heipei's weblog » Langeweile

CCed photos, still a lot of fun

Jojo — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 20:49:31 +0000

I’ve been keeping track of my CCed photos for a while now, updating the list of people that use my flickr-photos on a regular base. Today I did another round, simply by googling “heipei flickr”. Not surprisingly I came up with about 12 new websites and blogs. And I’m happy that people are discovering my more advanced photos as well, instead of using old and embarrassing snaps from my mobile phone.

The shot on the left was done after Katrin asked me for some photos to illustrate a blogpost related to medicine over on her blog. Some other site apparently had the same idea, and now this photo can be found here, here, here and here. This was not only rewarding for me but also interesting since I discovered (from this and other shots) that websites not only seem to search flickr but rather other related articles on related websites and simply use the same photos. When the photo is used in the right context and the website itself looks professional, one might even forget the small “CC by heipei” link at the bottom and the fact that I’m an amateur spending little time or effort (much less creativity ;) on these shots. This can only lead to the conclusion that photography is as least as much simple engineering as creativity, or that I have some hidden sense for compositing an image resulting from years of experimentation, browsing flickr and doing CG where you spend a lot of time making your rendered images look like photographs.

In general I’m still happy with my EF-S 18-200mm 3.5-5.6 and my EF 50mm 1.4, and the decision to buy a Speedlite was absolutely right (in fact, reviewing old shots, I’ve been kicking myself about not having bought one earlier). Apart from some crazy experiments and time-consuming handicrafted tools, my usual approach is to use the flash pointed toward the ceiling, increase it 1/3 to 1 with TTL and just fire away. If possible, a natural balance with available light will make laymen forget a flash was even used. You can go fully manual or simply use the ‘P’-mode with an appropriate aperture. A nice result can be seen on the right, though Katrin is slightly underexposed in this one. What I did was take the photo indoors (where you have your trusty white ceiling) in front of an open window at dusk. The backlight was provided by the setting sun, which adds a lot the shot and usually is done with a dedicated flash. I will be trying more of these in the future.

A little photostream-recap below, so no one can complain that I’m not blogging for the average reader anymore. Enjoy!

Photo technique bits: Polfilter

Jojo — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 13:24:22 +0000

A polfilter (pol for polarizing) can give you all kinds of nifty improvements in your outdoor pictures. Here is a little preview. I expect to achieve much more drastic differences come summer:

Left: No filter (or at least filter turned towards “normal”). Right: Filter set to the right angle. Make sure you check out the full-sized version of the photo and pay attention not only to the sky but also to the trees and the windows of the building. Image was sharpened with Gimp btw.

Spring: A photographer’s best friend

Jojo — Sun, 17 May 2009 21:14:14 +0000

Yep, it’s time for another photo-only post. Enjoy!

By the way, you should try the Eifelsteig.

Photography quickie: Mirror, mirror…

Jojo — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 17:48:13 +0000

Trying to take a shot of my new cell-phone (after all it’s raining today so there’s nothing to photograph on the other side of my window), I lacked sufficient natural lighting and the few lamps in my room don’t amount to much when it comes to object photography. A flash is the only logical choice in this situation. Since I still have no external flash which can be oriented and covered/diffused easily I’m still relying on the builtin-flash of the 400D. Flashing something (shiny) head-on gives really ugly shadows and reflections, as we all know. It also makes for skin that looks like it was soaked in a jar of butter. So, I had the really simple idea of reflecting the flash towards the ceiling, where it can bounce back and scatter. I used a small mirror at an angle of about 45 degrees. This only works indoors and with a bright ceiling which isn’t too far away from the flash (1-3m is OK I suppose). Now for the juicy images ;)
Best viewed large, this shows a) no flash at all b) direct flash c) indirect flash. Notice the shadows (or lack thereof) around the phone in the shots.

Another good example, a) direct flash b) indirect flash. People which look greasy on photos (which is everyone) will be happy to see that it doesn’t have to be like that. I also like how the second image has more depth than the first, which looks “flat” from the lack of natural shadows (where the light-source usually is above the object).

Please take note that both of these shots were more than insufficiently lit without a flash, so the natural-looking light distribution can almost completely be attributed to the flash.

Almost Summer

Jojo — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 12:54:02 +0000

With already two full short-trouser-days this year, summer should be right around the corner. As I’ve got nothing else to write I’m gonna post a few photos again, from the walks we took over the last few weeks.

The semester starts next week, but I’m hoping to keep up the regular walks around Aachen.

Wanted: Blue sky, green leaves

Jojo — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 15:35:49 +0000

When I was younger I hated the summer (or let’s say I preferred winter). That was because in winter you had a reasonable explanation why you would sit in front of your PC all day long instead of going outside to play with the other kids or generally to “get some fresh air”. Now that I don’t have to explain myself to anyone anymore and that I’m bound to a desk by my studies and my work (and my hobbies as well) I can’t wait to prescribe myself a lot of fresh air. Having said that I’ll post a few pictures (the sky may already be blue, but don’t let that fool you) for those of you who couldn’t make anything of the last few posts here ;)

GitHub Commit Badge

Jojo — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 14:47:09 +0000

After searching (and finding no existing solution), I created a small JavaScript-based commit-badge/banner which you can show of on your website to point at the latest (or a specific) commit in a Github-repo. This is what it looks like (if you see blank space here or something fubar please reload the page and after that complain ;):

(A live version with more than one repo can be seen here.)
So far this badge works with Firefox, Safari 3.x and Opera. I haven’t had the resources or motivation to make it work on IE though.
This has been my first foray into the world of JavaScript and DOM, and the first time I really wrote a CSS from scratch, so expect things to be buggy and the code to look slightly amateurish. The script uses JavaScript-libs, which I packed into one big file. jQuery is used to get the data from the Github API, Datejs for parsing the timestamp and an MD5-lib for requesting the gravatars.
If you want to use it on your website you should just download everything from Github and put it on your webspace. The README shows you how to embed it into your webpage (I made sure that the CSS-elements don’t clash with your existing stylesheets).
If you want to contribute to it you’re welcome to (the easiest way is forking the repo at Github), but please don’t try to make it into a monster-app which does much more than it was intended to do.
Thanks go out to DrNic for contributing and also for his Github-badges project for the good code-examples.
(By the way, Github asked for a JavaScript-version in this blog-post, so here it is. I hope they’re not mad at me for stealing the two tiny logos. ;)
Update: I notified defunkt of GitHub and what do you know, I got featured on their blog (entry here). Awesome. I hope I can put some further touches into the project in the next few days.

Streulichtblende DIY

Jojo — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 19:37:32 +0000

Was ist eine Streulichtblende? Eine Streulichtblende sieht so aus (Foto von fensterbme), man kennt den Anblick von jedem Profi-Fotografen. Also eine Blende die man vorne auf sein Objektiv steckt. Und was hat man jetzt davon? Wenn man Leute fragt die schon so eine Blende haben hört man dass die Fotos dadurch einen besseren Kontrast haben und weniger ausgewaschen aussehen. Das ist so da Lichtstrahlen die nicht direkt (also vom Motiv) ins Objektiv fallen sondern halt durch gestreutes Licht von der schrägen Seite kommen durch diese Blende abgeschirmt werden. Ich bin bei solchen Aussagen allerdings immer ein bisschen skeptisch. Deshalb habe ich heute mal ein kleines Experiment gestartet, nachdem ich jetzt sicher bin die 20 Euro für eine richtige Blende zu investieren.

Idee
Tja, Langeweile, tiefstehende Nachmittags-Sonne, Stativ mal ausgepackt. Hm. Also eine Schachtel Schoko-Bananen-Müsli genommen, einen längeren Streifen mit ca. 5cm Breite abgeschnitten, das ganze als Zylinder genau auf größe des Objektiv gerollt und dann zusammengetackert. Dann muss man nur noch das Foto machen, wobei man natürlich drauf achten muss dass das Licht sich zwischen den Aufnahmen nicht ändert und dass keine andere Blende/Belichtungszeit benutzt wird.

Resultat
Wow, das hätte ich nicht erwartet. Das Bild ohne Blende sieht aus als wäre das Originalmotiv von einer ordentlichen Smogwolke befallen worden, wodurch alles heller und viel kontrastärmer wurde. Guckt es euch selbst an, ist schwer das nebeneinander zu zeigen, deswegen empfehle ich beide Bilder runterzuladen und hintereinander zu gucken (Foto oben natürlich mit Blende, unten ohne).

Fazit
Die Blende ist absolut billig und einfach, das Material innen ist weder dunkel noch extra beschichtet und trotzdem sieht man schon so einen Unterschied. Der Vorteil bei einer richtigen Blende ist auch dass man sie falschrum auf das Objektiv stecken kann und somit leicht transportieren und gleichzeitig das Objektiv schützen kann.

Cheese!

Jojo — Mon, 12 May 2008 22:12:35 +0000

Since I really don’t have anything else to write about (and since some people complained about the lack of non-techie topics here recently) I’m just gonna post a few pictures and a link to my Flickr-Photostream. I’m sure some of you haven’t checked it out yet, but photography is a hobby of mine so it shouldn’t be omitted in my weblog. Also, pretty images always draw attention ;)

Keeping track of my CCed photos

Jojo — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 09:06:01 +0000

Since I’ve been more active again on flickr lately I was interested if any photos of mine have been used in the web. I release my photos under the Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons License. This means that people can take my photos, alter them, use them (even commercially) as long as they refer to me and use the same license. I guess some people just don’t care about the license of their photos while others don’t think that anyone would like to use theirs, but I did some research (i.e. googling) and turned up quite a few web pages which are in no way affiliated with me (I didn’t know them before or their authors) but still use my images. How they found those? Not sure, but I guess using a combination of “search-for-cced-images” and the appropriate tags. Here is the list:

Update: Aug 24, 2011

Updates until Feb 6, 2011

Some of these sites are private bloggers who look for a picture to go with their posts. Others however are professional websites. This is a way of showing off I guess, but it also shows that people do care about free photos. Now, there might be more websites with my pictures which I haven’t found, maybe not everyone links back to my photostream. If you do use my photos I’d really appreciate a flickr-comment, it makes me happy to see my motives on other websites ;). (Someone even contacted me once about using one of my photographs in a book about students, but for some reason didn’t do so after all.)
This list is also a reminder for me, and I might make it into a permanent page at some point.