bioneural.net » Photography

The incredible dissolution of being

Bruce — Sat, 10 May 2008 20:25:51 +0000

Another former communist-occupied country visited, another monument to the fallen photographed. How did communism's lofty ideal of equality become so twisted and evil, delivering oppression and brutality wherever it was (or is) practised? Having seen the poignant sculpture in Moscow commemorating Stalin's victims, and the collected skulls from the Killing Fields of Pol Pot's Cambodia, I wasn't expecting to find a similar memorial in the Czech Republic so moving. But death is only one way you can hurt people: how do you physically capture the dissolution of a man's spirit? The Memorial to the Victims of Communism is located in Prague's Lesser Town, on the lower slopes of Petrín Hill (since my image and this post are geotagged, you can retrieve the exact coordinates). This work by Olbram Zoubek, Jan Kerel, and Zdenêk Holzel was unveiled in 2002 and is succinctly described in this passage: It contains seven "phases" of a man living in a totalitarian state—from the first statue being a full man, up to the last statue where only a part of him remains. This evaporation represents the gradual physical and [psychological] destruction of a man who is ruled by any undemocratic regime. The man disappears due to censorship, secret police, no freedom of thoughts and expressions etc. Click thumbnail to enlarge imageThe incredible dissolution of being Very powerful imagery, I think reinforced by the shallow depth-of-field in this photograph which helps to blur the detail (and even the existence) of the more distant figures. It's not a great shot—taken in light ...

Mac geotagging software showdown

Bruce — Mon, 05 May 2008 20:38:21 +0000

From bioneural.net:

You're in Prague for 6 days with your camera (shooting in raw format), packing your data logger for geotagging, and your MacBook. At the end of each day you plan to download your images and track logs to geotag them before processing via Adobe Bridge. Given this scenario how do GPSPhotoLinker and PhotoGPSEditor—two free Mac apps—stack up against two commercial alternatives, Geophoto and HoudahGeo? What features are important? Below are the main characteristics I would look for in geotagging software, bearing in mind the above scenario. My interest here is purely the "business end" of geotagging i.e. writing the data from my logger to my images. As such my ratings reflect fitness for this purpose and do not necessarily cover the full feature set of the individual applications. Load multiple GPX track logs simultaneously: If your logger is as energetically challenged as the Holux M-241 you won't be leaving it in your bag and forgetting about it until the end of your 9 hour sojourn through the Old Town. You'll want to switch off logging during meal breaks, or inside galleries when you won't be using your camera (for example). Thus each daily download of photos could be associated with several distinct track logs, each potentially covering different activities. While you may be able to download a combined log (as you can with the Holux and BT747) you might wish to retain the individual logs, a useful option if you intend to archive the log/ KML export directly with the relevant images (e.g. ...

iPhone wallpapers for homesick Kiwis

Bruce — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 20:52:51 +0000

From bioneural.net:

Everyone loves customizing new toys and making wallpapers for your phone is probably one of the easier ways to do it (a lot easier, for example, than trying to find an inexpensive yet good-looking protective case!). I took a selection of images from Project Koru are turned them into three thematic wallpaper sets for my iPhone using this great Photoshop template. Blue Welly We love Wellington. We miss it and this makes us feel blue at times; the Windy City also has blue skies more often than those above us in England. These are evident in the Blue Welly wallpapers, featuring public sculptures around the city. The images in this set show: The Fern Ball in the Civic Centre; One of the totem poles on the City to Sea Bridge; One of the metal nikau palms outside the Public Library; The Weta Workshop Tripod in Courtenay Place. Click thumbnail to enlarge imageBlue welly iPhone wallpapers Godzone patterns New Zealand has a lot of different landscapes in relatively close proximity, making it an ideal place for the photographic pursuit of natural pattern spotting. The images in this set show: The golden sands of Abel Tasman National Park in Golden Bay; The leaf structure of the New Zealand tree fern; The rippled surface of Queen Charlotte Sound in the Marlborough Sounds; A dense stand of manuka (NZ tea tree) on the slopes of Mt. Taranaki (looking rather like a wooden barcode). Click thumbnail to enlarge imageGodzone patterns iPhone wallpapers Kiwi icons I've touched on iconic Kiwi symbols before (and noted a couple of icon sets). The images in ...

Evaluating the Holux M-241 data logger

Bruce — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 10:35:02 +0000

From bioneural.net:

After David rekindled my interest in geotagging blog posts with Google Map integration, and Dave's photo tracking experiences convinced me to revisit geotagging photos, I posted An ABC of geotagging photos on the Mac. In that article I considered questions relevant to selecting an automatic geo-location system, naming most of the few Mac-compatible devices available. I recently purchased a data logger to overcome the pain of manual photo geotagging and dispense with the hassle of a DIY solution. There's lots to like about the Holux M-241 on paper—despite some concerns as noted in Richard's detailed review. The device's appetite for AA batteries will be the decider for some people. We usually pack a recharger for my wife's noise-cancelling headphones when we travel anyway, so using rechargeables is no big deal. In fact I prefer something I know I can replace, as I don't want to end up with yet another working but unusable device due to a tired non-replaceable lithium battery (like my 1st iPod, Palm, mobile phone). The Qstarz BT-Q1000P was my original choice and could be obtained in the UK via eBay, but at nearly twice the price of the Holux. I have to say I like having a built-in display on the logger very much. This gives access to the M-241's 6 operating modes: Track Log Mode (the default; use Start and Stop (Enter button) to begin/ end a track logging session); Time Mode (useful display of UTC time for camera sync; can specify UTC offset for your time zone); Show ...

A break in the weather

Bruce — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 11:19:38 +0000

From bioneural.net:

Yesterday's treacherous weather foiled our walking plans. We set out under blue and sunny skies, arriving at our departure point some 25 minutes later under a blanket of grey and chilling precipitation. We didn't go far, returning to the car as the rain got heavier and then turned to sleet. We were safely home when it turned to hail, and then snow. Not to be thwarted this morning we were out the door before 0700h, but this time the skies co-operated and we enjoyed clear but crisp conditions as we took the opportunity to try out my recently-acquired Holux M-241 GPS data logger. As you can see from the following KML conversion of our track log, we drove in from the south east, and began our walk heading along Curbar Edge (seen here previously) in a north-west direction before continuing south along Baslow Edge. By zooming in using Google Earth we could confirm the accuracy of the track; each deviation corresponds to points of interest we left the path to inspect. A track log (in blue) showing Curbar Edge and Baslow Edge in Google Earth Click thumbnail to enlarge imageCurbar Edge after a sprinkling of spring snow The forecast for later today is 0 degrees with hail, sleet, and snow. English weather is fickle at best, but in spring especially it's the early bird that catches the sun.

CDFinder in the Mac geotagging workflow

Bruce — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 23:22:38 +0000

From bioneural.net:

Like many Mac users I archive my pictures in iPhoto, largely because I enjoy the tight integration this affords with Apple and third-party apps that might want to use them. Having entered the world of geotagging I was disappointed to discover that iPhoto can fail to show coordinates in EXIF (and when shown, oddly lists them under Exposure), does not recognise location data in IPTC headers, and does not provide any "show on map" facility (even Preview does this). Norbert Doerner of West-Forest-Systems then pointed out that I'd completely neglected archive and retrieval of geotagged images in my "ABC" article. This Mac software critique goes some way to redress that omission by considering the role of CDFinder in a Mac user's geotagging workflow. CDFinder is essentially an asset manager that catalogues any file on any volume (CD-ROM, DVD, USB drive, etc). But media metadata are its speciality, and this indexing powerhouse has recently been extended to handle geotags and provide related functionality. Disclosure: A single user license for CDFinder 5.1 was provided by West-Forest-Systems for the purposes of this review. I have a personal interest in the success of the Geotag Icon. Critique context The review machine was an Intel Mac mini running Mac OS X 10.5.2 (Leopard) with iLife '08. I shoot in NEF format (Nikon raw) with a D70 and JPEG with an Olympus C-70Z. My current media organization is I expect fairly typical: Most of my music is in iTunes; Most of my photos are in iPhoto; the rest are mainly in ...

In-car GPS + Palm = DIY photo tracker

Bruce — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 16:00:50 +0000

From bioneural.net:

If I told you I was using a GPS photo tracking system for geotagging photos from my Nikon D70 that stored track logs and waypoints to 1GB of memory, exported in GPX format, and connected to my Mac via USB or Bluetooth—you'd be right to wonder if I was making it up. It's not fiction, and nor is it new tech either. It's a "make do" solution I put together from gear I'd already been using for several years and with £0 new investment. Given poor Mac support in the data logger market, such a system is surely a good way to experiment on the cheap before shelling out on yet more battery-operated gadgetry. A DIY photo tracking kit A Nikon D70 I shoot in raw, meaning my D70 saves images in Nikon's NEF format. Although finding Mac OS X software that can write geo-location data to EXIF in raw is not difficult, getting that data in the first place is somewhat more involved. The D70 is neutered when it comes to support for on-camera fully automated geotagging (I'm still not entirely clear whether this is a physical hot shoe issue, or a firmware deficiency—anyone?) The upshot is that my only choice, other than the tiresome manual method, is automatic geotagging using a standalone data logger (aka photo tracker). A Navman 4470 "But why do you need another GPS?", my wife justly asked. Indeed I do have a GPS device equipped with Bluetooth, the Navman 4470, which I use for in-car navigation. Navman make great ...

Mapping fun with GeoRSS and geo-discovery

Bruce — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 00:26:26 +0000

From bioneural.net:

Continuing the recent geo-fixation trend evident on this site, this article shares the results of a slightly deeper delve into GeoRSS and looks at a great browser add-on that offers auto-discovery of geotagged content in webpages and in some feeds. What is GeoRSS? Wikipedia describes GeoRSS as "an emerging standard for encoding location as part of an RSS feed." It also encodes location in Atom feeds, and rather than the singular "standard" there are actually two variations (GeoRSS-Simple and the more advanced GeoRSS-GML). A third encoding, W3C Basic Geo, is depreciated but still in use (e.g. by Flickr; see below). I happen to use the Geo Mashup plugin for WordPress to geotag articles on this site. As well as adding appropriate metadata tags into the head of location-specific posts, the plugin automatically adds GeoRSS-Simple encoding to my feeds. The GeoRSS-Simple feeds are identified with this namespace declaration in the header: xmlns:georss="http://www.georss.org/georss" Each item in the feed will be marked-up with a coordinate pair separated by a whitespace and enclosed in a point tag. For example: 50.185676 8.464943 And that's it. So what can you do with it? GeoRSS in your blog feed In WordPress you can create a feed for any category or any tag just by putting /feed/ at the end of the URL. This is ideal if you have a dedicated category or tag for geotagged content. In my case I had geotagged content spanning several categories, so I decided to go back and add the tag "geotag" to all my geotagged articles across all categories. This ...

An ABC of geotagging photos on the Mac

Bruce — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 19:30:54 +0000

From bioneural.net:

This article considers geotagging photos from a Mac perspective, looking at automatic and manual methods, and explaining terms such as data loggers, track points, waypoints, and routes. It lists OS X software options for connecting to data loggers, converting track log formats, geo-locating photos, and writing that data to EXIF for both raw and JPEG images. It also covers the importance of time synchronization, what you can do with geotagged photos, workflow, choosing a data logger and controlling it from your Mac. Introduction With my blog articles geotagged and mapped, and the launch of geotagicons.com behind me, the next challenge was to consider geotagging my photos in future. Some time ago I blogged about doing this in iPhoto, and although workable for a small selection of images this manual/ best guess option doesn't scale well to 2-3 week vacations when you return with several hundred images and a poor recollection of what was taken exactly where. Before getting started on something (i.e. spending money!) I like to try and gain a reasonable overview of what I'm about to get into. What follows is a summary of my research into the terminology, technology, hardware and software that a budding Mac photo geotagger will want to get to grips with. If you also like to look before you leap then this article may be of service to you. Although written with fellow Mac users in mind, if you're afflicted with Windows much of the article is still relevant. What is geotagging? In a photographic context, geotagging ...

A winter walk in the Taunus

Bruce — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 09:12:43 +0000

From bioneural.net:

As January draws to a close I wanted to share the photo that has graced my desktop over the course of this month. I usually like a solid grey on my desktop to avoid distractions, but had to make an exception for this one of Simone's. The Times liked it too; it was selected for online publication in their travel photo competition (week 3). Simone took the photo on Christmas Eve 2007 while walking with family in the Taunus hills near Frankfurt am Main, Germany. The bleakness of the fog-enshrouded scene is offset by a few penetrating rays of sunlight, hardly enough to counter the bone-numbing cold and icy cheeks I can almost feel. On another level the group of walkers seem insignificant and vulnerable in this forest of tall and strong trees. Click thumbnail to enlarge imageA winter walk in the Taunus