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Flickr for iPhone Gets an Upgrade

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It be an understatement to say that the Flickr app released in late 2012 was an important move for the service. It probably helped save the farm. Now that great app just got another shot of adrenaline with some great upgrades. 

Yahoo's release of Flickr 2.1 for iOS has a slew of new features. Here are my favorites:
  • Picking photos from your iPhoto Photostream to save to Flickr. This is great because not every photo I want to share exists on my phone's camera roll. And often I'll save some heavily edited DSLR shots to my Photostream. This makes that whole process a tad easier.
  • uch faster uploading. I noticed a significant speed bump under the hood. When they first released the app I saw slow upload times. Thanks Yahoo.
  • Snap photos using the iPhone's volume up button. This is a no-brainer and I don't understand why more camera apps don't take advantage of this functionality now that Apple allows access to these buttons in the SDK. Afterall Apple lets you snap pictures this way while using the built in camera app.
  • This update saves an original photo to your camera roll in addition to your heavily post-processed version.
  • Higher resolution photos are now displayed in the lightbox view.

And there are a few more bells and whistles like quickly tagging your contacts in photo comments by typing @screename, and now you can get notified when contacts mention you. 

Now that Flickr is back with a vengeance I'm still struggling to figure out how it fits into my overall photo workflow. But the way I see it no other service offers the same level of high resolution photo sharing that Flickr does. 

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Photo of the Day: A Lone Tree on Lake Wakatipu

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I've started going through some of my first day images from my New Zealand trip. I decided to play around some tight versus wide crops. This is a fun tight crop across Lake Wakatipu in the heart of Queenstown. Thanks to the Nikor 28-300 lens I was able to get in nice and tight on this copse of trees. 

This is an HDR shot but instead of using the 5 images I shot I decided to only use 4. The +2 exposure shot was too blown out. I did a multiply layer and then masked back in some of the darker trees that I saw that misty morning.

It's fun to see some of my first day images versus the images I was starting to shoot by the end of the week. It's amazing what some intensive learning can do to a person.

 

 

​Lone Tree on Lake Wakatipu, New Zealand

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Photo of the Day: Baby Learning to Crawl

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Sure I've got some nice newer cameras but occasionally I like to grab one of my old ones and have some fun. I found my older camera and popped on a nice 50mm lens and had some fun shooting my daughter as she tried to crawl. I really love the depth of field on this one.  

I've also been enjoying Color Efex Pro 4. I used a soft focus filter and then dropped it back into Lightroom 4 so that I could add some clarity to her eyes and clean up a tiny piece of food on her mouth. Hey that's how babies roll!

Derrick Story had some similar advice this week about digging out an older camera. I shot this photo back in January but his idea holds true: Reinvigorate your photography by using one of your older cameras. 

​Baby portrait 50mm, f/2.0, 1/30 second

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Photo of the Day: Red Rock Canyon at Sunset

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Red Rock Canyon, Nevada

Yes the rocks are really this reddish orange. I wish the sky was better on this particular evening but sometimes you get what you get and then have to add something in post processing. I didn't do much to the sky here but I did add a hue saturation layer in Photoshop and masked in a little more color.

Also I ran it through Nik Software's Viveza, a great plugin that my friend Scott Kublin recommended. It lets you pick a targeted area and really play with the structure, brightness, contrast, saturation. I tweaked the structure a tad bit and also played with the contrast.

I used my Sony NEX-7 on a pretty terrible tripod. I did a series of 3 bracketed photos. Boy have I learned a lot since I took this photo in early January. 

by Clayton Morris

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Photography Tips: Learning ISO, Aperture, and Shutter Speed

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Entry level and amateur photographers learning their first DSLR camera are instantly confronted with the big three: ISO, aperture and shutter speed. And speaking from experience it can be terrifying. These three settings are the make or break functions to every photograph. While the combinations of the three are near infinite it does not mean it is impossible to gain a solid grasp on the concept of each as the learning progresses. With a base level understanding of ISO (film speed), Aperture (light), and the Shutter Speed (amount of time the shutter is open) photographic skills grow.

ISO

On any modern DSLR there is a setting either on the hard body or on the LED display that says "ISO". Under the ISO or to the side are numbers that range from 100 all the way up to 36000 (on higher end professional models). The ISO setting is the digital equivalent of using different film speeds in old 35mm cameras. Film speed, or ISO, is used to help achieve the proper light balance upon taking the shot. A great beginner tip for using ISO is the brighter the light the lower the ISO should be. For example, if you are shooting an indoor birthday party under low light, the ISO should be set at 400-600 (your mileage may vary). If shooting under intense sunlight the ISO is generally dropped to 100 (or even 50).

Here's an example of a quick shot using a higher ISO because I wasn't on a tripod in this lower light. This is ISO 800 at f4.

Very often during sunrise photography I leave the ISO at a flat 100 because I'm using a tripod. I generally try to keep it set to 100 in most situations. The higher the ISO the more noise you'll get on your photos. If you want a nice beginner e-book on improving your photos check out Trey Ratcliff's '10 Principal's of Beautiful Photography'. 

Shutter Speed

This is a setting I didn't even know existed until I had to tackle photographing a kids birthday party. You can read that full post here. The bottom line is that you need to switch to Manual mode to take advanatage of shutter speed. You can do it other ways but Manual mode gives you total control. 

Try to remember that shutter speeds double with every crank of the wheel. So you’ll usually have the options for the following shutter speeds – 1/500, 1/250, 1/125, 1/60, 1/30, 1/15, 1/8 etc. The idea of ‘doubling’ is useful because you're basically doubling the amount of light you let in each time you increase the shutter speed.  So when you up the shutter speed you'll want to drop the f-stop to compensate for the new night. 

To grab fast moving objects you'll want a faster shutter speed. This is definitely true when you're shooting kids, sports. etc.

 

Aperture

In a nutshell, the Aperture controls the size of the opening for the digital sensor and it's more commonly called f-stop. The more open, the more light comes in. Aperture use controls the focus on the subject and background. A good rule of thumb to use is the lower the Aperture setting, the crisper the focal point will be but the less in focus the background will be. So f/2.8 will get a nice portrait with a blurry background. The opposite also holds true; the smaller the opening, the crisper the background becomes. 

One simple tool to remember f-stop is to think about this: f/2.8 will probably only let you focus on 2 people while f22 will let you focus on 22 people. So imagine a large group shot of 22 people. It's a stupid little memory tool that helps me. I also learned a really dirty way of remembering this but there's no way I'll tell you unless I meet you for beers someday.

In many cameras, the F-stop are the same as Aperture, while in other DSLR cameras there is a dedicated F-Stop setting. F-Stop helps control the amount of light as well as the focal point in the camera. F-Stop, when used with the ISO, makes for tremendous range and artistic expression. As a good rule, especially with the DSLR cameras, adjust the F-stop in half-step increments and look at the photo taken to see the focus differences on the subject. When the desired setting is achieved, snap away and becomes the next Ansel Adams!