Archive for the 'photography' Category

01-07-2007

Blanchard Springs Caverns in Arkansas

Amanda and I visited the Blanchard Springs Caverns in Arkansas a few weeks ago, just before Christmas. If you can believe the tour guides, it’s the top rated show cave in the United States, as determined by the National Caves Association. Regardless of the hype, it is definitely an impressive cave, with some very large formations. If you’re ever in the area — a couple hours north of Little Rock — I recommend checking it out.

Unfortunately, I forgot to load a blank memory card in the camera before the tour, but I did manage to get a few photos before running out of space. Click on the photo to see some of the highlights on Flickr.

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Posted by Matt in photography, travel | No Comments »

06-11-2006

Custom Sketches for Only $1

I can’t remember where I first stumbled across Sketch-It, but I’m very glad I did. For just $1 you can have a custom sketch created by one of several artists. You can submit an idea, such as “ugly tie” or “baby shower.” Or you can submit a photo you’d like to see rendered as a sketch. The resulting sketches are released under a Creative Commons license.

I recently submitted a photo of my dog and I’m very impressed by the results, especially for just $1. In looking over some of the other submissions, the results can vary quite a bit, but if you’re disappointed with a sketch, you can simply pay another dollar and resubmit your request. Or you can contact individual artists who contribute to the site to find out about custom work.

Daisy photo

Daisy sketch from Sketch-It

Posted by Matt in cc, creativity, photography | No Comments »

06-10-2006

DIY Poster from 1910 Austin Panoramic Photo

My office at work has no windows and is pretty stark. I’ve been needing something to spruce up the walls.

For years I’ve been wanting to order a print of a 1910 panoramic photo of downtown Austin that’s on the Library of Congress Website. However, the price and/or the hassle has kept me from doing so. It turns out the LOC site has a much easier system for ordering prints now, but I have already taken matters into my own hands.

I used a program called The Rasterbator to convert the image into a series of 8″x11″ sheets that fit together to make a poster that’s over 7 feed wide. I used Scotch Clear Removable Mounting Squares to mount the individual sheets on my office wall. I’m very happy with the end result. Click on the photo below to see a larger version.

Austin panoramic cropped

Posted by Matt in Austin, photography | No Comments »

04-26-2006

Dim Sum Beginner’s Guide


Click to download the guide (PDF).

On a trip to Hong Kong a couple of years ago, Amanda and I wished we’d had some kind of Rosetta Stone to take with us to the dim sum restaurants we visited. We knew dishes we liked, but we didn’t know the Chinese names or characters for them. Most of the places we tried didn’t have the typical dim sum carts to order from, so pointing wasn’t an option either.

In getting ready for our recent trip to Beijing, I decided to put together my own dim sum cheat sheet. I used Wikipedia to find a list of dim sum dishes along with the Chinese characters for them. I then searched Flickr for photos tagged “dim sum” that were under a Creative Commons license. I put the two together to create a Dim Sum Beginner’s GuidePDF file. This guide is released under a Creative Commons license, so please feel free to add to or build-on the idea.

The printout did come in handy on our trip to Beijing. Dim sum wasn’t as prevalent there as it was in Hong Kong, but we did come across a few places. The ones we ate at didn’t have English menus or picture menus, so the cheat sheet was a big help.

Admittedly, I’m still a dim sum beginner myself, so this is not a comprehensive guide. There are lots more dishes I could add, but I stuck to the ones I know well—things that we hoped to eat on our trip and would recommend to anyone who hadn’t tried dim sum before. For more options, check out the book “Dim Sum: A Pocket Guide.”

I’d love to see more twists on this idea? How about a beginner’s guide to tapas, sushi, meze, and other snacky foods around the world?

Posted by Matt in communication, food, creativity, photography, travel, wikis | 1 Comment »

03-31-2006

DIY Creativity Poster


Click for a larger version.

Michael Michalko has written some great books on creativity. His book Thinkertoys contains a chapter on a technique called Brutethink, where random words are used to generate ideas by forcing you to associate the words with the problem at hand. Thinkertoys includes a three page list of words (pp. 169-171) intended to be used in generating ideas.

When I read the book a while back, I thought the word list might be handy to have to refer to, so I OCRed it and converted it to text. It came to mind when I ran across tagged photos on Flickr. It was fun to plug in the various words to explore interesting photography.

After seeing Mike Matas’ post about creating a Life Poster, I decided to create a poster to use for a visual spin on “Brutethink” problem solving. Since Flickr has a great stock of photos licensed under the Creative Commons, there was a lot of source material to pull from.

I searched Flickr for photos tagged with some of the terms from Michalko’s Thinkertoys list and compiled them into a single poster-sized image. Not all the photos will necessarily evoke the words that got me to them, but I think the end product will still prove useful for generating ideas. There are also a couple of words duplicated, in cases where I couldn’t decide between photos I liked.

I used my favorite freeware image viewer, Irfanview, to crop the photos and create the contact sheet to make into a poster. The process was very similar to the one using XnView.

The beauty of Creative Commons is that I can make the poster available for download from Flickr under the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License. To access the full sized version, click on the “All Sizes” button towards the top of the page. Many thanks to all the photographers who made their work available via Creative Commons.

After some price comparison searching, I decided to go with P-e-photo to print the resulting poster. With shipping, a 30″x40″ poster comes to a little under $30. I’ll update this post to include a photo of the final product, once the poster arrives in the mail.

If $30 is too much for you, an 18″x24″ print would be significantly cheaper and wouldn’t require cropping. Also, the resulting montage makes for an interesting—though busy—desktop background.

Keep in mind, the same idea can be applied using a variety of random stimuli. Some other sources to seed ideas include:

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Posted by Matt in cc, creativity, photography, general | 2 Comments »

03-31-2006

Search for Creative Commons Photos Using FlickrLilli

If you’re looking for Creative Commons photos to use in a project, check out FlickrLilli. The site allows users to search Flickr for photos released under Creative Commons licenses. Flickr already allows users to search for photos under each particular license, but FlickrLilli adds the ability to search across multiple licenses at once.

Posted by Matt in creativity, photography | No Comments »

03-27-2006

Beijing Photos and Trip Report

Amanda and I got back from Beijing about a week ago. It was a whirlwind trip, since we only had six days to spend there.

The highlight of the trip was visiting the Great Wall. On our second day in the city, we woke up in the middle of the night. Since we couldn’t sleep, we decided to get started towards the Badaling section of the wall. Rather than take the $80+ tour or hire a private car for $100, we opted to take the subway, then the local #919 bus. For two of us, the subway fare totalled about $1.50 round trip and $6 for the bus. We got to Badaling around 7am and it was still pretty quiet. The tour groups were just rolling in around the time we left.

The Chaoyang Theatre Acrobatics show was also impressive. The tickets were pricey, at $25 each for a one hour show, but the talent was top notch.

The most impressive food was at the two restaurants inside the Grand Hyatt. I had read multiple recommendations on Chowhound.com for the Made in China restaurant, but it was booked up the first night we went. Instead, we tried the restaurant downstairs called Noble Court. The food and service were excellent. We went back for the “Beijing Duck” at Made in China a few nights later and were even more impressed.

The Beijing Zoo was mostly depressing. The pandas had a decent enclosure, but with $2 admission, it’s not all that surprising that the cages for many of the other animals were dilapidated. The newly built aquarium—located inside the zoo but with a separate $12.50 admission fee—was impressive at first. However, you soon realize that the exhibit area is rather small and most of the building houses the dolphin show. Unfortunately, we were pressed for time and weren’t able to stick around for the show.

Another downer was our hotel. Luckily, we got a good deal via Priceline. The lobby of the hotel smelled very strongly of stale smoke. Overall it had little worth recommending, except for the huge grocery store in the basement of the attached mall. I was amazed to find that I could get Dr. Pepper (in the imported foods section) for about $1 per can. My favorite find was the bottled green tea they stocked, at less than $1 for about 1.5 liters. I probably drank about 8-10 liters while we were there. Now that I’m home, I’m hoping I can find some comparable bottled green tea at one of the local Asian grocery stores.

I enjoyed the trip and I’m glad we went, but Beijing is not high on my list of destinations to recommend to others. I know that they’re trying to make the city more tourist friendly in preparation for the Summer Olympic games in 2008, but I wouldn’t consider it particularly tourist friendly yet. In hindsight, I would have planned and researched more, to try to avoid some of the less impressive attractions.

I’ve posted my favorite photos from the trip. I’d love to hear feedback about the photos or from others who’ve been to Beijing.

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Posted by Matt in food, photography, travel | 2 Comments »

02-28-2006

Photos From Texas Juggling Society’s Jugglefest 2006


Alex Chimal

The Texas Juggling Society held its 13th annual Jugglefest earlier this month. The festival just keeps getting better every year. This year, visiting performers included Alex Chimal of Circus Chimera, Luke Burrage from Europe, and unicyclist Connie Cotter.

I’ve posted a few of my photos from the event on flickr.

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Posted by Matt in Austin, photography, juggling | No Comments »

12-23-2005

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX9 Manual

Amanda and I bought a new digital camera recently. It’s a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX9 and, so far, we both like it a lot. I’m still trying to figure out all the features and settings, so I wanted to find an electronic version of the manual. It took quite a bit of searching, but I finally found the manual on Panasonic’s Australian site. So, in case anyone else might be searching for it, here’s a link to the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX9 manual.

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Posted by Matt in tech, photography | 4 Comments »

12-16-2005

Visiting St. John, U.S.V.I.


Sunset & Moonrise from St. John

Amanda and I are having a great time visiting my mom on St. John. We went to the beach our first two days here, first to Cinnamon Bay and then to Francis Bay. Today was a bit rainy, so we relaxed at the house for most of the day.

I took this photo from the deck of my mom’s house a couple of nights ago. Right now, it’s after 11pm, but I’m sitting out on the deck and I can still make out the silhouettes of the islands because the moon is so bright.

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Posted by Matt in photography, travel | No Comments »

12-07-2005

3 Tools for Creating Your Own Passport Photos

Today I ran across a website that will help you create a passport photograph from a digital photo you upload. The site is called ePassportPhoto and, for the time being at least, it appears to be free.

If you’d rather do the work yourself, a site called OnTheGoSoft offers a $10 shareware program called called Passport Photo. Or there’s an online tutorial for making your own passport photos using Photoshop.

I haven’t had to get a new passport in a while, but I do sometimes need I.D. photos when traveling, especially for things like rail and subway passes. Between the tools above and all the online photo printing options, I’ll be making some I.D. photos to take on my next overseas trip.

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Posted by Matt in tech, photography, travel | 1 Comment »

11-19-2005

Cave Without A Name


cave grapes

Amanda and I toured the Cave Without a Name today with some friends. The cave is west of New Braunfels, about two hours from Austin. Formations include cave grapes (photo, right), a 40 scoop ice cream cone, a rooster claw helictite, giant cave bacon, a uvula formation, and soda straws. One of my favorite formation names was the “Leaning Tower of Boerne,” which is named after the nearby town of Boerne, TX.

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Posted by Matt in Austin, photography, travel | No Comments »

11-11-2005

The Slackers in Austin


Slackers

I went to see one of my favorite bands, The Slackers, play at Flamingo Cantina last night. If you have even a passing appreciation for ska, you owe it to yourself to give them a listen.

And if you’re in Austin and you read this in time, they’ll be playing another show tonight at the same place. I didn’t make it in time to see the opener last night, but the Slackers took the stage at around 11pm and played a great, high energy show.

If you can’t make it to the Flamingo Cantina tonight, check out a few of their songs on myspace.com.

Posted by Matt in Austin, music, photography | No Comments »

04-30-2005

Pflickr Panoramic Photo Pfun


Austin panorama

Thanks to a recent unexpected gift from Brian Mitchell, I now have a flickr pro account to play with. I just posted my first photo, a panoramic view of the Austin skyline, made with AutoStitch. AutoStitch is a new program that simplifies the process of making panoramic composits by automatically piecing together multiple shots.

I’ve been interested in panoramic photography ever since I saw an exhibit of old black and white panoramic photos made by a camera that litterally panned as it exposed the film. One of the shots included the same clown twice because he was able to run behind the camera to the other side of the shot before the camera finished it’s pan.

One of my all-time favorite photos is a panoramic shot of the Austin skyline from 1910, on the Library of Congress website.

Posted by Matt in Austin, photography | No Comments »