. Its important to try for a dialog or conversation with your readers.

If you are trying to engage someone in a conversation, commenting on or responding to their posts is important. It is considered good blogging etiquette. Offering constructive criticsm goes a long way toward winning readers not to mention respect.

5 questions for user friendly critiques

• What is the most successful/least successful part of the photo and why?


• Does the image trigger an emotional response in you? Anger, calm, envy?


• Are you passionate about the content of the image? Does it invoke happy or sad memories?
  
• Did the photo remind you of someone elses work or something awesome that you have seen?


• Does the photo touch a nerve, stir up a controversy, take a stand that you agree with or disagree with?

Learn from each other

Some people like to include the details about how they took a shot, set it up or processed it in photoshop. Other times they just put up the pic. It is perfectly ok to ask politely, "how did you get that!" More specifically ask:

• about the photographer's creative vision, settings they used and why they used them.
• about an expressive portrait or more specifically how the look came to be on the model's face.
• what decisions did you make and what ones were dictated by the conditions
• choice of subject or location and time of day
• What would you do differently next time

Make a suggestion:

Suggestions put politely are not offensive to most people especially if they are honest. Things you might consider as a suggestion include:

• cropping to highlight or center a main point in the frame or using the rule of 1/3.
• an idea for images in a series.
• suggest a different color sepia, black & white or high contrast and saturation.
• suggest a tutorial if you've seen one on the subject

Keep up the good work on your blogs I really like them and would enjoy them more if we did some better writing and comments!

"Urban Photowalk"

WE'RE GOING ON A PHOTOWALK! YAY!

Time for another photowalk. Meet at the parking lot on 10th and Hickory Wednesday Sept. 24.

Do your homework by looking at other posts on flickr. Here are some.

http://www.flickr.com/groups/greatcityscapes/ http://www.flickr.com/groups/topcityscapes-citylife/ find more by typing in cityscapes in the search box. Also you might like to see groups about small town life http://www.flickr.com/groups/livinginasmalltown/ since this is probably more of what we will see.

Dress Up Your Photos.

If you want your photos to look really professional check out this photoshop tutorial.

http://digital-photography-school.com/blog/look-the-part-how-to-show-off-your-photos-like-the-professionals-photoshop-tutorial/


This is my stab at it

PhotoStory 3

On Tuesday we took a look at PhotoStory 3. I used some of my memorial gardens pictures and the canned music that the photostory program creates. I did not do any titles or voiceovers.

Time for Photo Essays

Try Animoto
There are so many ways you can organize your photos into a photo essay. Remember a photo essay is a group of photos organized in order to tell a story or follow a theme. One web 2.0 application that looks like fun is animoto. Here is a demo i did of students' art.

Courthouse and Jail Rock

We followed this rainbow along the Pumpkin Creek valley on Saturday September 6, 2008.

Buffalo Creek Photowalk

Liatris
goldenrod
milkweed
juniper berries

I took these macro photos at Buffalo Creek Wildlife Management Area, south of Melbeta, Nebraska. There were also some landscapes that I can post later. I really enjoy getting out and walking, sometimes we see lots of wildflowers like today, other times its wildlife or neat weather conditions. Usually at this wildlife area there aren't very many people but this day we saw some horseback riders.

Black and White with a layer mask

Here is an example of a layer mask using the oval marquee tool to select an area from the layer mask and cut it away leaving the color from the layer below to show.

Picasa3 movie.

Easy editing.
Here is a movie made from the unedited images I took during our photowalk, of course you will want to edit before you render into a movie. Picasa makes it really easy.

Note it is a good idea to figure 4 seconds per photo and multiply this out, you will then know how many photos you need to put into the movie generator to make the pacing work out better than mine which I think is too long!

Picasa 3 test

Here are some photos from my picasa3 application, when I click on blog this 4 of the photos showed up in the blogger window.

Picasa 3

Just when you thought you were getting a handle on things something new comes along that will blow you away. Because some of the software we use in class is sooo expensive I feel like I should present you with some alternatives. We have already mentioned Gimp which is the open source counterpart to Photoshop. Now Google has updated their photo editor and sharing software Picasa. Its free and does many of the things that Bridge does so check it out! I uploaded some of my pictures to an album on Picasa's public site. Now I'm trying to see if I can embed a slideshow!
So after reading the directions I can blog directly from Picasa, Lets see!

Searching for the right place!

Ok students here is a new step in our quest to put our photos up quickly while we are all in the lab. In trying the wiki, it seems that most of us cannot post if someone is editing the class page. Boo! What I'd like us to try next is for you to set up your own blog. Since we have conveniently all gotten google accounts you can set this one up in seconds. Now lets see if we can upload photos! Wow that was really easy.!!














I think you can continue to write about your pictures and move them around I think I will see if we can leave comments. The only down side seems to be that everyone will have their own blog address but we should be able to bookmark links unless I can find a group blog!

Actually on the dashboard when you log in there is a place to post all of the blogs you follow. So we can link to each others photo blogs. Next I see that we can also embed video! yay! we can also keep our blogs from being listed on search engines so someone would have to know our addresses to see the photos.

What do you think?