I took a weeks holiday to visit a friend in London. We spent almost all of the week going sight seeing. Since last time (December 2011) was a photographic success with some really nice photos; I took my camera around with me most of the time again. I am glad I did, I caught some really nice shots but not quite as many as last time. One of the things people tend to do is go for the generic tourist shot so I tried to avoid that at all costs, but I did do a classical Big Ben snap.

It is not that I don’t uses images in design it is just I try to avoid them. Images can be extremely useful, for example their use to create textures that repeat in the background is well suited to them. There are other consideration to take into account, websites that use lots of images tend to be slow to load and don’t resize well not to meant ion they tend to look ugly after the fad they were designed in passes.

Something The Avengers film did really well was mix CGI with live action. They often switched seamlessly between the two. This makes the film much more believable for me by planting part of the CGI in a physical set or actors movements. Too often do directors just choose to create a whole sequence in CGI.

This again happens in wedding photography, but to a lesser extent. With weddings there are always the obligatory group shots where everyone poses in lines. For me this is less like photography and more like holiday snaps in that they serve a story telling purpose but the photos themselves have very little photographic merit.

When taking a photograph the first thing you need to think about is exposure and to adjust the exposure of a shot you have three options change the shutter speed, change the ISO or to open up the Aperture (decrease the f-stop). The aperture does not only help you do your exposure but it is your key to the shots depth of field. Depth of field means

The distance between the nearest and the furthest objects that give an image judged to be in focus in a camera. 

Source: Dictionary.app

Your depth of field can be used to give a shot a strong focus point or allow the user to see everything in focus. In a landscape shot usually a high f-stop is best meaning the foreground and background objects are in focus; while if you were to shoot macro shots often a low f-stop adds interest and emphasises the subject.

Depth of field is a vital tool in photography, it allows you to draw the users attention to where you want and can sometimes be used to exaggerate distances between objects. A side effect of having a shallow depth of field is bokeh. Bokeh occurs when using a shallow depth of field, essentially hot spots of light that are not in focus are distorted by the lens and form the shape of the aperture, they look like out of focus sparkles and again can make your photo more artistic.

I eventually got around to trying out some more long exposure traffic trails last weekend. The bridge I used is positioned over a dual carriage way, even then the traffic flow wasn’t as high as I had hoped for. The spot I choose had significantly less background light than that of the shots from Hong Kong. This allowed me to get more distinct trails from the cars light, however I find my preference is for the shots from Hong Kong  (seen here). The shots in Hong Kong have more interest due to the light pollution.

When shooting at night I find that it is even more important to consider the ambient light as it is often more focused and easier to spot flaws in.

Many older companies have got their board together and come up with a list of attributes they want to see in their culture; then shown them to their employees through an overly simplified diagram. These attempts at instilling culture into an already existing company are often pathetic and misguided.

Companies such as Google, Apple, Twitter and Facebook all have strong cultures in their business and it is that that helps drive them forward in such a focused way. When the employees understand where the business stands they know better where to grow it. So much of this culture is seen in the way the company designs itself, Facebook for example is ever evolving, moving fast but keeping all their changes to the core aesthetic of the site. It that that allows the consumer to make a bond with the brand and through that the company.

It’s this design that subconsciously allows us to make connections between a product and a company. A brilliant example of this is Unilever, none of their products carry the Unilever name, but you know its a Unilever product because of their simple but distinct logo and the Unilever tag they display at the end of their adverts. It’s this simple tag that allows the consumer to make a connection between all their independent product brands and there by builds the company’s own brand in the consumers mind.

This post was prompted by a link that has been doing the rounds this week http://startupsthisishowdesignworks.com/ it is worth a look.

Credit to: www.danheller.com

Long exposure photography can be quite time consuming because the longer you leave the shutter open the longer the camera needs to process it and you can never be certain that the shot is correct until you get it back. When shooting star trails it becomes even more difficult with the lack of light; meaning composition and focus can be very difficult to do, it is usually best to setup before dusk so you get it right.There are tons factors that can massively effect taking a star trail photo.

Composition

A shot of just the sky may be nice but it lacks a subject so often putting something in the foreground can add a point of reference making the image more interesting and give the shot scale.

Little or no Clouds

Clouds can add an interesting effect to the sky but they fog and diminish the brightness of the stars. Having a cloudless sky is a must and often star trails are clearest when you are high up (such as in the photo below).

Credit to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/velvet_pow

Dark skies

There maybe no clouds in the sky but that does not mean it is clear, try and pick a night where the sky is really dark and there are no wisps of a forming cloud and little air pollution. Another consideration to take into account is the ambient light from streets and cars near by, often this can wash out an image. It is better to get away from a city centre or a road.

The Setup

In order to take star trails you need a SLR camera with a Bulb mode (also called B). This allows the shutter to remain open until you let go of the shutter button (may work slightly differently on other cameras). Holding down the shutter button for over 30 minutes is a ridiculous idea so the purchase of a remote trigger is a necessity. I use a ML-L3 on my Nikon to take star trail photos, a remote tricker allows you to press its button once to star the shot and once to finish the shot. You will also need a stable tripod or a stand of some sorts that will hold the camera still. It can get very cold at night and the cold reduces battery life so go out fully charged up if you can.

Taking the shot

It is best to set this all up before darkness and make sure you are happy with your composition. Check you camera is firmly in place and your remote trigger works. When taking shots under bulb mode it is up to you to guess how long your shutter should be open so I advise that you start at 10 minutes (don’t be afraid to build up to over an hour) and build up until you get a clear shot. I would also suggest you take a notepad and pen and write down what time you started the shot and for how long for future reference.

Turn down the ISO to as low as it can go and put up the f stop this will reduce noise and let in as much light as possible. Another top tip is to check your cameras menu to see if it has an option for Long Exposure Noise Reduction if so turn this on and it will help remove noise you get from long exposures. Some cameras show the time the shutter has been open others however do not so a stop watch could be helpful. If it is still to light try and neutral density filter to darken the shot.

The method described here advocates taking one long exposure, however it is possible to do it by combining multiple shorter exposures in something like Photoshop.

They recently removed the basic dictionary function they had in Google Doc’s and improved it. Now they don’t only use a dictionary to guess the words you mean, but also look at context and what is popular right now to give you suggestions. This is the kind of thing I would love to see in the next version of iWork and Office.

They show some pretty cool examples of it in action here

If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.

Henry Ford (apparently)

Those famous words are the exact reason companies can rightfully ignore the consumers wants, because consumers are short sighted and ignorant. Another more recent example would be to look at Google’s Android, bending to demand and becoming fragmented to such an extend that every handset seems to be running a different version that looks different.

The next step may not be easy but that does not that mean we should look to avoid it. This is something Apple is good at. They often place hardships upon the consumer withdrawing outdated technology quickly. It may not be appreciated at first but there is forethought in most of their decisions and understanding of the technology that the consumer lacks. Microsoft favours a backwards compatibility view on things, this often leads to convoluted solutions and legacy technology sticking around far longer than they should. Consumer are stubborn and some times you need to prod them and prod them hard to get them to move on.