BurningbirdRecovered from the Wayback Machine.
I can see I need to improve my use of escapes with quotes in some of my semantic web technology, though the effect can sometimes be a bit humorous.
I’m about to publish a series of posts on photography, but before I do I have a question: has my site been as slow for you to access as it has been for me? I’m thinking this is a by-product of the Blonde Joke hits, but it could be my new DSL connection and only I’m having problems accessing pages.
Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
I won’t be purchasing iLife 6 anytime soon, but I gather it does have a nice feature in that you can subscribe to a Flickr photo feed with the tool. Unlike regular feed readers, with iPhoto, you can create a slideshow of the images–rather nice, really.
A friend has subscribed to my Flickr feed, and hopefully I’ll have some interesting photos for him to look at–bald eagles if I can ever manage to get any pictures. Still, I don’t expect to be posting as many photos to Flickr in the next few months. I want to experiment around with creating my own photo applications using the wide variety of Ruby-on-Rails, PHP, JavaScript and other libraries on my development server. I also want to start being a bit more discriminating about what I publish online. Quality, not quantity.
In addition, I want to start separating out the social aspect of photography that comes with photos being on a Flickr site. I want the photography to be seen as photography, not an invitation to have communal chat. I think the community can be fun, and I’ve met terrific folks at Flickr. But I also think it can impact on how you view your photography over time; or at least, I’ve found it so.
I still think Flickr is the cat’s jammies, and plan on continuing to use the service–just not as frequently, or for the same purpose as I’ve used the site in the past (as storage for my online photos).
Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
My first camera was the newly released Nikon 8008, though I used Nikon cameras previously when I worked for a photographer. I liked the 8008 so much that I ended buying two bodies: one to hold B & W film; one for color.
Now I use a digital Nikon, the D70, and hope to, someday, move up the line to something like the D2X. Until then, though, my D70 does a wonderful job, and I love the camera.
I was ambivalent when I heard the news that Nikon is discontinuing most of its film line in addition to all of its manual lens–only providing support for the F6 and FM10 and whatever lenses these cameras need. This does signal a major shift in the camera industry, and for the first time I wonder how much longer film cameras will exist. More, I wonder how much longer film makers will continue to create film.
Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
Recently, Apple came out with a photo workflow tool called Aperture. Sounds like a great tool, considering you have to buy a brand new computer just to use it.
Adobe also came out with the beta for its own photo workflow tool, aptly called Lightroom. Unlike Apple’s product, Lightroom runs on my laptop, though I debate the company’s use of ‘beta’ with the application: it is more than a little rough around the edges, and not all of the functionality is present. Still it is a wondrously fun tool to use.
To demonstrate how to use it, I imported several images from a single shoot of the Dillard Mill last Spring. These photos could have been particularly good, except that the time of day, and hence the lighting, was all wrong. I decided to see what I could do with the photo modification tools built into Lightroom, processing them more as a batch then the careful modifications I make with Photoshop. I then exported a Flash slideshow of the photos (HTML show). Note that I accidentally referred to Lightroom as Lightspeed a couple of times. Purely unintentional, the application is not that fast. At least, not on my laptop.
Lightroom does a really nice job of adjusting even completely lost photos, so that I could salvage at least 50% of the photos. The slideshow creation was very easy and even a little fun, and once it was ready, it was a simple matter to export it to my site, though where the files were placed tended to go wonky.
As with Aperture, Lightroom works with RAW images, which means you can work with the captured metadata, allowing modifications of exposure and white balance. Within the Developer section of the tool, you can continue to adjust the work, including luminance, color saturation, and brightness, contrast, and so on. It is the ability to quickly and easily work with RAW images that sells Aperture, and the same sells Lightroom. However, unlike Aperture, I don’t have to buy a new computer to be able to use it.
Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
I was rather stunned this morning to read a good-bye message from Lauren at Feministe:
After almost exactly six years as a blogger, about three of them at this domain, I believe it’s time for me to bow out. My dedication to my writing here has waned and I am tired of the oddly daunting responsibility of owning a website that runs significant traffic with my name attached. Running this blog takes far more time and dedication than I’d like to admit, and it’s time and dedication I can no longer afford to expend now that I am out of college. This is a decision I made some time ago and grappled with up until I hit publish on this post.
As Lauren goes on to say, blogging can be difficult, time consuming, and frustrating. It can also be discouraging when works that take time go unremarked, while a quick link to a silly joke pushes your Technorati profile up 400 points.
I think when you emotionally invest of yourself in your site, as Lauren has done–creating long, thoughtful essays, and caring about what you publish, in addition to your audience’s reaction–you either reach a point where you have to take a break, change how you run your site, or quit; sometimes, all three.
Some writers, such as Jonathon Delacour take very long breaks whenever needed. Others, such as myself and many of you, change the site, the focus, take shorter breaks, or whatever to keep the sites from breaking us down–to keep the fun still in the game. Unfortunately, there are those, like Lauren, who believe the only course they have is to quit. I can certainly understand the desire, or need, to quit, though I am unhappy to see someone like Lauren go.
I will miss you, kiddo.