31 Google Adsense Ads

I love the fact that a regular Joe like me can effectively become his own publisher with all the help that Google has provided. I’m such a novice though! If you’re a novice too then join me and we’ll try to navigate our way through this. If nothing else, it will be comical … like … um … ordering a cheesesteak with Swiss. Sorry, that’s a Philadelphia inside joke:) Well, you know what I mean.

On good blogs, there are almost always banner ads posted which just seems natural to me. I mean come-on, those are real websites. Stinky Fish is like an embarrassing amusement. The kind of site you have to ALT-TAB from the screen when anyone walks past. And for the number of times my faithful readers (my wife and my mom … yeah, that’s them up there) read this site, advertising isn’t worth the electrons it would take to paint the pixels.

But even as I write this post, Google has strategically enticed me by placing the word ‘monetize’ directly in front of my eyes – just inches above this very text. Monetize … yes yes yes … (the sound of little splishes here as my drool-plets hit the keyboard). I can hardly type anymore as my eyes are fixated on that word. It must be the key to complete financial freedom … to a vacation home in Ocean City … to a Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 … to an Alien Bees lighting rig … yes, yes … I’m certain of it!! Of course, I was certain that The Apprentice wouldn’t last a whole season 😦

If you select that tab, it brings you to the Google Adsense setup screen. There appear to be two kinds of advertising plans that Google provides – pay-per-thousand-impressions (CPM) or pay-per-click. WHAT!?! (or as my wife would say, ‘wuut!?!’) A THOUSAND IMPRESSIONS!?! I’m already discouraged. Hmmm … mom, I have a really big favor to ask … :-]] If a picture is worth a thousand words, is it also worth a thousand impressions!?! Not mine, that’s for sure.

So I typed in the account setup stuff and … kabang!!! I got an error.

More in the next post. When I figure out what to do and proceed on my way to making millions of dollars in the phoblography (you heard it here first) and web publishing business.

Peace,
Glen

30 Google Analytics

Welcome to the revamped website!

So I added Google analytics just to confirm what I already knew. That I can ramble at will and not offend a soul! BTW, I thought this shot of a Pennsylvania outhouse was appropriate for today’s post since it is pretty crappy. Bring your newspaper since I don’t think there is wifi in there.

hmmm … if a toilet flushes in the woods, does it make a sound? Now that’s my kind of metaphysics.

Google analytics is free (at least so far) and actually pretty easy to use. You sign up for an account which is quick and then you paste their javascriptlet into your website. From that point forward, teh scriplet uploads website hits to the Google analytics server. Then you just poke into that portal every two seconds to see how many people visited your site since two seconds ago. Or, as in the case of THIS blog, you call your mom and ask her to surf your site so that you can see if the counter even works at all. Simple really. Of course, that’s only if you can live with the disturbing secret that your mom hit on your site.

For more info go to http://www.google.com/analytics

back soon … peace

29 Photographic Abstractionism?

Is ‘photographic abstractionism’ a self contradiction? Is it more accurately artistic distortion? Maybe those are the same things … only different. Abstractionism was always an artistic distortion. Or was it an accurate personal revelation of a particular viewpoint?

There are enough common, foundational experiences of our world that we can be confident that, even to the artist, there were distortions of the thing represented relative to the perception of it. Of course, in many if not the majority of cases, the subject depicted never actually existed in reality. It was a complete figment but it was always analogous to real experiences … and distorted even in that context. The intent – to evoke … not remind. Of course, Pavlovian association can be leveraged to evoke subconscious response and so, reminiscent associations are a crucial element of evocative art.

This image has been distorted. Not warped. Just modifed. It is abstract in feel. A valid abstraction even though it uses a photographic medium. It’s not depictive … but it is definitive 🙂

that was fun … complete nonsense … but fun 🙂 I’ve decided that the best blogs make you think. They don’t necessarily make you agree … but they challenge your sensibilities.

Peace,

Glen

24 True HDR … can be brittle

This picture of some trees in Nockamixon Park seems to me to be dry and brittle. My goal was to get the image to closely represent what I “saw” when I took it. What I saw wasn’t really what was there .. it was my impression of what was there. I used bracketing on my D80 with a 2EV bracket spacing and shot this handheld. I always set everything manually and generally use center-weighted metering but I use it like spot metering by metering the highlights and shadows separately. I’ve been shooting RAW (NEF) almost always and occasionally checking histograms in odd lighting situations. I’ve selected Adobe RGB color space since it seems to be the least compressed.

Sometimes you have to take some steps backward before you move forward ;D That let’s you see the bigger picture … then you can move forward and focus on the really interesting things ..xxx

I’m in the ‘few steps backward’ phase right now. Learning new tools and techniques. Seeing what they can do … yada yada. Hopefully I’ll be a better photographer in the end ;D

If anyone has fave HDR compositing tools … please drop me a note with your recommendation!!! Photomatix seems to be the one I come back to. I tried compositing with Photoshop and realized that there was slight rotation in the images (they were handheld) and finding the rotation point was nearly impossible. :DDD What I don’t like about Photomatix is that it doesn’t seem to let you select the blend styles or percentages for each layer. It does however provide some nice tone mapping controls.

With Photomatix, the initial HDR compositing is performed on the source images and any special processing selections that were made such as ‘remove chromatic aberrations’ are done as one big batch process. The final composited image is then presented to you. At that point, you can select whether you want to perform tone mapping or not. The tonemapping module seems to be pretty powerful but not entirely intuitive. More on that later when I figure it out better 🙂

When Photomatix was done with this image … it was much too heavy! You know what I mean, don’t you!?! That over-processed look. I’ll attach it when I convert it to JPEG. So I had to blend it back together with the original image that had a lighter, airier feel in PS.

Peace,
Glen

21 New workflow ideas from Mitchell

Thanks to Mitchell Kanashkevitch, I’m trying out a new workflow. I downloaded Capture One 4 Pro trial and made two variants of this. One +2 EV and one -2 EV. Then I used the Photomatix trial to merge the three. I also used the Photomatix Tone Correction to alter contrast and levels a little bit. Here’s the result.

Now here’s the original. Of course, Mitchell also does quite a bit of dodging and burning. That’s next on my list of techniques to learn. What I was really interested to see is whether pseudo HDR using variants from the SAME image really had a notable effect. From what I can see … it does! Now to try it out on some more images … hehe ;DD

Steps in Workflow so far …
1. Capture image
2. Import into Capture One (haven’t tried direct import from the camera yet)
3. Mark with colors (green, yellow, etc)
4. Delete and clean up the ugly stuff
5. Open new session and pick a project photo
6. Make two variants (+EV and -EV)
7. Process and commit these to output
8. Import into Photomatix and create pseudo HDR
9. Tonemap
(8 alt. Import into CS3 and use layering to create HDR)
10. Dodge, burn, etc
11. Save back to project and to finished works
12. woohooo … try next one

I’m really excited about all this!! Seems weird … but being able to come just a teeeeeench closer to the kind of work that Mitchell does is totally exciting. Next big decision … in 30 days … buy Capture One or not … LOL!

Peace out bean sprouts!
Glen

17 The incredible lightness of being

Don’t ask me what that title means … it just seemed like it suited the picture 😛 I ran out today to the park because a big snowstorm is coming. Thought I’d grab some wildflower shots before they get buried under snow.

This was all about vibe. I saw these delicate wisps blowing in the breeze but the background was dull brown. After a lot of post, I was able to build some depth and push some color. There is no real subject in this image. It’s more about feel, texture, movement … the play of color and light.

Here’s another from today but I couldn’t bring much life to this one so I just stylized it.

Hope you like them ;D

Peace,
Glen

16 Cold nights, good music … and city mood

Good morning … (yawn) … it’s Friday! Not a day too soon. Yesterday I had Jordan who is a high school student ‘shadowing’ me at work. He is interested in becoming and engineer so his school assigment was to shadow one. I think I successfully cured him of that foolishness!!! LOL

Engineering is a ‘safe’ and steady career but your life doesn’t have any lasting impact. You make junk and then it gets thrown away. I told Jordan … teach! You’ll have real impact in people’s lives. You can mentor and impart wisdom. What do you think?

This pic was from a few nights ago when we were in Philly. I shot this through our car window as we sat and waited for the concert to end. This meter is on Walnut Street right on the edge of the University of Pennsylvania. Lovely old city district with so much heritage.

It’s interesting how some areas are so inspiring. Everywhere you look there is an interesting shot. Then other areas (like where I live) are so UN-inspiring. Can’t find a shot no matter how hard I look. hmmm … I think the problem is the photographer … not the geography!

I go back and forth on whether I love this Sigma lens or not. I think I do but then shots that I have the highest expectations for turn out a little flat. I’m still caught in indecision on my next lens purchase … grrrrrr! But I need a change so, one way or another, I’m buying a lens this weekend! LOL Wish me luck ;D

OOPS … forgot the blog-of-the-day ;(( This one is fitting for a Friday … to finish the week because it is really spectacular. Janine‘s photography will blow your socks off! You really must visit!

http://1-photo-a-day.blogspot.com/

Peace,
Glen

15 Night time in the city

MJ and I took David to a Sara Bareilles (sp?) concert last night and then we wondered off downtown to shoot pics. We missed a great concert but we had a blast on our own. I’ll pop a few of the pics in shortly when I get a moment to process them.

It was really really … ummm … REALLY cold so I didn’t use a tripod. Just cranked the ISO all the way up and ran wide open. Now I can see that I need to invest in Noise Ninja!!!

More later …
Peace out,
Glen

14 Bringing vision to life … or not ;(

This is another image from my hour or so at Stover park. I really desperately need help in my post-processing technique. I feel like lately I’m killing the images rather than bringing them to life. More than that, I think what I am doing is letting the image do whatever it wants to do … rather than enforcing what my vision for it is ;( This is good example. My vision is a very light and airy image with dancing trees, delightful pink tones and radiant glow! What I got was dry and brittle and boring.

If there is anyone out there that can help me … HEEELLLPPP!!! :))))

I’m interested in your thoughts … is it our job as photographers to simply reveal the beauty inherent in the subject … or to enforce our own vision upon it? Ted Byrne considers it the job of ‘creating wonder’. I like that notion. Definitely an interesting interpretation of the role. I’m reminded of the verse in Ecclesiastes that goes something like, ‘God made all things beautiful … in their time’ 😀 hmmmm …. is it our job simply to reveal the beauty or to create it?

Meanwhile, I’m going to keep trying till I figure out how to bring my vision to life. The joy of it all is the challenge of learning the levers … learning the techniques … and the effects as I tweak the sliders … hmmm … tweaking the sliders … good title for a blog ;DD

Peace out,

Glen

13 Searching for color in the midday sun … O.o

Yesterday was bright and sunny and, of course, the only time I could break free to go shooting was midday. I really figured that I would likely just drive around for a couple of hours and not really find anything worth shooting but I happened upon this park – Stover Park. It has an area that is well known in Bucks County called High Rocks. I had heard of it before but never been there. I know I’m going back though 🙂 These were some shots I took … totally bleached out … but so much future potential!!

The picture above I snapped handheld with my Sigma 50-150mm. Next time I will snap a a range of exposures and try HDR. The left side of the image is too washed out. In post, I burned the river and valley and tried to elevate the horizon line but it is just too washed out. I used a new technique for color boost that I really like. Change the image mode to ‘lab’ and apply some curve adjustments to ‘a’ and ‘b’ layers. Much more realistic color boost than just straight curves. The sun bleached most of it out but the rock, the tree and the river retained a little bit. Hope you enjoy.

One of the things I wrestle with is busy-ness vs. texture. Of course, being a bit of a non-conformist, I tend to hate rules anyway. This image is a good example of the what I am struggling with atm. It is phenominally complex and busy and yet much of it blurs into a textures leaving sweeping forms and colors. Rounded rock bisected by vertical tree. Rounded river intersecting with rounded rock. Pinks, blues, lavendar, green, yellow … so much. I don’t know if it works or if it overwhelms.

The challenge for a Pennsylvania photographer is simplifying the organic complexity … ;D I have a lot more practicing to do.

So my blog-of-the-day is one that I just happened upon … I guess most of them are ;P Markus Puustinen seems to be someone who likes to leave his viewers with lots of questions. His images are somewhat whimsical and always fun.

http://markuspuustinen.com/

Peace ;D
Glen