The Author – Bart Busschots
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Aug
30
Photo of the Week 80 – O.-L.-Vrouw van Goede Wil
Filed Under Photography on August 30, 2009 | Leave a Comment
In some ways this photo is a continuation of an ongoing theme in my recent Photo of the Week instalments – photos shot during the Golden Hour and then tonemapped to bring out the best in them. However, unlike the previous examples, this shot was not taken in Ireland, but rather in my native Belgium.
Although I was baptised into the Catholic Church, we’ve parted ways in the almost 30 yeas that have elapsed since then. However, despite me turning my back on the church (not the ideals of Christianity, just institutionalised Christianity), I still love church Architecture. Churches are usually designed with great care, and are often the most beautiful buildings in a town. This is not just any church though, it’s one of the churches in my home village of Duffel in Belgium, it’s also the church myself and my brothers were baptised in (at least I think all three of us were baptised here). This is not the biggest church in Duffel, but, in my mind, it’s the one with the most character.
The full name of the church is Onze Lieve Vrouw van Goede Wil, but you almost never see it written like that, on paper or signs you’ll generally see it as O.-L.-Vr. van Goede Wil or O.-L.-Vrouw van Goede Wil. In English that roughly translates to Our loving Lady of good will, in other words, it’s a church dedicated to the virgin Mary. Today it’s a small church in a small parish in a small village in the Belgian countryside, but in the past it was a place of pilgrimage. A supposedly miraculous statue of the virgin mother was found in a Willow tree growing in a marshy field where the church now stands.
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 18-55mm (D40 kit lens)
- Exposure: 1/640 sec
- Focal Length: 32mm
- Focal Ratio: f/4.5
- ISO: 400
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Processing: Generated by tonemapping a single RAW file in Photomatix Pro and then selectively tweaking the exposure slightly using the Dodge & Burn plugin in Aperture.
Aug
24
Photo of the Week 79 – Pike Bridge Re-Visited
Filed Under Photography on August 24, 2009 | 1 Comment
If this week’s instalment reminds you a lot of last week’s, that’s no coincidence, this week’s shot is also of Pike’s Brige, and also shot at the same time of day, the so-called golden hour around sunset. There are some marked differences though, last week’s shot was taken into the sun, this week’s is taken with the sun directly behind the camera – meaning this is the opposite side of the bridge. Although the conditions look identical, the shots were actually taken two days apart.
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 18-55mm (D40 kit lens)
- Exposure: 1/500 sec
- Focal Length: 42mm
- Focal Ratio: f/8
- ISO: 400
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Exposure Bias: -0.3EV
- Processing: Generated by tonemapping a single RAW file in Photomatix Pro
Aug
23
My Detailed Review of ScreenSteps
Filed Under Computers & Tech on August 23, 2009 | 13 Comments
If you follow me on Twitter you’ll have seen me vent my frustrations with ScreenSteps earlier this week. I held off on writing this review for a few days to get a bit more experience with the app, and to give myself some time to decide how best to phrase my issues so they don’t come across as being overly negatively. The short version is that I’m very conflicted about this app. Without a shadow of a doubt their idea is sound, as is their basic architecture. However, I found a few aspects of the interface exceptionally frustrating. Some parts of the app suffer from poor usability in my opinion, and another lacks what I consider to be very basic features. Ultimately, what’s missing is some fit and polish. However, it can’t be denied that the app works, which is obviously very important. I hope you can see why I’m so conflicted about this app. I want to love it, but I can’t – at least not this version.
Aug
19
Twitter Login Not Secured – WTF?
Filed Under Computers & Tech, Security on August 19, 2009 | 9 Comments
I don’t normally log in to Twitter directly – I almost always use clients – but today I did, and I noticed something which shocked me – Twitter is sending login details over an unsecured HTTP connection! I have no idea if Twitter’s always done this, or if they are experiencing some kind of bug today, but either way, this is a serious issue.
Were I to be using public WiFi or any other un-trusted network it would be trivial for someone to get both my username and password and take over my Twitter account. Worse still – if I were to use the same credentials elsewhere like so many people do – all those other accounts could be taken over too. This is just not acceptable in 2009.
Aug
16
Photo of the Week 78 – Evening at Pike Bridge
Filed Under Photography on August 16, 2009 | 3 Comments
Photography is all about light, and you get some of the nicest light each day in the hours around sunrise and sunset, or the so-called ‘golden hours’. I’m not a fan of early mornings, so, for me, there is only one golden hour each day, but some of my very favourite pictures are taken during that hour, including this one.
I got this photo on an evening when I wasn’t really planning to shoot, I was out getting some much-needed exercise, and brought the camera along ‘just in case’. I’m certainly glad I did. The light was superb, and it’s very rare that the water is this still under the bridge. The dynamic range was very large in this shot so I tonemapped the RAW file in Photomatix Pro to recover both the shadows and the highlights. I have also edited this image for use as a desktop wallpaper on either a standard (4:3) or widescreen (16:10) monitor.
This is Pike Bridge between Maynooth and Leixlip in Co. Kildare, Ireland. It has two arches, one crossing the Dublin to Sligo railway line, and this one crossing the Royal Canal.
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 18-55mm (D40 kit lens)
- Exposure: 1/80 sec
- Focal Length: 20mm
- Focal Ratio: f/8
- ISO: 400
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Exposure Bias: -1.0EV
- Processing: Generated by tonemapping a single RAW file in Photomatix Pro
Aug
12
Photo of the Week 77 – Ennis Friary
Filed Under Photography on August 12, 2009 | 1 Comment
This is my 67th Photo of the Week, yet it is only the second monochrome image to make it into the series. I think this is because I absolutely adore colour, and feel rather out of my depth when colour gets extracted from the equation. It took me hours to process this shot the first time, then I got some feed back from people on a few flickr groups, and then it took me another hour or so to have another go and come up with something I not just liked, but liked a lot. Most of the time I only revert to monochrome as a fall-back, but I’m going to try change that, and spend more time experimenting with monochrome precisely because I’m not comfortable with it.
Returning to this image, I reverted to monochrome here because I didn’t have a choice. I had once chance to get a short visit to the priory, so I had to make do with what ever I got – which was mostly rain! At the very end I got a few shots in good sun, but I didn’t have the opportunity to re-shoot this shot in sun because of time pressures. So, what I got was an image with a blown out sky, a flat looking stone building, and almost no colours to speak of. I was either going to bin it, or go monochrome. Determined not to waste the shot, I went for the monochrome option – deciding texture was going to be what I needed to concentrate on – in particular, I wanted to recover details in the sky, and enhance the details in the stonework of the building.
Since I’d shot in RAW I started by tone-mapping the image to recover detail in the sky, and also to enhance details in walls. Then I converted to monochrome using the monochrome mixer in Aperture, before using Aperture’s dodge & burn plug-in to correct some side effects of the tone-mapping and to pick out the spire of the church a little better. After seeking and getting some opinions from others I also used some pretty dramatic levels adjustments to really push up the contrast and really make those textures jump out.
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 18-55mm (D40 kit lens)
- Exposure: 1/400 sec
- Focal Length: 18mm
- Focal Ratio: f/8
- ISO: 400
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Processing: Generated by tonemapping a single RAW file in Photomatix Pro, then converting to monochrome in Aperture, dodging & burning in Aperture, as well as applying some other tweaks in Aperture.
Aug
5
Photo of the Week 76 – A Painted Lady
Filed Under Photography on August 5, 2009 | 1 Comment
Last week’s photo of the week was the result of serendipity – this weeks is the inverse, it’s the result of planning and dogged determination.
I was, and indeed still am, working on a long-term project to photography all 28 species of butterfly that live in Ireland (you can follow my progress here). I’d been keeping an eye on the different species I saw flying around each time I came outside – and the day before I’d seen that there were Painted Ladies on the wing – a species I was missing!
The time was right, the weather was right, so I chose a spot (the Junior Gardens on the St. Patrick’s College campus in Maynooth), grabbed my gear, and set out on my mission to capture a Painted Lady. I was in a great mood, full of anticipation, but I wasn’t expecting a quick result. Butterflies never do what you tell them, and rarely do what you’d like!
I waited. Then I waited some more. Then a little more. Finally, out of the corner of my eye I spotted one! A Painted Lady. But it didn’t sit still. It flew from flower to flower never landing long enough to even get a focus lock. Then it flew over the wall and out of sight. On the one hand it was a relief to see that my quarry was indeed around, and that I’d chosen my spot correctly. On the other hand, it was a frustrating near-miss. But I continued to wait. Slowly and watchfully walking around around and around the garden.
Eventually another Painted Lady came into the garden. This one was a little more co-operative, landing on flowers and feeding – but not in a very photogenic way. I shot about 25 shots of this guy, but none were good enough to make it here. I waited some more. Another one, this one was feeding on fabulous pink Daisies, and what’s more the Daisies were tall enough to throw the other plants near them totally out of focus when I got in close with the 55-200mm. The setting was perfect, vibrant colours and a lovely bokeh. BUT, my winged friend insisted on landing on low-down flowers, hence always being half-obsgtructed by one or more taller flower heads. I didn’t get the perfect shot, but I could now see it in my head. It was a Painted Lady on one of these pink Daisies with that fabulous green bokeh. all I had to do now was wait.
I stopped making my rounds of the garden and stood watch over my perfect setting. It took another half an hour, but in the end, I was rewarded with the shot you see here. In all I spent two hours trying to get this shot. I think it was time well spent! (don’t worry, I wasn’t bored, I had my iPhone with me and was listening to Photo Focus – doing as the jingle instructs – making pictures, not just taking pictures!)
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 55-200mm
- Exposure: 1/1600 sec
- Focal Length: 200mm
- Focal Ratio: f/8
- ISO: 400
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Exposure Bias: -0.7EV
Aug
3
NetNewsWire – From Hero to Zero in one ‘update’
Filed Under Computers & Tech on August 3, 2009 | 6 Comments
I have been a huge fan of NetNewsWire for many years and have recommended it every chance I got on podcasts, blogs, and in person. Before NNW was free I was a happy paying customer, and, to be honest, I worried a little when it went free. Without charging for it, would the developers keep adding to it? Keep driving it forward? The answer to that was a resounding ‘no’, it stagnated. However, it was still every bit as good as before it became free, so the stagnation didn’t really bother me. It did what I needed it to do, and it did it well, so I was happy.
What did I need it to do? Firstly, it let me organise my feeds into folders nested as deeply as I wanted, and it allowed me to read a folder as if it was a single feed generated as a combination of all the feeds in that folder or sub-folder. I had literally hundreds of feeds, and had them perfectly organised in folders often three or even four levels deep. It also allowed me to sync read and unread statuses between my many copies of NNW on the three Macs I use and on my iPhone. Finally, it allowed me to keep “clippings” which were also synchronised between all my clients.
This all lead to a fantastic workflow. I would read my news feeds on what ever computer I was at, and, when ever I came across a potential story to include in the IMP Live podcast, I’d just drag and drop it to my clippings folder. On Fridays when it was time to assemble the show notes for IMP Live, I’d just go through my clippings folder on my Mac at home and remove stories from the clippings folder as I added them to the IMP Shownotes. Then, the next week, I’d start the process over again. It was the perfect news reading and gathering experience for me.
Then came last week’s ‘update’ to NNW. I use the term very very loosely, because all this ‘update’ did was strip out features, and hence destroy my news reading experience, and my IMP Live work flow. To paraphrase Churchill, NNW have managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory!