A Man and a Camera

Nuts & Bolts: Street Shooting

Nuts & Bolts: Street Shooting contains great tips, some of which I was surprised to learn I had been using.

Story Photography

Story Photography is the home of Derrick Story's photography. Here is a list of his articles on O'Reilly's MacDevCenter. Check out this page for his digital photography tips and information.

Photography Help: Sleeping Beauty Castle

This photo of Sleeping Beauty Castle is obviously blurry. What settings do I use to make sure I get the castle in focus better?

I have a Canon S230, so I have controls for the ISO speed, long shutter, exposure, and slow-synchro flash. I don't have manual aperture or shutter control.

I'm standing about 300 feet away from the castle. I think I should've used ISO 100 and Infinity focus. Would that be good? Something I'm missing? There is EXIF data on the photo page. Any help would be great! Thanks.

Organizing with iPhoto

After reading various books and articles, and experimenting, I've finally come up with a routine/strategy for organizing and archiving my photos.

Import images and video clips (if any) via Image Capture.
Group related images into folders, either during or after importing.
Open iPhoto.
Drag folders one by one into the album pane.
Each folder then gets imported as an album and as a film roll with the folder name you entered.
Set the title of each film roll to blank or the roll info title.
Make backups of the Photo Library to CD-RW or DVD-RW depending on the size of the Photo Library.
When the Photo Library size will fit almost all of a disc, make a backup to CD or DVD (not RW).
Rename (safer) or delete (more risky) the iPhoto Library folder and create a new empty one.

Optional:
Make a disc image of the CD or DVD using Disk Copy to mount the Library without having to use the actual disc. It's easier than switching between Photo Libraries.

Importing Images on the Mac

Image Capture has emerged as my software of choice to bring photos onto my Mac from my camera. Why? Because I have more control over the process than when I use iPhoto.

Not only that, but iPhoto has been taking forever to recognize my camera. In fact, I end up force-quitting iPhoto after staring at the spinning beach ball for too long. When I first started using my camera, iPhoto recognized it quickly. My friend's Sony camera was always recognized quickly, too. I don't know the source of the slowdown.

Aside from that, there are other reasons why using Image Capture has its advantages.

It opens faster.
You can choose which photos to download. (it's all or nothing with iPhoto)
You can also download movie files if you have any. (iPhoto can't)
Thumbnail previews of everything you've got on your memory card. (iPhoto shows only one thumbnail as you download, which is of no help)
You can choose which photos to delete from the camera or have all of them automatically deleted. (iPhoto can only auto delete everything)

Sold? Go to Image Capture->Preferences to set it as the default to open instead of iPhoto when you connect a camera.

Note that I still use iPhoto for cataloging my images. I'm only talking about the process of getting them onto the computer.