From my previous posts you guessed it: Astir Beach is my number one beach. And every day the dedicated staff and management confirm this statement… since 1960.
Basketball World Championship Live at Astir Beach
No reason to stay at home to watch the basketball World Championship at a vulgar boob tube; Astir’s mega screen with exceptional luminosity and resolution is simply the best.
SIpping your Mojito, connecting with the world through the Wi-Fi net, watching the Greek team winning and all this while doing maintenance on your sun tan … Is that what crises means in Greece?
All photos live by iPhone.
Author: Yorgo Nestoridis, Media Marketing & Publishing, Founder of YORGOO Publishing, YORGOO Press and Semiomantics.
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The purpose of this exercise is not to reach a final result but to prepare the image for editing and post-editing. When calibrating, we try to correct systematic shortcomings of our camera. When we edit, we try to drive a maximum of data out of our image, namely because the camera delivers jpeg files which compress away quite some data of which some can be recovered.
Once we have the best possible set of data, we can apply filters and presets with a foreseeable result.
A somewhat more difficult sample in the sense that this image is not ideal for calibrating because of the color range and because it’s zoomed (114 mm in 35 mm equivalent). The image is therefore not at maximum sharpness or detail.
However, it’s a nice bird, worthwhile to spend some time on :-).
Tomorrow, our call we will focused on Image Editing. For this exercise we need one photograph in original format as shot.
Preparation for the call
I order to be able to advise call participants individually, I would like to ask you to select your image (can be most anything, landscape, monument, animal, flower, portrait) from your collection and attach it to an email and send it to my email at yorgo(at)yorgo.net. Please make sure you send a photo as shot without any editing, cropping or clipping or filtering. Don’t even add Lightroom camera calibration filters.
Please send a shot which has been taken without zooming. In the worst case just set your cam on automatic and take a shot out of your next window without zooming and send that one.
The earlier you send your picture, the bigger the chance that we will have time to edit it and to help you with presets or filters which may serve your camera calibration and ’standard filtering’ for quickly develop and edit your pictures.
Image 2: basic editing – rotate the picture as the horizon was not horizontal and the verticals bend to the left side; a global vitamin pack gets the pic up to speed. As this is a heavily zoomed image, the sharpness and details cannot be recovered as should. That’s why we would like to get a image without zoom.
Image 3: Black and white version of version 2.
Image 4: Some post-editing to remove crane and construction works. This post editing job can be done much better: in this case I just blew in 3 strokes with the content aware healing brush from Photoshop CS5 – this takes exactly 3 seconds!
Author: Yorgo Nestoridis, Media Marketing & Publishing, Founder of YORGOO Publishing, YORGOO Press and Semiomantics.
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Today as planned we will start populating the Photo Media stock platform. The pre-launch is reserved for Ycademy August Seminar Participants. Those concerned will receive a personal invitation by mail from Bianca later today.
During the next few days we will beta test the site extensively with the help of all venture partners. Today we focus on the sign-up procedure as well as on the identity verification. Also we will test upload capability as well as the resizing engine.
During the testing, the site will not yet be officially accessible from the home page link; please use the link contained in your invitation email.
Today’s task: Register with the site from the “Become a Seller” link on top right of the site and submit 10 Pictures for evaluation.
Administration
Bianca Gubalke and Zo Nicholas are the site admins whereas Bianca is focused on the Commercial end while Zo looks after Technical issues and Maintenance.
Tonight’s Call
Join tonight’s Ycademy call where we will analyze the site’s behavior and give support where needed. Also we will set up your Venture Partner’s accounts based on your registration.
I am looking forward to a great venture!
Author: Yorgo Nestoridis, Media Marketing & Publishing, Founder of YORGOO Publishing, YORGOO Press and Semiomantics.
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As spring has enveloped the beautiful Noordhoek Valley, South Africa, the stunning white arum lilies abound especially in meadows, wetlands and along water courses. The temptation to pick this protected species is huge and we see bunches of these exquisite flowers being sold off at traffic stops by local people. Illegally.
What most people don’t know is the tiny Arum Lily Frog – Hyperolius horstockii – that often lives in the arum lily; it actually fuses so perfectly with its environment that it’s hardly seen – by the human eye, by predators and of course by its insect prey, thus playing a very important role in pest control.
Arum Lily Frog
The above picture of the Arum Lily Frog was sent to me by a friend who actually enlightened me on this story! Probably only very few people are aware of this adorable little being and the danger of extinction when its habitat is being destroyed.
An Arum lily turns brown after about 4 hours when cut – so if we don’t pick nor buy these flowers, we add to protecting the environment.
Please do!
I have spotted an area where I might go hunting with my digital camera one of these days and try my luck of discovering an Arum Lily Frog! Fingers crossed…
High Dynamic Range Imaging (HDR) is a ” set of techniques that allow a greater dynamic range of luminances between the lightest and darkest areas of an image than standard digital imaging techniques or photographic methods” (Wikipedia).
The below exercise is a simple test, using only two images with different exposures.
The image has been taken inside a room exposing it to feature the colors of the interior. As you can see, the consequence of properly exposing the interior leads to over exposed areas, namely on the table and then all over the background where we basically see only white.
The interior is underexposed, however the background or the exterior area shows colors and details as the metering is set to render a clear image in the background.
After the merger we end up with a nice compromise which can be adjusted in post editing. Lightroom did a good job on the background as wel as on the table where we get now some of the blueish shine as a reflection from the external tones.
For the purpose of this test I have just darkened the tonal range of the highlights a bit to see a real contrast to the previous image.
Conclusion
HDR imaging has become an easy task with Lightroom 3, even for beginners. The difference between the first and the last photo is simply smashing. The ability to edit HDR in Lightroom with just a few mouse-clicks will help many amateurs to get a more professional look to pictures featuring interiors.
Of course it’s also a great feature for night photography or anywhere where improved dynamic range cannot be reached with just one shot.
This and more we will demonstrate live and exercise with the participants at this week’s Ycademy calls as an add on to the Ycademy Seminar which took place during the past week-end.
Author: Yorgo Nestoridis, Media Marketing & Publishing, Founder of YORGOO Publishing, YORGOO Press and Semiomantics.
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Smashing the new Lightroom 3 from Adobe. While many features useful for the professional photographer have been improved, Adobe has also thought of hobby photographers and laymen. The new edition of Lightroom makes online publishing a Sunday walk.
Lightroom 3 lets you export slide-shows in different formats; unfortunately there is not much flexibility there and the presets are 3:2 formated. However you can get 720p and 1080p as well, producing thus a YouTube HD movie as per above.
The images used are 4000 x 3000 pixels. Lightroom crops and compresses and in as much as I am concerned, much of the actual quality and detail is lost. here is an excerpt of one of the pictures as it came out of the camera:
When looking through the pdf or the YouTube clip, you will easily notice the difference. The images are not crisp, nor sharp and color gradients are washed away. The pdf is better than the YouTube version which is due to the YouTube compression.
Note also the Copyright mark in the slide-show frame on YouTube: I should have used a bolder face type.
In spite of the above, I am convinced that with Lightroom 3 will be a great help in publishing for many people and save a lot of time in the work-flow related to basic web publishing.
We will experiment with Lightroom 3 at the Ycademy Online Seminar which will start in just about 3 hours.
Author: Yorgo Nestoridis, Media Marketing & Publishing, Founder of YORGOO Publishing, YORGOO Press and Semiomantics.
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The Clacton Airshow 2010 attracts again loads of spectators and hobby as well as professional photographers. Taking a picture is one thing, getting it to the top of Google is yet another story.
Zo Nicholas has beaten them all with the publication of her images, using a Semiomantics XO Publishing Framework.
Zo comes in right after the BBC and ahead of YORGOO on Google rank 2. Note at the bottom Ycademy.com on rank 10!
YORGOO Publishing Network on Google Top 10
Zo Nicholas site is hooked to the YORGOO Publishing Network and she contributes to various publications. The effect is evident: the publishing power of the network assures rapid deployment and high visibility of content.
As you saw above, 3 top 10 entries in just a few hours. However the deployment was not over at this stage.
When I looked at the issue early this morning, the face had changed:
A second wave shows still 3 top 10 positions with Garden Route Publishing on the number 2 spot (Garden Route Publishing has just been upgraded to the brand new Semiomantics XO Media Framework which will be released later this year).
Surprise, surprise, there comes a good old YORGOO Blaster in as well on rank 2! and finally Ycademy, this time on rank 9.
Just an hour later, this is what I get right now:
Zo Nicholas on rank 5 and YORGOO Publishing on rank 10; and I am sure it will change again during the day as the deployment is not finished yet. Also I would expect this post to become visible soon, as well as another post I loaded the Destinations Expo :-).
Author: Yorgo Nestoridis, Media Marketing & Publishing, Founder of YORGOO Publishing, YORGOO Press and Semiomantics.
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