I want to be a Real Photographer

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Around the time I started to take my photography seriously, a couple of years ago, I started to “follow” professional photographers on the internet. Reading strobist, going on a strobist seminar, following people like McNally, Zack Arias, JoeyL, Zemotion, duChemin, Wizwow and a lot of other professionals – reading their books, blog and tweets. All of them – good people, all of them inspiring – all of them  – professional.

I was getting really serious about this. I experimented with different kind of business card. Wrote a plan. Designed a web-page, based on all the good advice from Arias. Focused on my strong points and worked towards a portfolio and web-presence that would show me to the world as the photographer I wanted to sell.

But then…

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Photo book printing

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Note: This article has been, sporadically, updated since it was written. Most of it is still relevant.

I recently photographed a couple of weddings and decided to make photo books, to the happy couples. They where a huge success. Initially I just chose the service that allowed me to pick up the books locally and seemed fair price wise. But then I decided to make a small test to see if I had chosen wisely.

A couple of notes:

  • The is a comparison of consumer services. I’m aware that there are professional services, that will give you a lot more then the consumer service, but also that at a totally different (higher) price.
  • I’m in Denmark, but as far as I can see what I’m writing here will be relevant for most people in Europa, as the service and machines used are probably all the same. It’s probably possible to find what exact machine is being used, but setting may vary, so I’m not sure how useful this information will be.
  • I’m only looking at book printing here.
  • Pricing is current as of December 12th 2008.
  • Both foto.com and digitalshoppen.dk (fujicolor.de) now offeres “photopaper” quality books. I’ve only tested the Digitalshop “Brilliant” print, but haven’t added it yet. The short of it: Better then the good PhotoCare.

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New homepage: DejligtVejr.dk

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Well, yeah, the domain name is danish, and it translates to “nice weather”. We had a bit of rain yesterday and I got tired of hearing people complain about it, so I decided to do a mini-site with a nice photo slideshow showing some nice weather:

http://dejligtvejr.dk

The site is flash based, which normally goes against my idea on how to make homepages, but this is not really supposed to be browsed. It’s not an information source. It’s just a bunch of pictures. If you can’t see them they are all available on http://gallery.tc.dk

I made the site using the web function in LightRoom, using the AutoViewer from Airtight Interactive. Very easy!

Samsung i780 GPS

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I’ve never had a GPS device before,  but one of the place the i780 got points, was on the GPS as I would like to play with one, and especially do geotagging of my photos.

In this blog I run through the software I’ve tested. Please note that my i780 is unlocked and unbranded. Yours may be locked to a specific set of services making impossible to use other GPS software.

My wants and needs are not for navigation – there’s 14 days trail version of Garmin XT included, which I’m still thinking about buying, but there’s also Google Maps which works flawlessly, but needs to download data. So unless you make it cache data before you go or has a “unlimited” dataplan with your provider you are going to pay as you go. And open street map software is getting better…

What I’m looking for is a simple piece of software that will capture my route and allow me to read it into a program that will syncronize it with the photos that I took while walking that route. This blog will mainly concentrate on the logging software. I’ll look at the PC (windows) side later. I’ve limited the search to software that didn’t require payment.

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First impressions: Samsung i780

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I got my new mobile phone yesterday. A (unlocked) Samsung i780. Not the LG KS20 which was my previous favourite, but thanks to the nice people at clicksalg.dk (I mailed them and asked if they really had it and when it would ship. The reply was “yes. Is today fast enough?”. Cool.), this one became available to me first. It was down to that for me. Which one will become available to me first… 🙂

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Casio Exilim EX-S500 Wheel of Fortune mode…

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While hunting for a way to access the service menu on my Casio Exilim EX-S500 pocket camera, I found a wheel of fortune function.

With the camera turned off, hold down [left], and press [Play] (the little arrow in a square), and the camera will randomly flip through all the images on the screen going bip, bip, biiip, biiiip, slower and slower until it stops, displays a random photo and goes “swuuuush”. I’m not sure how drunk you have to be for that to be useful…

I never found the service menu.

Nokia N810

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I held one of these things in my hand the other day. Very beautiful device. A bit heavy, but very sleak and thin. The keyboard seems a lot more usable then I expected.

Didn’t play much with the software but it seems nice.

If it did GSM I would buy one on the spot. As it is now, I’m tempted to get one and a really small G3 phone to pair it with. I wonder what the smalles G3 phone is…

Edit: I’ve read a bit more about and apparently the ever important ability to sync with MS-Outlook is currently missing, making it a non-contender. I guess that the same could be said aboit the FIC Freerunner (previouly FIC1973). Sigh.

Samsung SH-i780 date and price!

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I stumpled upon this page, which has the SGH-i780 as expected in stock on january 11th and at us$688 (unlocked, no plan).

It’s still in the running as my next mobile, but I’m not sure that I wont wait a bit and see what the reviews are saying. The fic1973/OpenMoko should be out soon, and at us$450, it’s quite a bit cheaper, and the vga screen really is a big plus for me. And with my new Eee PC, I don’t really need a keyboard that much on my mobile phone. Then again, the fic1973 date could easily get moved further into the future…

And my Moto V3’s battery is failing fast, and I would rather spend money on a new phone than money on a new battery for a phone that will soon be dumped.

p.s.: Found a Danish dealer that expect to have the i780 in stock on January 30th, febuary 29th, at 4628.- Danish kroner (910 us$, but that includes 25% sales tax).

P.P.S.: With the i780 release date slipping and the OpenMoko (dev edition) date on track, it could be come interesting…