dave_nelson___atlanta__ga

<p>Wow Benjamin Ng, thanks for the great tip.</p>

ACDSee will show you all of your images in a calendar view or sorted by date taken. You can also batch rename all of your photos by date so that they have names like 20080114-210132.jpg which would be a photo taken on January 14, 2008 at 9:01:32. But when editing descriptions and keywords in ACDSee you will want to make sure you are editing EXIF data and not the proprietary ACDSee database.

 

I highly recommend the use of EXIF data for tagging and viewing your images. EXIF is a standard that many tools understand unlike the proprietary data that many products use.

I found the dryzone backpacks to be very uncomfortable and sent them back. It was like wearing a cardboard box on my back with very sharp edges.

You can try to ask them to turn of the "intelligent enhancement" feature of their system. It works a lit like the auto-curves tool in Photoshop and also ads more contrast to punch up photos for average users.

 

But many of the folks working at Wolf have no idea how to turn it off.

<p>If you are looking to order the prints yourself, EZPrints.com are great, and if you are looking for a site where the parents may order the prints then SmugMug is my choice.

 

<p>I think if you take some time to read what SmugMug has to offer you will agree with me that no other site offers such a comprehensive package at such a great price.

 

<p>Check out my site at <a href="http://davenelson.smugmug.com/Sports" target="_blank">http://davenelson.smugmug.com/Sports</a> where I have 4 years of little league baseball.

 

<p>P.S. Enter my code and you get $5 off your subscription and I get $10 off next years plan. Here is my coupon code "qUWCtMsdEzfIg"

 

<p>Or see if you have other friends or family using SmugMug and get their coupon code for the same deal.

<p>I second the recommendation of the Canon 70-200 2.8 L IS and 100-400 4.5-5.6 L IS lenses. My experience is that the 70-200 is to short for football and baseball which is what drove me to the 100-400. I also bought both the 1.4x and 2x tele-converters but found that they degraded the image quality to much for my taste.</p>

<p>The 70-200 2.8 L IS is the sharpest lens I have ever used and the focus is amazingly fast, it really spoiled all non "L" glass for me. The 100-400 is also an amazing lens although it needs more light which I usually make up for by shooting at a higher ISO.</p>

<p align="center">Here is a daytime photo taken with the 100-400<br>ISO 400, 400mm, f9, 1/500<br><a href="http://davenelson.smugmug.com/gallery/3156412#173364969" target="_blank"><img src="http://davenelson.smugmug.com/photos/173364969-S.jpg" border="2" style="border: 2px solid blue;"></a></p>

<p align="center">And here is a night game photo taken with the 70-200<br>ISO 3200, 200mm, f2.8, 1/200<br><a href="http://davenelson.smugmug.com/gallery/2540664#133537557" target="_blank"><img src="http://davenelson.smugmug.com/photos/133537557-M.jpg" border="2" style="border: 2px solid blue;"></a></p>

If you do not have a reason to upgrade the body then don't. But if you are looking to spend some money I suggest saving up for a Canon 70-200 2.8 L IS.

<p>You may have better luck placing flashlights throughout the cave to light-up interesting features and to create a glow inside the cave. Use very high quality flash lights or take some reflective material to bounce the flashlight light off of to create a more even coverage.</p>

 

<p>The pictures below were taken in a mine that is electrically lit, and is very large, but I think in a smaller cave the same effect could be reproduced with flash lights.</p>

<p><a href="http://davenelson.smugmug.com/gallery/125113/9/4514029#4514029"><img src="http://davenelson.smugmug.com/photos/4514029-S.jpg" border="2" style="border: black 2px solid"></a></p>

<p><a href="http://davenelson.smugmug.com/gallery/125113/9/4514029#4514030"><img src="http://davenelson.smugmug.com/photos/4514030-S.jpg" border="2" style="border: black 2px solid"></a></p>

<p>I have been using a SmugMug Pro account for over two years now and am very happy with their service. But let me say up front, sites like SmugMug do NOT drive sales, that is your job!

 

<p>To get good sales you will have to get out there and sell yourself and your pictures.

 

<p>SmugMug is really easy to set up, you can use your own domain name, they are actively adding new features and improving existing ones. The people who develop the site have blogs where they keep everyone up to date with what they are planning. And the quality of prints from EZPrints have been very good in my experience.

 

<p>The price for the service is not matched by anyone else in the market. For $150 per year you get:

<ul><li>Set your own price for prints

<li>Host an unlimited amount of photos

<li>Get an unlimited amount of traffic

<li>No advertising banners

<li>No giving up ownership or copyright

<li>You can order a backup of all the uploaded images

</ul>

<p>No one else can touch that.

 

<p>But there may be other services available that do offer some other advantages like higher-end prints, specialty printing on different materials, stock image sales, digital download sales, social networking like flikr, blogging, free or cheaper, etc? Spend some time and investigate any and all of the ones that peak your interest.

 

<p>If you decide to sign-up for SmugMug enter my email address "<b>list@davenelson.com</b>" and you?ll get <b>$5 off</b> your fist year and I will get a $10 credit for bringing in a new member.

 

<p>Check out my photos at <a href="http://photo.davenelson.com" target="_blank"><u>http://photo.davenelson.com</u></a>

I second using sofware to making a video DVD with your slideshow instead of delivering a disk full of JPGs. Some players will not display files over a certain size, some players are just clunky and do a poor job of playing through them, and to top it all off people will copy the JPGs off the DVD for many other uses.

 

With a video slideshow you can add music, transitions, and crop specifically for display on a TV.

Try an ISO of 100, Aperture of 11, and adjust the Shutter Speed as needed. Put the camera on a good tripod that is only extended about half way, for maximum stability, and use a timer or remote to trigger the camera. That should give you a good starting point to build from.

Why not print a 20x30 with an extra pair of 10x10s on the print? I group up images like this all the time, especially panoramas.

<p>Try a search for "Macro Coupler."</p>

<p>Here is a search at <a href="http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?shs=Macro+Coupler&ci=0&sb=ps&pn=1&sq=desc&InitialSearch=yes&O=OrderDetail.jsp&A=search&Q=*&bhs=t">B&H</a></p>

 

<p align="center"><a href="http://davenelson.smugmug.com/gallery/130020#38218118"><img src="http://davenelson.smugmug.com/photos/38218118-S.jpg" alt="A penny" border="1"></a><br><b>This picture of a penny was taken using a macro coupling ring.</b></p>

I have been thinking about starting my own photography business or going to work for someone who already has a successful business for a couple years now. My conclusion is that I am going to continue to wait and maybe start a business after I "retire" from my current career.

 

Some of the reasons:

- I see a lot of "professional" photographers working at the local camera stores for less than minimum wage and lousy commissions.

 

- The most financially successful photographers of today are making a bulk of their income from writing books about photography, giving lectures, training DVDs, etc... All of which use skills very different from taking a good photograph.

 

- The photographers I come in contact with who do make a living at it are doing the type of photography I have no interest in. They are sports photographers who hire a bunch of high school kids to shoot opening day then sell lousy packages to the parents. They are working in a studio all day cranking out portraits of people who do not appreciate their work. They are being flown to far away lands to take photos of war atrocities one day and sent down the street to get "the pet of the week" photo.

 

- Most of the photographers I have met are kidding themselves when they say they are making a living at it. They are making less than $30,000 a year and either sinking deeper in debt or leaning on their family to support them.

 

My response to a young person asking the question is to "do it young." The younger they are when they make mistakes the more likely they are to learn from it and the more likely they will be willing to live on nothing. They also may be more willing to take larger risks that might result in some great rewards.

I second or third the recomendation of getting a SAN (Storage Area Network) box. The less than $800 Buffalo Terrastation is a great deal with 750GB of RAID 5 protected space. It uses 4 250GB hard drives and if one of them fails you do not loose any data, just insert a new drive and it will rebuild itself.

Are they just files on a data DVD or are you making a Video DVD?

I use Google, happy with Google, probably not going to change unless they do something really wrong.

Forget DPI/PPI/LPI and all of the junk altogether and shoot at the highest resolution you camera can produce. Let the printers whether human or machine worry about all that, they will upscale or downscale as appropriate.

I am sorry to say that I think you will find that the images on those drive are lost forever. Unless the bad drive can be "repaired" and re-inserted into the RAID without any adjustments.

 

Zach is right, RAID 5, 1+0, and 10 would be better choices if you were looking for performance and data protection.

 

I recommend that you avoid RAID altogether on a workstation and use RAID 5 on servers or SANs.

I detest music that automatically plays on ANY web site. In fact any sound at all from a web site is horrible! Having a "player" that a user may use to play some music is acceptable, as long as it is very clear that clicking on it will cause sound.

<p>I think SmugMug is the obvious choice for you Helen. Unlimited storage and unlimited bandwidth for $39.95/year.

 

<p>If you get more than the basic account there are other features available. You can set each gallery up as private, password protected, or public. You can make them available for purchase as prints or disable that feature. You can allow people to make comments, link to the images... etc...

 

<p>I am a really happy user of SmugMug and am always willing to talk about how great they are.

 

<p>Also, you can drop hundreds of files at a time to upload to a gallery. I do it on a regular basis and it works great.

 

<p>Here is my site <a href="http://davenelson.smugmug.com/" target="_blank">http://davenelson.smugmug.com/</a>

The "many small cards" versus "one large card" debate is really about risk. If you are just risking vacation pictures, or pictures you may sell as a hobby, then the pain felt by loosing a single large card is relatively small. But if you are taking photos that will put food and the table and pay the mortgage, then the amount of risk is much higher.

 

I just recently had my first failed memory card, I was able to get the images off the card with "ImageRescue" but the camera will no longer write to it, and will stick to using the "many small cards" approach.

Try using Exifer or ACDSee to rename the files with the date and time they were taken. I prefer Exifer for that www.friedemann-schmidt.com/software/exifer/

Here is an even better response:

<a href="http://www.digitalmastery.com/downloads/pdf/MagazineArticles/psuser30.pdf" target="_blank">http://www.digitalmastery.com/downloads/pdf/MagazineArticles/psuser30.pdf</a>

Select, feather, and color balance.

 

Select the area that is the smallest, feather the selection, and adjust the color balance to match the surrounding skin.