Blog Moved

I've redirected the previous subdomain http://blog.webartz.net to point to my new WordPress blog so, if you are reading this, that would tend to suggest you are using the other URL that gets you here (http://www.webartz.net/weblog.php). The blog has now moved so please update your bookmark to point to http://blog.webartz.net No further postings will appear here.

If you are reading this in a news reader via the blog's RSS feed, please update your subscription to use the new URL http://blog.webartz.net/?feed=rss2

I will leave this copy of the blog up for a week or so to give people a chance to update their links but it will be removed by the middle of February at the latest.

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I got hacked!

It's been a whacky day on the blog today. I woke up this morning to a note from my hosting company telling me that webartz.net had been suspended due to excessive email traffic. After a day of email exchanges with Total Choice Hosting (who are, by the way, a truly excellent web host - their server uptime is unsurpassed and their support is superb) I got in to the account this evening and discovered that someone had managed to upload 2 PHP scripts into the images/upload directory and were using these to send spam.

This is the second time in a couple of years that I've had something like this happen resulting in site downtime. The blog has been powered by pMachine which, although easy to use, apparently has some security holes. Unfortunately, it is no longer supported so I think it's time for me to migrate to WordPress instead. As a result, you may see some changes and a lack of posts for a few days while I get the new code installed and figure out how to migrate the existing posts between the two systems.

Wish me luck!

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Texas State Capitol

I had some more time earlier today to wander around the State Capitol grounds and take some more pictures. Here's a different version of a wide-angle view taken from the north-east corner of the complex. It's a handheld, 3 exposure HDR merged in Photoshop then tone-mapped in Photomatix with the settings tweaked for a rather more dramatic effect than usual.

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Buggy Seat

This image is for Jerry Hayes, an outstanding photographer and all-round nice guy who was in the group that went out to Johnson City to spend the day at the LBJ Ranch a couple of weeks ago. Jerry takes probably the crispest HDR images I've ever seen (like this one, this one or my favourite, for example).

During our period of car hopping (jump in, drive 20 yards, see something cool, grab equipment, jump out, shoot a couple of dozen frames, repeat ad nauseam), we found this rather interesting old horse-drawn buggy so we all started filling our memory cards. Jerry was playing with a rather nice 12mm lens so was taking a lot of wide-open-vista shots but I was shooting more detail images and decided that I should take an HDR of the buggy's leather seat. I'm fairly sure he reckoned it was a waste of time but here's the result. I'll admit that it's not the best photo I've ever taken but I'm rather happy with it. The leather texture is very interesting and, after darkening and desaturating the edges, the overall effect works quite well.

This is, of course, merely a feeble attempt to pretend that my shots turned out anything like as well as Jerry's. For example,here, here and here. His extremely different take on the same subject can be seen here.

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PhotoNetCast #21 is now available

Episode 21 of PhotoNetCast is now available via iTunes or from the PhotoNetCast site. This is the episode I took part in the recording of last weekend. It sounds good to me except for the fact that my response to Antonio's introduction somehow got lost in the recording. Honest - I wasn't being rude and I did say "Hello" :-)

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Farmhouse Kitchen

Here's another of the LBJ Ranch shoot images. This was taken inside the older of the two farmhouse buildings. The textures in the woodwork really benefit from the HDR treatment here.

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DXOMark Image Quality Database

I've just discovered a fascinating site produced by DXO Labs. The DXOMark database contains image quality information for a large range of digital SLRs and measures signal to noise ratios, dynamic range, colour sensitivity and various other parameters across the supported ISO range for each camera. It's fascinating to see how these numbers vary from camera to camera and quite pleasing to find that (a) the Nikon D90 is the best performer in the APC-S sensor class (and highest amateur/prosumer level body) and also that (b) it agrees with my assessment of the noise performance of the Canon Powershot G9.

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PhotoNetCast

It's been a rather interesting week for me photographically as you can probably see from the last few blog entries. I've just rounded it out with a very interesting 90 minute Skype conversation with Antonio Marques and Jim Goldstein regarding the Flickr/Getty project. This will be available shortly as episode 21 of the PhotoNetCast podcast. I've been an avid listener to this podcast since either it's first or second show so it was a great honour to be invited to join the discussion.

Hopefully Antonio will be able to edit the show to make me sound far more intelligent and interesting :-)

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Invited Images

In case anyone is interested, here's the collection of images that Getty invited into the Flickr Collection:















(PS: Yes, all these thumbnails link to my main photostream. I cut and pasted the images from another email and the original links don't work for anyone other than me and I didn't have time to find the links to each individual image. You can use the search box on Flickr to find the image by name - sorry for the inconvenience)

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Flickr Collection on Getty: Why I'm Taking Part

Jim Goldstein posted an interesting entry in his blog last week relating to the Getty Flickr Collection invitation he received and why he intends to turn it down. I commented in his blog but wanted to expand on that here and give some of my reasons for accepting the same invitation.

Firstly, I should note that I am not accepting the invitation 100%. I had about 3 dozen images invited into the collection but I have no intention of submitting about 2/3 of these right now. I have problems with the fact that Getty require exclusivity and this would prevent me from doing anything with those images other than selling signed or numbered prints. On top of this, the commission rate offered by Getty (20% for the license model my images were invited under) seems extremely low based on the other stock agency sites I have looked at.

After this, it's reasonable to ask why I am still interested. As a keen amateur who is looking to make enough from his photography to feed the (equipment and software) habit, I can see several reasons which push me towards Getty and accepting the invitation for at least a subset of the invited images:

• The Getty name is very prestigious and, frankly, it will look rather good on my photographic resume to say that I have some images in a Getty collection.
  
• The photos are pre-screened by Getty editors so are obviously of interest to them. I don't, therefore, have to edit my own work and try to guess which images to use as an initial submission to a new agency. I know exactly which images are most likely to be successful already.
  
• The process of signing up and submitting images is made very easy and involves nothing more than filling in a form (after reading a lot of small print) then uploading high resolution versions of the images and editing description and title information (the original Flickr information is pulled in and you are given an option to change it).
  
• Although I have no hard data, my impression is that Getty has a huge customer base and, hence, my photographs are likely to be seen there more than at some other agencies. I would rather have 20% of something than 60% of nothing.
  
• From my perspective, submitting the images that I would not otherwise have tried to sell is pure upside potential. I can test the water and see how things go using these images then jump in or keep clear later with what I would consider my best images depending upon how things go. Anything I make on the submitted images is icing on the cake.
  
• It's flattering to be told by a professional photo editor that your work is commercially viable.
  

The biggest unknown to me, as someone taking the first steps into the agency pool, is which agencies are most likely to actually license my photographs. Giving exclusive access to all my best images to one agency seems to me to be a rather risky proposition until I have a better idea of whether or not that agency is doing everything it can to market my images so, for now, my approach will be to try several agencies with a subset of my images and determine which offer the best returns. Obviously this is more work but, over a couple of years, I hope it will yield enough data for me to select the agency which suits me best.

The question now, of course, is whether the Getty editors will be happy with the quality of the 10 high resolution images I have waiting to be inspected. Normally I'm not too worried by the amount of noise Photomatix adds to my HDRs but now my fingers are crossed.

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