Fol­low this link to the gallery of pic­tures we took at the Prince­ton Art Walk this past Sat­ur­day. This is a most unusu­al event put on by the artist com­mu­ni­ty of Half Moon Bay and the Coast­side. Watch for future hap­pen­ings.

Lori and I will be per­form­ing Light Draw­ing at the Prince­ton Art Walk tomor­row. This is in Prince­ton Har­bor, Half Moon Bay, CA, start­ing at 7pm. This is a free and organ­ic event in which artist’s open their stu­dios and homes to an evolv­ing dis­play of inter­ac­tive art. Most activ­i­ties will be up and down Har­vard Street. Look for us after dark to be pro­ject­ing near real time light draw­ings on the sides of build­ings.

For more details, see this arti­cle in the Half Moon Bay Review and this PDF doc­u­ment for the sched­ule of events.

See you there!

This was tak­en 2 weeks ago and is my first attempt at the mature sub­ject of the Gold­en Gate Bridge peek­ing out of the fog. Tak­en from the Marin Head­lands, be pre­pared to sit around wait­ing for the right con­di­tions. Bring a book or load the iPod with a col­lec­tion of pho­tog­ra­phy pod­casts. And be pre­pared for the cold and wind. Also, the fog can move very fast and the pic­ture can be gone in the time it takes you to get out of the car and focus your cam­era. I did a fair amount of lev­el cor­rec­tion in Pho­to­shop and a lit­tle red sat­u­ra­tion to get the effect I was look­ing for. Check­ing the web cams (see the link in the right col­umn) can help sur­vey the con­di­tions which may change dras­ti­cal­ly by the time you get there.

Is this a young red­tail hawk? He was fair­ly big and his tail was not red. Any­way, that is my pic­ture of the day.

Just dri­ving down High­way 1 and noticed the irri­ga­tion and John­son House in har­mon­ic con­ver­gence. Click the pic­ture for a larg­er view.

Our last pho­tog­ra­phy work­shop dis­cussed the online pho­to host­ing site, Flickr and here are the notes I pre­pared:

In addi­tion to host­ing pic­tures from pho­tog­ra­phers around the world, Flickr also func­tions as an online com­mu­ni­ty and a social net­work­ing site and can be used to meet oth­er pho­tog­ra­phers that share your inter­ests. Keep in mind that Flickr’s pri­ma­ry func­tion is to dis­play your pic­tures and you can choose what oth­ers see or how much you inter­act with any­one else. In short, it is noth­ing like Face­book, no one is bug­ging you to be their friend and there are no ads when view­ing your pic­tures, even for the free accounts. There is one ad on the free account when you go to your Flickr home page, but it is small.

Accord­ing to Wikipedia, as of June, 2009, Flickr hosts 3.6 bil­lion pic­tures. It was start­ed by Ludi­cor in Cana­da in 2004 and bought by Yahoo in 2005. At that time, all con­tent was moved to the Unit­ed States and is now sub­ject to US laws. It is cur­rent­ly the most pop­u­lar pho­to host­ing site.

There are both free and Pro accounts avail­able. The free account lim­its your pic­ture upload to 100 megabytes a month. The Pro account cost $25 for a year and allows you unlim­it­ed uploads. You can upload video, all accounts are lim­it­ed to 90 sec­onds for each movie and pro accounts may upload High Def­i­n­i­tion video.

A note on the upload lim­it – if you have a free account, do not direct­ly down­load pic­tures from your 10 megapix­el cam­era into Flickr. Learn to use soft­ware to reduce your image files to a much small­er size while retain­ing pic­ture qual­i­ty. This will allow you to upload many more pic­tures tak­ing full advan­tage of your free account. And select only your best pic­tures to upload. Leave the blurred and dupli­cate pic­tures out. You wouldn’t put those blurred pic­tures in your pho­to album.

A Yahoo ID is required to join. If you do not have a Yahoo ID, Flickr makes it easy for you to com­plete the form to get one.

Flickr is used by ama­teur and pro­fes­sion­al pho­tog­ra­phers as a quick and easy way to share their work with friends, fam­i­ly and clients. Blog­gers use it as an easy place to store pho­tos to use on their blogs and to allow oth­ers to use for web con­tent or print­ing.

I find Flickr very easy to use and con­fig­ure to my spec­i­fi­ca­tions. You con­trol all pri­va­cy set­tings for pho­tos, whether the gen­er­al pub­lic can see them or just friends and fam­i­ly who are mem­bers. You can send guest pass­es to non mem­bers to see pic­tures you list­ed as pri­vate. You have some con­trol over how your gallery appears to oth­ers. You can orga­nize your pho­tos into sets and col­lec­tions. And there is plen­ty of assis­tance pro­vid­ed by Flickr to help you get the most out of your page.

Cen­sor­ship (what you see) defaults to the strictest lev­el, suit­able for minors. You can adjust what you allow your­self to view from there.

There are few restric­tions to what peo­ple can post. This is reg­u­lat­ed only by the coun­try from which you are view­ing. Ger­many and Chi­na have very strict restric­tions on what their cit­i­zens may view on Flickr.

Beyond pub­lish­ing my pho­tos, I find real val­ue view­ing the work of oth­ers. If you seek to improve your pho­tog­ra­phy, look­ing at and ana­lyz­ing oth­er pho­tos is an excel­lent way to learn. Some peo­ple fol­low their own course and pre­fer not to be influ­enced by oth­er work. More pow­er to them. I find oth­er work very inter­est­ing, edu­ca­tion­al and inspir­ing and find Flickr is an excel­lent source for help and ideas.

Groups – Search out groups with­in Flickr, there are thou­sands of them, each with a spe­cif­ic theme in mind and thou­sands of peo­ple con­tribute to these groups every­day. If you need inspi­ra­tion or want to learn a new tech­nique, vis­it a group with a theme that inter­ests you. You can view the pho­tos by select­ing from thumb­nails or run a slideshow of the entire pool. Again, look­ing at and eval­u­at­ing other’s work is a great way to fur­ther your abil­i­ties.

Some great groups to vis­it are “The Com­mons” and “Explore”. The Com­mons hosts pho­tos with no known copy­right restric­tions and is filled with pic­tures from the Library of Con­gress, the Smith­son­ian Insti­tute and many inter­na­tion­al libraries, muse­ums and col­leges. Explore hosts “most linked to” and “most viewed pic­tures” and rep­re­sents an amaz­ing col­lec­tion of ran­dom work from around the world. I also enjoy a group called “Light Junkies”, a col­lec­tion of light draw­ing and long expo­sure pho­tog­ra­phy. Use the search engine at the top of the page to locate your inter­ests.

The Com­mons is here: http://www.flickr.com/commons/
Explore is here: http://www.flickr.com/explore/
Light Junkies is here: http://www.flickr.com/groups/lightjunkies/
Here is one for the Gold­en Gate Bridge: http://www.flickr.com/groups/ggb/

Inter­act — You can com­ment or add over­lay notes on any pic­ture which the own­er allows com­ments. You can join groups, add your pho­tos, join in on dis­cus­sions in each group’s forums and receive feed­back on your pic­tures. Tag your pho­tos with key words to help you sort through your pho­tos and to help oth­ers dis­cov­er you too. Com­ment­ing and receiv­ing feed­back can enhance everyone’s expe­ri­ence and pro­vide valu­able insight.

Pro­tect Your­self – You knew it sound­ed too good to be true, but actu­al­ly, it’s not so bad. There are a few things you should con­sid­er when you post pic­tures online. Post­ed pic­tures can be copied. Every dig­i­tal pic­ture con­tains data such as when the pic­ture was tak­en and the cam­era set­tings. It can hold your name and con­tact infor­ma­tion to pro­tect your copy­right priv­i­leges. You should make sure that your con­tact infor­ma­tion is embed­ded in each pho­to you post. This gives you some form of copy­right pro­tec­tion and gives oth­ers the abil­i­ty to con­tact you if need­ed. The only way to com­plete­ly be sure your work is nev­er copied is to nev­er post it. So, you need a lev­el of trust to par­tic­i­pate in the fun.

Obey the rules – Be aware that Flickr main­tains the right to delete your account and all the pic­tures at any time for any rea­son. There have been a few com­plaints and dis­putes but there are usu­al­ly facts miss­ing from what I have read. These prob­lems are rare. The rules are not unrea­son­able. Stay in the bound­aries and keep copies of your pic­tures on your own com­put­er.

Spend time set­ting up your Flickr pro­file. There are some copy­right set­tings there too. That is where you deter­mine who can see your pic­tures and if they can com­ment on them.

Flickr makes it easy to view var­i­ous sizes of your pic­ture, embed them into web pages and share them via email. It goes on and on and new fea­tures are insti­tut­ed all the time. I use Flickr every­day, enjoy the inter­ac­tion, learn from oth­ers and (until I find some­thing gross­ly wrong) rec­om­mend it to every­one. Have Fun!

Ref­er­ence: Derek Sto­ry pro­duced a pod­cast (#175) on the Dig­i­tal­sto­ry web­site enti­tled “Top 10 Flickr tips”. Check it out.

Red-winged Black­birds — PHOTO BY GARRETT LAU

The San Fran­cis­co Bay Bird Obse­va­to­ry holds a pho­to con­test as part of their fund rais­ing activ­i­ties and the sub­mis­sions peri­od starts today with a dead­line of Octo­ber 9.

“The San Fran­cis­co Bay Bird Obser­va­to­ry is ded­i­cat­ed to the con­ser­va­tion of birds and their habi­tats through sci­ence and out­reach, and to con­tribut­ing to informed resource man­age­ment deci­sions in the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area.”

Prizes include bird pho­tog­ra­phy work­shops with Oliv­er Klinkworth or Bruce Finac­chio and gift cer­tifi­cates from Bor­rowlens­es.

Read all the details on their web site: http://www.sfbbo.org/support/clickoff/clickoff.php

It was a busy 3 days and a good chance to prac­tice sport action shoot­ing. Huge swells hit the bay area and the surfers hit the water. I caught some shots at Steam­er Lane on Thurs­day, Half Moon Bay on Fri­day and then went to the Driscoll Ranch Rodeo on Sat­ur­day.

There are a wide vari­ety of pho­to­genic sites around the San Fran­cis­co bay area, each with their own micro cli­mate and access chal­lenges. The fog may be in or out, it may be cloudy in one area and sun­ny just a mile away, the surf may be up or flat, the traf­fic to that site may be insur­mount­able. Before I dri­ve or hike some­where to take pic­tures, I often check the con­di­tions via the many web cams locat­ed around the bay area. Here is a list of active web cams I find use­ful. Some cam­eras allow you to take con­trol to pan and zoom the scene.

SanFranciscoBay.com has the most com­plete col­lec­tion I have found to-date.

SFGate and CBS5.com have their own sim­i­lar col­lec­tions.

But there are more:

Con­tro­lable “Alca­traz” cam which is actu­al­ly from Sausal­i­to.

SurfLine.com links to all avail­able cam­eras point­ed at the ocean in addi­tion to list­ing surf con­di­tions. Explore this site to find reports and surf cams from around the world. this link takes you to Cen­tral Cal­i­for­nia.

Hi-Def San Fran­cis­co (pic­tured above) mon­i­tors the bay and sky­line from Sausal­i­to, track­ing ships and offer­ing time lapse movies of inter­est­ing days.

Sam­Cam at Sam’s Chow­der House in Prince­ton Har­bor will give you an idea of the weath­er con­di­tions in Half Moon Bay.

For traf­fic con­di­tions, I check SFGate’s traf­fic page and 511.org for a live map of dri­ve time and high­way speeds.

I also mon­i­tor the Bay Area Air Qual­i­ty Man­age­ment Dis­trict look­ing for clues to air clar­i­ty.

That’s a start. I’ll list more as I find them and l’ll link this post for easy access on the side of this blog.

Hap­py view­ing!

I par­tic­i­pat­ed in Scott Kel­by’s World­wide Pho­to Walk this past week­end. Over 30,000 peo­ple par­tic­i­pat­ed around the world.

A pho­to walk is a group of pho­tog­ra­phers get­ting togeth­er in one place, ambling through a town, and pho­tograph­ing any­thing that moves or does­n’t, basi­cal­ly ter­ror­iz­ing the natives. You dis­cuss equip­ment, tech­niques, com­po­si­tion or any­thing you can get them to talk about. Just watch­ing what they pho­to­graph is a learn­ing expe­ri­ence. I whole­heart­ed­ly endorse this annu­al event.

View images from the walk that I post­ed on Flickr here.
View the San Fran­cis­co North Beach Walk group pho­tos here.
And view walk pho­tos from around the world here.