Customize the SmugMug Style Bar

If you create a custom header on your SmugMug site, you might experience that the Style Bar (Style Dropdown Box or Style Button) takes up an entire line of horizontal space just for itself. It might even be placed like this:



It would be much better to have it be one of the YUI buttons and have it on the same row as the Share and Slideshow buttons.



I searched a long time on the great wide Interwebz to find a solution. Way down in the Digital Grin Forum I found a post that explain how you do it. As you can see I have made it work, so can you.
So head over to the Digital Grin Forum to get the code :)

Find specific color photos with MultiColr

If you're working on a graphical project or maybe a website, you're properly working within certain colors. If you need a stock photo for your project, it can be a tedious process to find a photo that fits in your color profile.

Let's say you're working with two different shades of olive green #DAE8B6 & #B5D267. You go to MultiColr and pick the two colors in the color chart.

You are then presented with a wide variety of photos that include these two particular colors. The cool thing is that the Photos a picked among the millions of Creative Commons images on Flickr :)

Interesser møtes på Twitter

Bruken av Twitter øker eksplosjonsaktig for tiden, også i Norge. Twitter er litt vanskelig å komme i gang med, man er nødt til aktivt å finne noen som man deler interesser med.
Når den første terskelen er overskredet og man har fått noen å følge med på som sier noe av interesse, går det imidlertid sterkt.
En Twitter bruker kvidret om at nå var det jammen en fin kveld for en tur med kameraet, en link til et bilde på Flickr ble lagt ved.
En annen Twitter bruker kvidret om at han hadde bestilt en ny linse og gledet seg som en unge.
En tredje Twitter bruker kommenterer disse tweets og diskusjonen om kjøp av fotoutstyr og Flickr starter.

Diskusjonen utviklet seg til å omfatte seks-syv brukere på Twitter. Det hele endte med at en av brukerne spanderer en formue på en linse, mens en annen startet en ny gruppe på Flickr for twittere.
Gruppen Twitter Photochallenge ble raskt større og er nå en veldig aktiv gruppe med medlemmer som deler bilder på Flickr og deler informasjon på Twitter.

Dette er et eksempel på hvordan det er veldig enkelt å treffe andre mennesker på Twitter med samme spesialiserte interesse som en selv!

Dette er samtalen som gjorde en av brukerne noe fattigere på pengepungen, men alle litt rikere på sjelen :)

(Starter i bunnen)

Sensor Cleaning

You can shoot a lot of photographs with your digital SLR camera, without seeing any signs of dust on your sensor. But when you shot with a small aperture like f/32 and have large unicolor areas like blue sky, you'll suddenly notice small dark spots in your images.

Look at the top center part of this image with a lot of blue sky (click to see final result on Flickr :)


I shoot a lot of landscapes at f/22 - f/32, and I have seen how my sensor have collected dust over the last months.
Today I finally pulled my self together and bought the Dust-Aid Wand. It was a scary experience to swap that cloth over my sensor this first time, but it helped :))



So I hope that I no more have to use the spot removal tool in Photoshop Lightroom (although it is a fantastic tool :)

Lyrics on last.fm with GreaseMonkey and LyricWiki

LyricWiki is a community site where anyone can go to get reliable lyrics for any song from any artist without being hammered by invasive ads.
LyricWiki is driven by the users in the community like any Wiki.

LyricWiki is a cool site on its own, but it becomes really powerful in conjunction with other sites like last.fm.
But LyricWiki is not built into last.fm by default, you'll need to install the GreaseMonkey Firefox extension and the Last.fm - Lyrics UserScript. Read this short blog post if you're new to GreaseMonkey.

When all that is done, you'll find lyrics on every track page on last.fm. If the lyrics for your particular track is not found, you'll find a link to the page where you can put in the lyrics for your favorite tracks :)

This screenshot shows the "Eric Hutchinson - Food Chain" track on last.fm with lyrics enabled.

Add Inline Images in Gmail

Adding inline images in e-mail messages have been possible in e-mail clients like Microsoft Outlook and Mozilla Thunderbird for many years. But it has up until now not been possible to add inline images if you use the browser based Gmail client.



Google have now added the "Insert image" option to Gmail, but it is not turned on by default... To turn this function on you have to go to "Settings - Labs" and enable the "Inserting images" feature.



When that is done you'll see a new icon in the menu when you create a new message.

How to view Flickr photos large on black

Big Huge Labs has some useful Flickr tools, one of them is the ability to show a Flickr photo large on black background. This is a fine way to present your Flickr visitors a quick link to a large detailed version.

If you want your visitors to view a large version on black, you have to provide a large enough version :) But how large should it be, or to phrase the sentence better: how small can it be, and still be viewed large on black?

Here comes the weird part: I have seen images as small as 1024*768 px that show up fine in "View large on black", but others in 1280x1024 px that don't...?

I have no idea why this is so, but to be on the safe side, you have to upload an image that is big enough to get a native "large" version and a bigger "original" version.




The sweet spot for Flickr to create that large version is 1281 px on the largest side, this is the versions that will be created if the image is 1280 px on the largest side.




So if you want to be sure that your "View large on black" link on your Flickr photos work as intended, the longest side has to be at least 1281 px :)

Ansel Adams, the first HDR pioneer

Photographers have always tried to take advantage of the huge dynamic range that we see around us. The process to bring out that dynamic range in a photograph have been going on since the camera was invented.
One of the pioneers in this high dynamic range field is Ansel Adams.

William Turnage describes Adams this way: "He manipulated the work tremendously in the darkroom. He always said that the negative is the equivalent of the composer's score and the print is the equivalent of the conductor's performance, and the same piece of Mozart is conducted differently, performed differently, by different orchestras, different conductors, and Ansel performed his own negatives differently."

How to get 9 shots in AEB on Canon 40D

Canon only implemented 3 shots in Auto Exposure Bracketing mode (AEB) on the 40D/50D. Even the 5D mk. II has only 3 shots in AEB.
The rumors says that the 60D will have 9 shots in AEB, we'll see...

But 3 exposures is not enough if you shot scenes with a lot of dynamic range and want to create HDR/Tone Mapped images. In normal situations it is enough with 6 exposures ranging from -3 ev to +2ev with a 1ev interval.
That can be achieved fairly easy using the exposure compensation dial. Here's how:

1. Use a tripod!
2. Use manual ISO, as low as possible.
3. Use 1/2-stop increments on the exposure compensation dial, not 1/3.
   
4. Set the AEB to -1 0 +1. You'll now see three markers in the display that shows the AEB value, to begin with it will show -1 0 +1.
   
5. Set the drive to 2 second (self timer).
6. Use aperture program (A). If your shooting landscape you'll properly want to use a small aperture like f/16 or f/22, maybe even smaller like f/32.
7. Frame and focus the shot.
8. Switch on manual focus so that the focus is the same in all 6 shots.
9. Turn the exposure compensation all the way to the left to get three underexposed shots, -3 -2 -1. The display will now show one marker on -1 and one blinking marker on -2 telling you that the third marker is on -3 :)
10. Press the shutter, wait those 2 seconds and let the camera shoot 3 exposures.
11. Quickly turn the rear dial to control the exposure compensation up to 0 +1 +2. That will be 4 ticks if you use 1/2-stop increments on the exposure compensation dial.
12. Press the shutter, wait those 2 seconds and let the camera shoot 3 exposures.
13. You now have 6 exposures at -3ev -2ev -1ev 0ev +1ev +2ev.

OK that will be sufficient for most situations, but if you shoot directly into the sun, you'll want more underexposed images. If you add another little procedure to the one above, it is possible to shot 3 more exposures fairly quickly:

1. Follow step 1-9.
2. Press the shutter half way down to read aperture and shutter speed for the -3 settings. That could be f/22 and 1/180 sec.
3. Switch to manual mode (M) and set the aperture to the same value that you used in aperture mode (f/22). Set the shutter speed -2 stops lower, that would be 1/750 sec. With a little practice this is done very quickly by turning the dial for the shutter speed four ticks (2 stops) to the left.
4. Press the shutter, wait those 2 seconds and let the camera shoot 3 exposures.
5. Switch back to aperture mode (A).
   
6. Proceed with step 10-13.

This will give you 9 exposures ranging from -6ev - +2ev, enough exposures to shoot directly into the sun :)

What you do with those 9 exposures is a whole different story, but they make the perfect starting point for some nice into-the-sun-hdr-shots :))

iPhone Sunrise / Sunset applications

Landscape photographers love to shoot in the hour around sunset and sunrise. But how do you know when an where the sun will show up or disappear?

There is several iPhone applications that helps you to calculate the movement of the sun and the moon. I have tried several free applications, but these two applications is all I need to know when the sun & moon will be where :)

Sunrise (1$) is a simple utility to calculate sunrise, solar noon, and sunset times, as well as the phase of the moon.
By default, it shows the information for the current day at the current location, but Sunrise can calculate any day in the past or future for locations around the world.

Sunrise uses iPhone and iPod touch’s ability to locate itself to determine the latitude and longitude for its calculations, so you don’t have to pick a city or location — it’s automatic.

In addition to using the current location, Sunrise has a self-contained list of locations from around the world for displaying times for other locations, or for iPod touch users who cannot use location services.

When using locations from the database, Sunrise can operate without a WiFi, cellular or GPS signal.

The Focalware iPhone Application Helps Photographers and Filmmakers Know the Position of the Sun and Moon - Anywhere, Any Time
Focalware is a photography application that calculates the position of the sun and moon anywhere in the world and at any time by utilizing GPS location and date information.

Focalware helps photographers and filmmakers around the globe plan optimal shots with accuracy and maximize their shooting schedules. For example, if a photographer has an assignment for a shoot in New York City on March 15, 2009 and the building in the shot faces 195 degrees but the photographer prefers raking light at an angle of 130 degrees, Focalware instantly computes a time of 10:28 a.m. with a sun elevation of 35 degrees as the time for the desired conditions.

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