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All content © Michelle Jones 2006-2007
Flickr partner Moo has just launched a new product, NoteCards.
NoteCards - square prints made from your own photos or designs. They have a magic flap on the side, to make them stand up proudly on your mantel, bookshelf or window sill, and are perfect for mailing to friends.
I love sending and receiving real mail. Can't wait to design some of these and integrate them into my stationery rotation. 16 cards cost $24.99 US.
via Laughing Squid
Tags: photography, Moo, Flickr
Photography enthusiast Nick Pagazani was hindered by the range and fixed location of his camera's flash. Since his camera has no connector for an external flash, he needed a light-activated slave trigger to fire a remote strobe. It had to ignore the pre-flashes used for red-eye correction and fire only on the main flash. His solution: Use a microcontroller to count pulses from a phototransistor and trigger the strobe at a switch-selectable count.Case #96: Nick Has an Illuminating Flashback at Design News
I think this is a little too complex for most people (heck, it's way too geeky for me) but it's a neat project to look at.
A Danish (I think Danish anyway) has put together a great step by step tutorial about how he setup the background and lighting for a Christmas card family portrait. Called The Making of a Christmas Card it details building a light panel, positioning two flash units, and incorporating a gobo. It's tutorials like this that make lighting so much easier to understand for photographers looking to take the next step up from using only available light and on on-camera flash. It's definitely worth looking at if you're interested in portrait lighting.
Another cool DIY photo display project is making the internet rounds today. Easy Photo Wall on a Shoestringwire Budget is posted over at DIY design community site Curbly. It describes building a very cool display wall that makes for a super dynamic (and super easy to change photos) display wall. The author found his inspiration for the project the lobby of a Minnesota theater. "They had this cool system for hanging cast bios and other info that consisted of wire, pulled taut across a span, in this case from floor to ceiling, with small hardware holding some photos and glass in place. I inspected it and it seemed like something I could do at home. So next time I was at the hardware store I picked up some very basic hardware for just a few bucks."
Photo Coasters? I know, sounds lame. They're neater than they sound though, well they're an interersting way to display family photos at the least. Actually I think these, filled with grandkid and family photos, would make a pretty cool holiday gift for family members.
Always excellent fototiller points out a very cool frame for winter (yes winter is on it's way, it was 30F when I walked my dog this morning) from Urban Outfitters.
Forget those boring snowy scenes in regular snow globes. This snow globe is totally DIY - ready for you to create whatever winter wonderland you want. You simply unscrew the bottom and put your own pictures inside (of your friends, your mom, your dog, your records... whatever you want). Close it back up, shake it like crazy and watch the glittery snow start swirling! Imported. Wipe clean.
This simple but very good project from Anh-Minh gives you a very large, very impressive photo display for any wall. Materials include double sided tape, photos, screws, a drill, wall anchors, two people and um specially cut pieces of plexi-glass. OK maybe it's a tiny bit complex but still very cool for the adventurous DIY-ers among us.
Custom photo book publisher MyPublisher recently launched Photographer's Showcase an audio/visual show and tell from accomplished photographers about the books they've created with MyPublisher.
The first three photographers in the showcase are an impressive lot and their books look fantastic. Each of them raves about the quality of the books they received from MyPublisher. I was underwhelmed when I used MyPublisher a few years ago but these testimonials make me think I should give it another shot for a project that I'm working on this fall and winter.
The three photographers are:
Rick Smolan: Time, Life and National Geographic photographer. Creator of "America 24/7" and "The Day in the Life" book series.
Terry Gruber: celebrity wedding photographer (Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas, Billy Joel, etc.). Gruber is using his book as a ready-to-travel portfolio that he can give to wedding planners.
James Danziger: Photo Editor The London Sunday Times, Features Editor, Director of Photography for Vanity Fair
Tags: photography, MyPublisher
Beautiful! Simple! Cylindrical! All the qualities you look for in the finest photo frames, now available in the CanFrame — a simple DIY photo frame project from Photojojo.Our tutorial will step you through an insanely simple way to show off your photos for the price of a 79 cent can of beans. All you need is the aforementioned can, some glue, a photo, and 15 minutes!
The DIY CanFrame: Transform a Tin Can into a Simple Photo Frame in 15 Minutes at Photojojo
Tags: photography, photojojo, diy photography
Photo-opoly allows you to DIY your way to a very personalized Monopoly like (they don't actually reference Monopoly, trademark issues and all) game. 22 spots on the board are just waiting for your photos. You supply the photos and Photo-opoly gives you all the other supplies you need to put it all together.
Got boxes of old photos you want to give new life to or maybe a hard drive full of images you'd like to bring into the 3D world? Photocraft is the book to help you do those things. Filled with ideas and how to's for making things like clocks, tote bags, shower curtains, cool displays, pins, wallpaper and a ton of other stuff.
Popular Science's cool How2.0 feature has instructions for turning an old laptop into a digital frame that automatically pulls images from your Flickr feed. It's a bit too hardware intensive for me to ever consider doing the project but for the more brave amongst us it will be an excellent DIY photography project. As the article notes if you're not geeky enough to build the digital frame yourself you can always buy one from ThinkGeek.
Tags: flickr, photogrpahy, diy photogrpahy
Dust on a DSLR's sensor is one of those unfortunate facts of life that basically every owner will have to deal with at some point. Shooting outdoors, changing lenses, and even simply using your camera puts you at risk for dust on the sensor. If you don't have dust now, you will later so be proactive and learn now what your options are for dealing with it.
Continue reading "Dealing with Dust on Your Digital SLR Sensor or "Out, damned spot! out, I say!"" »
I know you've pushed your CF cards to the limit. I know you've maxed out your Flickr uploads on at least one occasion and I know that you'd have a couple shoeboxes full of prints under the bed if you were still shooting film. Are all of these photos not ready for prime time? Or have you just run out of wall space or gotten tired of frames? Either way it's time to try out some new display techniques and tools that that will give your photography new life, not to mention adding seriously to your house's style-fu.
Continue reading "Bust out of the Frame: Cool Alternatives for Displaying Photography" »
Photocritic blog points out this ingenius camera add-on to help make a photo session a lot more fun for children. Basically you trim the base (the feet) of a pez dispenser, slide it in to your camera's hot-shoe and watch as your subject is amused and entertained by the funny, candy containing creature just inches above your lens.