Donncha's Monday Links

Posted on November 19, 2007 by Donncha O Caoimh

The first thing I look at in the Sunday Times is the magazine. Just about every week there’s a feature on a photographer and a few weeks ago that was the late Bob Richardon. I can’t find the article online but I love this quote,

‘I have always photographed loneliness because that is my life.’ Richardson wrote in his memoir. ‘People say that my work is sexual. Look closer, stupid’

Donal noticed that Meteor updated their online texting service! Looks much better now.
How to communicate across domains using frames. For security reasons this isn’t a good thing.
XSS – Proof of Concept
Gamma spotted some photoshopping of Cork Opera House in the new Rory Gallagher DVD. Good catch!
As seen in several places, Red Cardinal has the news that Google Local is now in Ireland. If you have a store front business, you should register there to put yourself on Google Maps!
Gnome.org Blogs run on WordPress MU. Here are the plugins they use, including my Flickr Widget!
A huge collection of GIMP plugins have been updated to work on GIMP 2.4 and now available as the GIMP FX Foundary. I downloaded the package, installed them in ~/.gimp-2.4/scripts/ and only got through a couple of the scripts so far. There are loads of effects there. Cool.
A wedding photographer shares her workflow, including using the GIMP. (via)
Who cares what the bokeh looks like? As long as you love the picture. See featured comment.

Donncha's Thursday Links

Posted on November 15, 2007 by Donncha O Caoimh

I have to admit, I preferred how WP 2.2 displayed lots of draft posts on the edit and post pages. Having to go to the Write page and click on the “54 more” link is annoying. For some reason, this post didn’t show up as the newest draft. Now it does, maybe because I deleted another (newer) draft post of the same name. When I created another “Donncha’s Thursday Links” post it didn’t show in the drafts list either. I had to search the drafts posts for “donncha” and it appeared at the bottom of that list. Strange.

I should get used to having my photos ripped off, but I don’t think I ever will. It’s as upsetting now as it ever was.

The Shocking Truth About Princess Diana! – is Meatrack on to something here?
yesterday’s wedding photo, here are a few more to enjoy!
How to take the foto of ‘that stranger’ offers a few hints for the budding street photographer. Remember that model release! You can’t license your images for most uses if you haven’t got one!
PHP 5.1.6 and up have an annoying bug. If a directory name has a slash at the end the mkdir() command will fail. Thanks Tummblr for tracking that down!
I love the light and shadow in this image.
Conor asks Organic – is it worth it?. A recent study on organic foods, “indicate that up to 40 per cent more antioxidants and other beneficial compounds are to be found in vegetable crops, and up to 90 per cent more in milk.” The study hasn’t been peer-reviewed yet however.

PS. Ray D’Arcy appears on the Restaurant tonight on RTE 1 at 8.30pm!

Donncha's Wednesday Links

Posted on November 14, 2007 by Donncha O Caoimh

A few days ago I blogged without comment a video by Larry Lessig on the Creative Commons. It’s a great video, but I won’t use it to license my photography. Why? Jim covers most of my reservations about the scheme. This might come as a surprise to some but one of the main reasons I “reserve all rights” on my Flickr stream and photoblog is because I would like some say in how my images are used. I would be horrified if a picture of my son was used in a derogatory way, or if a photo of a stranger on the street appeared in an inappropriate context.
If I was going to use one of their licenses then it would have to be the cc-GPL. I’ve released GPL licensed software for the past 10 years and at least then all materials used in any derivative works would have to be made available. Would that mean a magazine featuring a GPL licensed image would have to make PDF files of their magazine available? I hope so. I also do not want to give up my right to redistribute my image under a different license. As the original copyright holder of the work that is important to me. Anyway, my duck photo shows that many people think photos found online are there to be ripped off and used. I don’t think it matters what license you use.
This image would definitely not make it into the wedding album. Love it!
Digg’s API docs, for something I’m working on now.
Paul Indigo took a great portrait here. I can only imagine how bossy that woman was if he compares her to Hyacinth Bucket. Paul is so right. The number of “That’s great”, or “Lovely image” comments on Flickr and photoblogs is overwhelming. They don’t add much to the photographer’s skills. Critique!
Conor gets nostalgic about the Speccy for Science Week. Damien has more posts about great inventions.

Donncha's Friday Links

Posted on November 2, 2007 by Donncha O Caoimh

Anyone who knows me knows I’m an avid photographer.

Thomas Hawk was in a train station in San Francisco when a body was discovered on the tracks. He snaps literally *everything* and took a photo of the poor guy who died, but then he questioned if he should publish the photo? I admire how he stands up for his rights on the street. Jeremy Brooks who is featured in the previous link did the same, much to the ire of a shop keeper.
In Synthetic technical style in digital photography Doug has quoted a Mike Johnston piece on photographer’s style saying that digital photography lacks a distinctive style, and that it lacks integrity because it can be manipulated so easily. As Mike says in his longer piece, every image can be taken as a separate case, but I disagree that that is a bad thing. I’m not limiting myself to one technical style.
Paul Indigo has had some interesting encounters while photographing people on the street, but he’s got great advice if you want to do it yourself.

This gentleman agreed to pose for me. He wanted to know whether my camera was digital or film. He said he would pose if it was digital but not if it was film. I am not sure exactly what his reasons were.
Avant Window Manager for Linux is like the Mac OS X Dock for our little free OS. I haven’t tried it but it looks pretty. This is a nice screenshot with screenlets too.
Amber Jack describes itself as, “a lightweight Open Source library, enabling webmasters to create cool site tours.” Take the tour. It’s nice!
Barry reveals all, about how WordPress.com serves files and pages that is.
This video of Vista Vs Ubuntu Makes me wish I had gone for the higher end video card for my laptop. There’s not a hope in hell the onboard Intel video will handle all the eye candy in Beryl!
Go Maith are experiencing technical difficulties but still manage a very entertaining dancer and fiddler!
Matt announced the new WordPress.com Theme Marketplace. Some sites unfairly jumped the gun before Matt posted details of the Marketplace on his blog. I love the idea that .org users get the themes for free because they have to be GPLed. That’s great!
If you were adding hooks and a plugin system to WP-Cache, where would you put them? wp_cache_get_cookies_values() definitely, maybe at cache generation too? What about the admin page?

What has Web 2.0 done for you then? (via)

PS. I installed Xcache and the Xcache WordPress plugin I mentioned on Wednesday. I don’t think it’s any faster than the Memcached backend I was using but I have one less service running now, and the admin stats page is nice.

Kinsale Art Gallery

Posted on September 22, 2007 by Donncha O Caoimh

Haydn’s Gallery in Kinsale is now showing my work and Ryan’s as of this week. I visited the framer on Monday where I signed a number of prints and I have to say I’m very impressed with the prints made by those Hewlett Packard Z3100 and Z6100 printers. I wish I could print all my stuff on them!

If you’re in the area, call in, say hi to Haydn and browse around. The gallery is open every day but Monday and is situated on the quayside in Kinsale. Here’s a map of Kinsale courtesy of Yahoo. The cross-hairs mark approximately where the gallery is.

Try and spot the slight mispeling on one of the images I signed. Oops!

Charity photography exhibit starts today

Posted on September 6, 2007 by Donncha O Caoimh

If you’re not subscribed to my photoblog, In Photos dot org, you might have missed the announcement about the exhibit. Mallow Camera Club (no, we don’t take photos of candy, cookies or biscuits, Mallow is a town a few miles from here!) will be exhibiting a number of photos in Mallow Town Library for three weeks starting today.

One of the Club’s members, Sean Riordan, is heading out to South Africa shortly as part of a group from the Niall Mellon Township Trust helping to build homes for the poor in that country. All the photos on exhibit will be for sale with all profits going to help fund Sean’s trip and the good work he’ll do in November.

Your one week’s hard work will change the lives of generations of some of the poorest families in the world. Over 200 families will move from a one roomed shack measuring 3m x 3m to a house with 2 bedrooms, a kitchen and a bathroom. Most importantly, these houses will have running water, electricity, and sanitation – facilities we take for granted in our everyday lives.

One of my photos, this one of Brendan O’Carroll outside the Opera House in Cork will be on show and for purchase too. It’s not exactly like the one shown here. It’s a portrait with a tighter crop and better. I’ll be there tonight at 6pm to see how things go. If it’s bought while I’m still around, I’ll sign my photo for you. You never know, it might be valuable in years to come!

So, here’s me asking for everyone to give this a plug, especially if you live in Cork or some of your readers live in the locality. Come on Donal, Ryan, Tom, Damien, Adam, Gamma Goblin, Conor, Will, Mel, Haydn, Mark and everyone on Cork Blogs .. Giz a link and a plug, please!

Jethro @ Phunnypictures.com sucks

Posted on July 2, 2007 by Donncha O Caoimh

Unfortunately it’s simple to steal photos these days, and I spotted my Thieving Duck on yet another joke site. Most recently, the News of the World used it, this time it’s on http://archives.gophercentral.com/Gettin_Ducked_phunny_pictures.html

Unfortunately Jethro, the owner of the site, has declined to acknowledge my email of the 25th June and so refused to add a link to my blog post.

Hi Jethro,

The picture of the duck robbing the woman (http://archives.gophercentral.com/Gettin_Ducked_phunny_pictures.html) was taken by me in Chicago in 2005 and the original image can be found at http://inphotos.org/the-thieving-duck/

I would appreciate a link back to that page next to the image please as it’s a copyrighted image. Lots of other sites have already done the same, including snopes.com and cuteoverload.com: http://inphotos.org/the-most-sent-around-duck-photo/

Thanks, glad you like the photo!

Donncha.

I don’t mind too much when a site owner responds and adds a link back to my blog, but when they ignore me then my temper rises. Bah!

The Thieving Duck on The News Of The world

Posted on June 15, 2007 by Donncha O Caoimh

Do you read the UK Sunday newspaper, The News Of The World? A comment was left on my photoblog yesterday saying that newspaper used my Thieving Duck image in their magazine and I’m interested in seeing it for myself. If it’s true, they used the image without permission or attribution and that makes me just a little bit angry.

I’m posting this here because this blog has a lot more readers than my photoblog and I already mentioned it there and nobody responded. I emailed the newspaper yesterday but I’m not holding my breath waiting for a reply.

If you have last Sunday’s newspaper, I would really appreciate a photo of the page in question. I can be emailed at donncha @ ocaoimh.ie, thanks!

Update! In case you missed my comment below, I received an email from NotW offering me their standard rate which I’ve accepted. Hopefully I’ll hear back from them soon.

The moon will be blood red tonight

Posted on March 3, 2007 by Donncha O Caoimh

A lunar eclipse is expected tonight at 10:44pm here in Ireland, all over Europe, Africa and elsewhere. I’ll be outside with my Canon 20D and 75-300 zoom so hopefully I’ll get a shot or two I can post here later. NASA has a great page on the eclipse which is where I got these two images.

I checked Astronomy Ireland too but unfortunately their site is basic and at a glance isn’t very informative. They definitely need a blog to update their events and provide more information. If one were cynical, you might think they want you to ring their premium rate numbers…

Never fear, the blogosphere came to the rescue. Daragh’s post on the subject has the times of the eclipse and how long it’ll last. I’m subbed to his blog, read that post this morning, and only thought seriously about the eclipse this evening, long after forgetting where I had come across it.. Thank you Darragh! Hope you enjoy the Blog Awards tonight!

Edit: I wrote a short post, how to photograph a lunar eclipse which might be useful to you if you’re out on this cold night. It’s getting foggy here in Blarney but I hope if clears up in the next hour!

9:46pm – a shadow can be seen at the bottom of the moon.

Matt has some excellent shots of the eclipse:

(Matt – get off the phone! Jacinta just rang and the line is busy!)

More photos of the eclipse:

Holy Shmoly!

Look what I found today!

Tag Archives: Photography