Bonzer in the kiddie Pool

Originally uploaded by rharrison

Something on a happy note:
One of my favorite applications using the flickr API is Photojojo’s PhotoTimeCapsule. It’s a simple app that just sends me an email twice a month with the most interesting photos I uploaded a year ago. Today I found a picture of a very happy puppy in my Inbox. How could you not see that and smile?

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I just wanted everyone to know how much my wife, my family, and I appreciate Jimmy. Sadly we met him because he volunteers for an organization called Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep. Something I feel he probably doesn’t tell others because his personal modesty won’t let him. Everyone in my family who was there commented on how wonderful the photographer was who came to help us through the most painful moment of our lives. In the most difficult of circumstances he was able to give us images to remember our boys that make me smile because they convey our love for them even at the same time they show our pain from loosing them. His compassion, respect, artistic ability, and warm heart have inspired me to pursue my passion for photography. I only hope that someday I’ll be at a point where I’m able to help another family in the same way Jimmy helped us.

I’ve included a video after the jump that will tell you more about NILMDTS and what they do. You will cry when you watch it, but it is very, very touching and conveys the importance of their work.

Update:

Some other posts about NILMDTS:

• What Constitutes the Ultimate Photograph?- Going Pro 2010
• Marketing Essentials International » Guest Post: Charity, Something to Fill Your Heart With by Aurora Onorato
• Marketing Essentials International » What Really Is The Ultimate Image?
• Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep. « Iris Cheung Photography Blog:

A lego reconstruction of the famous 1932 photograph "Lunch atop a skyscraper" taken by Charles Ebbets.

Mike Stimpson has clearly put a great deal of thought into how some of the most famous photographs were shot.  So much that he’s recreated them using LEGOs!  He even included links to how he setup each shot which is a fun way to learn a little about lighting as well.  Just plain fun!

A Lego recreation of Robert Capa's 1944 photograph taken during the D-Day landings on Omaha beach during World War II.

See more and the Originals on flickr, via A Photo Editor

frisbee-09 Before / After
© Russell Harrison

I’ve been pretty amused by the buzz about the new “Content Aware Crop” feature in PhotoShop. It never occurred to me that it wouldn’t have that feature because I’ve used Open Source tools to do the same thing for years.

The bench really distracted from the composition of this image so I simply used the Resynthesizer plug-in for GIMP to remove it.

• Free select tool to “lasso” the bench.
• Filters -> Enhance -> Smart Remove Selection.
• Done

I’ve been working on my photography quite a bit this year and feel like my images have progressed dramatically from what I’ve learned. I’m finding I enjoy doing portraits and have done a few shoots recently for friends and family. I hope you enjoy them.

They are an example of what can be achieved with only Open Source software. To achieve the same results using proprietary solutions would require spending well more than $1000 on software alone. Instead these and more are available in the standard Fedora repositories. All I had to do was click on “System -> Administration -> Add/Remove Software” and look through the “Graphics” packages. It couldn’t be any easier!

I use digiKam to manage my photos and to do basic post processing. UFRaw is my tool of choice for developing the RAW files directly from my camera, and GIMP more than handles my advanced processing needs. Generating ICC profiles for both my monitor and camera using GNOME Color Manager has really improved the quality of my final images. The difference is subtle but critical for getting a quality product.

Thanks again to all the communities maintaining and continually improving these tools. I’m continually excited by your work!

judy-black-35-bw
© Russell Harrison

barb-black-18-bw
© Russell Harrison

Heather
©Russell Harrison

rebecca-05
© Russell Harrison

matt-heather_m-15
© Russell Harrison

The red light from the setting sun over my right shoulder almost makes it look like the trees have already started changing colors. I shot this in RAW format using my old Canon Digital Rebel and then tonemapped it using the excellent qtpfsgui tool.

A friend of mine recently took a trip to Dubai where he apparently ran across this gigantic Christmas tree in the mall.  He took a series of pictures I assume to show off both its grand size and its mad fiber optic color changing skills.

The set just screamed to me that it needed to be stitched together as a panorama, both do see the whole thing at once and just to see what Hugin would do with the color changes.  I assume the entire tree changes colors at once so the different levels just show the passage of time between the frames.

Its not up to my normal standards for panoramas but considering there’s no way he had this sort of thing in mind when he took the originals I think it turned out pretty well.  Especially for only a few minutes of work.

I just wanted to remind all the flickr users that took pictures at FUDCon last week that we started a flickr group durring FUDCon 9.  It would be nice to keep that pool going so if you have some pictures you can add to the pool from any FUDCon past or pressent please do.  Those of us that couldn’t make it this time would love to see what everyone was up to.

First geek to identify where they’ve seen this picture before wins! © Russell Harrison

Update: No Google searches, its cheating.

Its the first real time I’ve tried anything in Gimp. Didn’t turn out too bad as an editing job. Nicu Buculei‘s tutorial on the Fedora Project wiki was very helpful. Now if only the picture were better…

• Flickr: FUDCon
• BarCamp wiki / FUDConRaleigh2008
• FUDCon/FUDConF9 – Fedora Project Wiki
• FUDCon – Fedora Project Wiki

Thanks to the time I had on the plane traveling recently, I was able to get the pictures from our visit to the ancient Mayan city of Caracol organized. I’ve posted the pictures on flickr in the Honeymoon day five – Caracol set. It is really an amazing place you should check them out!

I had meant to to write a post as soon as we got back from the honeymoon with the title “Change is good” to echo the post I made right before the wedding. Change is good so far but it hasn’t stopped me from being way to busy. At any rate I figured I should just work on getting some pictures up, and I’ll write up about what we did on our honeymoon later.

I’ve set up a flickr group for anyone that has pictures from our wedding or related to it to post in. Please put anything you’ve got there. I’m really excited to see it! In the mean time I’ve got a very few pics from the wedding and I’ve started posting honeymoon pictures, only days one and two so far but there are many more to come!