Ever since I started making PhotoWalkthrough in 2006 I've wanted to design a logo for the show. I've tried many times to come up with some ideas that represented photography, photo editing, art and science - all the things I think make up photography and my show in particular. I finally decided a couple of months ago to ask for help. I was a graphic and web designer for years before I was a photographer so it really stung admitting I needed someone else to do this for me but I did it and eventually hired Anthony from Motojournalism. Right from his first ideas document he came up with some stuff I'd never thought of that I really liked. To cut a long story short we finally settled on the curves dialog you see above with the brush stroke as an s-curve through it. The ideas and typography were Anthony's suggestions and we worked together a little on colours (which we agreed to pick from our background image) and usages (the text is actually a transparent cut-out in the white bar so you can see the image through it). We have versions of this that work as square format, black and white format and all the other possible usages we might need. Anthony did superb work and I absolutely recommend him if you need a logo design. Best of all, he put up with a very fussy and interfering customer. Thanks Anthony - you rock.
So having done the work to make a new logo the obvious next step was to redesign the website and now I'm launching this thing at last. There's more still to do. I'm going to work on improving the navigation - I've already made a start on that with the newly designed Tutorials page. But, <big breath>, it's live after many many hours of work! I hope you like what you see. As usual I welcome feedback.
There's such a lot of free online photography training available that sometimes the great stuff gets lost in the river of amazing content. Well I just spent the last hour and a half watching a CreativeLive free video training session with Zack Arias and I was blown away by the quality of his work, his teaching and of the presentation. If you love learning photography online you've got to see this one. Here's the intro video. Check out the CreativeLive site to get the rest.
Very often we're looking at our photographs and trying to find the one real winner, the one that tells a story by itself as well as being beautiful and interesting. Often, though, a collection of pictures is much more powerful for giving an overall sense of place or story. Shooting for a collection frees you up, giving you permission to focus on just the interesting details and encourages you to think about a progression of events, the ordering of your images. It makes you a better storyteller.
Felix Kunze, a good friend of PhotoWalkthrough, has just posted a beautiful and simple photo essay showing the work of Marlene Rose, a glass sculptor. It's illustrated with wonderful photography as you'd expect from Felix. Marlene Rose and the making of beautiful glass
Whatever your thoughts about the merits or otherwise of micro-stock there's no denying that iStockphoto is doing great business. As well as the spiffy new website redesign (and the iStockphoto site really is looking very splendid right now) they've come up with a great way to sell even more of our stock photography and at the same time providing a service I think bloggers will quickly find invaluable. iStock are launching a Wordpress plug-in that helps bloggers browse, buy and insert the perfect stock image to accompany their post or web page and with the rise of smart feed readers like Flipboard, Apollo and Pulse (three of my favourite news reading apps on the iPad) the importance of an eye-catching image for gaining attention and building traffic has never been greater. The plugin pulls tags from your blog post and uses them to search against iStockphoto's catalogue of images. It was written by GuteWolke for Wordpress version 3.0 and is available at www.microstockplugin.com. Images purchased through the plugin are the same price and licensing terms as those bought through the website.
A new free photo sharing site just launched that makes it easy to share photos and make a collection with multiple contributors. It's called Yogile and it isn't just another Flickr or PhotoBucket. Signing up is a doddle and you'll automatically make your first collection. All you have to do next is hand out the simple URL or email address for your collection and your family and friends can upload photos too without even having to sign up.
So if you've had a wedding lately Yogile is a great way to collect pictures from all your guests. Just send everyone the URL or email address of your collection and everyone can upload their best pictures to your shared collection without even needing to sign up. There's a 100Mb/month upload limit and you can add a password if you want to keep things exclusive. The opportunities for collaborative collections is huge. Imagine collecting all the pictures from your latest photo walk, training course or family holiday.
Overall I like Yogile very much. Anyone who's tried to make a collection in Flickr and then get people to add their pictures will know how difficult that can be. Yogile makes everything much easier and there's even a handy slideshow view so you can sit back and enjoy everyones shots. There are a couple of features I'd like to see like a "download all" button, the ability to re-order the pictures and possibly even the ability to select a few shots in a collection and make them into a new collection. But as a brand new service I think Yogile gets the core features right and I look forward to seeing where they take it next.
At last PhotoWalkthrough is watchable on an iPhone, iPad or Android mobile phone. I've been playing around with some HTML5 video support and I believe I've found a solution that supports just about every browser and platform. Embedded below is the latest show which you'll see either as an HTML5 embed or as a flash object depending on what you're using to view this page.
I'm posting this to ask for your feedback on how successful this experiment is. If you've had trouble with this post or if you just want to say that it worked please leave a comment.
UPDATE: I suspect this isn't working for Firefox users. I'm still refining the code, though.
On today's audio only show we have a special guest, Felix Kunze, a travelling photographer that has recently been doing work in Haiti. We talk to him about how Haiti has fared since the earthquake and the life and responsibilities of his modern take on the role of photo journalist.
I've been working some more on PhotoWalkthrough desktop wallpapers and I've made a collection of 5 different colours schemes quite reminiscent of the Mac abstract or the Vista wallpapers. You can see them all in the Wallpaper Gallery and download them as zip files or windows 7 theme packs.
I've also added a new Promote PhotoWalkthrough section to the site where you can download logos, information and images related to PhotoWalkthrough. This is the place to look if you want a PhotoWalkthrough logo for your site or blog and I'll add lots more to this section over time. For now I've added what I had to hand.
If you've not already tried out Lightroom 3 beta then now is a great time to jump on board. Beta 2 has just been released and it's available from labs.adobe.com to try for free. It's a limited time beta and I don't recommend using it as your main photo repository since the database files likely will not be forward compatible with the final version. But it's a great way to get to grips with Lightroom, see what it can do for you, see what's new and give Adobe feedback on how you'd like to see it improved.
I've been playing around with Photoshop (yeah ok it's what I do) and thinking about maybe doing a series of tutorials based on colour. And this idea of a desktop background with vibrant colours came to mind. From there it was only a small step to the Vista style backgrounds and I've added a few ideas of my own on top of that too. Feel free to download this if you wish. I'll plan out a short tutorial for it and add it to the list of upcoming shows - it's a lot of fun to make your own branded desktop wallpaper.
Click the image to view the full sized version at 1920 x 1280. Designed to fit widescreen monitors but also works ok in standard 4x3 monitors.
From 2010's PhotoWalkthrough coverage of the Focus On Imaging show in Birmingham, UK. Finally on this 2010 series of Focus On Imaging shows we take a look at Timecare who sell everything you need to archive and protect your most precious photographs and photo backups including a very special material that will sacrifice itself to protect your CDs.
From 2010's PhotoWalkthrough coverage of the Focus On Imaging show in Birmingham, UK. We visit the Eizo stand today to see what's new with the very high-end monitor company and to see if they've anything us mere mortals can afford. We see Eizo's first self-calibrating monitor and learn about the Flexscan S2262W and the Coloredge CG303W and CG245W.
From 2010's PhotoWalkthrough coverage of the Focus On Imaging show in Birmingham, UK. We take a look at the Canon 550D, one of Canon's higher end entry level dSLRs complete with full 1080p video capability. We then try out the SX210, a high end compact camera with optical image stabilization and a massive 14x optical zoom.
From 2010's PhotoWalkthrough coverage of the Focus On Imaging show in Birmingham, UK. We re-visit the Moo stand today to see what's new with the young printing company and take a look at their latest clip frame. Sample promo web link included.
From 2010's PhotoWalkthrough coverage of the Focus On Imaging show in Birmingham, UK. It's with no apology at all that today's show is about insurance. It's something we all put off but if especially if you're in business as a photographer you *must* have public liability insurance. Nik from Aaduki explains quickly why and how easy it is to get covered.
From 2010's PhotoWalkthrough coverage of the Focus On Imaging show in Birmingham, UK. Permajet have been in the printing business for over 20 years and have an impressive range of both paper and ink solutions for modern digital printing. Today we look at their latest Pearl paper and their EcoFlo continuous ink systems (CIS) for the Epson R2400, 2880 and 3800 printers.
From 2010's PhotoWalkthrough coverage of the Focus On Imaging show in Birmingham, UK. The Gitzo Athena drew constant admiration from the passers by at this year's show it's a large and impressive motorised tripod head that can be mounted anywhere and controlled wirelessly.
From 2010's PhotoWalkthrough coverage of the Focus On Imaging show in Birmingham, UK. Blurb have been going from strength to strength since we saw them last year. They've introduced a new book size at customer request and made ICC profiles downloadable so customers can soft-proof their work before sending it for print. plus special DISCOUNT CODE INCLUDED for 50% off the cost of printing your own book in today's show.
From 2010's PhotoWalkthrough coverage of the Focus On Imaging show in Birmingham, UK. In this show we find out all about Kata's state of the art for light weight and superior strength in their newest camera bags, the bumblebees.
