At under $20, the tripod accessory fastens to your tripod using velcro, holds all kinds of gear (or weights, to provide extra tripod stability) and should be an excellent tool for studio photographers that use their tripods heavily.
If you use a Mac, you probably know and love iPhoto, but if you’re on a PC, we hope you’ve discovered Picasa, the free and easy-to-use iPhoto competitor from Google. This slick program lets you manage and download photos, view slideshows, burn images to CD, basically do everything you’d want to do with your photos on your computer… except share them on the web.
The wizards at Google haven’t stood still, we recently found out (via Michelle Jones) that they’ve been working on an easy way for you to share your Picasa photos for free via the web. Their efforts are almost ready for primetime, and they’ve coded up some pretty cool features for their free online photo sharing site:
The photos are Big — Check out this example and click on the “slideshow” link to marvel at how big it can get.
It’s easy to flip through an album using your left and right arrow keys. Images are cached so the experience is extra-smooth. — Try it here.
You can download a friend’s entire album into your copy of Picasa with just a click
It’s free for the first 250MB of storage, $25/yr for 6GB more room.
Our pal Heather Champ just posted about an upcoming Flickr photo exhibition in New York City.
It’s a great opportunity to get noticed for your favorite shots.
Enter by June 26th by submitting one photograph to The Blink of an Eye Flickr Group. A panel will pick the best five and they’ll be shown off at the show. It only takes a second to submit a photo!
The thumbnail above is the first play — one of his sketch artists took a photo submitted to the Photojojo Flickr group and re-interpreted it as a Sketch. Now it’s your turn to re-interpret the sketch as a new photo. Give it a try, and post the result to the photo pool!
Hot on the heels of the piece she penned for Photojojo on photo toys, our pal Karina just kicked off a summer series on photo projects to do with little people. Check out her first project!
db clay makes really tough wallets using Gaffers Tape and canvas. His camera series consists of three beautiful wallets made from full-color photographs. Really pretty.
We’ve been following word of the MonsterPod for months, ever since we heard about its debut at the PMA. Its inventors claim it’s made of a material that can mold or shape to stick to any surface or object: tables, windows, rocks, trees, sheet rock; right side up, or upside down.
Now we hear it’s due to start shipping on June 20th.
We hope it’s for real. We’ve got one on order, and we’ll let you know if it works as they say as we get it.
Photographer jan von holleben has a fun new series of photographs, dreams of flying. Great inspiration for taking portraits of children (and the young at heart, for that matter). Taken with lo-tech backgrounds or just the ground as background, these photos are a great reminder that you don’t need a fancy studio backdrop to take a memorable picture of your kids.
Use the video feature on your digital camera to capture some fun videos. Check out the video these guys made racing through Manhattan on bikes. Awesome.
Yes, the screen is small (3″), but it’s a digital photo frame, and it’s darned cheap.
Mark Wilson’s $40 DIY Digital Photo Frame uses the Juicebox digital media player, available on eBay for anywhere from $10-$30. You can also buy it new for $20-$50, depending on where you get it.
A fun and cheap weekend project! And a great alternative to the nicer, but more expensive digital photo frame project we just covered in the newsletter!
Many photographers will consider their Depth of Field when shooting a portrait, but how about the colors of the background versus the subject’s clothing and face?
Chuck Gardner shows you how to choose backgrounds and clothing that will lead the eye of the viewer to the face.
While you’re there, don’t miss his excellent beginner’s guide to studio lighting. He uses diagrams and example photos aplenty to teach you the lighting lessons you need to flatter anyone’s face in your next portrait.
One Picture a Day features, you guessed it, one photograph a day. What we’ve seen has been vivid and very well done. Check it out for some daily inspiration.
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