30 Jan 2012
As you must have seen in recent post I just came back from a trip in Mauritius, and if you have been following this website for a little while, you should have also noticed it is not my first trip there!
I love that country, people are nice, food is good, weather is great and the people are very welcoming! In my last trip, which is not going to be the last :), I took many photos I am happy with. This means I will be posting quite a few photos in February from that trip.
24 Jan 2012
I recently came across that website:
http://www.joeyl.com/
I really like the look of it, the photographs that guy takes and also the information about how he made his portfolio. Great stuff!
24 Jan 2012
I came across Hugin, an open source multi-platform application a few years ago and am often happily surprised with the results!
However, having it working on the latest MAC OS X, Lion, can be difficult!
I am quite surprised they don’t fix the issue in the package they offer for download.
If you ever had issues with this software on MAC here are a few tips to get it working fine
A common error you can get when sticking a large number of images is either a timeout error or a no matching points found error.
- To fix the timeout issue, you need to use an older version of enblend and enfuse. In fact, those older versions are bundled with all the latest version of Hugin. You just need to follow the instructions in the “Enblend-enfuse-4.0″ folder.
- To fix the no matching point issue, it is a bit more complex. But I have finally find a solution that worked from this website
https://bugs.launchpad.net/hugin/+bug/717944
You need to change some of the default settings in Hugin:
Preferences->Control Point Detectors
There you need to select which program you will be using, I recommend cpfind + celeste (make it you default), select that program and click edit.
The default arguments are:
–celeste -o %o %s
You need to add an extra settings as below:
–ncores 1 –celeste -o %o %s
The key to fix this issue is to use the “–ncores 1″
You can probably experiment and up the number but at least with “1″ it will work!
From what I understood this changes the number of parallel threads used by cpfind. The issue being for too many threads being used by defaults causing a buffer overflow. Using a “1″ fixes the issue but also makes the processing slower.
Below was also a great source of information about this application:
Panoramas
11 Jan 2012
I just stumbled a great website offering super Hi Res photos of the earth, and all this for free!
It is a great resource and great work from Tom Patterson.
http://www.shadedrelief.com/natural3/index.html
30 Dec 2011
Let’s first start with my last news post, did I say I was going to post some new photos next week? right, there will be photos next week then! ;)
Ok, a little late I must admit but as I have been travelling it has been difficult to take the time required to process, select and write about photos. But it should be back on track soon! I have a xmas photos particularly original which I am impatient to share on this blog.
Also, I recently came across several sites about using photography for charity, mostly for doing portraits of people/family who cannot afford it. I never thought about doing this…
But after reading different web sites, most of them are referenced HERE, I can see how it could bring some joy to some… we often take for granted that everyone can afford a camera, but this is still a luxury item for many people.
In any cases, I like the concept, I even like it better if the photos are given away on disk/printed and not kept by the photographer and therefore not used on any sites or portfolio, because then, it is really a gift.
So this is as far as I will speak about it. But I will keep this in mind and hopefully one day I will be able to find someone who would like a free printed portrait or photos of whatever matters to them.
15 Dec 2011
I have been away for work recently and haven’t updated the photo blog for a few days, this should resume to normal next week.
I just need to get out and take more photos :)
28 Oct 2011
A friend of mine recently told me about this new technology, a new type of photographic technology.
From what I understand the concept is that such camera do not care about focusing, instead they capture “light” and focus is done after, through software. I think it is a great concept, even a bit like “Blade Runner” :)
It does not currently offer great resolution and the manual settings are very limited. But what I found exiting is that it isn’t just a concept, it is real, you can buy it!
The fact that focusing is done through software means you can change the focus on different object of the photo in real time! check this LINK, where you can see what I mean for yourself. You just need to click where you want to focus, the leaves or the spider. I find this fascinating! especially since I like very much to play with the depth of field in my photos…
It has some limitation about how much it can focus, you can see that with that PHOTO. You get a sharp focus on the animals but the house in the background isn’t so sharp when you click on it… not sure if this is a problem with the resolution supported, but I would have expected a sharper focus.
To get those “live pictures” as the vendor call it, you need a special viewer. According to this REVIEW, you can only export a “focused” picture at a very low resolution (1.2 Megapixel, 1080×1080). I hope they improve their export/edit restrictions as well as resolution. When they do, I will definitely consider buying one!
If you want to know how it works, check the LYTRO website or another in-depth REVIEW HERE.
28 Oct 2011
One has to wonder how it is possible that the photo below is in fact a 3D model! I would love to see an animation of this, even just turning around and showing a gradual modelisation…
The author is Dan Roarty, if you go to his website you can see some other 3D stuff he’s done.
But apparently, this is not a real portrait, it is a 3D rendered model, quite an amazing achievement I think! What may give it away is the bottom of the hair, but only I only thought that after reading some comments from the author on THAT FORUM, where he said he spent lot of time on it :)
The bottom left part of the hair looks a bit too smooth for me, but that’s really being picky! Well done! and that’s an understatement!
18 Sep 2011
Right, after looking for a new look for this photo blog I think I have finally settled on the present one.
I needed something with side bars but which was still focusing on the main photo content.
I think I have the right balance now and should keep the site as it is for a while!
Hope you enjoy the change.
9 Sep 2011
I have decided to revert back to the old style for this blog as I wasn’t fully satisfied with the new one. I think none of the themes I have found so far works as I want out of the box, so I will have to spend a bit more time customising the one I previously selected. Stay tune for q new look still to come! :)
In the mean time you can enjoy the new daily Photo I am publishing…
7 Sep 2011
After a year with no cosmetic changes I decided to refresh the look of that website. I hope you like it.
It is darker and I feel it helps increasing the focus on the photos, it should now also be easier to follow updates made on this blog.
Now, I just need to blog some more photos every day :)
13 Jun 2011
I recently came across that mazing site, this guy took a year off to photograph the sky in different part of the world. Eventually being able to add 30K+ photos together and build a giant 5000 Mega Pixel photo of the sky above us.
There is a nice summary of his story here
And the website he created is here: http://skysurvey.org/
Amazing work!
