PShizzy: The Blog

Tomorrow, November 18th, starting at 6am PST, you can get a free copy of Zonealarm 2009 Pro for free. Lifehacker, a favorite site of mine, has more info. As soon as the link is available, I will edit this post and include the direct link. For now, check out the article at Lifehacker, or the Zonealarm site.

Note, this is Windows only, which makes me a sad Mac. Not really though, because I have a PC laptop.

EDIT: Link is up. Click on the links above, or HERE.

Tags: business, general by PShizzy
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One of the most common sources of frustration I have on a regular basis is that of filesharing. That’s because while everyone has the internet, how we have it and how we use it is so unique to each of us, that we often end up with a few incompatibilities.

Let’s take email. Everyone’s got an email address. But not everyone supports the same file size for attachments and downloads. I can send 20MB files (thank you GMail), but you might only support 5-10MB (like my Cox account supports). Now what?

How bout IM’s? Excellent. I use AIM. You use MSN? How are we even friends? Ok I use Adium. What? Ya, it lets me use AIM, MSN, Yahoo, etc. Great. Wait, does it let me share files across? Yes. But crap, I’m on a router, so now I have a firewall. What, you’re on a router too? But it says the file is sending. Of course, it’s said that for the last 10 minutes. And ya, I’m just trying to send you a small jpg, so this should have been done nine minutes ago.

Ok how bout FTP? Great. I have one. Do you have a server? What’s your ftp address. What, that’s private. Ok. I’ll post the file on my webspace. Wait, now it’s too public.

Using a common protocol is tough for sharing because we may not have any in common. Making a file public is bad because now the file is public. It’s funny because the answers we seek end up being their own problems. So what if I had a place where I could store files, make them public or private on a file or folder level, share them via email, a special link, or otherwise, and generally have the ease of use of a download for our users, while we have the security of using a service with its own protocol on our backend.

Oh ya, what if it were free too, unless you want to move single files that are over 100MB (which at the rate cameras keep upgrading the sensors and megapixels might be next year)? Keep on reading! [Read more →]

Tags: general by PShizzy
8 Comments »

When you preview a RAW image taken on your camera, most often what you’re doing is reviewing a low resolution JPEG rendering from that RAW data. Some applications offer ways to extract these jpegs. Canon’s own Zoombrowser allows this, as does Photo Mechanic. It’s not a big deal to open up these apps and extract a few files, but now there’s a better way.

From the crew over at Imagenomic (known for their Portraiture and Noiseware plugins), comes Instant JPEG from RAW. It’s not a program, but rather a system level utility. Right click on a folder, select the utility, and just like that the images are extracted. Sounds great. Here are my favorite features

1) Um, it’s free. This is big. I don’t like installing weird apps like Zoombrowser (which is free) to do one single thing. It’s a waste. But a simple utility, that’s right clickable? Awesome.

2) The Imagenomic folk aren’t strangers to many of us. I know a few people who use their Portraiture and/or Noiseware applications.

3) It’s cross platform. Since I rock a Dell laptop and a Mac Pro tower, these things are important to me.

There are limitations. The biggest one, as noted on their blog:

IJFR has no control over the look of the file. Since the file was created by the camera, it was the settings on the camera at the time of capture that rendered the file into what it looks like. In the case of a DNG exported from an application like Lightroom or ACR, it is the adjustments in that application that will affect the look of the rendered JPEG that is stored in the JPEG (it is called the Preview image).

There are ways around this, but it could be more work than just exporting out of Lightroom or Photoshop.

A little more info, the link, and thoughts after the jump. [Read more →]

Tags: general by PShizzy
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So I get a call from an old friend and she asks if I wanted to go cover a HS Football game. I was amped. I haven’t covered hs football in a long time, and while football is football, each level of skill has their own challenges. With the NFL, even the worst coach teams can run off a play with military precision. Broken plays just don’t happen that frequently. In college, if you’re lucky enough to shoot a D1 school (such as ASU), then you’ll have an assortment of talent, and while play’s may get broken, the players are often talented enough to make the best of it.

At the HS level, sometimes having enough players is good enough. And thus enters Boulder Creek at St Mary’s. Boulder Creek in only it’s second full varsity year put up a good fight, led by All Region quarterback Taylor Davis. Inexperience in their receiving core kept Boulder Creek on the ground, with Davis running for dear life and the ocassional first down, against St Mary’s. Boulder Creek’s defense held their ground, only giving up a touchdown through the first half to keep the score close at 7-0, but St Mary’s opened the second half with a kick return TD. Eventually, a 32 minute (of 48 total) time of posession by St Mary’s caught up with the Boulder Creek defense. Final score: 27-7.

So, how do I prepare for a hs football game? a few thoughts, and a gallery, after the jump. [Read more →]

Tags: general, photography by PShizzy
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So there you are, in the middle of or after a shoot. You have a small pause in your day, and you decide to start downloading your files. If you’re like me, you let the card download while you go get a snack or attend to something else. You wait for that familiar “ding” sound. Except this time, your download starts off with the “error” sound. It doesn’t kick in just yet. You figure it’s a forgotten setting or you had a hidden window asking you if were you sure you wanted to do what you just tried to do. So you set it up again. Ready to leave the computer to it’s chore, you get the error sound again. It’s starting to kick in: You may have just encountered your first (and unfortunately not last) corrupt card.

You panic, of course. It’s an important shoot. It’s a memorable family gathering. It’s an image of you with Charles Barkley. Whatever it is, it’s lost. You think it’s unfair. You always backup (you do, right?), having two or more copies of a file, offsite (so both copies don’t burn down in a fire or short out in a flood), perhaps online (so that you always have access to it), and in different mediums (DVD so you can’t overwrite a file incorrectly). But how can you backup something that’s corrupt before you even get to a computer? Forget that. How can you at least get back a single copy of all your images? Oh God, what’s it going to cost?

We’ve all read about those companies that will recover your files for you. They often have engineers in bunny suits (cleanroom outfits, not the mall kiosk gig). Those bunny suits ain’t cheap, and neither is the service fee for file recovery on any sort of disk.

So how about FREE, and Mac/PC friendly. Link after the jump. [Read more →]

Tags: general by PShizzy
3 Comments »

I have a Mac Pro desktop, recently acquired, but my laptop is a Dell running XP. Yes, networking allows them to talk and share files, but it’s not always that easy. I like to consider them digital acquaintances. I need to connect to the network and sometimes enter my username and password to conect to the other computer. Not a big deal.

But it gets worse. What if I have a document, image, or file that I need on my laptop (which I worked on while I was out of the home/office), and I turned off the laptop. When I get home, I now have to get that laptop, boot up, log in, connect to the network, check to make sure my Mac can see the laptop on the network, then pull the file. Fun, huh? Even if I left the laptop on, I’d still have to log in, connect, check the connection on the Mac, etc. It’s not so much that it’s difficult, but it is tedious, and a waste of time, which I value very much.

Wouldn’t it be nice if I could just put my files on my laptop or Mac in a folder, and have that get pushed to the other computer? And I’m not talking about running a program, and putting a file in there, or uploading to an FTP. I’m talking about opening your standard Windows or Mac folder, and dragging and dropping your files in, and that’s it. Now you check your other computer, and it’s there. Better yet, what if I put the files in the folder, and then turned off the computer, but it doesn’t matter, because the other computer can still access the file? And what if I’m at a different computer altogether, and I need to access it via a web interface.

Enter Dropbox. They do exactly what I said, and more. Of course, this kind of timesaver is something I regularly find over at Lifehacker, and they are running a poll comparing five different file and folder sharing applications, which Dropbox is winning. The problem is that Dropbox is so popular that it’s now in closed beta. You can sign up at the Dropbox site, but only to be notified when they open the beta up to the public again. Or, you can be invited, if someone (cough cough, me) has invites to give.

Read on to find out more about dropbox, including a video that shows the features (oh, I forgot to mention, the file syncing is just one of MANY features Dropbox has), a chance to get in on the beta, and how I use it.

[Read more →]

Tags: business, general by PShizzy
16 Comments »

This week should be interesting: tomorrow night, the Phoenix Mercury face off against the Washington Mystics, so expect a gallery late tomorrow or early Wednesday.

I’ve also gotten permission for use of some images for the purpose of green screens. I don’t shoot them very often, and whenever anyone asks about how to do them, I try to reason with them that unless they have a specific need, go with another idea. Of course, if you need that dinosaur/prehistoric or fairy/fantasy background, well that’s kinda hard to do with props.

But wait, that’s not all.

[Read more →]

Tags: general by PShizzy
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I saw this on the Rob Galbraith site so props to him for posting it. It’s a commercial by Canon, entitled Journey, which showcases the Rebel XSi. While it’s a commercial, they took the photos of 10 different photographers in various scenes, and made a large sequence of photos, showing the journey of man (and woman), from a small child in a backyard all the way through to the NFL. It’s a wonderful commercial.

I bring it up because it has to do with photography, but also because videos can be inspiration for still work. While different mediums, a great scene is a great scene, whether it’s captured by video or still. I especially like commercials, because they are condensed. A commercial has 30 seconds to capture your interest, sell you on an idea, and keep itself in your mind enough to transcend the tv screen, because they eventually want you to go buy some item or service. Images are similiar, in my mind. An event may last hours, or even days. We select a limited amount of images, and they need to take you through the gamut of emotion, the spirit, and the feel of the event. [Read more →]

Tags: general by PShizzy
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