Continuing in the theme of panoramic photo's, here are a couple more of my favorites from the same Alaskan cruise:

Learning about photography

During my commute to and from work I listen to podcasts about photography. I found this to be a great way to learn about what the professionals consider to be the most important aspects of photography. There are a lot of great interviews with active professionals in all the various photographic categories (photojournalism, wildlife, fashion, wedding, etc.). Podcasts are also a great way to find out about the latest software and gear, to know what it is all capable of, and what the professionals are using. Podcasts are a fun, free and easy way to learn about pretty much anything. "This Week in Photography" (TWIP) is one of the shows I enjoy listening to.

Printing Photo's

Below is a photo I took while on a cruise in Alaska. It is an irregular shape in that it is pretty much square because I AutoStitch'ed it together from two portrait photographs. I use Lightroom for managing and post processing my photograph collection and I used Lightroom to tweak the contrast, colours, clarity, etc.

Yesterday I sent this photo to print at Costco's Photo Centre.

Many of your run of the mill print centres do not provide much variation from the standard width and sizes (4"x6", 5"x7", 8"x10", 8"x12", etc.); Costco provides a couple of square selections (8"x8" and 12"x12") at a very reasonable price point. I printed this photo at 12"x12" for the paltry sum of $2.49. I will write more about the quality of the print when I pick it up.

-- Edit -- MAY 19, 2010

I picked up the print and am quite pleased with the result. I will reserve final judgement until after I print some more pictures with a greater colour range. However I recommend it purely for the price; it is definitely not going to break the bank.

Canon Zoom Lens EF 70-200mm F/4L USM

I picked up a the above mentioned lens last Saturday from a local shop on Victoria Drive called Multiple Electronics. I went there in hand with a quote I printed from B&H, not expecting them to come anywhere close however the guy at the sales counter took my quote and made me a deal that wasn't much worse than what B&H offered plus shipping. So instead of having to wait for the lens to be shipped, I got to walk home with it. I also picked up a sturdy tripod and circular polarizing and UV (lens protecting) filters.

I have taken a few shots with the new lens, but not much to write home about yet.

Eye-Fi

There was an offer through Google and Picasa a while back for $50 for a 4GB Eye-Fi SD card for your digital camera and 200 Gigabytes of web storage capacity. Since I was already familiar with Picasa, and I was nearing the limit of my 1 GB of free storage, I decided to take them up on the offer.

For those of you out there that do not know what the Eye-Fi does, here is a brief summary:

After some initial setup, the 4GB Eye-Fi SD card becomes a wi-fi tether to your computer. When you put the card in to your camera and take photo's with it, as soon as you are within reach of your wi-fi or a predefined wi-fi hot spot, the card will begin to upload your photo's taken to your computer.

One thing I didn't realize about this offer is that the card supplied only works with JPG files; which is great for most of the point and shoot camera's out there, but not so great if most of the photo's you take are in a RAW format. Apparently Eye-Fi does make a card that works with RAW photo's, but that was not what was included in the offer.

That having been said, I do think that the Eye-Fi has a great product, and I have used it and it works; I just wish I had read a little deeper into the offer to begin with.

I added a link to my Picasa Web Album.

Welcome

Hi there! Welcome to my web log.

This is my first web log, and my first post. I hope to showcase some of my photography here and share a little of my life with the rest of the world.

Thanks for finding me.