Archive for the 'Photos' Category

Keep Going

Published
by
Zz85
on February 9, 2009
in Photos and Updates
. 0 Comments

Something I remember from a book about journals - keep writing, even in times its difficult to write. Inspiration doesn’t come always, and sometimes the motivations and goals for doing something turn dim. The book mentions a lady who was depressed after losing a loved one, didn’t have the inspiration to write about new things, but keep recording seemingly mundane actions like waking up, sleeping and eating for a long period of time, and eventually that helped her recover.

Because I started this blog initially for myself, at times, I feel apologetic to myself for not maintaining my blog. Sometimes I procrastinate when I have too many things to write about. Then times swing when I’m unsure of what to write. At least I keep a little diary where I dump my thoughts and feelings in it and 6 months after I’m here, reading them helps me measure myself.

And my photos here (or here @ facebook) these days seem to be the outlet of expressing the (almost daily) adventures I’m going through.

Have a great year of 2009 ahead, if I haven’t greeted you so, late but better than never.

2009 New Year Fireworks, San Francisco
New Year Fireworks 2009, San Francisco, from Treasure Island.

10 Photography Rules To Know & Break

Published
by
Zz85
on December 1, 2008
in Photos
. 2 Comments

From the book “Photography and the Art of Seeing” (1979), Freeman Patterson has photography rules to take note of and to break them.

#1
Rule: Focus on the center of interest
Break: Keep the center of interest out of focus; play with the blance of forms

#2
Rule: Fill in the frame with the subject
Break: Allow space around the subject; look for interaction with the environment

#3
Rule: Do not shoot between 10 A.M. and 3 P.M. (golden hours)
Break: Shoot on any day, at any time

#4
Rule: Do not shoot against the light
Break: Photography only against the light for a month

#5.
Rule: Hold the camera steady
Break: Shoot while jumping up and down or spinning around

#6
Rule: Follow the “rule of thirds”
Break: Vary composition. Respond emotionally

#7
Rule: Obey the light meter
Break: Disobey. Mess up the zone system. Oversexpose and underexpose by three , even 4 f/stops

#8
Rule: Photography children (and pets) at their own eye level;
Break: Move up, down on the side, all over

#9
Rule: Avoid lens flare when shooting against the sun ;
Break: Use lens flare to enhance a composition

#10
Rule: Keep camera level with the horizon
Break: Create your own horizons.

Pretty interesting stuff I thought. Here’s also a blog by photographers exercising these tricks.

My Google Maps, Geotagged Picasa Photos, GPS Tracks Mashup

Published
by
Zz85
on June 25, 2008
in Photos and Technology
. 7 Comments

Hi Google fans, mashup hackers, GPS geeks, geotaggers lovers, or anyone who has time on hand.
Here’s my simple howto for mashing up google maps, geotagged photos on picasa web albums, and gps tracks.

note: below is a screenshot. scroll to the bottom of this post for the interactive map
Google Maps, Geotagged Picasa Album, GPS tracks mashed up

motivation: As mentioned in my previous post, syncing GPS tracks is a very convenient way for geotagging photos. Our friendly giant, Google already has some fantastic services for photos, geotagging, maps but apparently we do not see support for GPS tracks.

summary: This online mashup requires mainly a web browser with a little manual work.

steps:
——
1. Upload geotagged photos to Picasa web albums & download KML (google earth) format
2. Convert gps tracks to KML format
3. Merge GPS tracks and Photos KML
4. Upload merged KML to google pages
5. Request google maps to open KML
——

pre-requisites:
You must have a google account. This is for uploading to picasa web albums and google pages.
You also know how to geotag photos by syncing GPS tracks. This has been mentioned briefly in my previous post.

Step 1.
After geotags have been saved to the photos EXIF, you see a little compass icon on photos in picasa web albums. Select the photos you want and upload them to a web album. After uploading, go to the web albums and click “View Map”. Save the “View in Google Earth” link which is a KML format.

Step 2.
Convert your GPS tracks (GPX, NMEA etc) to KML format. You could use the free powerful GPSBabel or convert it online at GPS Visualizer.

Step 3.
Open your favorite notepad/text/xml editor/ide and copy the kml data into the photos kml If you find it tricky merging the KML files by hand, try using this utility called KML Merge

Hint: If you would like to edit a little KML, you could customise what to display and perhap place tracks information (speeds, time, altitudes) in the little bubbles when clicked on.

Step 4.
We have to store the GPS tracks somewhere anyway, so the free and good way is to upload to googlepages. Under the right section there’s box call uploaded stuff. Click upload files, and select the KML file to be uploaded. Copy the url of the upload file.

Step 5.
Visit Google Maps. In the search box, paste the url where your KML is hosted. Tata, you get GPS tracks, geotagged photos on the interactive map! Click on share this map to email or embed this mashup on your blogs.

the trick: if you haven’t notice, this mashup is built mainly on the fact google maps is able to layer the google earth format (KML) onto google maps online.
To send a linked url map to your friends, append a url encoded kml url to google maps.
eg: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=http%3A//joshuakoo.googlepages.com/HendersonPicasaPhotos.kml

Here’s the result:

View　Larger Map

conclusion: this is a really simple, rough mashup for google maps, photos, gps tracks but it shows some possibilities of what it can be done. i would also like to point out that everytrail has a fantastic services for gps tracks which supports google maps, and photos geotagging. Unfortunately, its photos uploading is pretty rudimentary but one would still use if everytrail if there’s no preferences for picasa web albums.

Geotagging Photos - 3 Simple Methods

Published
by
Zz85
on June 21, 2008
in Interesting Stuff, Photos and Technology
. 3 Comments

What’s Geotagging?
Geotag. “Geo” + “Tags”. Tagging with geographical information or GPS coordinates.

The meaning is so simple, there isn’t a need to look up its meaning. Geotagging is one of the interesting stuff that makes me think about it, its brings more fun after having a GPS receiver, and the possibilities is really up to one’s creativity.

Lets take for example if write a traveller’s blog, you could look for posts categorised by time, by categories and by subject tags. Imagine having each post is tagged with its location, not only you know the location reading a post, you could easily navigate and search for posts by location and visually on a map. (Geojoey’s a free blog service for geotagged enabled blogs.)

Basically anything you wish to keep geographical information or data to be organise by location could be “geotag”, secret places (search geocaching), treasures, objects, animals, friends etc. It will be cool to have microblogging/status updates services support geotagging. Twitter tackles “what are you doing” but perhaps geotagging answers “where are you”.

Why Geotag Photos?
There’s should be some good reason why Google’s and Yahoo’s services supports this other than competition. When organising photos, you group them by usually by time, albums, folders etc. As the photos collection grow quickly, we need more to search and locate and there’s where descriptions, keywords tags comes into place. Perhaps with sophisticated software, we could find them by colours, mood, faces (I hope).

With the addition geotags, we know easily and exactly where a photo is taken, we could easily find photos taken in or around an area, we could layout photos over the world map and visualise where we had been before. (See SuperGeoTagged for flickr photos on google earth/maps)

3 Methods.
Likely, you need to know only 1. Make a choice.

Method 1: Automated Package.
You take a photo with your camera, and the location gets tagged to the photo automatically. Sounds simple but how? This usually requires some equipment. Either your camera has built in GPS, or you attach it to a GPS addon which is usually costly. A more practical situation is using mobile phones (and software) which takes advantage of its built in (or connected) GPS and camera. (Here’s a product for nikon cameras. Zurfer is a mobile software/service for automating and uploading geotagged photos from cameras phones)

Method 2: Map Assisted Geotagging
A little manual work but nevertheless the most affordable method. Select photos, then pinpoint it on the map on the computer to tag them. Since yahoo, google and microsoft already have their own map services, they already have services and software which allows users to do so easily. At the same time, there are software and online services and tutorials for providing such geotagging mashups. (examples: flickr, locr)

Method 3: Syncing GPS Logs
With a little work, this provides the most flexibility at affordable costs. Have a device to record GPS logs while you shoot away on a separate camera. Since GPS has multiple purposes, it would be a waste just to use it for tagging photos. With a GPS receiver, you could use it for navigation, finding directions, displaying routes and travel statistics, and while doing all these, record your tracks. With these track logs, a software would be able to extract the geographical data and tag locations to photos taken based on time contained in photographs.

My Choice.
Method 3. Since I already own a cheap bluetooth GPS receiver, I run the cool free trekbuddy on my mobile phones which tells me my location, speed, distance at the same time recording my travel tracks. The logs transferred to the computer would be synced with the photos, and coordinates are written to the photos’ EXIF and automatically displayed on maps with comptible services. The freeware I used is Geosetter, which is very good and powerful.

Photos on a boat

The benefits of a GPS Log can been seen here using Geosetter. Not only it shows you the path you took, it can shows you at exactly which spot you took the photos. On the boat, while Trekbuddy was tracklogging, its CMS can provide accurate ETA if you set target waypoint at the jetty. Click here for another screenshot.

More Examples.
Google supports geotagging in various services/products. Both Panoramio their community photo site, Google Maps (enable show photos under More) can view tagged photos, and Google Earth, Google Web Albums supports tagging. Microsoft’s softwares Virtual Earth and ProPhoto supports geotagging.
For method 3, you could purchase a gps data logger, but if you have already own a gps mobile phone, all the more its similar. A simple, free software like GPS Track could do the gps logging easily for you. Trekbuddy also provides inbuilt geotag for camera phones when u record a waypoint. (Method 1) Other free GPS software for mobile phones of interest are VlkGps and Mobile Trail Explorer.

More Links and Resources
Google’s Picasa Web Album - allows geotagging of albums
Yahoo’s Flickr - their organz feature allow you to geotag photos
Google’s Panaramio- service mainly to upload and specify coordinates. Photos on this service are shown in Google earth
Locr - A photo sharing site mainly with geotagging capabilities and location sharing (using maps by google, yahoo, microsoft)
Zooomr - another photo sharing community with Geotagging support.
Everytrail - For recording of tracks mainly but supports syncing for photos uploaded
Trekbuddy - Free powerful GPS j2me software for mobile phones
Geocoded Photo A similar article on wikipedia.

Juicing Up Photo Viewing Experience: Part I

Published
by
Zz85
on January 9, 2008
in Ideas, Photos, WP-Plugins and WebLinks
. 2 Comments

on this blog, on your wordpress site, or anywhere else. This series is a result of my recent craze with scripting/programming and photo ideas.

Screenshot of Fotobook Highslide

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Fotobook Highslide - Mash up of Wordpress, Facebook Photos & Highslide JS

1. Photo Gallery
I tried a couple of wordpress plugins in the past: Gallery2, Simple Extended Gallery, Flickr….

They were perhaps good, but perhaps complex, lacking and I didn’t seem to like it. Then I created PhotoZip and even though Photozip plugin had its short comings (eg. perhaps a little slow due to batch processing), I’m glad Tim have the interest to improve it so much better than I would.

It is only recently I found out about Aaron Harp’s Fotobook, an integration/mashups of Facebook’s photos into your blog. So I tried it, and it works.

The integration is good (since I use facebook too), the layout neat, the configuration all done with much ease. It seems like it was something I tried looking so hard before, now that I found it, I love it. My photo gallery can be viewed by clicking on the Photos tab.

2. Highslide
Tim’s improved PhotoZip supports LightBox, so does Fotobook. No doubt it gives great effect and I like it too when used appropriately. Even my cousin’s portfolio uses it to enhance viewing experiences.

However, a reason why I don’t use it? Perhaps it was due to some negativity when I experienced it on some sites. But when I come across the Highslide javascript library, I thought I would use it for the following reason
1. At the first impression it reminds of LightBox- to expand an image in the same window.
2. However, unlike Lightbox, it is less obstructive. The background is not grayed out, and window can still scroll, and the expanded image can be dragged around.
3. It seems more reactive.

Not only it good to find the right tool for the right job, it good to find the best package available. So I’m using Highslide Wordpress plugin. Since fotobook was written in a way it was simple to customise it, I created a style/theme similar to Aaron’s lightbox style, except it works with highslide. Check out one of my gallery for example.

(Tip: You can use arrow buttons on your keyboard to navigate through the photos. You can also click/expand more than one photo at a time too.)

Click here to download Highlight Style for Fotobook.

Instructions:
Ensure you have Fotobook and Highslide plugin working.
Copy the highslide folder into fotobook styles folder
(eg. /wordpress/wp-content/plugins/fotobook/styles)
Select the highslide style under fotobook options.
View your photo gallery, test and enjoy!