Facebook.com PS Actions available at FashionActions.com http Music: Coin Laundry by Lisa Mitchell Behind the scenes of the photo shoot “The Whispering Tale” for Coco Magazine Model: Alyena at LA Models Hair: Ty Marie Combe MUA: Heather Graves Stylist: Alice Woo at United Citizens Photography: Emily Soto EmilySoto.com
Enjoy St. Valentine’s Day photo manipulation tutorials. Love and romance is very easy to express. Here you’ll find some tips on how to do it in a proper way.
Photodoto
It wasn’t that long ago that I was sitting on the edge of a 1.000 foot granite cliff above Yosemite valley shooting a time-lapse of the setting moon. Never one to let a moment be wasted I simultaneously took the opportunity to photograph the Milky Way rising with my second camera. (more after the image)
Infinite II – Milky Way Above Yosemite National Park
One of the great things about nature photography is that while experiencing Mother Nature’s best you also get the time to ponder it’s meaning and vastness. When it comes to night photography it also gives you the opportunity to experience an adrenaline rush of being startled by a mouse running under your leg as you sit on the ground cross legged in the dark. Fortunately for the mouse and I we fared ok on our chance meeting. After that I quickly got back to enjoying the scene unfolding before me and pondering just how many stars are out there.
Related Posts:
Infinite, Point Reyes National Seashore
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Copyright Jim M. Goldstein, All Rights Reserved
Infinite II
JMG-Galleries – Jim M. Goldstein Photography
Samsung has announced the MV900F – a flip-screen ‘MultiView’ camera that adds the company’s range of WI-Fi-capable ‘Smart’ models. The MV900F is built around a 16.3MP back-illuminated CMOS sensor and a 5x, 25-125mm, F2.5-6.3 zoom lens. It also features a 3.3″ OLED screen that can tilt up through 180° to allow for simple self-portraits. This capability is complemented by the addition of the company’s app-mediated smartphone connectivity, allowing images to be easily transferred for upload to the Internet. The camera will be available from August at a recommended price of around $ 349.
News: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
Canon USA has published a series of user guides for its flagship EOS-1D X full-frame DSLR, in the form of HD videos that are designed to be played-back on the camera’s rear LCD. There are 18 topics covered, including a series of videos looking at how to get the best out of the AF system. Canon video tutorials are also available for the EOS-1D Mark IV, 5D Mark III, 5D Mark II, 7D and 60D. (From UnitedByPhotography, via CanonWatch)
News: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
Settle in for an outstanding 13 mins on the philosophy of portraiture from one of the most interesting portraitists working today. (If you are not familiar with the work of Nadav Kander, you may want to take a look at his website [some NSFW] first.)
Produced by the National Portrait Gallery as a tie-in to the 2012 Olympics, this is by far the most detailed look I have yet seen into how Kander works. As a bonus, there are several still BTS shots showing his portrait sets.
(Via APE)
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We’ve had a chance to use Panasonic’s latest models, and have prepared previews of the DMC-LX7, DMC-G5 and DMC-FZ200. The LX7 is the company’s latest pocketable enthusiast model, featuring an impressive F1.4-2.3 lens covering a 24-90mm equivalent range. We’ve included a real-world samples gallery, to show how it performs. We’ve also taken a detailed look at the G5, seeing how it compares to the G3 and what its more comprehensive feature set offers for photographers. Finally we look at the most interesting superzoom we’ve seen in quite some time – the DMX-FZ200 – a camera that puts lens brightness (and hence usability) ahead of offering the biggest possible zoom number. Click here for links to our previews
News: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
Accessory maker Richard Franiec has unveiled his design for a custom grip for the Sony RX100. As usual for one of Franiec’s grips, the anodized aluminium accessory is held in place with 3M VHB tape, which holds it firmly in place but can be removed, without damage, later. The design follows the pattern of his existing grips and doesn’t protrude beyond the camera’s retracted lens barrel, so that pocketability isn’t reduced. The grip will be available from August 2012 at a cost of $ 34.95, plus shipping.
News: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
Mobile apps like Instagram are ‘debasing real photography’. That’s according to writer and broadcaster Kate Bevan, in an opinion article on British newspaper The Guardian’s website. In the article, Bevan argues that filter effect apps like Instagram ‘spoil pictures – they get in the way of the image and they distort the story the picture is telling’. Bevan calls these filter effects ‘the antithesis of creativity’. What do you think? Click through for a link to the full article, and a chance to have your say. (via The Guardian)
News: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
Facebook is Rolling Out a New Photos Presentation Page.
Facebook is currently in the process of rolling out a new and improved photos page for users. I’ve been part of a beta group testing out this new page over the last week and I have to say that the new photos layout is a huge step forward for photos on Facebook.
It is inevitable that the new page will be compared to Google+’s photos page and while there are similarities there as also some differences as well.
Like Google+, on your photos page, as well as on the photo page of your friends, you can hover over any thumbnail and like or comment on a photo with a single click without ever leaving the page. This allows you to like many more photos in one place at once than you could previously do. This new hover and like/fave/+1 functionality is a major lubricant for social activity on photos.
Although it may feel like Facebook copied G+ here, if my memory serves correct, it was Flickr who first introduced this hover/fave action for us in their “photos from your contacts” page. So maybe Facebook and G+ are both actually copying Flickr here more than anything. One small cosmetic difference between Facebook and Google+ here is that on G+, the +1/comment stats are light gray that light up when you hover to interact. On Facebook the stat information is gone completely unless you hover and then it appears for you to interact with.
One nice hover tool that Facebook also introduces us to here is the ability to remove yourself from a photo directly from the hover action. I’ve never quite understood why people feel the need to tag me in photos that I am not in on G+/Flickr/Facebook, but when they do I usually just delete the tag and block them. It’s nice to be able to more easily do this now with the new photos page on Facebook.
Facebook’s Old Photos Page.
In the past, Facebook’s photos page had a very stale 4×3 small thumbnail format. You had to actually click through to your “Wall Photos” as a separate album to even get to these. The smallish thumbnails were all the exact same size. There was too much white space around the thumbnails.
With the new Facebook photos page Facebook has recropped all of your photos as square photos. While some photographers dislike the squaring of photos on the web, I actually love the square. It’s my favorite crop of all and I think it works well from a design standpoint in showing off the photos. G+’s photos page, btw, uses more of a justified mosiac page that retains a photographer’s original crop and squeezes them all together to fit on a page. I love the justified/mosaic view as well — in fact, I have a hard time deciding whether I like the square or mosaic layout format the most, I just love them both so much.
One of my favorite new features about the new Facebook photos page (that G+ doesn’t have yet) is that it gives you the ability to make some photos bigger than others. Facebook’s new square thumbnails themselves are bigger now than the old 4×3 thumbnails and with less white space on the page, but even better, you can now choose to highlight favorite photos turning them into even larger oversized timeline sized squares.
New Facebook Photos Layout on the “Photos of You” Section. Note the awesome Facebook tshirt I’m sporting in the highlighted photo. 
One area where I think that this new manual resizing and highlighting of photos is going to be huge is in the “Photos of You” section. Let’s face it. You’re so vain. I bet you think this blog post is about you, don’t you? Giving people the ability to highlight the photos of themselves that they look the best in will be irresistible to many.
Whether the new Facebook photos page is “inspired” by Google+ or Flickr or not, I think it’s great to see the continued evolution of photo presentation on the social web. In general our photos are getting larger, better looking and easier to engage with. This is wonderful.
One negative about the new Facebook photos page is that like the old photos page it still comes with ads on the right side of the page (unlike G+’s page which is advertising free). I cropped these advertisements out of my screenshots because, well, they don’t look very elegant. Obviously Facebook counts on this advertising revenue to keep the lights on and I can’t begrudge them for running advertisements next to my photos as their service is free, but it still detracts from the aesthetic experience in my opinion. I’m not sure what the answer here is. Would I pay $ 25/year for an ad-free version of Facebook like I do with Flickr? I think I would.
More on the new Facebook photos page from The Verge.
Thomas Hawk Digital Connection
