The pandemic has slowed and shrunk my life in pretty significant ways. It’s been months since I’ve left the county which is a stark contrast to my prior routine. One of the most profound effects of slowing down is that you see less, more. The resolution of the life around me has increased significantly. I... Continue Reading →
Starting off in print photography, I learned that the standard photograph here in the States is 4" x 6". Just about every film camera takes images in that aspect ratio. The prevalence of digital cameras and digital media changed all that. Photographers are less bound by fixed print sizes and thus can be significantly more... Continue Reading →
My employer has campuses all over the world. While on an extended trip to Sydney, I met up with a group of photographers there called the "Shutterbugs." The Shutterbugs every so often explore the area around the office over lunch practicing their photography skills. When I came back to San Francisco, I wanted to start that... Continue Reading →
The photographer's day really begins well before sunrise. The early morning hours are critical in getting great photos as the most color change happens the hours around sunrise and sunset. One of the Meetup groups, Not Only Black and White, had a sunrise shoot out at Bronte pools. The photographer's day really begins well before... Continue Reading →
One of the pleasant surprises here in Sydney is that it has a very vibrant culture of Meetup groups. I thought Meetup, being a New York corporation would have very limited presence here. The opposite couldn't have been more true. I've found groups that do photography, PHP development, WordPress, and more. It's been easy to... Continue Reading →
It was an exceptionally good sunset tonight seeing the warm colors across the sky from our balcony. I think I've seen more fireworks here in three weeks than I have the last 10 years living in the United States. Fireworks seem to be an every other day occurrence here in the land of Oz. I... Continue Reading →
Atlassian's corporate headquarters is right in the heart of Sydney. It's a beautiful location in the old Bank of New South Wales. As one could expect, we make extensive use of HipChat, our group chat platform. HipChat supports persistent rooms were groups of people can gather around a particular topic. Sydney has a group for... Continue Reading →
Today was one of the first days I felt really far from home. From California, it's a chunk of flying to get home. From Australia, it's literally halfway around the world. It takes 24 hours of continuous flying to get to home from here to see family. I got news today that my uncle had... Continue Reading →
Chinese New Year is a huge deal here. Celebrations are going on over the next two weeks including parades, food fairs, fireworks, and even coloring the Sydney Opera House with red light (as fleeting as it was). I'd never really photographed fireworks well before. Much like children, they are a fleeting art form that needs... Continue Reading →
It's amazing sometimes how the cadence of your day can change so quickly. I was walking home across the Sydney Harbor Bridge and saw that the Sydney Opera House was lit in bright red for Chinese New Year. I came back to the house and grabbed my camera gear. I was ready for the first... Continue Reading →
Treasure Island speaks to me. I love the view peering back into San Francisco from the island. I stopped with a buddy of mine several years ago to show him the view. He remarked, “this is the second most romantic view in the Bay Area!” I wondered… what was the most romantic spot in the... Continue Reading →
I came over the pass at Grant Grove at about 4 o’clock. Why is that significant? I’m well within “crappy afternoon light” part of the day. What is “crappy afternoon light?” By no means is this a standard industry term, I just find photos taken in the late afternoon before the golden hour surrounding sunset... Continue Reading →
Removing Noise with Adobe Lightroom One of the benefits of spot metering is that you can dial in the metering to a specific area of the photograph. Sometimes, when using spot metering there are large areas of the photograph that are dark. I found this to be true with concert photography. Since the light was... Continue Reading →
Moving up from a point-and-shoot camera to an SLR camera has opened up many amazing doors yet is teaching me the fundamentals of photography all over again. The SLR camera gets great results, but it takes more work to get a better photo than out of the typical point-and-shoot camera. It's not so much that... Continue Reading →
I decided it was time to update to a full SLR camera. My camera has been great for the past seven years. It had a full manual mode which gave a lot of creative control to me. It was also small and easy to take along on the motorcycle. The lens was fairly flexible for... Continue Reading →
Many years ago I was very much against the idea of "renting" software. When you buy a product, it's nice to know that you have "purchased" something so that that item can continually return value for it's useful life. As software versions have become more and more blurry with the ease of updates, the fundamental... Continue Reading →
This is a blog post that's taken 7 years to write. I started taking photos in 2005 for this one. In the United States we have two major sets of federally funded highway systems that connect cities across this land. Interstates - Most commonly known as the "superslab" amongst motorcycle riders. President Eisenhower championed the... Continue Reading →
I'm preparing a set of images for upload for a future blog post and started to make the edits in Photoshop but quickly became frustrated with the work required. For each image I had to: Shrink the image from 4000x5000 down to 480x600 Increase the canvas to 640x520 Place a 20 pixel border on the... Continue Reading →
A number of years ago I did a post on panoramic photography back in 2007. Stiching software has come a long way in the past 5 years. It used to be that packages were free/easy and limited in features or expensive and complex. Free solutions that had lots of features were buggy and complex. It... Continue Reading →
Recently I had to take a set of slides exported out of PowerPoint and turn them into slides again. While the process was totally backwards, it generally worked for the purposes of the meeting. When PowerPoint exports slides, it puts 6 slides on a page in PDF form. So to get them back into slides, ... Continue Reading →