Shoot2Capture Photography Blog

Being my usual lazy self when it comes to editing photos I finally got to Photos I took in a month ago at Garden of the Gods. Despite the very windy weather the first half of the day and very cloudy weather the second half of the day I came away with some keepers. Here’s my favorite of the set, the rest can be viewed here.

This has nothing to do with photography but it’s hilarious and I can’t stop watching it.

Last week Scott Bourne posted on the TWIP blog what his idea of a perfect camera would have; 20 Steps to the Perfect Digital Camera It was a great article that got me thinking as to what I would include in my perfect camera. So I came up with my own list based on technology that I think is feasible within the next 10 years; as I agree with Scott on many of his points my list has similar items.

1. It would have a full frame sensor with the ability to use the same amount of megapixels in a standard or panoramic format.
2. While I can say right now I do not need any more than 20 megapixels, that might change in the future.
3. I want a sensor that can turn night into day without more noise than ISO 800 film. Honestly, I really just don’t want any noise; I really hate noise.
4. The sensor shouldn’t have to be cleaned, whether that means it cleans itself or just never gets dust on it I don’t care.
5. A camera with stabilization built in the body is a must. They already offer it on some bodies but every DSLR should have it.
6. A full 16bit color sensor would a logical inclusion since we’re already at 14. It will definitely increase the file size of the images though.
7. Photographers should have the ability to choose what data is displayed in the viewfinder, being adjustable is the key.
8. Buttons that can be changed to do any function desired, with text that changes on the buttons to display the new function.
9. A universal lens mount that adjusts automatically for any lens brand.
10 The RAW file should be an open standard that can be read by any photography software without an update.
11. I didn’t realize this until they included video with the D90 and 5D MKII, but I want full 1080p HD video with autofocus and exposure control.
12. Since I almost exclusively shoot in HDR now, in camera HDR is the most important feature to me.
13. I also shoot lost of panoramas so in automatic in camera stitching would be nice.
14. Speed wise, I want 20FPS with a shutter speed of at least 1/50,000 of a second.
15. In the opposite direction, the camera should include the ability to program as long of a shutter speed as needed; eliminating the need for using a shutter release with bulb.
16. The camera should be completely weather/waterproof (including the ability to operate underwater up to 20ft without a housing) with an operating range of -40°F to 140°F.
17. A battery life of 10,000 shots or 5 hours of video is definitely feasible.
18. A built in ND filter would be very useful for my waterfall photography.

This isn’t my “end all, be all” list but the most relative things I could think of at the moment. Please share any thoughts below.

My wife Megan and I made a trip to shoot the Flatirons near Boulder while they were covered with snow last week. Unfortunately by the time we got there most of the snow was melted and the Flat Irons were completely in shadow. It was poor planning on my part but we decided to see what else we could and drove up Boulder Creek Road. About 10 miles up the the road we discovered Boulder Falls. I didn’t know there was a large waterfall that close to Boulder and I really like to shoot waterfalls. The falls was only a few hundred feet from the road and they were still covered in snow and ice. We spent about an hour shooting while I tried to focus on creating HDRs to capture all the textures in the landscape. It took a lot of patience to capture the necessary number of images with some of my exposures lasting over 30s. The HDR panorama I created took over 10min just to capture all the images. I’ve included my two favorite images from the group and link to the rest in my website gallery.

A message to take away from this post is that if you can’t photograph your intended subject, don’t give up, look for other opportunities around.

After noticing numerous outages at Photrade.com (an image sharing website) and a lack of updates I decided to scour the internet for information on what was going on.

Tims’s Digital Darkroom has a good blog post about what has been going on lately http://www.timsdd.com/photrade-strike-2-what-is-going-on/165. Someone anonymously posted on Timsdd that the CEO laid everyone off in the beginning of October and after speaking to a former employee I confirmed that he/she no longer worked there. They were not allowed to say anymore than that leading me to believe all of the staff signed a non-disclosure agreement concerning the status of Photrade or the circumstances of their layoff.

I also checked numerous other blogs/twitter posts related to photrade or their staff and curiously found no mention of anything going on at photrade.

Needless to say things don’t look good for photrade and I’m sad we’ll be losing a photo company with such great ideas on sharing images. I have an extensive portfolio on the site with over 300 images but I no longer feel safe keeping them their with the current status of the company. I’m therefore going to remove most of images except for the ones related to contests.

If you know anything else or just have a comment about photrade then please leave comment below.

*Update - just before posting this my thread asking questions about Photrade on the “This Week in Photography” flickr forum was removed, presumably by Scott Bourne. Seeing as he’s on the advisory board for Photrade I can understand his removing info that might hurt the company; but he only helped validate my suspicions about problems at photrade by doing so.

**Second Update - The CEO at photrade finally provided some info about what is going on. http://blog.photrade.com/?p=216

Here’s a blog post I wrote for another blog at HyperPhocal.com

7 Tips for Organizing your Photos

Where is that photo of!?!?!??!!!! I still can’t find it!!!!!! With the advent of digital cameras photographers can take virtually unlimited photos…… but how do you find the right photo just when you need it? Finding a specific image can sometimes be frustrating, especially when you have a lot of photos. Following some of the simple tips on this list will make your images quick and easy to find.

1. The more photos you have on your computer the more important it is to organize them in a way that makes sense to you. If you remember photographs based on the date or subject organize them into folders based on that. For example: I know in July of 2007 I photographed in Utah and therefore I placed my images in a folder labeled “2007-07-25”. If I have a large amount of images taken over multiply days of the same subject, I’ll typically place them in a folder with the date the last images were taken on.

2. Develop a system so you can search by more than one cue - For those who better remember photos based on a subject a simple but descriptive label is important, such as “Utah_Trip_Landscapes”. You can even combine the two methods to create a label like “UtahTrip_2007_July”. The possibilities are endless so remember to find a way that works for you and to stick to it. So if I am looking for a great landscape for my portfolio or a contest I can search landscapes and see all of my best landscape photos, or I can search Utah to see my Utah photos, or I can search by date.

3. Workflow, workflow, workflow - Develop a workflow such as Ron Brinkmann’s from “TWIP” www.twipphoto.com/archives/172. The importance of a workflow is that is assures your images are uploaded and saved the same way every time; making sure your images are there to be found when you need them. There is no perfect workflow that works for everyone but sampling the workflow of many pro photographers will help you figure out what works best for you.

4. Find easy ways to rename it - Something that I notice most photographers fail to due (myself included sometimes) is rename their photos according to the shoot. It’s easy to just pull your images on to the computer, put them in a folder, and never mess with the boring image names. I don’t know about you but _DSC1251 doesn’t say a lot about an image to me; there are several ways to remedy this.

Most cameras allow you to rename a few letters of the image in the camera before taking the shots. So you can use your initials or a form of shorthand about the subject. Examples: My initials are JJH so the image would be named _JJH1251. If I’m taking pictures of the ocean I could use _PAC1251 to designate the Pacific Ocean.

Windows and Mac machines allow batch renaming of images. All you have to do is select all the images and rename; the photos will be named with the new description and a number. You can also rename each image with a separate title that describes it, but that can be tedious if you have numerous images.

5. Software - Use a photo organizing software such as Lightroom, Bridge, Aperture, Picasa, etc. Most of the available software will automatically organize images in a number of ways such as date, type, title, and camera used. They also allow key wording, rating, and color labeling (but we’ll get into that later). I personally use Adobe Lightroom and I’m constantly finding new tips on how to use it at Matt Kloskowski’s blog, www.lightroomkillertips.com.

6. Keywords - A very helpful way to organize images for searching is the use of Keywords. Keywords are short descriptions of the image that allow it to be found later using keyword filters. PCs and Macs allow you to add keywords to most photo files and then later search based on those keywords; photo organizing software such as Lightroom also provide this function. I find keywords are very useful when you have a large library and you’re looking for shots of a similar subject. To help you understand how I select what keywords I choose I’ve provided this example.

Sell photos on photrade | By Shoot2Capture

This is an HDR photo of Zion Valley National Park in Utah during a forest fire. To help simply describe the photo I used keywords such as: Zion, Valley, National Park, Fire, HDR, smoke. If I do a keyword search for images with the words “fire” and “national park”, this image will show up.

7. Rate your photos - Another very useful feature in making your best images easy to find is rating or “staring” your images. Numerous software programs and operating systems will allow you rate an image with “stars” from 1 to 5. This is great when you want to find your best images. I often use star ratings to decide which images I want keep, edit, or delete; a 1 typically ends up in the trash and a 3 or above will be edited.

These definitely aren’t all the ways you can organize your images but it’s a great start. How do you organize your photos? Share your tips in the comments!

- Jason Hatfield

Last Sunday my wife and I visited Roxborough State Park just southwest of Denver. Roxborough State Park is a small, out-of-the-way park with red rock formations like Garden of the Gods but on a smaller scale. While the park was small it had amazing views of the jutting red rocks that run along the start of the front range. We got there kind of late and only had a couple hours to explore so we’ll definitely be going back; hopefully when there’s snow! While there I had the opportunity to create the panoramic photo below with the fall foliage at its peak. I composed this image from Lyons Outlook on the Fountain Valley Trail. Click on the image for a larger view.

Now for the technical stuff for you fellow photographers. Yes, this is an HDR pano composed of 6 images using 5 images for each HDR photo. I shot it with my D200 and 18-70mm nikkor lens with a split ND filter. My focal length was 27mm with a f-stop of 13, I set my focus to the hyper focal distance to maximize sharpness. I shot with my camera in a vertical position on a ball head panning from right to left without about 30% overlap between each image. I used Photomatix to create the HDRs first then stitched them in Photoshop CS3’s auto-merger (I couldn’t get Panorama maker to stitch properly). I then finished with a small amount of PP in Lightroom 2. If you have any other questions about my setup please leave a comment.

I have added a gallery of my panoramic images to my website. It can be viewed from this link or through my main website. It includes panoramas from my recent forays into the mountains near Denver. Here is my favorite from the group.

Well, I’ve decided to start a photography blog. I plan on using this blog to discuss photos I’ve shot, locations I’ve been to, insights and tips developed along the way, general photography topics, yada, yada, yada; you get the point. I currently have no regular schedule to post to this blog but who knows, that might change. Anyways I hope I haven’t wasted too much of your time and please leave comments in my coming posts on what you think. If you have a suggestion for a post don’t hesitate to email me or comment.