You know, some folks used to (or still) feel that digital photography is not true photography. There are even those who feel that HDR imagery is impure. Say what you will about them, but neither technique is more awful than the photo retouching skills of Pageant Photo Retouching. What… the… fuck? When I look at this image, I think of child taxidermy. And it doesn’t stop there, this one is more frightening that the first! You’re supposed to have pictures of your kids with missing teeth. They shouldn’t look like botoxed, denture wearing brides of Chucky. They should resemble the cute and filthy little monsters they truely are.

And she charges money for this heinous service! Does anyone actually buy this crap? If so, why aren’t I making money in photography yet?
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I ran across this post on Digg about how the folks who make GIMP are considering a revamp to the GIMP UI. I for one, think this is a positive direction for the application and it probably help build a stronger user base going forward. The current GIMP UI suffers from the same quirks that the NetBeans 3 series UI suffered from: it tried behave in an application-centric fashion like the Mac, but did this on a window-centric OS like Windows or GNOME.

On the Mac, applications like Photoshop and Quark XPress can have their tool bars floating around the screen along with the active document. If you are running other applications, you can still peek through to see the applications running the background. When an application is in the foreground, it will present it’s menu options in the global menu bar. Now when you try and to the same thing in an OS without a global menu bar, it kind of sucks. In the case of NetBeans, your main menu bar was attached to the code editor while the “pallet” windows would be menu-less. So on OS’s like Windows, each tool pallet was it’s own window, thus making increasing the number of tasks in the task bar, etc. It was also possible to alt-tab to the code editor and lose sight of your tool pallets. It was very annoying and one of the reasons I became an Eclipse fan.

Gimp makes takes NetBeans old problem to another level: the main tool pallet and the active windows both have menubars. And like NetBeans 3, you’re tool pallets are also windows. Have a look at this screen shot on Windows to get a better idea what I am talking about. Under GNOME things are as bad, but it’s still visually confusing. Even slightly more confusing, the tool pallet is actually your main window (you start there) and not the document window. Applications like Photoshop and PhotoPaint handle the tool organization a lot better on Windows.

As of version 4, NetBeans made a decision to to try a single-window interface. The UI has been substantially cleaned up and usability greatly improved. Now it looks like the GIMP team is trying a similar idea and by all appearance, it looks pretty damn good. I am eagerly looking forward to see what develops.

Can we stop talking about the iPhone now please? It’s been almost a month now and no one can stop talking about this device. Even worse, no one is talking about anything new about the iPhone. While I do enjoy reading Mac rumor sites like AppleInsider.com, MacRumors.com, and others. But now the topic of these sites is now about 90% iPhone, 10% Mac. Even on sites like Digg.com, the iPhone is the reigning Apple-related topic. To a non-iPhone user, this topic has become dull and boring. Until there is an Apple sanctioned SDK, I could really care less that you can now run the Apache HTTP Server on an iPhone. Who cares? It’s of very little use to anyone using this phone. It’s BORING!

But with that said, is there anyone doing anything cooler than Apple these days? Or does Apple just need to release something else cool soon so we can talk about something else?

I love it when an ActionScripter can’t handle errors gracefully. I ran across this Dell Ad on OSNews.com today:

It might have been useful had it worked

I decided it was time to get caught up in the HDR photography frenzy. Honestly, it’s a lot of fun and you can get some really interesting images that you just simply can’t get with one shot. Rather than wasting a post trying to tell you how to create an HDR image, I thought I’d share some of my experience shooting images for an HDR and equipment you can use if you want to travel light.

You may need some new software in order to create an HDR image. My tools of choice are Adobe Photoshop CS3 and Photomatix. While yes, Photoshop does have an HDR function, the tone mapping function of Photomatix Pro can take your images further and it is worth every penny. If you want to learn more about how create an HDR images using Photomatix, head on over to HDR101. There you can also get a 15% discount on Photomatix. As for gear, I use a Nikon D70 and the 18-70mm kit lens for all of my shots. For the most part, a wide angle lens is ideal when shooting an HDR, but any lens will work fine. You will also need a tripod of some sort. When you’re traveling light, the Gorilla Pod is an excellent choice. I stuff my gear into a Lowepro Micro Trekker 100 back pack which holds my D70, 18-70mm, 50mm f/1.8, and SB-600 flash. The Gorilla Pod still fits in the bag, although the fit is a little snug. However, the bag is still small and not heavy.

I got to use the Gorilla Pod SLR Zoom on a recent trip to Maine and decided to try my hand at HDRs. Of the bunch, this one was my favorite:

You can see the rest of the images here. More often than not, many tutorials will tell you use the auto bracketing feature of your camera to generate the different exposures. However, this usually isn’t enough information to generate a rich HDR image. The image above was composed of 6 different exposures. Using the Gorilla Pod, I was able to secure my camera to the dock railing as like so:

It was a bit nerve racking at first seeing how if the Gorilla Pod didn’t work, my D70 would be at the bottom of Casco Bay. Each image was shot at f/9 and I only changed the shutter speed for each exposure. The Gorilla Pod was remarkably sturdy and it was able to stay in place even after adjusting the exposure dial.

You can even use the Gorilla Pod as a standard mini-tripod. I set my camera on an old dock on the beach to get this image here:

As you can see, it can still work great even not secured to some type of object. So when you can’t take your Manfrotto Tripod with on your vacation, you still have at least one decent tripod option.