Globetrotter Photoblog: June 2010

Billboards and workflow

>> Tuesday, June 22, 2010 – Globetrotter

Billboards in Bor taken on Sunday. I have in DPP made one picture EV-2 and one EV+2 in TIFF and then run them through Photomatix HDR tone mapping. Then scaled them down using Photoshop. Then added the tagging in Zoner Photostudio, including the Geotagging. Then uploaded to smugmug and copied the link that is finally posted into Blogger.. Its a bit of a workflow.....

One cloudy day

>> Sunday, June 20, 2010 – Globetrotter

It started out nicely today with a lot of sunshine then the clouds came and 30 minutes after this picture it was pouring down. Rainy season is in Jonglei properly now. It was though a good opportunity for some HDR photography.
Do note that this picture is uploaded on SmugMug photohosting. I am just testing it out to see the responsetimes compared to my normal hosting at one.com so far it seems much faster though.

I added in a small slideshow on this blog on the bottom which seems to load quite fast, also from SmugMug.
It took them almost 2 hours to get us back online.

Changing EXIF data and Geotagging with least effort?!

>> – EXIF, Geotag, Globetrotter, GPS, HDR, Software

Yesterday I downloaded Zoner Photo Studio 12 Professional as it seemed to be a product that had some features I have not found so far in any other software I am using.

I have before tried to put up pictures on Google earth, Panoramio, PicasaWeb, Flickr, my own picture gallery and so forth but always had an issue with Tagging.

1. I dont want to spend time tagging everything while typing a lot of information. I want to batch tag a lot of photos with the basic tags I need.

2. I want a simple way to point and click on a map to geotag a picture.

3. I also liked the idea of being able to easily re-organize pictures into folders based on year, month and date. Normally when I go out and shoot pictures it is one location one day for a particular activity so the date seems to be the best starting point for storing my pictures. My Canon 350DS just give me the 261CANON folders with 100 pictures in each. It however also make sure the EXIF data is there so why not use it.

4. I also want to make sure each pictures is marked with the Copyright information in the Exif data easily.

In the batch EXIF mode Zoner will open a new window and you can simply mark and click and the tag is added and then save it to all pictures.

Zoner allow me to batch tag a whole directory, even Geotag a whole directory if needed. Ofcourse pictures are taken at more or less unique GPS points but with 600 pictures in my web gallery that would be an impossible task to do. At present I am just targetting trying to show them in the right village. For some specifically interesting photo's I will Geotag them on the actual spot.

I have not seen these features in any of the softwares I use normally. Picasa, Adobe Photoshop CS2, Digital Photo Professional.

One thing I have discovered the Zoner software can not do properly is HDR pictures. Atleast not if you are taking pictures without tripod, remote release and so forth as the software assumes your 3 - 5 pictures are perfectly aligned before importing. Thus Photomatix and Photoshop is still the best choice for me in that department.

It should be noted that tonight the SmugMug uploding page went offline with the following error message. Atleast! it does not impact the viewing of the pictures on this blog! eventhough theyare on the site. Can only hope they are uploading a new version of the site with some new features then ?!

Murle Village in Jonglei State

>> – Africa, cattlecamp, Globetrotter, humanitarian, Jonglei, Murle, South Sudan, Sudan, swamp

A picture taken from the Mi-8 I was in the other week while going to Pibor. Trying to get a steady shot in a vibrating helicopter like the Mi-8 is not easy. Atleast we are able to open the window while in the air so we have a chance at clear shots.

I am now starting to Geotag as well as put more EXIF data into the pictures. So you can actually fin out exactly where this photo was taken.