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Archive for February, 2015

Glacier City: Icelandic Ice Cap Carved Out for Year-Round Use

27 Feb

[ By WebUrbanist in Destinations & Sights & Travel. ]

ice cave blue chapel

Burrowing hundreds of feet into the second-largest glacier in Europe, the world’s largest system of ice tunnels and spaces (including a chapel and cafe and exhibit spaces) are being excavated to connect visitors with a massive natural blue-ice cavern buried deep beneath the surface of Iceland. This incredible complex is set to open within the next few months – just in time for a summer vacation.

ice cave project

ice cave interior tunnels

Set inside Lanjoekull (Long Glacier), the Ice Cave rests on hundreds of feet of ice and is set nearly 5,000 feet above sea level – naturally, its location within a glacier means it can be accessed year-round. Combined with its record-breaking size, these factors make it unique among global ice architecture projects.

ice cave lighting design

ice cave underground light

Lights have been embedded using ice and snow in the passageways to create stunning illumination effects as one passes into the glacier. Visitors will be driven up the entrance via a special 8-wheel-drive, 40-passenger vehicle with 360-degree views and accompanied by guides who will then bring them inside these amazing tunnels carved from ice. One has to wonder: why stop at tours and visits? One could conceivably create an entire city below the surface, or at least a remote outpost for winter sports, using these same techniques.

ice cave entry carving

ice cave walls passageways

ice cave infrastructure

More on the history of the project from its makers: “In 2010, one of Iceland’s leading consulting engineering firms had an idea, that resonated with a some of Iceland’s most experienced adventure tour operators. They had a bold and daring vision, to take people not just around and onto, but also inside the heart of the remote and extraordinary glacier ice cap.”

ice architecture project

ice cave greenland military

Geoff Manaugh of BldgBlog highlights a similar historical endeavor called Camp Century (aka Project Iceworm) in which the US military burrowed beneath the ice in Greenland (video above): “Camp Century was a sprawling complex of prefabricated architectural units and steel arches installed within the ice cap, and, astonishingly, it was powered by a portable nuclear reactor.”

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[ By WebUrbanist in Destinations & Sights & Travel. ]

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5 Things You Should Know About Lightroom Before Starting

27 Feb

So you just installed Lightroom, now what?

You could spend some time just playing around and learning through doing, but if you’re looking for a nudge in the right direction here are a few simple concepts that I wish I’d thought about before starting my own Lightroom journey – hopefully it helps you! Five things you should know about Lightroom before you start:

#1 Your organizational strategy

organize-in-lightroomThis might not seem important at first, but Lightroom is an amazing organizer of your photographs if you choose to use it as one. So before you start haphazardly uploading photographs into your Lightroom catalog try to come up with some sort of basic organizational strategy first.

Some ideas for organization include:

Organizing by date, by location of shoot, or by specific events. Think about your style of photography and the subject matter you plan on shooting. For example a wedding photographer would probably want to organize by date/bride-groom name, where as a wildlife photographer may organize by location/animal.

Lightroom has many different tools for organizing your photographs from colors, star rating and flags. You could for example use flags as a simple yes/no option to quickly cull images, while colors could be for various states of post production workflow (i.e. blue is for images that need to be processed and green is for images that are finalized and shouldn’t be touched).

This might sound overwhelming at first, but if you get into this habit early on, it will simply become a part of your Lightroom workflow, and trust me an organized Lightroom library makes things a lot easier when you’re dealing with thousands of photographs.

#2 How you want to import photos

This is a simple question, but one that you should know the answer to before you get started with Lightroom. When you first open up the import dialog box you’ll be asked whether you want to Copy as DNG, Copy, Move, or Add. Knowing the difference between these four options will help you make the best choice for your workflow. So here’s the Cliff’s notes version:

  1. Copy as DNG – Converts the file type to Adobe’s .DNG format. Read all about Adobe’s DNG format here.
  2. Copy – Retains the original file type of your image (on your computer or memory card) and copies it to a new location on your computer or hard drive.
  3. Move – Moves the image from one place to another on your computer (or from the memory card).
  4. Add – Adds the image to a Lightroom catalog without moving its physical location on your computer or copying it.

For a more detailed look at importing photographs in Lightroom check out: Quick Tip: Importing to Lightroom Made Easier

#3 How to use the Lightroom Develop Module

lightroom develop moduleNow that you’ve got your organizational strategy situated you’re starting to get into the fun stuff, before you go all hack and slash post-production on your first photograph it does help to learn some basic fundamentals. Here’s three quick points to get you started.

  1. Learn what the basic tab does – The basic tab is the workhorse of Lightroom it is what will bring your image to life. At a minimum master these five Lightroom sliders and you’ll be on the road to successful image processing.
  2. Learn the art of local adjustments – Once you’re comfortable with Lightroom’s basic tab you’ll probably want to move onto learning things like how to apply adjustment brushes, graduated filters and radial filters to your images. These tools function in much the same way as the sliders within the basic tab, however, they allow you to have more isolated and local control over your images.
  3. Learn the finishing touches – Finally within the develop module you’ll want to learn a bit about the finishing touches that Lightroom is capable of providing. Things like the clone/heal tool, sharpening, and noise reduction are a good place to start. You may also want to learn about how to remove chromatic aberrations and correct for lens distortion as well. These types of tools are subtle, but powerful, and really will bring the entire image together as a final printable work.

#4 What are presets and how you should use them

While you may be tempted to start with presets it’s better that you learn your basic tab and various other tools first – why? Simply because all presets are created from these settings so once you learn those settings not only will you know a lot about the presets you’re choosing, but you’ll also be able to create your own.

When it comes to presets think of them as a starting point, not a finished product. Learn how to use them to speed up your workflow by creating your favorite looks within a preset, then applying what you know about the various sliders in the basic tab to fine tune the results.

For more info on Lightroom presets: A Concise Guide to Lightroom Develop Presets

#5 What your export settings should be

Here you are, ready to export your first photograph from Lightroom, and just when you thought you had everything figured out, this screen pops up. What do you do now?

Lightroom Export

First you’ll want to remember that Lightroom doesn’t save your processed images, only the instructions of how to process them, that’s why you need to export (export = “save as”) a file out of Lightroom. This image is separate from the original camera RAW file, and as a result will need its own name, and place of organization.

You’ll want to determine what file type and size you’re going to export, and whether or not you want Lightroom to automatically add a watermark to your photographs. These things are all going to be preferences for your own work and there’s no right or wrong way to go about doing it, but you should learn about the implications of each before you start exporting hundreds of photographs.

What Else?

What else would you tell someone who’s just getting their feet wet with Lightroom? Leave us a comment below and let us know!

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The post 5 Things You Should Know About Lightroom Before Starting by John Davenport appeared first on Digital Photography School.


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26. Februar 2015

27 Feb

Das Bild des Tages von: Borys Las-Opolski

Zwei Mädchen am Fenster

Im Ausblick: Ein Leica Clone, ein Interview mit Jim Rakete und Männer und Katzen.
kwerfeldein – Fotografie Magazin | Fotocommunity

 
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Tokina to launch water dispersing filter coating and IR-cut ND range

26 Feb

Japanese optical manufacturer Tokina is showing a hydrophilic filter coating that forces water droplets to spread into a thin film so that they become invisible to the camera. The coating will allow photographers to carry on shooting when rain or spray on the lens would otherwise obstruct the optical path. Read more

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Snag Yourself aPhoto Job!

26 Feb

Want to take photos? (Yes!) Want to make money? (Yes!) Want to do both at once? (Double yes!)

Photo jobs aren’t as rare as one may think. Whether you’re looking for a full-time gig or simply want to make a little extra cash, you just gotta know where to look and how to market yourself.

So we’ve got tips to help you find work while simultaneously making it easier for employers and customers to find you.

Get ready to call yourself a working photographer! Cha-ching!

Photo Jobs Are Calling You!

(…)
Read the rest of Snag Yourself a
Photo Job! (665 words)


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Lytro plans to shed jobs as it shifts focus to video

26 Feb

Lytro CEO Jason Rosenthal has announced that the company has raised an additional $ 50M in funding, but plans to use it to make a strategic shift into video and virtual reality, while shedding some jobs. Although the exact number of layoffs has yet to be decided, website re/code is reporting that between 25-50 of Lytro’s 130-strong workforce may be made redundant as the company seeks to hire new employees with video and virtual reality experience. Click through to read more

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Transit

26 Feb

Transit-©-Matthias-Koch-Artikelbild

Ein Beitrag von: Matthias Koch

Ich bin aus beruflichen Gründen häufig und lange unterwegs. Meine Geschäftsreisen lassen mir normalerweise wenig Raum und Zeit für Kreativität. Die üblichen Stationen beschränken sich auf Flughäfen, Hotelzimmer, Büros und Sitzungsräume – keine exotischen Orte, sondern Orte banalen Alltags.
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Secret Lives of Superheroes: Realistically Posed Action Figures

26 Feb

[ By Steph in Art & Photography & Video. ]

secret lives of superheroes 1

The secret lives of superheroes are far more mundane than you might imagine, with the Black Widow helping the Hulk trim his armpit hair, Spiderman scrubbing Captain America’s shield, Thor taking selfies and Wolverine getting fresh with the ladies. Indonesian photographer Edy Hardjo uses high-quality action figures and minimal Photoshop to create funny lifelike scenes of characters from the worlds of DC Comics, Marvel and beyond.

secret lives of superheroes 2

secret lives of superheroes 3

Intrigued by how closely some of the figures resemble the actors that play the characters on film, Hardjo began to wonder whether he could use them to tell some new stories of his own.

secret lives of superheroes 7

The figures are posed in comedic little scenes that play on each character’s personality.

secret lives of superheroes 4

secret lives of superheroes 5

Hardjo relies mostly on the lifelike qualities of the figures themselves, but also uses Photoshop just enough to digitally remove stands and obvious joints.

secret lives of superheroes 8

secret lives of superheroes 9

Behind-the-scene photos showing how each scene is posed can be seen on the artist’s Facebook page.

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[ By Steph in Art & Photography & Video. ]

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NPPA and World Press plan ethics symposium following contest disqualifications

26 Feb

The National Press Photographers Association and World Press Photo plan to hold a symposium later in 2015 to talk about ethics in photography, following news that 20% of the photos entered in the World Press Photo contest were disqualified after reaching the penultimate round, due to digital manipulations of some sort being discovered. Meanwhile, the NPPA has called on the photographers disqualified from the contest to release their photos to the public. Read more

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Fotoskulpturen oder Der Stand der Dinge

26 Feb

Ein Stück Rollrasen liegt auf einem Bett.

Zum ersten Mal so richtig begegnet sind mir zufällige Skulpturen letztes Jahr beim Streunen durch die Berge Islands. Zwischendurch haben wir immer wieder gestapelte Steinberge gefunden, die einen einsam in der Landschaft, manche zu Hunderten auf einem Pass. Einige waren stabil, unversehrt und voller Moos, andere fragile Bauten, die beim nächsten Sturm mit Sicherheit umgeweht worden sind. Sie werden also danach nur noch auf dem Foto existieren, das ich von ihnen gemacht habe.
kwerfeldein – Fotografie Magazin | Fotocommunity

 
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