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Stuck in Customs HDR Book Contest Day 1 – Landscape Photos

December 2, 2009 By 3 Comments

As I mentioned yesterday, I’m judging Trey’s photo contest in which PeachPit is giving away 3 copies of his soon to be released book A World in HDR. I’ve been watching the submissions (anyone can participate – you just Tweet links to photos!) today, and I’ve collected several of my favorites below.

It’s was very difficult picking a winner because all of the submissions are really fantastic. The photographers did a great job, and the people who submitted the images had a keen eye. But don’t you worry your pretty little heads… I picked a winner down below! ;-)

So, today is Landscape day and let me give everyone two big hints if you want a better chance at winning:

  1. Make sure you link to an image that is a reasonable size. If I can’t view it in at least 1024×768 it is definitely not going to win. I mean who wants to squint at a tiny little image. Just upload it in 1920×1080 and you are going to be safe. Oh, and don’t put ugly watermarks all over it either…
  2. If it’s not Creative Commons licensed then it’s not going to make it onto my blog or any other reputable ones either. Which means that you also aren’t going to get a powerful backlink. Or the traffic that comes with it. Using a CC license doesn’t erode your ability to sell commercial licenses, it just lets you get free publicity from people like me who might use it non-commercially.

That’s it! Off to the photos now!
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Filed Under: Contests, Photography Tagged With: , , , ,

27 Mac OSX Freeware Applications I Use and Recommend

December 1, 2009 By 4 Comments

A while back I chronicled my 51 Favorite Freeware Apps for Windows because it helps me keep a list of what I need to install when I’m trying to set up a new PC. And of course I also listed the 50 Free iPhone Apps I Love and Use, and even my Free Themes and Apps for Blackberry Curve. Well, it’s about time I do the same for my Mac downloads! So here is a list of all of the various Mac Freeware I install when setting up a new machine:

System Tools

growl

  • GeekTool – A very powerful panel for your system preferences which adds all sorts of command line like functionality. This is for power users only.
  • Growl – This is a little add in that improves just about every other application by adding instant notifications to your Mac. Works with Adium, Firefox, Skype and many more. Get it!
  • Skype – The absolute standard for making calls through the Internet. I use it for communicating with my partners in Lebanon as well as for doing Podcasts and interviews with others around the country.
  • Carbon Copy Cloner – Useful for making copies of your hard drive to upgrade to a new computer, or even for automated backups to protect your data.
  • atMonitor – This is a critical application, as far as I’m concerned, to manage your computer’s overall health. I primarily use it to keep an eye on my CPU usage and ensure that I don’t have an application running away with all my processing power. That heats up your machine and wastes your battery. Another option is MenuMeters if for some reason you prefer it.
  • The Unarchiver – Software for uncompressing Zip, Tar-GZip, Tar-BZip2, RAR, 7-zip, LhA, StuffIt and many other formatted files, common when downloading from newsgroups or other online sources.
  • CrossLoop – Allows you to take over a computer remotely with permission from the other person to help with troubleshooting and things like that. Good for helping the family out… (My previous review.)

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Filed Under: Computing Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

The Stuck In Customs HDR Photo Contest

December 1, 2009 By 2 Comments

Chicago-HDRI first wrote about the photography of Trey Ratcliff in February 2007 with my article The Best Photography on the Web – Part 1. At the time, I recognized Trey’s work as unique and original, but I had no idea that he was to become an icon of the High Dynamic Range movement.

Just two months after I wrote about him, two of Trey’s images won the prestigious Smithsonian Magazine Annual Photo Contest. I mean, he didn’t place just once… he had two top 10 photos in the same contest. That goes way beyond luck folks.

A-World-In-HDRFlash forward to 2009, and Trey is about to publish his first book called A World in HDR. And in conjunction with the book release, Trey and Peachpit Press are running a contest to give away 3 copies of the new book.
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Filed Under: Photography Tagged With: , , ,
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