Photography
My Portfolio
Didn’t get it yesterday, but I finally got my JavaScript/jQuery based Portfolio up and running. I’m using Galleria – a nice script that has Flickr support integrated.
It’s pretty simple to set up – but the docs aren’t straight forward 
<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<title>Christian Kildau's Portfolio</title>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="./galleria.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="./galleria.flickr.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="./galleria.fullscreen.js"></script>
</head>
<body>
<div id="galleria">
<script type="text/javascript">
api_key = '0a5a49ea38e03b11f477aaf066b5dcd2'
var flickr = new Galleria.Flickr(api_key);
flickr.getSet('72157614373115604', function(data) {
$('#galleria').galleria({
data_source: data,
image_crop: false,
show_info: true,
autoplay: true,
transition: 'fade',
preload: 3,
});
});
</script>
</div>
</body>
</html>
No Flash required, so it even works on my (veeeery slow) iPhone 3G…. 
EDIT: Forgot the link. 
A Portfolio for my Website
I was looking for a way to add a Portfolio Slideshow to my Website for the last two weekends now, but it looks like my requirements are pretty high:
- Interoperability (e.g. no Flash)
- Easy handling
- Smooth transitions
- Automatic resize to fit the Browser’s windows
- Use Flickr as CDN and for stats
I came across a jQuery based solution called Galleria, which fits my needs pretty much, but it was slow! My Core2Duo MacBook Pro had a hard time sliding trough my 1600px images! And I haven’t got it to work with Flickr so far. I think Galleria is the way to go and I’ll try to get it to work with Flickr and play more smoothly, but in the meantime I embedded a Flickr slideshow in Flash… See My Portfolio
Hope to get it done today, but don’t really count on it 
Photo Workflow and Backup 2.0
I’m sitting here on a train trying to use the time to re-organize my photo workflow and thought I’d share it here to also have a blogpost for this week… Inspired by Chase Jarvis’ ego post on his blog, I knew how to not do it. I’m not gonna show you a lot of totally needless Apple devices just to make things look more awesome. I love Apple and their OS, so don’t get me wrong, but you can always overdo it and make things look like you got sponsored…
Finding the right workflow isn’t easy. The first thing I did was writing down what I wanted and what I already own:
- A MacBook Pro
- A Mac Mini
- A fast NAS (e.g. Fileserver) with tons of space
- An on-site backup to an external HDD
Currently I have my entire Library on the MacBook Pro’s internal 5400rpm hard-drive. This is just slow. Things feel very sluggish, which is why I want to replace that hard-drive with an SSD. SSDs are expensive or small, so I need to move my Library (80Gb at the moment) somewhere else… would be pretty easy if there weren’t my requirements:
- Have backups of everything
- Be able to import and edit Photos on the MacBook Pro when on the road
- Be able to import and edit Photos on the Mac Mini when at home
- Sit on the couch and edit some photos I imported to the Mac Mini earlier
- Upload Photos to the Web from on the road and from home trough Lightroom
- Have a separate archive where all my photos are seriously safe
- Be able to access part of the Archive from everywhere in the world
My solution is kinda complex. First of all I split my Library into two. One for the Archive and one for the “Current Work”. Nothing special about that.
- The Archive holds my finished Photos. The Photos them self sit on the NAS whereas the Catalog and other Metadata sits on the Mac Mini’s SSD for performance reasons. This means I can only use the Archive on the Mac Mini. Backups are handled by the NAS and are stored on an external HDD.
- The “Current Work” Library contains my recent photos which I’m still planning to edit. For flexibility reasons everything is stored on an external HDD and backed up to another external HDD from within Lightroom. No Time Machine here for the external HDD since I’m planning to use this Library on multiple computers.
- Photos are moved to the Archive when everything is finished.
- A Publish Service exports my favorite Shots in the Archive to a public folder on the NAS. I can easily access that folder at home or trough my VPN from everywhere in the world. Maybe I’ll add iPhoto’s sharing…
- I am also thinking of adding something like Crashplan to add another level of security by having an off-site Backup… not just for my photos.
This all sounds complex, maybe this makes it clearer (or worse ):
Czech Republic – Final conclusion
What has started as a 10 day road-trip from eastern Germany trough the Czech Republic, Austria and maybe Switzerland back to western Germany ended after just two days in Prague. On the first day we visited Karlovy Vary and drove to Prague on day two. But in Prague some ************* have smashed a windows and broke into our car and stole every single piece of clothing I own, my girlfriend’s laptop, my tripod, the car radio, ball pens, old shoes, some coverings, the drink holder…
We called the Czech police. They didn’t care, they didn’t come. They didn’t let us file a charge. 2500€ lost. No insurance will cover it. The car was that damaged, we had to abort the trip. Not that I wanted to continue, without any clothing.
I didn’t like the Czech people in the first place. They were rude, they all didn’t give a crap about anything. Several times my tripod has almost been knocked over. Every time we had a question the officials pretended they didn’t speak English or German or whatever.
I write this post just to put it all behind. Karlovy Vary and Prague are nice cities, I’ve been there the second time now (this time just to take photos), but they won’t see me again. Ever.
Things went wrong in Hamburg
Last weekend my girlfriend and I spontaneously decided to visit Hamburg. We only did a quick research and then knew what we wanted to see: the Port of Hamburg, the old Elbe tunnel, the Warehouse District, the Fish auction hall, the old Town hall, the Jungfernstieg at the Binnenalster and the famous churches. Not to forget Reeperbahn! That’s the theorie…
I find cities look best when it’s lights are already turned on, so we wanted to see the most of the sights at night.
On the first evening we wanted to see the harbor. Our hotel was close to the Central Station so we decided to simply walk. Sadly Internet on my iPhone 3G was that slow in Hamburg, that I couldn’t see my map with the photo locations, so we had to walk on our own and find some sweet spots. At the beginning we walked totally wrong and ended up in the fruit district of the harbor. We then walked along the harbor trying to get to the right points. On our way we walked right in between HafenCity and Warehouse District so that we didn’t see both. We walked up to Landungsbrücken when it was already 12am, but I wanted to see at least the old Elbe Tunnel! So we walked trough and tried to find a nice spot at the other side of the harbor, but didn’t find anything. So we walked back, decided to take a drink and then took the train back to central station and our Hotel.
The next day our schedule was pretty tight, because we didn’t get the harbor shots… we started at 10am, went to central station to get a Hamburg CARD. With the Hamburg CARD you can use all public transportation (more on that later), and you get a discount on most tourism stuff.
Our first stop was the old Town Hall which is a nice walk along Hamburg’s shopping street. But I didn’t find the old Town Hall very special, at least not in bright daylight! We then headed over to the Binnenalster and Jungfernstieg, which also looked, well… let’s say nice during daytime.
The weekend was hot, very hot! After just 3 hours we already needed a break! So we wanted to take a train down to Landungsbrücken and make a harbor tour. But there were some heavy constructions going on, so we had to take several trains, which isn’t that easy if you don’t know the city… Finally at Landungsbrücken, we got a 2€ discount off thanks to our Hamburg CARD! Awesome…… The harbor tour was very nice and we got a good overview. But still not a single good shot!
And believe it or not due to the heat on the boat, the glue which sticks the rubber grip on my Nikon D90 melted!
Since we still had a lot of sights to see we hurried up a bit and walked to St. Michaelis church, spent a lot of time looking for a supermarket to buy some water, walked back trough Warehouse District (to really see it for the first time!) and then walked back to our Hotel to take a nap
We still wanted to see the harbor, the Warehouse District, the Fish auction hall and the Reeperbahn. We started again at 8pm to take some night shots. Mobile Internet still was horribly slow, so I still couldn’t load my map! We took the train to Landungsbrücken again, then walked up to the Fish auction hall, then headed further to Dockland. When we arrived at Dockland the light was just crappy so we waited some time and discovered one thing I find totally awesome about Hamburg: The Habor ferries! They have ferries all across the harbor, with stations that look exactly like Bus stops, just on the water. And it’s even included in the Hamburg CARD! We took one, drove to it’s last stop and then drove back. Totally awesome! Back at Dockland the light was better, although I now found it to be already too dark as the nice blue sky was almost gone. I took some shots until we wanted to go to Warehouse District. It was already 12pm and the Reeperbahn was much closer so we decided to visit that first. Which again wasn’t a very good idea. It was horribly crowded, but fun to watch. When we finally came to the Warehouse District the damn lights were already turned off and the entire scene just looked boring
We walked back to our Hotel and fell to bed at 3am…
The next morning we didn’t want to walk trough Hamburg again, so we decided to drive back and visited some friend we met last year on our Trip to Egypt… By the way: we walked about 35km that weekend!
If we had a better plan, I think our Hamburg experience would have been awesome! But even with our crappy plan the trip was great.
Color meets Black & White
I really love Black & White, so I try a Black & White version of most of my recent pictures.
In the last week I’ve been to Sanssoussi in Potsdam, Germany near Berlin and to the Saxon Switzerland near Dresden with my Girlfriend. The weather in Potsdam was great, but that attracted so many tourists, that it was almost impossible to get a good shot of the castle. In the Saxon Switzerland the weather was also great, but although we went there in the late afternoon the sky still was like f/64 whereas the canyon was like f/1.4.
Here are my favorite shots of this week, I couldn’t decided weather I like the color or the Black & White version.
What do you think?
BlogTimes Photo Contest (my first one)
The German blog ‘BlogTimes‘ has recently started a photo contest for city and landscape photography. So far I have never participated in any photo contest, but this time I thought I’d do so with my favorite three pictures:
Wish me luck. The contest ends on August 15, 2010.
What a polarizing filter is for
I’m sitting here at a German train, digging trough my unread mails and found one stating that I misunderstood what a polarizing filter is for. Well, I don’t think so And instead of just telling him so, I thought I’d share it here.
I think he was referring to my post about too much polarization. In that post I said, that I always adjusted the angle of the polfilter to get the strongest effect in the skies. By saying that I of course didn’t mean that you can only use a polfilter to darken the sky in landscape shots. To understand what you can use a polarizing filter for, you need to know that all a polarizing filter does is cutting reflections. The earth’s atmosphere is full of small particles which do all reflect the light of the sun. By cutting these reflections the sky gets darker because there are less reflections which would make the sky look brighter… But I’m still stuck to that polfilter = nicer sky thing.
I for example often use a polfilter when shooting trough windows, because things do reflect in windows and by using the polfilter I can cut these reflections.
Another example is shooting water. If you shoot water without a polfilter chances are good that all you see is the sky or whatever is above that water. But with a polfilter set to the right angle, you might be able to see down to the ground. Depending on the depth of the water of course.
But the reason I usually just keep the polfilter on all the time when shooting landscapes (even if there is not a single piece of sky in the shot) is because IT DOES CUT REFLECTIONS! It cuts reflections from the grass, making it more vibrant. It cuts reflections from leaves, making them more vibrant…
Just two other things you should keep in mind: A polfilter sucks light! Your shutter speed will be about one to two stops slower. Make sure you can hand hold that speed! And the other thing is don’t overdo it or you might get an over-saturated candy look… or as in my case an almost dark sky.
P.S. sorry for the lack of example pictures, but as I said I’m on a train
Lightroom 3: Second Thoughts
Since everybody is talking about how great he thinks Lightroom 3 is, I thought I’d talk about what I miss in Lightroom 3 First off… I’ve been using Lightroom 3 Beta exclusively since the beginning of this year and I also think it’s new features are great, BUT:
- Tethering! I don’t really need Live View, but I at least want to be able to change basic settings like aperture, iso and shutter speed from Lightroom! I only use this feature when my camera is on a tripod, so I don’t want to run back and forth!
- Remote Tethering or whatever you call it… I want to be able to tether my Camera from my iPhone, just as with the OnOne solution, but from within Lightroom. Oh… don’t tell me it’s useless. Again… handy when on a tripod. Think about shooting still lives in the studio… no more running from the object to the laptop or even to the camera! Or Startrails in the cold, or, or, or…
- Publishing Service … O.K. Lightroom 3 now has Social Media, especially Flickr integration. Awesome! But why does this only work for images I upload trough this new feature? I want to be able to link my existing images back into Lightroom! Or did I miss something about that feature?
- Video, though not a killer feature for me some basic editing features would be nice. (Just as Aperture does)
Benro A-169 Review
I am a big fan of the Joby Gorillapod SLR-Zoom and the world often really is my tripod, but I also love long-exposures and night photography, which isn’t really feasible without a real tripod. That’s why I wanted a tripod for my travels for a long time now, but never found one that is light, small, still sturdy but also affordable. Then I came across Induro…
Benro TravelAngel A-169
Uh? You said Induro, what’s Benro, you ask?
I did a lot of research on the Internet about several Induro tripods and it turned our that Induro tripods are just re-labeled Benro tripods and are then sold for a higher price, mostly to the US. In fact I haven’t even found any reseller for Induro here in Germany. Look at the Carbon series of Induro and Benro for example: Induro & Benro (click Select Products). The specs and the look are the same, just the names changed. And the price of course
Benro also has the Travel Angel series, which I found just awesome, because they are very small, but still sturdy. And with that I already start my review of the Benro A-169…
First of all the Benro is an aluminum tripod that comes in a nice bag:
And as I already said, the A-169 is very small when collapsed (just 38cm):
The lowest possible height is also just 38cm, but it won’t hold your heavy camera well at this position. Nevertheless all the connections and locks feel very sturdy (click to enlarge):
Then I went out to field test it (see result at the top)…
My heaviest Camera/Lens combination currently is the Nikon D90 with Nikon MB-D80 Battery Grip and my heaviest lens, the Nikon 70-300 VR attached, totaling at 1850g. The Tripod legs themselves can hold that load easily. You might need to attach your bag to the tripod in windy situations to get the sharpest result. The legs sometimes twist a little bit, but still it’s a stable tripod for it’s weight and size! Benro says it’s capable of up to 8kg of load. I was also evaluating the A-268, because it only has 4 leg sections (A-169 has 5), but the additional weight wasn’t worth it in my eyes. Also I am usually using Exposure delay mode and the self-timer to give the tripod time to stabilize. And don’t forget to turn VR off
I could only order mine in a set with one of the Benro ballheads. And from what I’ve heard in the forums, they aren’t the best ones, which is why I went with the cheap BH-0 head and the intention of upgrading to a better head later… And yes, the BH-0 head isn’t great. It’s almost impossible to do small adjustments, because you directly loose all directions! But it does at least have a bubble level and an attachment ring (for my BlackRapid RS-4).
It’s not Gitzo, but it’s worth it’s money! I think I’ll get some very sharp images from it as long as I remember that it can’t do wonders and keep some techniques in mind (exposure delay mode, self-timer, use bag for stabilization…)
Take care & enjoy the great weather.
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Hi, my name is Chris. I am a wannabe photog, traveler & geek that lives in Hesse, Germany. more about me...
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