Wings in the Poplars

The poplar trees in my backyard are the tallest in the neighborhood. Right before dusk birds flock to their branches. Here is a triptych I created of a few frames I captured. I shot it with my Nikon D60 through a 70-200mm zoom at 1/125th of a second at f14. I shot at a slow shutter speed to blur the wings.

Winter of 2008 at EWU

Today's snow reminded me of the winter of 2008. Here are a few winter shots I captured while at EWU. I shot these with a pretty ancient Nikon D1X.

Winter Sunset

Here are a couple of shots I captured outside in my backyard off of my deck. It's hard to believe that I wasn't stranded in a forest somewhere. I shot it with my trusty Nikon D60 with a 70-200 mm zoom.

Candid Portraits

A candid portrait of Dr. Rodolpho Arévalo I shot during a faculty awards ceremony. The mixed lighting gave a bluish halo to the subjects.I like this kind of photography I like. It shows a subject engaged instead of staged.

Turkeys

Here's a shot I took in the spring of 2008. The exposure was terrible. The white balance was shifted extremely pink. I used Lightroom 2 to pull a reasonable exposure. I cranked the vibrance up to pull some richness in the colors. I love what vibrance does to polarized windows, it turns them a beautiful shade of teal blue. It was exciting seeing wild turkeys foraging around on the front lawn of Showalter Hall.

Profile Photo

I just had one of my portraits added to a website. It is of EWU Music Professor Michael Waldrop. He teaches percussion here at the University and is a very interesting and thoughtful person. He called me because his current portrait was outdated and he need a new look. I shot it with Norman strobes through Chimera soft boxes. I shot it with a Nikkor 85mm f 1:1.4 lens wide open to give a narrow depth of field. It is much better than his previous version.

Flickr Banners

After searching for universities with flickr accounts in an effort to see how other institutions use this resource I found a few that were doing interesting things with web implementation. The University of Charleston uses flickr to feed a flash banner on their homepage. The images used can be found in their set here.



New Jersey Institute of Technology uses a similar approach feeding a rotating web banner on their homepage with images pulled from flickr here.

It makes total sense to use flickr in this way. Edits to the banner don't have to involve touching the code, simply update the flickr set that the banner is pulled from. Cloud computing is evolving into a new method of content control. Also the update to content is instantaneous. Our current web server takes over an hour to update a web page, with flickr as soon as the content is updated in the set you simply refresh and the content is posted to the web page.

2009 Spring Flowers

Spring flowers have survived the flowers at Eastern Washington University.

John and Ruth

John and Ruth
Originally uploaded by skypilot53

Here is a shot from Kurt Langland during our February '09 INPA shoot. It was really an incredible experience. If you are a photographer in Spokane check us out.

Embedded flickr Slideshows Increase Visiblity

A few months ago we placed a link to a embedded flickr slideshow on the University's home page. The concept was to provide a quick glimpse of life at Eastern without spending a lot of time programming it. After researching several different flickr enabled slideshows we settled on flickr's own. It is clean and easily re-sizable and loads very quickly. Another great asset is the full-screen mode. Our Admissions reps can show this to a group of prospective students with a projector. This is a great tool for small businesses. It is up to you to create good perceptions of your business and enable others to see them.

To date we have recorded 1,787 visits to our Photo Tour page. That is fairly significant as it makes up 5.5% of all the traffic on our flickr site. Not bad seeing that it took about two days to make to page. Now I am creating new flickr slide shows for individual departments and programs for them to embed on their sites. Share with me how you are using flickr slide shows.

A Bridge to flickr: Metadata Propagation

Here's a little table that is in beta. It is an attempt to determine what metadata fields Adobe Bridge inputs and flickr outputs. This can help with serialization of media content.

Data Sets	Adobe Bridge CS3	flickr.com
File Properties	Filename	*Information may be propagated from Filename, Title or Headline.
	Document Type	File Type:
	Application	Software:
	Date File Created	Date and Time (Original):
	Date File Modified	Date and Time (Modified):
	File Size	File Size:
	Dimensions	Image Width: and Image Height:
	Dimensions (in inches)	Dependant upon Dimensions and Bit Depth
	Resolution	X-Resolution: and Y-Resolution:
	Bit Depth	Bits Per Sample:
	Color Mode	Color Space:
IPTC Core	Creator	Artist: and By-line:
	Creator: Job Title	By-line Title:
	Creator: Address	Creator Address:
	Creator: City	Creator City:
	Creator: State/Province	Creator Region:
	Creator: Postal Code	Creator Postal Code:
	Creator: Phone(s)	Creator Work Telephone:
	Creator: Email(s)	Creator Work Email:
	Creator: Website(s)	Creator Work URL:
	Headline	Headline:
	Description	Caption- Abstract:
	Keywords	Keywords: and Subject:
	IPTC Subject Code	Subject Code:
	Description Writer	Caption Writer:
	Date Created*	Date Created:
	Intellectual Genre	Intellectual Genre:
	IPTC Scene	Scene:
	Location	Location:
	City	City:
	State/Province	Province- State:
	Country	Country- Primary Location Name:
	ISO Country Code	Country Code:
	Title	Object Name:
	Job Identifier	Original Transmission Reference:
	Instructions	Instructions:
	Provider	Credit:
	Source	Source:
	Copyright Notice	Copyright:
	Copyright Status
	Rights Usage Terms	Usage Terms:
	Raw Filename	Raw File Name:
Camera Data (EXIF)	Exposure Mode	Exposure Mode:
	Focal Length	Focal Length:
	Lens	Lens:
	Max Aperture Value	Max Aperture Value:
	Flash	Flash Mode:
	Metering Mode	Metering Mode:
	Custom Rendered	Custom Rendered:
	White Balance *Note this value is of the original image.	White Balance: *Note this value is of the original image.
	Scene Capture Type	Scene Capture Type:
	Serial Number	*Not displayed.
Camera Raw	Raw Filename	Raw File Name:
	White Balance *Note this value is of the adjusted Raw image.	White Balance: *Note this value is of the adjusted Raw image.
	Temperature	Temperature:
	Tint	Tint:
	Exposure	Exposure:
	Recovery	Saved Settings Parameters Highlight Recovery:
	Fill Light	Saved Settings Parameters Fill Light:
	Blacks	Shadows:
	Brightness	Brightness:
	Contrast	Contrast:
	Vibrance	Vibrance:

Kristina at INPA

Kristina
Originally uploaded by John Demke

Here is a frame I shot at the last INPA meeting and photoshoot held Thursday February 26th. Peter Boden and Paddy Hoy were so generous to let me snap a few frames on their set using their model Kristina. I was interested in their DIY lighting devices. This is shot with their cardboard tubes.

I have so much to learn about flash photography. I am going to bring my soft boxes next time.

INPA Photoshoot

I just got back from the Inland Northwest Photographer Assembly photoshoot and I am stoked. I found this association through their flickr group. There were about thirty photographers and models in attendance. Many photographers set up portrait studios in various room in the Web.com building on Washington Street. The vibe was great. I felt excited and everyone there were very understanding, engaging and willing to give advice. I learned a lot about strobe photography in particular, something which I am truly lacking in. I am so excited to go shoot some of my own stuff.

The Two Towers

Here's another frame from my winter vacation to Cannon Beach. Check out my Landscapes set to see other shots like these.

Score Me!

I just found a fun new way to interact with other people's photos on flickr. Score Me! (post 1, score 5) is a flickr Group that requires you to rate the photo of five other photographers in order to post your own. In return you get five rating on your own photo. It is pretty interesting to see how others view your art. It also forces you to evaluate others. I think I grade a little easily. Usually nothing lower that a 5.

The Other Father

I watched Coraline on Saturday with my family. I was pleasantly surprised in the fine quality of the story-telling. It may have been a little too deep for my 7 year-old, but the 10 year-old got it.

There is a cool flash builder on the site that allows you to upload a photo and put buttons over you eyes. Check it out.