Silvermac

The summer is just around the corner and most of you who travel and take many photos will want to upload them online and share with your friends and family.

Having been there myself I had to choose a host that provides me with a great photo hosting/sharing options and amongst many others I have opted for SmugMug.

Have a look for yourself, you will get a 14 days free trial account and don’t forget to use the SmugMug discount coupon X6dRIaxh10P1k - that will save you $5.00 of the regular price for any type of the account.

By the way, my SmugMug gallery is here if you’d like to have a peek and let me know what you think.

I was considering getting an EF 70-200mm F/4 L IS USM and weighing up my options whether to go for it or not. Considering the price the only option would be to sell my 100mm macro to free up some funds … you know how it all works.

So I took a little test today, just to see how good 100mm macro lens actually is and whether it would be worth selling it or is it just too good to kiss it goodbye.

I also have EF 24-105mm F/4 L and decided to compare the two lenses in identical conditions.

I asked my wife and two daughters if any of them would like to help being a model, but since they were preoccupied with watching some Gossip Girl rubbish on TV I had to find another girl. She was incredibly co-operative, didn’t complain, didn’t say a word and didn’t even blink. I can’t thank her enough!

I was actually quite amazed when I saw the difference … continue reading…

Last weekend I visited Ron Mueck’s exhibition at Brisbane Gallery of Modern Art and took a few shots of his amazing sculptures.

The Big Baby, 5m long sculpture of a newborn baby girl.

See the larger image here.

Mask, is Ron’s selfportrait, approximately 3m long sculpture.

See the larger image here.

To illustrate the real size of it here is another shot with some people in the background.

For a few years I’ve been using Flickr to post and share my photos, but as my Pro account was expiring a few weeks ago I have decided not to renew  but rather to move on. Yes, my Flickr account is still alive, but since it’s no longer a Pro account only the latest 200 uploaded photos are displayed.

Why did I move on?  Well, Flickr hasn’t changed a lot in years and the interface feels so yesterday. One of the major issues I had was the white background with no options to change. Yes, there are some third party ‘gateways’ to display the pictures on black background, but that’s really not it.

I explored number of alternatives and here are some that I have found: Zoomr, PBase, PhotoBucket, PhotoNet, SmugMug, Deviant Art, Zenfolio,  23, PicasaWeb, Fotki, Fotolog, Photo Dekho, Photo Buzz, Humble Voice, WebShots, DropShots… and all of them have their advantages and disadvantages. Some are free, some you pay for, most of them have a basic free account, but if you want real stuff you have to pay. Some of them look great, some are far from great and some just consfused the hell out of me.

In the end I have signed up with SmugMug. I found that SmugMug is the closest to what I really wanted, it has an excellent professional looking interface, number of ways to display your portfolio by using over 50 themes, endless ways of customising your site and has an awesome set of tools for uploading and managing your photos.

The Power and Pro accounts even let you point your own domain name to your SmugMug account, which is pretty cool. All account types offer unlimited storage and traffic for photos with Power and Pro accounts including unlimited HD videos.

Have a look for yourself , you will get a 14 days free trial account and if you decide to sign up , don’t forget to use the SmugMug discount coupon X6dRIaxh10P1k - that will save you $5.00 of the regular price for any type of the account.

By the way, my SmugMug gallery is here if you’d like to have a peek and let me know what you think.

One of the new functions of iPhoto 09 are Faces. When you select the Faces in the menu bar on the left you will see a cork board with the thumbnails of faces that iPhoto has identified in your library. The default thumbnail photo, or the key photo, is not always the best choice, so you’d like to change it.

There are two ways of doing this. Firstly, you can click on a little “i” icon in the bottom right corner of the photo, then skim through the photos until you find the one you like. Click on it and your new key photo will be set.

The other and easier way of doing this is simply to skim through the images (slide your mouse pointer over the thumbnail) while on the cork board, and once you see the photo you’d like to set as a key, just hit space bar. The new key photo is set. The same applies for the Events view thumbnails.

An extra tip – if you are skimming through the Faces, hold down the Option button, this will show you the entire photo, not only the face.