Karlo.Org - Weblog

1. More people.
2. Fewer buildings.
3. Shoot more B&W.
4. Shoot less wide angle. Use a normal lens more often.
5. Use a tripod. Really.
6. When it comes to prints, think big. Stop shooting for 640x480.

That's as many as I can hope to remember. To give you an idea, I own a tripod but I've never posted a photo shot with a tripod to the photolog. And I think there's been maybe one, or two, black and white shots.

That said, it looks like I'll be totalling over 5000 photos taken this year. It's probably not my record (I suspect I shot more frames in film during college, but there was no count of them) but it's not a bad effort. Still, that's only about a half a roll a day.

Posted by Tom at 2:37 PM | Permalink

Apparently I'm not the only one who really likes the new American Express ad, "Tribeca", featuring Robert Deniro talking about New York City, reportedly direct by Martin Scorcese. If you haven't seen them on television (I'm not sure they're running outside the New York media market) then you can watch them online here.

Posted by Tom at 3:04 PM | Permalink

My family's Christmas present was a Nikon SB-800 Speedlight (flash) for my D70. I'd previously been shooting using a decade-old SB-28, which I rarely used due to the awkwardness of getting a satisfactory exposure (it's not 100% compatible with the D70.)

Not only is exposure great on the SB800, but it comes with a filter to tune its light color temperature to the same as tungsten bulbs, which helps eliminate that funny blue color cast that we all associate with flash photos. I used to do this with Roscoe lighting gels, but it's really even better when combined with perfect flash exposure.

Now that most SLRs come with a built-in flash, the external flash unit is a less common sight. But if you spend hundreds on lenses, you might want to consider dropping the dough on an external flash -- it really does make a huge difference when set up properly.

Coming soon: 2005 photography New Year's resolutions.

Posted by Tom at 9:39 AM | Permalink

Don't you just love group shots? The posed group is a form we see less these days than in the past, but they're often the photos you like the best years later. I took this one last night, finally (after a month) using my new tripod for something other than household decor. Now if I could just get my hands on a Nikon infrared camera remote... but they're rarer than a blue moon.

Posted by Tom at 5:23 PM | Permalink

Thanks to the folks at EZ Prints, who coverted this 16 Mega-Pixel panorama into a beautiful 4 FOOT by 1 foot panoramic print. The detail and the impact of the print are really impressive; I've shown it here with a magazine so you can get a better sense of scale.

The success I've had with this print will definitely motivate me to shoot more large-sized panoramas; frankly, computer monitors just aren't capable of doing these kinds of pictures justice.

On a related note, there's a group of folks at NYU now working on a 1-gigapixel imaging system. Some of the past work done on this can be found at the R1 project web site.

Posted by Tom at 7:45 PM | Permalink