A little while back the editors at Frisco Style magazine asked me to share my Top Digital Photo Tips, and the attached scan shows the article that ran in the magazine.

This article was written for absolutely newbies, so if you don’t have a lot of photography experience, this one is for you! These are the 7 most important tips to drastically improve the quality of your images. For ease of use, the following is the text from the article.
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Last week I was in San Francisco for just one day for a meeting, but I did have time to drive over to Fort Point and take a panorama of the Golden Gate Bridge with my GigaPan.

Now, I’m not really pleased with this Gigapan because I used the wrong camera to take the photo. I was using a Panasonic TZ3, which is a fine little point and shoot digicam, but it lacks some basic manual controls such as manual focus, and a few others, which caused this panorama to not work so well. In addition, I had some of the adjustments off a bit.

Still, having said all that, the image is decently cool. And if you’ve never had the opportunity to see the Golden Gate Bridge in person this is a good way to check it out.
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When I went to Hawaii one of the coolest things I did was check out the live volcano. To this day it was one of the most awesome sights I’ve ever witnessed. Seeing a mountainside with liquid hot magma pouring out of it was enough to make Dr. Evil proud.

Well, since none of us has all night to watch lava make it’s way down a mountain, someone was kind enough to film a lava flow throughout the night and then speed it up for us. So here is a time lapse video taken on the Big Island of Hawaii for your viewing pleasure.
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I’ve got quite a smorgasborg of random links for you guys today. Hope you enjoy!

• I don’t even know how to describe this. Just check out the Hema “product” page.
• Have a dog or cat? Get a Peticure to trim their nails.
• MoreWords.com helps solve crossword puzzles, word games, and generates domain name ideas.
• Clone photos on Flickr are cool. They are photos with the same person in multiple poses.
• Obama leads Clinton 1,611 to 1,480 in total delegate count.
• Barack Obama: On Net Neutrality, which I’ve long advocated!
• Prostitution: A User’s Manual from The Huffington Post
• The universe explained in 4 minutes or less.

I just had to give up my Sprint powered PPC8800 for a Blackberry Curve 8310 so I could be on the communal rate plan and also have real-time Exchange access for e-mail at work. After doing so it forced me to do a lot of research on applications and ways to better my Curve.

I figured some other people are going to go looking for this info as well, so I’ve compiled what I learned here. Its not my most organized post, but there is a lot of information and I didn’t want to spend forever getting the post out. Hopefully if anyone knows of other cool, free stuff for the BB you’ll drop a comment below and let me know.
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When I first encountered Juan Francisco Casas’ art I was stunned. Sure, there are a lot of artists out there that can draw lifelike figures. But how many of them work with nothing but a blue Bic pen? And draw photographs up to 10 feet tall? As far as I know - exactly one.

Here is what the Daily Mail had to say:

They may look like pin-sharp photographs - but these amazing pictures are actually drawings created with the humble ballpoint pen.

The stunning pictures, measuring up to 10ft high, were drawn by a rising star of the art world, Juan Francisco Casas.

Casas, 31, can use up to four 14p ballpoint pens for a canvas and his works are already a sell-out at exhibitions.

Formerly a traditional painter, Juan began the drawings three years ago based on photographs of nights out with his friends.

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Several months ago I was pleased to be contacted by Dr. John Silber’s assistant about a photo featured in my article about a Weekend in Denver. Dr. Silber, who spent 25 years as President of Boston University, was completing a new book entitled Architecture of the Absurd: How “Genius” Disfigured a Practical Art, and was interested in using my photo of the new Denver Museum of Art as the inside cover for the book.

I was quite pleased to provide the original images for Dr. Silber’s book, and even more pleased when he generously sent me an autographed copy! Thanks Dr. Sliber!
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We really take the little things for granted in the USA, like not having to share the road with mules, comically over-burdened bicycles and crazy pieced together vehicles. But in Vietnam all of these things coexist (not exactly in harmony either).

All of these photos were taken by our close friend Vi just a few weeks ago in Vietnam. In addition to the photos, you absolutely have to watch the completely insane videos she took of the traffic in downtown Saigon. It is truly, unbelievable. People pay zero attention to any sort of traffic signal, and as a result it is a complete free-for-all.
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Here is a little something for you to sneak onto your loved one’s desktop for Valentine’s day. You’ve got two weeks to pull it off, and it’s very simple to do:

• Hop on the computer and use Internet Explorer to navigate over here to One Man’s Blog.
• Find this post, then click on the thumbnail image to bring up the full sized version.
• Right-click on the image and choose “Set as Background”.

You are done. You can thank me later.

Oh, and I snagged this from the Social Wallpapering site… which is kick ass. You really should check it out.

Wow, folks this is exciting news! Months ago I registered with the Global Connection Project (a joint project of Carnegie Mellon University, NASA, Google, and National Geographic) for possible inclusion in their GigaPan beta program - a piece of robotic photography equipment that takes GigaPixel panoramic photos using standard digital camera equipment. Well, I just got notification that my application was accepted and I’ll be one of the first people on the planet to get my hands on one of these babies! Yee-haw!

Here is a little description of the GigaPan straight from the Web site:

GigaPan consists of three technological developments: a robotic camera mount for capturing very high-resolution (gigapixel and up) panoramic images using a standard digital camera; custom software for constructing very high-resolution gigapixel panoramas; and, a new type of website for exploring, sharing and commenting on gigapixel panoramas and the detail our users will discover within them. The GigaPan website allows hosting and sharing all kinds of panoramas, and so the robotic GigaPan mount is recommended but is certainly not required to be part of this community.

What the heck does all this mean? Well, imagine looking at a digital photo and wanting to zoom in for more detail. You probably know that a 10 megapixel photo will give you pretty good resolution. Now just imagine 100 times greater resolution than that! No, wait! Don’t just imagine it - try it out yourself with the sample below! It reminds me of Harrison Ford’s character in the movie Blade Runner…
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I was in the Washington, D.C. area this weekend and while visiting a book store came across this Hummer sitting out in the parking lot. Thought I’d share the license plate with you guys…

Almost a year ago I wrote about the new Microsoft Photosynth technology, calling it The coolest photo technology I’ve ever seen. I still think that. Dammit! How much longer do we have to wait for a public release? Seriously this is Microsoft’s main problem - they… take… too… long… to… do… anything. Let’s have it already!

Anyway, here is a neat demo of the technology as applied to the Space Shuttle. You need to follow this link to go and actually check out the image collection.

For Endeavour’s historic launch on August 7th, 2007, Live Labs joined forces with NASA to provide a Photosynth tour of the shuttle from vehicle assembly building to the launch pad. Thousands of photos intertwine to provide three dimensional, 360 degree perspectives of one of human kind’s greatest innovations.

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