Photo.net Newsletter: February 4, 2009

Hi %%First Name%%,

Did that groundhog in Pennsylvania see his shadow or what? With my luck, we’ll end up with six more months of winter around here due to some clerical error. Josh: “Uh, shouldn’t that have been six WEEKS of winter?” Customer Service: “I’m sorry sir, it looks like we credited your account for six months. There’s nothing I can do, but I will make a note on your account for next winter.”

I took a trip back to the “home office” in Boston last week. Why is it that every time I head to New England the weather gets awful there? If it’s not a “Nor’eastah,” it’s a heat wave or sleet or a plague of locusts. Well okay, not that last one. But for heaven’s sake, there must be a week and a half each year when the weather is beautiful out there, and I miss it every time.

Oh well, shall we move onto more interesting topics then? Check out the new Photo.net Twitter feed and Facebook group. Read a really cool article on photography at the Super Bowl with Sports Illustrated photographer Bill Frakes. Go out and take some photos for the Monthly Project. For all that and more, read on…

As always, if you have any questions or suggestions, please send them to me directly at contact@photo.net. Enjoy the newsletter!

Sincerely,

Josh Root

Photo.net Director of Community

New Photo.net Site Features

Photo.net has a Twitter account

In an effort to communicate more with the PN community about what is going on “behind the scenes”, I have set up a Photo.net Twitter account. I’m going to keep it updated with blurbs and thoughts based on whatever is going on with photo.net at the moment. If you are a Twitter member, you can follow the posts there. If you aren’t a Twitter member, you can use the RSS feed to keep updated. And if you don’t know what an RSS feed is, you can just bookmark the photo.net blog and read the posts in the sidebar. And yes, it is one of my 2009 goals to keep the PN blog more active and up to date. Not sure exactly what Twitter is? It is a form of micro-blogging. Not sure what micro-blogging is? Reading this Wikipedia article might help.

Twitter page for Photo.net: twitter.com/photonet

Twitter RSS feed: twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/19686503.rss

Photo.net Blog: photo.net/news/blog

Photo.net Blog RSS (won’t get you the Twitter posts): http://photonetnews.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

Become a fan of Photo.net on Facebook!

It must be “social networking” month here at Photo.net because in addition to the Twitter account, we’ve got a Facebook page going as well. We’re just getting started with it, but we’ve got some neat plans for the future that will help Photo.net users bring PN along with them to Facebook if they choose. A Facebook-Photo.net gallery application is in the works and we will likely have some sort of interesting contest or promotion to announce its release.

Photo.net Facebook group: www.facebook.com/pages/Photonet/58543151943

How to turn off the WYSIWYG text editor

We finally got the bugs worked out of the new text editor for the photo.net forums. Personally, I think the new editor, while not perfect, is a lot better than what we had before. There is no reason that people should have to learn circa 1999 HTML to make a forum post in 2009.

However, I realize that some of our users would prefer to go back to the older non-WYSIWYG system. Thanks to our crack team of programmers, that is now possible.

• Go to your “My Workspace” area (link in the upper right corner of every page).
• Under “Account Options” look for “WYSIWYG editor: disable – enable”.
• Click on “disable”.
• Enjoy your new WYSIWYG-free existence.

Latest Articles

Super Bowl 2009: Working the Sports Photographer’s Angle

We have the honor of having Bill Frakes document his behind-the-scenes experiences as a Sports Illustrated staff photographer capturing the Super Bowl XLIII in Tampa Bay, FL. He shares with us some of the challenges, set up details, excitement of the day, etc, to give us a sense of what it’s like to be in the seat of this high-powered sports photography dream job.

Read the full article: Super Bowl 2009: Working the Sports Photographer’s Angle (photo: © Sports Illustrated 2009).

Canon EOS 5D MkII Review

Bob Atkins reviews Canon’s addition to the family: the hot-ticket Canon EOS 5D Mark II. This camera has been much anticipated, largely due to the success of the predecessor, the EOS 5D. The Mark II version includes the ability to shoot HD video, setting new standards for DSLRs in the future.

The Canon EOS 5D MkII is a remarkably capable camera with excellent imaging capability, including the ability to shoot broadcast quality HD video and record sound in stereo. It represents an advance in features over the original EOS 5D and the overall image quality is generally higher—though that higher quality may only be revealed in large prints. -Bob Atkins

Read the Photo.net Canon EOS 5D MkII Review.

Madagascar Trip Report

Wildlife photographer and Photo.net member Don Clary recently took a trip to Madagascar. He details his equipment, experiences, and offers advice to others who may be looking for a great wildlife photography destination. Perhaps you can model your next photo trip after Don’s—he even offers contact info for the tour companies he recommends.

Read the Madagascar Trip Report.

Featured Member Photographer: Ton Mestrom

Like many people on Photo.net, photography is Ton Mestrom’s passion but his day job is something else. Working as an RN overseeing a endoscopy department in the university hospital of Maastricht, photography plays a small role in his professional life (digitally processing specialized endoscopic images for example). That has not stopped him from following his passion for photography and becoming a truly wonderful street photographer.

Street photography can be difficult for even the most technically talented photographers. That is because there is so much more to this type of photography than just knowing the numbers that make up the technical side of image making. A good street photographer has to have a sense of place, a sense of self, a set of people skills, a quick eye and has to know how all of those talents fit into the environment that he is working in. Ton has these skills and they show in his images.

”By profession I’m a trained observer and for me there’s nothing more interesting than observing the world around me and the people in it, the way they behave and interact amongst themselves as well as with their environment. It’s really as simple as that. It’s like being a child in an adult world—you see so many unexpected and amazing things. ” -Ton Mestrom

Read More »

Samples from the member’s portfolio:

View Ton’s entire portfolio »

Special Deals from Adorama

The compact Nikon D40x is designed to deliver the picture-taking benefits of a digital SLR, yet is easy and fun to use. The D40x is ready to shoot when you are, thanks to split-second instant shutter response, which eliminates annoying shutter lag.

Exceptional image quality is made possible by a high resolution, 10.2-effective megapixel CCD image sensor and Nikon’s exclusive image processing engine. With a 10.2-megapixel resolution, the D40x invites creative picture cropping freedom without loss of picture quality and delivers the ability to make enlargements of extraordinary size.

Additional features include built-in flash with innovative Nikon i-TTL control, In-Camera Editing features with Nikon D-Lighting, Red-Eye Correction, Image Trimming, Image Overlay, Filter Effects and more. An ingenious HELP Menu with “Assist Images” helps you select the appropriate settings for many camera features.

Buy now from Adorama: Nikon D40x [sale price: $274.95]

Other deals from Adorama:

• Crumpler 4 Million Dollar Home Photo Bag [sale price: $46.80]
• Tiffen 55mm Digital HT Circular Polarizing Glass Filter [sale price: $99.95]

What’s Happening In Our Forums

• B&W Photo - Film & Processing (22 Responses) Slow B&W films
• Film and Processing (66 Responses) The future of film, film cameras and film processing labs
• Pentax (45 Responses) If You Could Only Have....
• Philosophy of Photography (87 Responses) The intrinsic and extrinsic matters of photographs

Go to Photo.net Forums »

Project Of The Month: Window Light

Window light is some of the best lighting in the world. It’s soft, magical, and best of all, it’s free. Find a scene lit only by window light and see what you can do with it. Take a portrait by window light. Or just let the light wash over a classic “bowl of fruit” still life. No matter what, you will learn why photographers have been relying on window light for years to create beautiful images.

This project is a repeat of one of the projects from last year. It’s such an important aspect of photography that I thought it was worthy of doing again. You can check out last year’s “window light” project images in the No Words forum thread: Window Light Thread.

If you need some advice, the Photo.net Lighting Forum is a great place to ask questions.

See all of the Monthly Projects (and submission instructions) on the Monthly Project Index page. Also, be sure to take a look at last month’s Urban Images project page and see all the wonderful images that were uploaded. Here are a few that caught my eye:

Editors’ Picks

Valentine’s Day Photography

Samples: