Photography News and Inspiration - August 1st Edition

Featured Image: "Postman by the wall" - Nikon D700

It’s a lovely fresh Autumn day here in Ireland, as the first official day of my favourite season of the year begins. I didn’t do a roundup post last week as I hadn’t come across that much of note. This week, there’s a few interesting news and website tidbits and I’ve some great inspiration sites to follow.

I’ve had a busy and somewhat surprising week. Over the last whole I’ve been working on making this little short film about Dublin City from some of the footage that I’ve been collecting over the years. I posted it yesterday as part of my Streets of Dublin project, and it was picked up by several local tourist websites which was pretty good, but then the local news media picked up on it and it kind of snowballed. It was the first thing that I’ve ever done that’s gone viral, which is pretty exciting. Anyway, a big thanks to everyone who said such kind words and helped get the video noticed.

I also launched my latest set of Lightroom Presets, Landscape Gold this week. In the space of a week, it’s already become my most popular set of presets. There’s still a chance to get it for the special launch discount, and I want to thank everyone for the great enthusiastic response. My next set, “Steely Blue” will be available next week (hopefully!)

Right, on to the news!

First up, Sony Alpha Rumors reports that Sony posted a surprise first-quarter profit. Sony’s camera devision has been on fire lately so it’s great to see the company’s fortunes turning around.

Speaking of Sony, Sony Alpha Rumors also has a roundup of the large number of Sony Rumours floating around about Sony’s upcoming announcements at this years Photoikina exhibit in Germany.

If you’re a mac user, Apple has posted a handy technical support document on how to avoid Image Persistence on Apple displays. While this is kind of general information for any computer user, there’s some MacOS specific tips in there.

DpReview covered an interesting story this week, that a group of Hollywood producers got together to convince Kodak to keep producing Motion Picture Film. With Fujifilm dropping out of the business last year, it’s great to see that kodak is going to keep producing film in the near term. While advances in digital cinematography have come a long way, there’s still something special about movies shot on film.

I recently wrote about a new app that was in development to help Aperture users move their Libraries to Lightroom called Aperture Exporter. The app had been in beta, but it’s now available for purchase in the Mac App Store or directly from the developer’s own site for $14.99 (which seems a little steep to me for a single purpose tool, but anyway)

If you’ve been trying out the Yosemite public beta from Apple and the use of translucency has been bothering you, the Mac Observer has a tip on how to disable it. (Ok, I know this isn’t directly photography related, but it’s still a handy thing to know ;-) )

Inspiration

I have two great photographers for you to follow this week, with some wonderful photography on their websites:

Sarah Beth Photography Sarah Beth is a pet photographer from Minnesota and her work is simply gorgeous. If you like animals you have to see some of the great images on her site.

Poems without Words A really great photo blog by Rebecca Lilly with some really beautiful images. Rebecca is a fellow Irish photographer and she also develops some popular Lightroom presets and Photoshop Actions.