Learning something everyday

I live in Dreamweaver and Photoshop. I just discovered this image editing capbility in DW. Sheesh...

Sharpening an image

I can't resist this....

At this point he was nearly 60, and he is wearing a shirt, suit coat and tie. You drummers will love the shot near the end where you can see his amazing left hand position in that incredible open roll. Sheesh. This is the legendary "West Side Story" suite.

Bill Evans

I tried to find a video of paul Motian (still looking), but this rendition of "My Foolish Heart" by Bill Evans is simply too amazing not to share in the meantime.

Sublime and Swingin'

"Sunday at the Village Vanguard" with Bill Evans was the first time I was introduced to Paul Motian. I was playing in a trio at the time and thought I was pretty good keeping the group moving with my kicks and pops. Paul Motian blew me away. I listened to that album till it wore out and then bought another one. Keep in mind that Bill Evan's amazing piano work will keep you smilin', but Paul kept it kickin'. Tragically, a few days after this recording the amazing Scott LaFaro (bass) died in a car accident.

I can't wait for this new group to record.

Marching to the Beats of Different Drummers - June 30, 2006 - The New York Sun: "Mr. Motian is among the most significant drummers of the past half-century and a leader of considerable renown. His famous trio with Joe Lovano and Bill Frisell is a regular attraction at the Vanguard and his quartet with Chris Potter played at Carnegie Hall last week. Although the drummer's new band combines saxophones and guitars in a manner somewhat reminiscent of his Electric Bebop Band of the 1990s, his current octet sounds like nothing I have ever heard before."

Create an Impression at Seth's Blog

I love this post. I believe that what you wear telegraphs messages that are received loud and clear. It is one of the ways we can set ourselves apart from everyone else. My expartner and I were once mercilessly teased because we showed up for a 100K contract pitch in coats and ties. The entrepreneurs were all dressed in jeans and t-shirts. Fine, but I still think we were right. (got the job BTW). They eventually ran the company into the ground and the last time I saw them they were wearing suits and trying to rebuild the company into a viable business.

What you wear can make all the difference in the world as to how people treat you.

Here's a couple of blogs I like.
Top 10 Resources (mens fashions)
Arrogant Menswear Blog
English Cut

Seth's Blog: My seersucker suit: "It totally transformed the way people treated me. Doormen, people on the subway... in an increasingly casual age, I was sort of stunned by how easily a $99 suit changed the reaction people had."

Have you seen this?

Wow. I can't believe how much time this will save me. As a web and app designer, this little shared program will make online collaboration even easier. Thanks Giffly guys!

Gliffy.com - Create and share diagrams online.: "Gliffy is easy, free, and fun!

* Diagramming in your web browser without downloading additional software
* Similar to Visio, yet in your web browser
* Desktop application feel in a web-based diagramming solution
* Add collaborators to your work and watch it grow
* Link to published Gliffy drawings from your blog or wiki
* Create many types of diagrams:
o Flowcharts
o UI wireframes
o Floor plans
o Network diagrams
o Any simple drawing or diagram"

Metallic Heaven

You may think that it sounds more like a rock band name than a state of mind, but that is what I thought when I saw my portfolio prints on metallic paper. Heaven. The color was amazing and the black & white and sepia prints were simply astounding.

I am developing a new portfolio and I decided to try the new metallic paper for the prints. I have them printed from inkjet and they were beautiful. But I had seen a few prints at a lab that were truly amazing in the sharpness and color saturation. I wondered if there would be a big difference in my work, so I took a few files over for some test prints.

Wow. Ok, that did it. The metallic prints are amazing at the larger sizes (my new portfolio is 16 x 20), and the difference was dramatic enough that I decided to switch. So my new portfolio (15 prints) will be on the Kodak metallic paper.

I asked Stephanie at Mighty Imaging (who I have worked with for years) if I needed to readjust my files for the metallic paper and she said no. “The metallic papers work well with the profiles you already have,” she said, “ but most important thing you can do is to really calibrate your work space and know what the print will look like.”

Mighty Imaging’s owner Peter showed my some samples of work they had printed on the different mediums and the metallic. I gotta tell you, those metallic prints are really amazingly sharp and colorful. And the papers are pretty durable. “You don’t really have to laminate them or anything,” Stephanie told me, “they are amazingly easy to maintain. Just keep them out of direct sun like you would any photograph.”

Opinion here, but I think that the metallic paper would be perfect for large display prints and wall art, scenics and landscape. My work is people in location and I am loving the look of the skin tones, hair and fabric. My favorite look is the black & white and sepia prints that I have. They have a look that is difficult to describe, so you should get a file and have your lab make an 11 x 14 or 16 x 20 print for you on the metallic paper. (I know Fuji has a metallic paper, and I have no idea if it reproduces the same. I would imagine that it must be very similar. I am referring to the Kodak paper here.)

Put it side by side with one of your prints on glossy or matte and see what you think.

(Full disclosure: While this happened, I took the project of redesigning the Mighty Imaging Web site. However, please know that the above is a personal experience, and not necessarily an ad for Mighty Imaging. Many labs use the metallic paper, and while I work with and like Mighty Imagings work, the point should be about the look of the paper and how it may work for you.)

This is a nice effect

Could work out very well in a wedding or portrait book, and there are certainly times in design that this trick could work out great. NOTE: the title refers to making what looks like a print sitting on a surface, not a 'realistic photo" look. Your camera already does that part.

Realistic photo print - Easy to follow photoshop tutorials: "By using just a few simple effects you can turn your digital images into realistic photo prints."

Quirky and Fun

I know these guys. They are as crazy as they are talented. This is a great example of a site to impress viewers with a feeling of excitement, commitment and passion to the art. Sites like this give you a chance to stretch a bit, and create some images for, you know, fun! All the while making a statement about your own attraction to the medium, approach to the subject and personal approaches to the shot. I am not even goint to take a shot at the use of "Flash" as this type of site is more for directed visitors instead of "browsers".
Good job fellas.

Arizona Professional Photography | Whirlphoto.com: " WHIRL
Michael Norton, David Schmidt, and Rick Gayle are commercial photographers with distinct, individual styles. They're also friends. Quite a concept, wouldn't you say? So is Whirl, an alliance that allows them to share knowledge and experience. They consider it important to communicate, not compete, which gives their clients the benefit of their combined expertise. Take a few minutes to view their individual portfolios, and get to know Whirl better. They're a likeable bunch, if they do say so themselves. "

Wish he had a tip jar...

One of the border actions here saved me yesterday. It was just what the client wanted and it was free. Pretty cool action sets here. Check 'em out.

Photoshop Action! FREE Actions for Adobe Photoshop 5.x/6.x/7.x/CS: "Welcome to the updated Photoshop Action! site. On these pages you'll find actions that I have created. Most of them are unique to this site and all actions may be downloaded, used and distributed freely. No plug-ins or styles are required to make these actions work!"

Update: Some of the download links don't work. I guess I was lucky witht the one I used... the one with the 35mm strip look. Sorry.

Oooohhhh

This is a cool little laptop that could fit in a camera bag. Lots of power and space. Nifty.

DigitalJournal.com - Digital Culture For Creative Minds: "And that is where Flybook comes in. To put it simply, this Taiwanese company makes laptops that are tiny, tiny, tiny. Measuring 9.25 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches total, the display is only 8.9 inches and the whole thing weighs less than three pounds. The Flybook has exceptional performance capacity and is so portable and small it can practically fit into a handbag. It comes equipped with 80GB of hard disk space, an Intel Pentium 1.1GHz processor and Windows XP Home edition. "

Tilt / Shift "Plunger" Lens

For you DYI guys out there. (HT Art)

DigiHack - Digital Photography projects: Tilt-Shift PC Lens: "Here is another fairly easy hack that if you like it, and use it, can save you goo-gobs of money. Build your own tilt-shift lens. I know there are people out there who would love to experiment with a PC Shift lens, but the cost of purchasing one is generally prohibitive unless you plan to shoot professionally with the lens. (A nikon shift lens with tilt functions cost over $1000, BTW: The Nikon guys once took a look over this and said, 'why would you do that to such a nice camera? We sell that lens you know.' I know. That's the point)."

10 Free Plug-ins: Check 'Em Out

I use Actions and Filters like a crazy man. They make my life go so much easier. My list of actions is huge and grows nearly every day. These Plug-Ins are interesting. Some you will like, some, eh... but the point is there is so much to do and so many ways to do them. This is a nice little resource.

10 Free Plug-ins to Enhance Photoshop: "Whether you're talking about a browser or an advanced 3D graphics modeler, plug-ins are a way to get more punch out of your application. And when it comes to upgrading a program's usability, Photoshop boasts one of the largest collections of plug-ins out there."

Redesign for Business

I just finished a rush redesign, the one I referred to here.

Got rid of the Flash crap on the home page, killed the frames and totally cleaned it up. I would have liked fewer images, but the client let me cut them to the point where they got a little uncomfortable (then I put a few back in).

Just thought I would share the redesign with you. The site is a hybrid of Javascript, CSS and traditional html and will do this client a ton more than the previous nightmare they had. Visit here.

Dang, it's getting hot here in Phoenix. (Stoopid Sunspots... DOH!)

How to Ruin a Good Thing

I like the internet. I like Search engines. I like PPC. This kind of crap will kill it all.

How Billions of Bogus Pages Undermine Search Engines, Advertisers and The Web: "Over the weekend, Monetize, a blog dedicated to tricking search engines, described how a blackhat got Google to index over 5 billion webpages within three weeks. Yahoo and MSN were fooled, too, though nowhere near as badly. (MSN, for example, indexed just 62 pages before cutting him off.)

Searchers who landed on the pages were treated to copy scraped from legitimate websites, along with Pay-Per-Click ads from Google or Yahoo.

The effort seems to have met some success. Third-party traffic monitor Alexa noticed enough activity to rank at least one of the rogue sites among the 2,000 highest traffic sites on the web. That's a phenomenal ranking for any site, especially a three week old site based in Romania.

According to Ana's Lair, the search spoofing project was really fairly simple. In the end, the scheme required an SQL-driven auto-page generator, a modification of DNS software, and redirection/cloaking code to show Google one thing and the user something else.
"

Sheesh

... hey, where's all the noise about 'losing our rights' and stuff...

Camera Blocking Technology in the Works - Gizmodo: "Camera Blocking Technology in the Works"

oooohhhh...

... of course storing the image, saving the image, working on it in photoshop... nawwwww... it's big and that must make it better!

EETimes.com - Record CCD image sensor has 111 million pixels: "Dalsa Semiconductor has fabricated an image sensor with more than 111 million pixels. The company claims the 4 x 4-inch charge-coupled device, configured as 10,560 x 10,560 pixels, is the world's highest-resolution image sensor and the first to break the 100 million-pixel barrier."

49 More...

... ways to be a better designer. Photogs woulc benefit from most of these as well.

Computer Arts - 50 ways to become a better designer: "20 PRACTICE ALWAYS MAKES PERFECT
“The more projects you work on and the more time you spend using programs, the quicker and more efficient you become. You learn not only from your mistakes but also from your successes, and these will help raise your standard of production.” "

Well...

... that's really a big ad.

:::CARLTON UNITED BIG AD:::

Can bad design hurt you?

Yes. It can. Most definitely.

I really don't get some designers. Their complete refusal to understand the way the web works makes me wonder if they aren't doing their clients damage by designing for them.

This guy did.

I have spent the last week working on a new clients site that had everything in the world wrong with it. Backstory: The site is this clients main way of attracting, and more importantly keeping business. They have built the tools and such needed to book their clients into the site. This is the way they keep 12 people employed.

Enter "DesignBoy" who informs them that their site (which was working very well, btw) was 'ugly' and needed a facelift to generate more sales. They agreed that more sales would be great. After all "DesignBoy" has won some awards for his design. Impressive.

So DB does his thing. Flash intro page, flash home page, follow through pages are in html (yay) but hidden in framesets (boo). No title tags, no meta tags, no alt tags, no content visible to search engines at all. Forms that don't work. Browser incompatibility (looked great in Firefox, broke like hell in IE, so-so in Safari). Did I mention he put it in frames? High level content pages in frames? In 2006?

They just laid off the 4th person.

In my opinion, "DB" should be held liable for "restriction of trade", incompetence... or just plain arrogant stupidity. Of course "DB" is far too busy to come to them and fix the problems, he now says he just doesn't know why it is not working and will get back to them soon. Uh-huh.

I have rebuilt the site in CSS and html, made some dramatic changes to the naming conventions, images, alt tags and SE visibility. I am hoping with some strong advertising (traditional) and some serious damage control for many of their clients that had moved on because of forms not working, broken links and such, they can hire those 4 people back.

Bad design affected the lives of 4 families. Maybe more.

Sheeeesh.

Fantastic Idea for Anyone...

... in a creative rut, or slump.

Candy Cane For Your Portrait

There are so many ideas that can come from this. I think I will try it out a bit this weekend.
Related: Over at PhotoJoJo another artist checks in.

Raw File Conversion...

Wonderful site. I have requested the free one, so I will let you all know how it works. Take a look for yourself.

pixmantec

Eight Diagrams » James Whitlow Delano Interview, Part I

I found this interview to be fascinating. Take a few moments and enjoy.

Eight Diagrams » James Whitlow Delano Interview, Part I: "Photographer James Whitlow Delano lives in Japan, but he is known for his projects that have taken him throughout Asia. His series Japan Mangaland was recently cited with the Leica Camera’s Oskar Barnack Award, Honorable Mention for 2006. His other plaudits include the Award of Excellence from Communication Arts for an Editorial Series, the Alfred Eisenstaedt (Eisie) Award, the Grand Prize at the Banff Mountain Photography Competition and the Award of Excellence from Communication Arts. Some of his China images were recently collected and published in Empire: Impressions of China."

Portrait Photographer Arnold Newman Dies At 88

A long, long time ago a very good friend of mine gave me a book for my birthday. He knew my passion for photography (specifically landscapes) and he thought that I would like seeing the black and white photos in the book.

They stunned me. Picasso, Stravinsky, portraits so strong and meaningful to me that I literally couldn't put it down for days. I learned every line of the images, studied the light, angle and composition. I became a Newman groupie.

Once, while in NY on assignment I was in Dugall's when his assistant came in to get Arnolds prints. I stared at those 16x20 boxes like they contained gold.

They did. The work of Arnold Newman.

Portrait Photographer Arnold Newman Dies At 88: "Arnold Newman, a deeply influential photographer who spent a lifetime capturing penetrating images of artists, entertainers and presidents, has died at age 88.

He died Tuesday morning of a heart attack at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, according to his son, David Newman."

Oooh...

Having a 7 MP camera that can go underwater, in the desert sand, snow and wind... my, that looks like a pretty cool little camera. Olympus' Bright Capture Technology also delivers pretty nice images in low lite. Thinking about a little blog camera, or a pocket camera with punch? Take a look at this little guy.

Stylus 720 SW underwater camera, waterproof camera, shockproof camera: "Stylus 720 SW
Less than 0.8' thick, this versatile, compact digital camera is designed with the signature style and performance for which the Stylus line is renowned with the added benefits of Shock and Waterproof technology - perfect for any situation, durable enough for shooting in any conditions. From hiking, surfing and skiing to parties and Little League games, the solid, shock-absorbing design combines with waterproof sealants to deliver clear, vibrant pictures of whatever, whenever, wherever."

Communication?

I believe that the most important part of any company is their customer service, and how they treat their customers. Jet Blue is just an airline, but their customers love them... because of the certaintly of being treated well.

Today I called a local high school to enroll my daughter in a summer school class. The lady on the other end of the phone informed me that there were 'tons' of spaces open, but to come in as soon as possible. I grabbed my phone and was out the door. I arrived at the school less than 15 minutes later. The Algebra 2 class was closed. Had been for a week. The lady I spoke with didn't really work in the summer school area, she had casually picked up the phone and was, well, wrong.

The receptionist quickly wrote a number to another school, 8 miles away, that she was sure had spots available. I went to the car and called the wife to make sure that the additional drive was ok. I dialed the number that lady had written down. No answer.

I continued to drive toward the school, with no answer at the number I was given. Finally call directory service, get another number. When the receptionist answers, I am informed that she cannot transfer the call to the "summer school' administration area because those phones were not linked to her phones. I took the number she gave me and then asked if the number I had was a different line in. The number the other receptionist had given me had been removed - last year.

I called the new number and explained that my daughter was an out-of-district student and what would I need to get her registered. Just the address, was what I was told.

Right.

I arrive at the school and go into the summer school area where I am handed a form to fill out. Cool, and then I give it back to the young lady who then tells me I have to have a counselor sign it. I told her that I had just spoken to her and she had told me that all I needed was our address. "Yes," she said, "that's all you need. And the signature from one of her counselors."

I drive the 12 miles back to the local school by our house and they kindly sign it. There is a little area on the form that indicates that the cost for the class is $135. "Please pay at the bookstore."

That's what it said.

I go to the bookstore and they inform me that they only take checks and cash, no debit / cc. That would have been an easy add to the form, you know. The lady looks at me and says, ahem, "We don tek no plastic. Cash or check is what we take. You no pay credit." She tell me that there is a bank right down the road. I tell her I will be right back and she says "fine."

After going to the bank I arrive back to the school, walk all the way to the back where the bookstore is and find the note you know would be there. "We are in lunch. Bak in 25 minutes."

They actually arrived 3 minutes early from lunch and we went in and paid for the class.

How can they get away with this level of unbelievably bad customer service? Government schools... no competition? An attitude of arrogance and entitlement? Absolutely no buy-in from staff for customer satisfaction? Mebbee a little of all the above?

Look at your business and at the way little things get handled. Are they smooth and seamless or as big a freekin' disaster as simply enrolling your kid in one summer school class.