I thought we could start on Saturday (Nov. 11) and go for seven days.
He has a theme for each of the 7 days. I’m in.
Doug Lane’s Micro.blog photo challenge
“My Fares” by Joseph Rodriguez
It was not unusual to see shoe-shiners outside of Grand Central. They’re not there anymore. I think it’s a Banana Republic now.
Incredible photo portfolio backed with incredible stories.
/via Kottke.
Austin Mann’s iPhone 8 Plus camera review
While the iPhone 8 Plus looks essentially the same as the phone we’ve had since the 6 Plus, there are some new features in the 8 Plus which really impact creative pros across the board — most notably Portrait Lighting, along with a few other hidden gems.
As per usual for Austin, he does an excellent job highlighting the capabilities of the latest iPhone’s camera system. The results are gorgeous.
One thing I take away after pouring over his entire review; we’re at a point now where every single adjustment and improvement that Apple makes to this camera system is seemingly subtle but has dramatic results.
For example, the new file formats are invisible to the user yet save 50% space on both device and in the cloud. As someone who paid Apple for 1TB of iCloud storage (which they recently upped to 2TB for free) and who stores nearly 100,000 photos and videos … this means I will be able to store four times the amount I was able to before this update. This is a marvel at nearly every level of technology – hardware, software, and file system.
Other examples are HDR in Portrait mode, the new Lighting effects (which is one of the most practical uses of ARKit that I’ve seen yet), the Lock Camera setting, the new “smarter sensor”, etc. When you see Austin’s photos the improvements are absolutely stunning. You can tell he is even surprised by the results.
I’ve long been impressed at the camera system in the iPhone. It is my primary reason to upgrade from one iPhone to another each time I do. But we’re now in a territory where Apple will soon be selling not just the most popular camera in the world, but the best camera in the world.
Capturing the ISS’s transit of the Sun during the eclipse
This is quite a feat.
Photographer Trevor Mahlmann figured out where you’d need to be within the path of totality in order to capture the International Space Station transiting the sun during the eclipse. That alone is pretty awesome. But there was a hitch.
The land area that you’d need to be on in order to capture it is private land. By happenstance Destin from Smarter Everyday has a friend whose child was midwifed by a woman who knows (or is married to?) the landowner? Incredible.
So the three of them teamed up to get what I would say is easily the best photography done during the eclipse so far.
You can watch Destin’s video on Smarter Everyday and then also head on over to Trevor’s Patreon to help support his work.
Aerial photos of a few wineries
In late April Eliza and I took a weekend day drive to visit some wineries in the tristate area of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. We wanted to visit a few wineries we had never been to before and the beauty of that region alone is worth the drive.
We both take tons of photos on days like this but for a change I thought I’d take a photo of each winery we visited with my drone. I didn’t know how this would work out logistically – would the wineries let me, would it be a pain to do, would it take too long and put a damper on our day? It turns out none of my fears were founded. It was super easy to do (with some initial set up) and the results came quickly and easily.
Here are the aerial photos along with my personal ratings of the wineries.
Belmarl Winery and Vineyard – ★★★★★
Brotherhood Winery – ★★★★☆
Demarest Hill Winery – ☆☆☆☆☆ (sorry, it was terrible)
Warwick Valley Winery & Distillery – ★★☆☆☆ (region worth visit, spirits are not)
Now that you’ve seen the photos, I’ll give you a quick rundown of how I prepared so that taking these photos wouldn’t ruin our day. Before we left I set up the drone and my small take-off table in the trunk of the car ready to fly. Props attached, batteries in, bag unzipped. The only thing I needed to do at each winery was find a safe place to fly, turn the drone on, take a photo or two, land, and turn the drone off. I focused on only taking two or three photos of each winery. So I chose my angle, flew to a decent height, took my shot and left. These were only for my own personal collection anyway. My guess is that my longest flight was 5 minutes long.
This idea of looking at things slightly differently using the drone fits my principle of having an excuse to explore.
I wouldn’t change much about my technique here. And it likely seems like an odd thing to obsess over. But, I’m satisfied with the shots (they are photos that I never would have if it wasn’t for owning a drone) and my set up. I hope to do this again on similar jaunts.
Multiple photos and videos in a single post on Instagram
With this update, you no longer have to choose the single best photo or video from an experience you want to remember. Now, you can combine up to 10 photos and videos in one post and swipe through to see them all.
Fantastic update and finally one that is different than most, if not all, other platforms.
Photos app updated on iCloud
Apple has debuted a major update to its web-based iCloud Photos app at iCloud.com, presenting a new user interface that more closely resembles the macOS Photos app.
Major is a good word to describe this update. You’ll even notice the ‘url’ for the app is now #photos2 on iCloud.com. The app is significantly improved in every single way.
/via The Loop.
Thirty days of images
Each morning, at around 9am Eastern, a new image is published to my blog. I schedule these posts each weekend (I even built a WordPress plugin to help me) and they publish automatically without any other interference from me.
I’ve just hit 30 consecutive days of this schedule and I’d like to keep it up in perpetuity.
The image posts are the least popular on my blog. They are not tweeted or shared on Facebook or Instagram. They are silently published with no fanfare. I think of these posts as a slowly building collection of my favorite images. A way to showcase images, not as a library, but as a selection.
Very, very light editing happens from shot to post. I shoot with my iPhone (currently an iPhone SE), a Canon DSLR, or a GoPro camera. Hopefully soon I’ll be adding a new UAV camera to the mix. I do not make reference to the camera used for each shot because I believe that sort of information is irrelevant. The image is what is important, not how it was captured. In general I prefer my images to be slightly bumped in color so I generally crop, straighten, bump a few values, and prepare for publishing.
To prepare for publishing I have two albums in Photos for macOS. “To Publish” is an album I drag images into that I would like to publish some day. I generally drag 7 to 10 new photos into this album each week so that I always have enough to choose from when I’m scheduling these posts. “Published” is an album full of every image I’ve published. This way I have a fairly simple way of remembering whether or not I’ve already published a particular photo or not. Once the image is edited I drag the image to my Desktop, resize to 1000 pixels wide, and toss it into a new post in WordPress, tag it, and schedule it to be published.
It is a simple enough workflow that it allows me to get an entire week’s worth of images scheduled within about an hour or less each week. I hope if you’re subscribed to this blog you enjoy seeing them.
These posts have inspired both Danny Nicolas and Kyle Slattery to begin doing similar posts on their site. I’m extremely happy and humbled to see that and I’m glad to subscribe to their blogs to see what they share. Who knows? Maybe in another 30 days two or three more people will join.
How to fix bad thumbnails in Photos on macOS Sierra
Since updating to macOS Sierra my Photos library will show some bad thumbnails that are either completely black or have black “bars” on them. Here is just one example that I managed to screenshot (see: top left photo).
If you come across this issue it is pretty easy to fix.
- Right-click (or, control+click, or two-finger tap) on the photo.
- Choose “Rotate Clockwise” (this will rotate the photo, and regenerate the thumbnail)
- Rick-click on the photo again
- Hold down the Option key
- Choose Rotate Counterclockwise (this will rotate the photo back to its original orientation)
I don’t know what causes these bad thumbnails but at least it is relatively easy to fix them.
Exploring Conservation Island in Promised Land State Park
It takes just over an hour for me to get to Promised Land State Park. (See also, park map.)
Because it isn’t too close to home I’ve only been to this park twice. Once two years ago to kayak and again just a few weeks ago with Jonathan Edwards to do a little UAV flying and hiking. We ended up flying and fooling with our photography equipment more than hiking. Which was fine. It was fun just to geek out a bit rather than worrying about step counts. (We did manage to squeeze in about 5 miles somehow though.)
Jon and I parked our cars just off Pickerel Point Road and walked to Conservation Island. This park is very big and has tons of hiking trails that I hope to someday get back and hike some more. Maybe I’ll hike them like I’m hiking the Lackawanna State Park trails when I find the time. Our first priority was getting our UAVs in the air for a bit.
For those keeping track of my Lackawanna State Park hikes, this exploration of Promised Land State Park happened in-between the Abington Trail and South Branch Trail hikes. I’ve been doing a lot of exploring lately.
We did some flying above the Conservation Island bridge (ended up drawing a crowd too). It was windy and once we had our footage we didn’t take the UAVs back out. From there we walked the loop around the island and toyed with our equipment. There were a few neat spots to check out like some rock outcroppings and a lush area on the eastern side of the island. From what I read the island was created when Lake Wallenpaupak was created.
I was testing out a few lenses for my iPhone (a wide-angle and macro lens) and Jon was toying around with a camera he had borrowed from a friend and a selfie-stick. We managed to get some decent photos. Here are a few of the photos I kept. I’ll be publishing the better ones on the site over the next several months.
All-in-all it was a good day out.