Yanik's Photo School » Websites

Off-Campus Learning Links for December

Yanik — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 07:43:45 +0000

There are so many cool and informative photography articles out there that I’ve decided to start an “Off-Site Learning” post. This post will be once a month for now and will focus on links that I found engaging and informative. It’s all about getting as much information in you to continue to perfect your skill as a photographer.

I hope you enjoy this new feature at Yanik’s Photo School. And if you find great articles about photography learning that aren’t listed that month, please share them in the comments so that we may all benefit from them.

Photography learning links for December

- Syl Arena has an article about using high speed sync with your small strobes like the Canon 580EX or the Nikon SB-900. You can sync them up to 1/8000 sec!

- On the same theme, you can look at an oldy but a goody by David Hobby over at Strobist on high speed sync for Nikons. At the end of the article, you’ll also find this very informative PDF by Naturescapes.net

- Did you manage to get the free gel packs for your speedlights? If so, ever wondered how ALL the colors would turn out? Well, Peter Emmett did so he shot them all just for you! Check it out!

- Chase Jarvis has a video out about “Making the Web Work for You”. I haven’t watched the whole thing yet (it’s an unedited 82 minutes!!) but from what I’ve seen, it’s well worth it. So get out the popcorn and enjoy!

- Over at Lightroom Killer Tips, Matt Kloskowski goes over how to add a watermark in Lightroom! How cool is that.

- Do you still think your Lightroom is slow and cluncky? Then you should check this article out by Jim Goldstein that just might heelp speed things up for you. 4 quick ways to boost Lightroom performance.

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Top 10 Free Online Photo Editing Websites

Yanik — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 07:12:27 +0000

Today I’m going to give you a list of the top 10 free online photo editing Websites. Why you might ask? For many reasons but mainly because you’ve asked me to! I’m really glad I added a Suggestion Box because you guys are using it! Keep it up.

I think this post is quite pertinent with the economy the way it is right now, and will probably be for a few years. You might think twice about your future luxury purchases like Lightroom or Photoshop.

If you already have them then you might want to look at this list anyways since online photo editing could be very practical when you’re traveling without a laptop. You certainly don’t want your friends and family to see your unprocessed images now do you? They might think traveling reduces your photo IQ!

So without further ado, here are the top 10 online photo editing Websites. IF you plan on using Photoshop Express, I strongly suggest you take a look at my 2-part walk through tutorials: Part 1 & Part 2.

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DIYPhotography.net – Review

Yanik — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 07:13:30 +0000

It’s time for me to review another great Website for you to enjoy (You can check out all my website reviews here). Yes, I know you love it here but remember that one of the reasons you keep coming back is that you always learn something new. For me to post great content, I have to be inspired and I do that by constantly searching the Web and learning myself. And today’s no exception.

Let me introduce you to DIY Photography. If you’ve never heard the expression DIY, it stands for “do it yourself”. DIYP is dedicated to giving you tips on how to do photography related “stuff” on your own. It could be anything from all aspects of studio equipment to some really neat post processing.

Website: DIY Photography

Owner: Udi Tirosh

Main subject: Effective Photography on the cheap

Target Audience: Beginner and intermediate photographers

Content Theme: Education

I’ve been exchanging a few emails with the owner of DIY Photography, Udi, and I can tell you that he’s a great guy who’s mission is very similar to mine: helping out fellow photography passionates like you. The site is updated frequently so your hungry photography brain is always fed. I’m subscribed to the RSS feed on My Yahoo! page and I love checking out the new articles.

Some of my favorite articles are:

- Creating your own Bokeh
- Making your own softbox
- DIY Hand Strap

To sum it all up DIYP is all about creative people doing creative projects to improve their photography skills without having to spend a ton of cash. You can even check out the active forum on the DIYP Flickr Group. See ya there!

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Darren Rowse and Digital-Photography-School.com

Yanik — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 12:45:48 +0000

If you were curious enough to check out my Useful Links section you would notice a link to the Digital Photography School created by Darren Rowse. I find this blog/forum to be a treasure chest full of fantastic information for both amateur and professional photographers. When I have a few minutes, I like to browse the forums and soak up information. Maybe even post a comment or two if I feel that I can contribute useful information. Here are the details….

Website: Digital-Photography-School.com

Owner: Darren Rowse

Main subject: Photography Education

Target Audience: Beginner and intermediate photographers

Content Theme: Education

About DPS

DPS is all about learning and sharing what you know about photography. It’s forum-based with clear categories like: “Share your Shots”, “How I took it” and “Macro Photography” just to name a few. It’s not a formal school of photography as it’s focused on members sharing information with other members.

Darren took a few minutes from his busy schedule to answer a few questions for you…

1- What can a amateur photographer expect from DPS?

DPS has always been designed with the amateur photographer in mind. While we have a few Pros using the site too it is the normal person with a digital camera who wants to go to the next level in their use of it that we have in mind as we write our tutorials and tips.Really what we’re about is helping people to get out of Auto mode and grab a little more creative control of their camera. We do this in three main ways:

1. The Blog (digital-photogrpahy-school.com/blog) which has daily tips and tutorials on a range of types of photography
2. The Forum (digital-photography-school.com/forum) which is much more reader driven and is all about sharing photos, community and helping one another improve through Q&A, critique and reader written reviews and tutorials.
3. The Newsletter – which is a weekly summary of the blog and forum activity and a great way to keep in touch with the latest digital camera gear coming onto the market.

2- How do you see the future of DPS?

The site has gone through wonderful growth since being launched two years ago. We have hundreds of thousands of readers each week and as a result the community just keeps growing.In the coming year I’m hoping to do a complete redesign of the blog and forum and also hope to start a second blog with a ‘cameras and gear’ focus. Other than that we’re purely focusing upon producing the most helpful content on digital photography that we can.

3- How can new members contribute to DPS?

There are numerous ways to connect with DPS. You can subscribe to the blog, become a member of our forum or signup for our newsletter for starters.

However if you want to actually contribute something to the community we’re always on the lookout for guest writers on the blog and people to kick of great discussions in our forums. I’d welcome your email via our contact form if you feel like you have something to contribute.

DPS is a great site that perfectly compliments Yanik’s Photo Blog. I invite you to read some of the useful article and check out the forums. You might be surprised to see how quickly time flies when you’re learning!

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TinEye – How to Build Your Client Portfolio in Minutes!

Yanik — Mon, 19 May 2008 18:25:04 +0000

Ok, this software is a revolutionfor photographers and photo enthusiasts! But I’m getting ahead of myself… excitement and all. Let me introduce you to TinEye.com. The first true image search engine to hit the Net. Here’s my interview…

Welcome to Yanik’s Photo Blog TinEye, how are you today?

Thank you for having me, Yanik. I’m great! Thanks for asking.

For the folks that haven’t heard from you yet, please tell us what you are and what you do.

Well, Yanik, I’m the codename for Idée’s image identification-based web search engine, currently in private beta. I do for images what Google does for text. Just as you are familiar with entering text in Google to find web pages that contain that text, using me, you enter an image to find pages where that particular image (and modified versions of it) appears.

Incredible! How do you do it?

Well, Yanik, that’s my little secret but I can say this… I use sophisticated pattern recognition algorithms to find your image on the web without the use of metadata or watermarks. I instantly analyze your query image to create a compact digital signature or ‘fingerprint’ for it. I then search for your image on the web by comparing its fingerprint to the fingerprint of every single other image in my search index.

How come you can’t find my images online when I know they’re there?

That’s a good question. As you know, I’m still in private beta. As we speak I have indexed 486,637,255 images from the web. That’s only a small fraction of what’s out there. I am working hard by constantly crawling the Web and increasing my library.

Many of my readers sell images on stock sites. How can you help them?

Another good question Yanik! Have you thought of hosting a talk show? Well, using me to find photographers’ images online can help by doing 2 things. First, they can easily build a client portfolio in just minutes! As we know, most clients won’t give credit for used images or they’ll credit the agency like Shutterstock, IstockPhoto, Dreamstime or Fotolia. So finding clients can be a long or impossible process by using a standard search engine. Secondly, photographers could find users using their images illegally. Of course they won’t know if the image was purchased with the right license but they could find people claiming the images as their own.

Thank you very much for your time TinEye. Now let’s watch a quick walkthrough video of you in action!