Thursday, July 28, 2011

Landscape photography of Ian Cameron

The essence of good landscape photography seems to boil down to three things: composition, timing and light and Ian Cameron believes that this final ingredient, light, its colour, quality and strength is the single biggest infuence on the success or otherwise of the final image.


Enjoy the slideshow -at this terrific gallery  Transient Light 

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Shooting panoramic pictures

With the advent of high resolution digital cameras and great software, stitching panoramas has never been easier. 


The world's largest picture (as of 2010) is a 80 Gigapixel image of the London skyline, available at http://www.360cities.net. Microsoft Research's Photosynth software is useful as well. You can view the beautiful panorama of St. Peter's basilica in Rome here 


There are useful instructions on how to shoot overlapping images that can be stitched easily @ panomonkey.com. There are many ways you can stitch the images together by yourself using various photo editing tools such as Adobe Photoshop or you can use web based tools such as Panomonkey or Photosynth to name a few. 



The above panorama was created by stitching three images with Microsoft's Image Composite Editor (free photo stitching tool). 


For an example of a 3D image created by the Photosynth software, click here to see a winter image of Pleasant Lake, Michigan.


So go ahead and get started, and soon the world will be enjoying your panoramas.

Sunday, January 30, 2011

2011 Detroit Auto Show (NAIAS) gallery now online.

The annual Detroit event is among the premier auto shows in the world. The Detroit area auto dealers also host a major charity event, raising funds for numerous children's charities in the area.

This year's show was quite spectacular, with the Big 3's resurgence in full display. And for all car and photography enthusiasts, it is a terrific event that can't be missed, despite the cold weather. The Michelin design competition display & entries were splendid. So was the Venturi electric racer that could hit 307 MPH. Shape of things to come. Lexus had a kinetic display - with the LED wall and a cool L-Studio broadband channel.

BTW - Ford had the best vehicle models (ok, I am biased) and Chrysler had the best human models.

Enjoy the gallery.

Weekly freebie by Fotochoice.com (Jan 30, 2010)

Plymouth Ice Festival is a terrific fun family event in the midst of the cold winter season in Michigan. Kellog park transforms into a stage for talented ice carvers armed with an array of tools. This week's free foto is that of the ice sculpture depicting Roman goddess of Justice (although she is not wearing a blindfold).

While today's digital cameras can function in cold weather (it was about 20F on Jan 22, 2011), it is important to protect your camera from condensation. My advice is to carry a zip lock bag to drop the camera in, while it adjusts to the temperature difference (hot to cold or cold to hot).
And try to avoid changing lenses while you are out in the cold.

It was indeed a terrific day for kids of all ages. For more pictures from the event, please visit our gallery.

This foto was taken with my pocket camera Canon S90, F8 and 1/500 shutter speed.