Entries Tagged 'Photography' ↓

Wow! Where has the last year gone?! It seems like no time since I first posted about going to WWDC 2009.

I never got a chance to say just how much I enjoyed it last year. It was a great opportunity to learn a ton of stuff about Mac and iPhone development first hand from Apple engineers. The talks were excellent and well delivered, there was a real buzz around the place and the other developers were extremely friendly and helpful. And of course it was an opportunity to spend some time in one of my favourite cities.

It has also been a very interesting and busy year for me since then with Mobilizd. I have completed a number of iPhone projects and have some great iPhone and iPad projects in the works at the moment. I have also met and worked with lots of really cool and interesting people.

I am delighted to be going back again this year, even though it has been a bit of a nightmare getting everything sorted out at such short notice (WTF was that about Steve!?). In particular, I am looking forward to seeing the new iPhone 4G launch at Steve Jobs’ Keynote (hopefully), learning more about iPad app design & development, new SDK features such as Game Center and meeting up with lots of cool developers and of course the WWDC Bash in Yerba Buena Gardens!

So as part of my time honoured WWDC tradition, here is a picture I took in SF last year:

The Balclutha, San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park

Canon 40D Remote Live View

Tonight I finally got to play with my new DSLR camera, the Canon EOS 40D. As Royal Mail are taking their time to deliver my Compact Flash Card, I have been unable to use it in anger until now. I had read about the Remote Live View feature of the camera so I decided to try it out tonight. As you can see from the picture, not only can you remotely operate the camera from your PC, you can also see the real time Live View image that the camera will display on its LCD. The photos are instantainously downloaded to you PC as soon as you take them too. It is a brilliant bit of software, a lot more interesting than developing financial software that is for sure!

I am only really starting out in photography so I have a lot to learn. Apologies for the flash reflection!

This week I purchased a pro-sumer Digital SLR camera from a well known high street chain. I was encouraged to take out their accidental damage policy claiming that I was actually buying my next camera. If it was broken, they would replace it “whatever happens”, if it couldn’t be repaired within 21 days, with an equivalent model, even if it was more expensive. It works out at around £30 a year for 5 years. So if in 4 and a half years a new model comes out and I accidentally run over my camera with my car, I should* get it replaced by the newer model. Of course it doesn’t cover loss or theft. I was thinking of getting some sort of after care as DSLRs are known to be delicate and very expensive to repair and it should give me peace of mind when using it “in the field”. I have 14 days to cancel the policy, what should I do??

* Whether I do or not I don’t know, sounds a bit too good to be true IMHO.

You may have noticed the odd photo appearing on the sidebar of my blog. I have recently started uploading a selection of my images into flickr. Its quickly becoming a habit, and a time consuming one at that. Every photo has to be lovingly touched up in Photoshop, then tagged with a description and title, tags and added to sets. Then you have to wait ages for the upload!

The thing I enjoy the most is describing each picture. It allows you to take a bit more time over each image, rather than flicking over it in a slide show. It encourages you to find out what you acually saw (e.g. the name of a statue or ship). Also, once tagged you have a great way of quickly finding images you are interested in. Flickr’s 100MB monthly upload limit is going to be very restrictive, which may mean upgrading to the pro account .

I have spent a *lot* of time recently organising and reconciling my digital photo collection and storing them in an easy-to-traverse hierarchical structure. Its amazing how disorganised it can quickly get with lots of duplicates from repeatedly copying the same images to different folders. Photography is one of those things that I would love to do more of, given the time and necessary budget!

Anyway, expect to see a lot more (if you are at all interested) in the near future.