Hollywood wants $$

So there is this.copyright law debate in the US. My view is that this is just a technological advance which Hollywood doesn't want to accept is not ready of.  I mean, the digital revolution has outdated the printing press. And the whole physical distribution chain. As much as I love printed books (and I just visited a very nice bookshop yesterday), I think it will be replaced by ebooks someday. I can subscribe 20 issues of NatGeo on iPad with 30 percent cheaper than printed magazine. Photographic book publisher Blurb now can publish your books to iPad too. Artists alike can publish themselves to wider audience. Youtube is a good example, a lot of unknown young artist record their own music videos and gain thousands of followers.

Anyway, I had a brief popularity yesterday because my picture was featured on TOP. Although I was excited that my picture is featured on a widely known photo site, I was also disappointed because it is not chosen as a print candidate. But now looking at the other photographs that also didn't make it, I'm quite relieved. I mean, obviously there are those which is better than mine.

Attended Google #devfest last week. I think that the web is becoming more like a platform, although I won't go too far saying its going to be the future. Which it probably will. :)
But I'm concerned that the browser becomes too bloated with. All those new JS API, CSS, multimedia extension, even SQL! Seriously....

But it will be interesting nonetheless

After reading this article at TOP, it just occurred to me that a lot of Ansel Adam's devotee took his advice blindingly. I mean, Ansel was a landscape photographer. And quite a lot of people are using the same method for street photography. Shadow details? Zoning? Oh please!

Lightroom Preset

Ok.. I have some image comparison for the x-equal film presets. The shadow area is deeper and give more contrast for overall image. Some people want to see all the details, but somehow I'm more attracted to the darker, more contrasty scene.

Normal

Kodakchrome 200

Normal

Velvia or Kodachrome.. can't remember

Well.. in other news, Blurb will launch an iPad application to view their photobooks.

River Ouse, York

This is one of the popular pictures from my UK travel. Maybe because it pictures the image of typical European old cities with a river in the middle of it :)

Technology updates

Few things I have discovered while I'm away from blogging.
I just logged into the dashboard, and Blogger.com has announced that they have released iOS Blogger app!!
This means I can write my travel diary from my iPad. Yay!
And the other exciting stuff I have found is film Lightroom preset from X-Equals. I bought both bundle for a special $5. The list price is $9.99. Before I found these presets, my pictures were just dull. Its the best $$ you can spend on LR preset.
Pictures will be coming soon... hopefully. *cross fingers*

The prints are here!

Ok so few days ago the package from DigitalSilverImaging (DSI) arrived at my office. Its a huge package, and I think its a little bit overkill.

I got the 11"x17" fiber based print (bottom right) free of charge, courtesy of Eric Luden, founder of DSI. I was a little bit disappointed. Not that the print is bad or something. Its just that I was expecting something different.
I was expecting something like my cotton paper platinum print from Carl Weese. This print has glossy appearance, which makes them looks closer to RC prints. In fact, I prefer the RC print looks.
Maybe its just my ignorance, but I'm heading to England next week to see the street photography festival (=

 

 

One thing I like about DSI is that the back of their prints are clean. No filename a la Mpix. Even if you are not a professional printer or art collector, the text print is a big no. It makes the print look cheap.

Queen's Cat
Properly framed

My thoughts :

• The adhesive tapes for the packaging are bad.. it can accidentally stick to the prints
• The prints are arguably looks better than Mpix ones, but it might be becauce I post process them differently