Light through the beeches

Never knew I was such a springtime person, but there are so many things to take pictures of, this year! For the first time in my life, I did a photography workshop--cannot call myself "autodidact" any more. That makes me a bit sad, but that's a joke! It taught me a couple of errors of composition in the samples I brought, but more importantly, we went out to photograph the woods on the Veluwe. Sunlight filtering through the young leaves of a beech tree must be one of the best things you can see.

Cool software: Cooliris

For viewing pictures on the net in a very cool layout, as if you have a 3-D photo (and video) wall, an add-on exists for the Firefox web browser. And for Safari, for the iPhone, for Linux... in short, for almost all of us except for who stays with slow and cumbersome MS-Explorer ;-) That is Cooliris. Some time ago, an update was launched that also works with the pictures on your own computer! Very cool software indeed, as the picture here shows.

Cooliris is only a browser, so it cannot replace your Irfanview, which has conversion and archiving options (to name just a few), let alone Lightroom. But it is so fast & cool-looking!

Learning shortcuts takes time... but will be worth it!

Some time ago I downloaded a Lightroom plug-in by Jeffrey Friedl to integrate uploading photos to Flickr into the export menu. Note: the first hyperlink is to the plug-in, the second to his blog--a must for Japan photo lovers! You can also click here for the plug-in.
It took a lot of hassle to get it going--whether that be my incompetence or the complexity of the chain of software...
First, you must find out that you need Lightroom's "Plug-in Manager" (lower-left corner of the LR export menu screen, see the image right here) to install the thing.
Then, you have to find out that the plug-in does not automatically show in the export menu, but has a separate "header" (see the upper-right part of the picture).
Third hurdle: it takes some figuring out when exactly to log onto your Flickr account: before you start the export, in order to get the authentication process right.

It took me quite a number of tries, I admit, but when all is right, things go quite smoothly and it runs as smooth as a well-oiled bicycle. No more hurdles: the photos are online! It really is a shortcut now, from LR to my photo stream on Flickr in one go.
And at the same time my 6-week trial period is over... OK, I feel ready to register now (though that is not quite for free; the plug-in is "donation ware" or restricted to 10 photos at a time. Take your pick!).

Magnolia in Spring--Far to Go to Reach Imogen Cunningham

Really irresistible, this spring: temperatures are much above normal since some time and all plants and flowers are just exploding! After a day of hard work in the garden, the magnolia tree looked gorgeous in the sunset. Even better is the purity of a single magnolia flower in close-up. But a snapshot like mine is far from the perfect photo Imogen Cunningham once made of a magnolia--I swhowed her photo a long time ago already.
Still, I'm not dissatisfied with this snapshot, the more so as it was taken with the 'second camera', the Panasonix Lumix TZ5, and without a tripod. Not bad at all, this little compact camera! But that's something I said before, too ;-)

Daffodils in spring

Ain't they sweet? Two looking at each other, the third looking in a different direction. Menages à trois are always risky ;-) Daffodils have something human, with their big trumpets acting like faces or noses.
Yet even without such strange thoughts, they remain irresistible objects for photos, every spring again! The backlight made them even better. Enjoy your weekend, whether it be in spring as in our neck of the woods, or whatever is your season (this might be read in the southern hemisphere, after all).