After my teaser I started to think about what kind of photos I have ready, to design a new blurb photo book. Of course some photos I took on our last vacation to Scotland are worth to be printed into a photo book. You can preview my book online, but if you want you can also buy a printed copy. The book is titled “Bilder einer Schottlandreise. Photos of a journey to Scotland”. Blurb offers several tools to advertise your book to your audience.
Prior to my vacation to Scotland I bought a filter holder to be more precise the Cokin Z-Pro. Along with it several Cokin ND filters and a 10 stop ND grey filter from Hitech. My decision to buy the Cokin Z-Pro and the Hitech 10 stop filter was driven by the price and the fact, that all the Lee stuff was out of stock and delivery times were several weeks long, time I did not had. I am very disappointed about the Hitech filter because of its reddish color cast. Therefore I decided to buy the Big Stopper from Lee filters along with the Lee filter holder. Now having both filter holder side by side, I understand why you should not make use of the Lee Big Stopper in a Cokin filter holder.
Making your own photo book with Lightroom and Blurb – Up to now I developed and organized my RAW photos with Apples Aperture. Last christmas I purchased Lightroom in addition. The support that can be found at the internet such as blog-posts, tutorials and forums show that Lightroom seems to be more popular. Of course you can find equivalent support for Aperture, but you have fewer options. What I liked from the first moment I started using Lightroom is and was the RAW development. I will not discuss pros and cons of both applications here.
PicsAround a community based photo location database. The idea behind PicsAround is simple and easy, just one of those things that need to be remembered and discovered by someone. Assume you are anywhere or nowhere, just start up PicsAround, raise your iPhone and see what you can discover. What to be discovered is a share of photos other app users would love you to see. The more participants and submissions the better the database of course.
A DIY photographic light box out of kappa boards (styrofoam) including a background board costs about 15 EUR (approx. 13 GBP/20 CAD/USD). The DIY (do-it-yourself) light-box is space-saving, easy to setup and easy to stow away. Anybody, like me, who likes to take a photo of small things that should be sold at an online auction etc., knows that a good picture and a good product presentation is nearly a guarantee to achieve a reasonable price.
Sailing, The Photo-shoot On Which You Can Take Your Family. Adventure holidays such as safaris, trekking or even sailing are great for photographers. Even those who have never been interested in this art before, return home to find that they have taken some amazing snaps. Exploring beautiful landscapes makes framing a perfect photo both enjoyable and easy.
The HDRI Handbook its out in version 2.0 and a fresh arrival at Amazon. To be honest I was not able to go through the book entirely. Not because of losing the interest in reading or finding it boring. It is just to much information to read in a short time. It is loaded with deep knowledge of the author Christian Bloch. It contains 7 chapters in over 650 pages. Tons of very useful information on HDR for both the beginners and experienced HDR photographers as well as for computer graphic artists. I simply could not wait until I finished reading it to let you know that this is a must have book if you are into HDR photography or would like to learn about it.