On my Focx Photography Facebook page I usually post the same pictures as on this site to make it easier for everyone to look at my photos and maybe visit my page. For a photography page, images are everything – especially if the link I want my followers to click is part of a never-ending information stream on Facebook. The only option I have to make my link stand out is to push my photograph directly on Facebook, in the form of a thumbnail of the picture displayed beside the link. Fortunately, Facebook tries to do that automatically with every link I post. Unfortunately, it never works (for me) out of the box. Luckily, I have found a way to make sure Facebook eventually displays the thumbnail!

Here is what I do to make the thumbnails show up in Facebook beside my blog post:

1. Copy the link to my blog post containing my photo into the status box.
2. Facebook will fetch the blog title and content text, but will fail to load my main post picture (I use NextGen gallery, maybe that’s why?). The tab of the box will switch to “Link” automatically as Facebook has recognized that I copied a link.
3. I select the posted link, delete the text and click on “Status”. The box is now empty and shows no sign of my post or link.
4. I select “Link” above the text box, copy my post link and click “Attach”.
5. Facebook loads the blog title (again), and all of a sudden – the thumbail shows up, too! Ready to go!

And that’s all there is to it: this method to display Facebook post link thumbnails hasn’t failed me once. Let me know if it works for you, too!

In my case, I want to show my reader a single large picture, so I am using NextGEN Gallery’s “singlepic” function. This gives me a relatively large photo that always has the right size for my post regardless of the original picture, but my readers can click on it to see the larger original picture on a black background. The file loaded by the plugin is called singlepic.php and is located in the /view/ directory under the wp-content/plugins/nextgen-gallery/ plugin directory. To display the EXIF data, we have to add some code to the singlepic.php file or create a new template file called singlepic-exif.php – a copy of the original file, where we add the lines to keep the original file intact and doing so also save our file from being overwritten by the next plugin update.

So, we have made a copy of singlepic.php, named it singlepic-exif.php and placed it in the same directory as the original file. The last lines of the file look like this:

…
<a href=”<?php echo $image->imageURL ?>” title=”<?php echo $image->linktitle ?>” <?php echo $image->thumbcode ?> >
<img src=”<?php echo $image->thumbnailURL ?>” alt=”<?php echo $image->alttext ?>” title=”<?php echo $image->alttext ?>” />
</a>
<?php if (!empty ($image->caption)) : ?><span><?php echo $image->caption ?></span><?php endif; ?>
<?php endif; ?>

To display the EXIF, we need to add a line after </a> like this:

…
<a href=”<?php echo $image->imageURL ?>” title=”<?php echo $image->linktitle ?>” <?php echo $image->thumbcode ?> >
<img src=”<?php echo $image->thumbnailURL ?>” alt=”<?php echo $image->alttext ?>” title=”<?php echo $image->alttext ?>” />
</a>

<p><?php echo $exif['camera'] ?>, <?php echo $exif['focal_length'] ?>. <?php echo $exif['aperture'] ?>, <?php echo $exif['shutter_speed'] ?>.
</p>

<?php if (!empty ($image->caption)) : ?><span><?php echo $image->caption ?></span><?php endif; ?>
<?php endif; ?>

This adds (as you might guess) information about your camera, focal length, aperture and shutter speed. You can also display ISO and date by replacing the names in the code. The only thing left to do now is to make sure you use the newly created singlepic-exif.php file. This is done by adding the code template=exif to the NextGEN Gallery shortcode in your blog post. So if your shortcode was

singlepic id=xxx w=320 h=240

then after adding the exif code, you get

singlepic id=xxx w=320 h=240 template=exif

- and that’s it! Now you know how to display EXIF data in your blog post with NextGEN Gallery. I learned about this over at the Japanese site lunablog, by the way!

Time and again, I think about my photography workflow. Is there a way I can optimise the process to have more time for interesting things? Is there software that lets my pictures shine some more? I tend to spend too much time trying software just to come to the conclusion that things are fine the way they are. So, after spending around two years getting into photography and some 30,000 pictures, I am quite happy with my workflow.

What you should know before reading

There are some things I would like to state to let you know if this workflow might work for you or not:

• I use a Mac. Only one of the three programs I use in my workflow is available for Windows, so this article may be most useful to people who use a Mac or plan to do so.
• I work with JPEG 95% of the time. As my main camera is an Olympus E-620 with almost no RAW potential on top of the out of camera-JPEGs, my workflow does not include a RAW-converter. I will talk about about this some more later.
• I use Picasa as my picture manager, Pixelmator for editing photos and Flickery to manage my flickr account.
• I am not a professional photographer. This means, I don’t take pictures for a living. I do try to take beautiful pictures, like to show people my work and receive feedback. Photography is something very dear to me, so I will spend quite some time and money on it. That said, software costing several hundred dollars is no option for me, neither are cameras and lenses costing more than a thousand dollars. I prefer spending the money available for travelling to great places.

Organising files: folders, collections, backup

In the beginning, worrying about files does not seem so important. Some software like Picasa or Aperture also promise to manage the file organisation for you. While I do use Picasa to import pictures from the memory card, I like to be independent if necessary. That’s why my pictures are usually sorted into folders named “Year-Month-Occasion”, with one “Year-Month” folder pictures not part of an event. The photos I took this year are kept on my laptop’s hard disk for easy access, older ones are moved to an external hard disk (“the archive”) where space is not an issue. Warning: be careful with Picasa when moving pictures on your hard disk! If you decide it’s time for some photos to move to your external hard disk, or if you just want to reorganise your photo directory: use the “Move folder…” feature in Picasa or your collection and album data will vanish! Picasa uses little files to keep track of which pictures belong to an album – they contain the file location on your hard disk. If you move files outside of Picasa, your album will end up with 0 (zero) pictures.

At some point, the folder or timeline view of Picasa won’t be enough. Luckily, Picasa has a not so well documented but easy to use feature: collections. Collections in picasa are entirely unrelated to your file structure, photos are added on a folder basis. This means you can have two folders, one from the archive and one from this year, in the same collection, e.g. “Family”. I keep collections with pictures from this year (“recent”), photos on this website (“dailyphoto”), documents unrelated to photography (“documents”) and others. For big events, you will want to create an album containing only the best pictures – the album feature of Picasa does exactly what you are looking for. To sort my photos after a day of shooting, I use the “favourite” function (star icon) to tag them for further use on this site or elsewhere. There is also a tag feature, but I can’t seem to find the time.

Backups. Do keep backups. You owe it to yourself, your photography and your loved ones. I have gone back again and again to look at pictures I took during my first year in Japan, and I treasure every single one of them. It has become easier and easier to keep backups as hard drive prices are lower than ever and software has improved and is almost hassle-free. I spend next to no time on backups while still having a feeling of security, and here is what I do: Pictures on my hard drive are automatically backed up by Time Machine, the standard Mac backup software. I do this at least once a week and it takes one second to click the button – if you set it up to work all the time, you don’t even need that click. My archive sits on my external hard drive, with a copy on a secord hard drive. This needs to be done once per year. If I have the chance, I also throw all of my pictures into a password-protected encrypted file container (using Mac sparse-bundled disk images) and leave that with any friend or family member who has the space and can be bribed with chocolate.

I hope you enjoyed reading the first part of my Photography workflow for Mac series. In the next part, I will talk about image editing!

In the beginning, this service will run as a “beta” – I will be tweaking things on my site, layout may look a little strange and orders may take a while to be processed. The prints themselves though will be perfectly fine! The process itself is simple:

1. Surf to the single image page by clicking the “read more” link.
2. Below the image, you will find three links: Print, Card and E-Card.
3. Choose your product (E-Cards via e-mail are free!)
4. Follow the Fotomoto window instructions (select size, shipping address etc.)
5. Receive your print or card in the mail (after a while)

As I am still testing it, not all my images will be available for print. If you can’t find a “Print” link for a picture you want to buy, send me an e-mail and I will try to make it available as soon as possible. I will not be selling any prints for photos containing people though, as I don’t have their permission for most pictures, especially my travel photography. Feel free to send me feedback and ideas!

Any (small) profit made from the prints will be used to support my photography expenses, so if you like my pictures, buying a print is the best way to see more of my work in the future :) Enjoy!

As a consumer, I am looking forward to hours of relaxed flickr-browsing, reading eBooks on photography and picture eBooks (like Neil Creek’s Australia roadtrip eBook). I love viewing photobooks, but sitting at my desk I have a hard time focusing on the pictures instead of checking email, reading articles etc… you know what I mean. While the iPad has a browser and email, sitting on the couch or lying on the bed makes all the difference for me. But there is something I’m even more excited about: a new way to show my photos.

Everyone wants to show his or her photography to as many people as possible. It’s the reason we are on flickr, write a photoblog, post on twitter and whatnot. The question is: what’s the most appealing way to make my photography available for iPad users? Sure, they could just read my photoblog. I might wait for a iPad photo viewer WordPress plugin (or modify shutterbox). But I could also try reaching out to iPad users by offering them free themed photo-eBooks sized just right for the 1024×768 4:3 iPad screen (this is where the native 4:3 aspect ratio of my Olympus E-620 DSLR comes in handy!).

Style, style, style. I’m sure offering iPad-optimized photo-eBooks would secure my reader’s attention far better than a blog like this ever can. Maybe he or she will even share it (I would publish under a creative commons BY-NC-SA license) with family and friends. They will hopefully find their way back to my website and more pictures by just clicking the link on the last page. So?

This leaves me with the question what software to use for designing the eBooks. I had a look at Scribus, but being the spoiled Mac user I have become in less than a year, I’d love a native application for this job and am open for suggestions. Pixelmator? Pages? NeoOffice?

Displaying and showing your flickr pictures on your Facebook account is easy. That’s great. So I uploaded a photo to flickr to test it and reloaded my Facebook homepage. No photo.

Here’s why: Facebook checks the data on your flickr photostream at a (random?) time about once per day. If there are new pictures, it posts them on your Facebook homepage where your friends can see them. That’s nice and for sure the easiest way of doing it. But sometimes you’d like to have the photo on Facebook right now, for testing the connection or to show it to friends without delay. It can be done, and here is how:

1. Go to your Facebook profile page
2. “Options” (Right beneath the “Share”-button of the input box at the top)
3. “Settings” (same place)
4. Go to “Stories posted by you” -> Imported Sites -> “Flickr”
5. “Update now”

Done! Facebook now checks your flickr photostream and displays all pictures you uploaded since it last updated.

What I did:

• some tonemapping in HDRtist
• cropping (this and the rest done with Pixelmator)
• sky blur
• level adjustment
• slight sepia effect

And here is the result:

Nachtrag: OmegaT,  das Übersetzungstool, funktioniert zwar unter Snow Leopard, aber aus irgendeinem Grund funktioniert die Kantenglättung der Schrift (font smoothing) nicht. Unschön. Ob das an OmegaT selbst liegt oder an Java – keine Ahnung.

Im Zuge der Aktion habe ich auch die Struktur ein wenig überarbeitet. Im Menü oben findet ihr jetzt alle wichtigen Seiten auf einen Blick. Unter Über focx.de gibt’s ein paar Worte über die Seite, die Photos und mich. Im Portfolio seht ihr eine betrachterfreundliche Übersicht meiner besten Photos. Unter Album findet ihr alle Bilder (auch die, die es nicht ins Portfolio geschafft haben) übersichtlich in einzelne Alben geordnet. Und schließlich gibt es eine extra Seite zum “Photo-des-Tages”-Tags bzw. täglichen Photoblogs. Dessen Aussehen ändert sich eventuell noch ein wenig.

Aber keine Angst – auch wenn sich der Titel der Seite geändert hat, bleiben Euch meine nicht-photographischen Kommentare erhalten. Der Tag muss erst noch kommen, an dem ich mich da zurückhalten kann ;)

Dann habe ich zum erstenmal in meinen über 10 Jahren PC und Web eine Bildbearbeitungssoftware gesehen, die nicht zu wenig und nicht zu viel kann. Die unglaublich cool aussieht. Und die all die Effekte und Filter, für die der fette Core2Duo-Prozessor meiner Macbook Pros ein paar Sekunden zum anzeigen braucht, in Echtzeit darstellt während ich am Regler rumdreh. Wie das? Pixelmator benutzt den Prozessor meiner Grafikkarte, der für solche Dinge viel besser geeignet ist als die CPU, und die meiste Zeit nur gelangweilt rumhängt. Das Ganze kombiniert mit einem hervorragenden Benutzerinterface und einem (rabattgesenktem) Preis von unter 40€. Dazu gibt es ein ausführliches, angenehm zu lesendes farbiges Handbuch, eine Lern-Webseite und Entwicklern die alle paar Monate neue Features und Verbesserungen umsonst zur Verfügung stellen, für die andere Hersteller ein kostenpflichtiges Upgrade veranschlagen würden.

Was soll ich sagen? Ich hab’s gekauft.

Dem heutigen Photo des Tages habe ich eine zweite Version beigefügt. Der Effekt erinnert mich ein bißchen an Sin City. Was haltet Ihr davon? Die Bearbeitung habe ich mit Pixelmator erledigt, aber dazu mehr ein andermal.

In order to test the pervasiveness of modern technology, rank this list of alphabetically ordered twentieth-century technological step-changes in order of importance – listing those you could least do without ‘first’, and those you’d be most ready to give up on ‘last’ (“Reihe die untenstehenden Erfindungen des 20sten Jahrhunderts von “ohne könnte ich nicht” bis “geht auch ohne”", Übersetzung von mir).

Antibiotics
Airplane travel
Automobiles
Birth pill
Computers
Electricity
Food preservation
Genetic engineering
Motion pictures
Nuclear capability
Plastics
Plumbing in the home
Radio
Reinforced concrete
Space travel
Tapwater supply
Telephone
Television
Sewerage disposal
Vacationing

See where, on the list, you would draw a cut-off line if it were imperative to do so! (“Wo würdest Du die Verfügbarkeits-Linie ziehen, wenn Du müsstest?”)

Aber: man merkt doch wie schwierig es ist, aus immer länger werdenden Büchern das Wichtigste herauszuholen. Der Film fängt mehr oder weniger “mitten im Geschehen” an, und es vergeht kaum Zeit in der nicht stark plotrelevante Dinge passieren. Ich weiß nicht, ob es nicht besser gewesen wäre, auch diesen Film in zwei Hälften zu teilen. Im Film kommt die Geschichte um den Halbblutprinzen viel zu kurz, man hat keine Zeit sich zu überlegen wer denn das sein könnte. Und als man es dann erfährt, ist es einem völlig gleichgültig – Halbblutprinz, war da was? – weil viel wichtigere Dinge passieren. Ein actiongeladener Kampf aus dem Buch verschwindet im Film völlig.

Gleichzeitig ist mir der Film etwas zu lau, das vielfältige Drama mit dem sich die Geschichte entfaltet fällt der Kürze zum Opfer. Der Konflikt zwischen Potion-Checker Harry und Nummer-2-Hermione wird nur kurz angerissen. Snapes innerer Kampf bekommt eine Szene am Anfang (die so schnell vorbei ist, dass man kaum weiß was passiert) und eine in der Mitte (Snape: “Ich schaff’ es nicht” DD: “Du musst.” Ende). Man hetzt von einem Teil zum nächsten, au ja und ein bißchen Quidditsch muss auch noch rein! Und die Liebe! Hey versucht da jemand Dumbledore umzubringen? Dafür haben wir keine Zeit, weiter! Etc.

Es gibt aber auch zwei sehr gute Punkte: Ginny tritt (vielleicht sogar besser als im Buch) mehr in den Vordergrund und ist für Harry da, als Ron und Hermione ihm mal wieder nichts glauben (beste Freunde sehen anders aus). Und mein persönlicher Höhepunkt des Films ist die Szene, in der Harry einem um den Tod flehenden Dumbledore den Horcrux-Trank einflößt. Das hatte Tiefe. Leider war mehr als eine Minute für die Szene auch nicht drin.

Alles in allem: kann man lassen. Aber allmählich wird die Luft für Nicht-Leser dünn.

Auf den Bildern könnt ihr den Ablauf sehen. Zuerst werden die Götter angerufen. In die vier Ecken des Grundstücks werden in Richtung der dort aufgestellten Bambuszweige Papierschnipsel geworfen (von den beiden Hausbauern), während der Priester seinen Stab (mit den weißen Papierschnüren) schwingt. Im Shintō geht es um Reinigung, und genau das bewirkt das Stabschwingen.  Die Familienmitglieder legen Zweige mit Papierverzierung auf den Altar, der mit Früchten, Sake und anderen Gaben bestückt ist. Mit dieser Geste bieten sie ihr Herz und ihren Glauben den Göttern dar. Der Priester bittet die Götter um Verständnis und Erlaubnis für die Störung. Schließlich wird der Akt feierlich beschlossen, in dem mit Sake angestoßen wird (die Autofahrer wurden vom Priester ganz pragmatisch gebeten, den Sake doch “der Erde zurückzugeben”). Zuletzt geht man zu den umliegenden Häusern, stellt sich den Nachbarn vor und verteilt kleine Geschenke, die über die Unbill des Baulärms hinweghelfen und den Grundstein für eine gute Nachbarschaftsbeziehung legen sollen.

Ich bin schon gespannt, wie das Haus wird, Anfang nächsten Jahres soll es fertig sein. Solange das kleine Grundstück auf der anderen Seite nicht bebaut ist, kann man vom Haus aus einen kleinen Bambushain sehen – sehr schön!