A day at Vienna’s Schoenbrunn Zoo

Sometime before Christmas I decided to take a break from all the shopping madness and head out to the Zoo, something I haven’t done in years. Schönbrunn, Vienna’s Zoo right next to the imperial palace, has been revamped quite a bit since I’ve last been there and there is still some construction going on. The cages and exhibits aren’t quite as decrepit and depressing as I remember them and most places now look like they were actually made to house the animals they are holding. Only the Orang-Utans still look suicidal and depressed, even though they just recently got a huge, new species-appropriate environment.

 

10 New Year’s Resolutions Every Photographer Should Make

Andrew Burgess wrote a wonderful article titled “10 New Year’s Resolutions Every Web Developer Should Make” over at nettuts+ and as I read it I realized it applies just as well to all photographers out there who want to set some goals for 2012. So here is the version for photographers:

1 – Learn a new Technique

The only constant in life is change and although we all tend to develop our daily routines it is important that we keep learning. Especially in the fast developing field of photography it is essential to keep up with new trends and techniques, as well as mastering the old ones of course. So no matter what your speciality is, set yourself some goals to try out new things: every tried infrared photogrpahy? How about nightshots and long exposures, or maybe it is finally time to try out some HDR compositions. Go out and learn something new! Along the same lines, now is as good a time as ever to re-evaluate your workflow, and learn better and different tools to get the job done more quickly.

2 – Get Better At What You Know

We all tend to stick to what we know and work in our comfort zone. We’ve always done things this way and it always worked so it’s got to be the right way. It’s an attidue we are all guilty of. Set yourself some goals on improving what you do best. How? Well try something different or a new approach:

• You take studio portraits? Look up some new light setups
• You are a wedding photographer? Try an alternative take on the subject
• You are a sports photographer? Try using a lense you’ve never used bevor for a game

You get the picture…

3 – Explore a New Field

This resolution is a different twist on the first one. Learning a technique in your own field is great, and might even be useful to your daily practice.
However, there are dozens of fields in photography; explore! Try: aerial, astro, large format, makro, panoramic, pinhole, time-lapse or underwater photogrpahy! :)

4 – Engage the Community

The web is a huge and wonderful place! Quite a few great friendships as well as a few business associations had their beginnings online. Whether it is “classic” social web via Facebook, Twitter or Google+, or photography related sites such as deviantart, 500 px or modelmayhem, talk to others! Everybody likes to meet new people and get feedback on their work.

5 – Teach Others

Going hand-in-hand with the previous point, you should resolve to teach others more in 2012. Why? Well, “Teaching something is the best way to learn it”? Plus it’s fun, it will establish you as a thought leader and will get you a lot more interaction than just posting your latest pictures.

6 – Take Better Care Of Yourself

As photographers we pride ourselves on our dedication to our craft. We’ll work long hours, hunched over a computer in the dark or slugging heavy equipment around adventurous locations. We suffer to make photographs look great! To be able to keep doing this for as long as possible you need to take care of yourself. Besides sleeping and eating well, make sure your workplace is ergonomic and that you get a sensible camera bag. Get an assistant or an intern to help you with the heavy lifting. Don’t be to proud or bossy to accept help when it is offered. Unfortuantely I know enough photographers and camera operators that can’t work anymore ’cause the screwed their backs with years of heavy lifting…

7 – Manage Your Time (and Other Resources) Better

For a lot of us — especially freelancers — what you’re doing with your time could be the difference between feasting and fasting. Remember all those fun, new techniques you should learn about? Well, don’t let their lure limit your bacon-bringing hours to few and far between. Of course you also should not over-push yourself, there is no need to accept absolutely every job as long as you can afford it. Aim for fewer high paying gigs instead of many small jobs. For an idea on how to get there watch this exciting episode of Chase Jarvis’ show with Ramit Sethi.  A healthy work-life balance is what to aim for on the road to success.

8 – Better Post-Shoot Practices

After you’ve prepared everything for weeks and then had a strenous shooting some of us tend to be lax on the aftermath, especially with the next projects looming on the horizon. But there are a few crucial things you need to do after a shot. Apart from the obvious image editing and getting the photos to the client on time you definately need to backup your data! It’s crucial and there is no excuse not to do it! Back ups however are virtually useless if you don’t tag your pictures properly. Trying to find that one shot between terrabytes of pictures is not only frustrating but will also cost you more time than actually tagging and labeling your picture properly the first time round. Also, keeping in touch with clients and customers even after delivering the goods is a nice touch and will generate more projects for you. Pick up the phone and call someone you enjoyed working with, chances are they enjoyed working with you too and might want to repeat the experience.

9 – Generate Passive Income

Making money while you sleep is what we all dream of, but it is actually possible. There are quite a few ways in which you can generate a flow of passive income:

• Sell your pictures to stock image sites such as photodune
• Sell prints at redbubble or deviantart
• Set up your blog with some non-intrusive ads
• Publish a book with tutorials and/or pictures at sites such as blurb or lulu

Be creative, it doesn’t take long to do the most of these things and although they won’t make you rich, a steady flow of a couple of bucks on the side never hurt anyone. Save up the money to buy that lense you always wanted!

10 – Take a Break

Sometimes you just need to get away from it all! It’s important that you don’t burn out and no matter how much you love photography some down-time is really valuable. Make sure that you have a hobby appart from photography that you can pursue without camera or computer! After a break you will have your creativity flowing again and your fingers itching to press the shutter release.

 

Have any of resolutions that aren’t on the list? Let me know!

Have a good one and see you all next year!! :D

Christmas time in Alsace, France

At the start of December we decided to pack our bags and head to Strasbourg for a long weekend, to visit friends and enjoy the famous Christmas markets. The weather wasn’t the best, but the “vin chaud” kept us going as we toured the city and the surrounding regions. Here are some impressions from our trip through Strasbourg, Obernai, Colmar and Riquewihr:

Are you getting the most out of your pictures? Before and after using Adobe Lightroom presets

When I started photography I was convinced that everything you do with a picture should happen in the camera and the darkroom. Then digital cameras came along and changed the game. People who knew a lot less about phtoography started taking much better pictures than me. I was annoyed and slightly embarressed. How did this happen? Well two simple reasons: consumer grade digital cameras “enhance” pictures automatically and people started playing with picture editing software.

In the beginning I was appalled, tweaking pictures in photoshop was cheating in my eyes and I refused to partake for quite a while. Then two things dawned on me: editing digital pictures with software is actually the same as playing in the darkroom, and it is not considered cheating by the industry.

Editing pictures is an integral part of every photographers job, in fact professional photo retouching is a whole industry by itself. Every picture you will ever see on billboards, in magazines or anywhere else has been retouched!

So if you’re an aspiring photographer you should be intimately familiar with photoshop and of course Lightroom. I basically “grew up” with the different versions of photoshop over the years and truly love the program. When Lightroom came out I was reluctant to start using it, my logic was: everything I can do in Lightroom can be done in Photoshp as well. Now while this may be true there are a couple of compelling reasons to use Lightroom:

• It’s great for organizing and managing your photo archive
• It makes working with RAW images easy and painless
• IT SAVES YOU SOOO MUCH TIME!!!

Once you get used to the slightly overwhelming interface of lightroom you have an amazing tool at your command that makes working with large amounts of pictures quick and hassel free. After finding the perfect settings for a picture, you then can save those settings as a preset and reapply them to any other picture or set of pictures. This has 2 great advantages: you can edit all pics of a shoot with a couple of clicks using batch processing and you can create great “moods” and save them as presets to be used another time.

Why should you bother?

Well let me show you the difference a Adobe Lightroom preset can make:

 

Convinced? Thought so… ;)

Not only can you create your own presets, the internet also offers tons of ready made presets for yout to play with. Either just google “Lightroom presets” or head over to http://www.presetsheaven.com/ one of the best places to find, discuss and offer different presets for Adobe Lightroom.

How do you install a preset for Lightroom?

Simple:

1. Download the preset file (usually a zip file)
2. Unzip the preset zip file on to your desktop
3. Go to the Develop module in Lightroom
4. Go to the Presets panel on the left, right click anywhere in it and choose “Import”
5. Select the .lrtemplate files you unzipped in Step 2 and click Import

Have fun pimping your pictures!!

Autumn at the Trabrennbahn Krieau

Since I’ve a got a couple of free days now I finally manage to head out and take few pics again. Met up with a good friend to go and explore the Vienna Trabrennbahn Krieau, a partially abandoned old horse racing track at the edge of the Vienna Prater. Although it was freezing cold and we only managed to head out as the sun was setting a couple of pics turned out alright.

 

 

Tecoma Gas at the Local

My friends from Tecoma Gas finally gave a concert again last Weekend! They rocked the Local and had Klaus Hinteregger from Fadin’ to Whiteout as opener with his solo gig. A long and enjoyabel evening was had by all and luckily I managed to get in a few snapshots before the whisky tasting went out of hand… ;)

 

Fixed: Problems when updating iPad to iOS 5

As much as I love Apple products, I really hate iTunes. I don’t want to use it, it never works the way I expect it too and I spend way much too much time trying to update things through it. I seriously hope that with iOS 5 and direct update possibilites this drama will finally have an end.

Anyway, as I was once again trying to update my iPad to the new iOS 5 I ran into an obscure error:

• “An error occurred while backing up this iPad (-402653081). Would you like to continue to update this iPad? Continuing will result in the loss of all contents on this iPad”

I had allready learned while trying to update my iPhone that you need to turn off your firewall (Zonealarm especially) and any other real-time scanners such as virus software or ad-aware.

Another nice side effect of the error message was that iTunes crashed and wouldn’t respond anymore. A few restarts later and and a couple of forum searches wiser I finaly found a method that solved the problem for me:

1. Make sure all apps are up-to-date on your iPad before connecting it to the computer
2. Don’t start the auto-update process as soon as you plug in the iPad, cancel it and transfer all purchases first
3. Make sure again that all apps are up-to-date, if not update them in iTunes again
4. Then make a manual backup (right-click the iPad in iTunes and select “Backup” in the context menu)
5. Then, and only then, start the update process manually by clicking the “Update” button in the main window when you select your iPad in the list on the left
6. Happy updating!
7. If the iPad/iTunes hangs up during the restore after the update, disconnect the iPad from the computer, restart iTunes and reconnect it, then choose to restore the iPad from the latest backup
8. Good Luck!

Now if only apple makes the iPad multi-user / multi-account capable, I’d be really happy!

Anyone else have fun problems or solutions to updating your devices?

Pictures of the Vienna Prater

The Vienna Prater is not only home of the Riesenrad, the renowned feris wheel, but also hosts a amusement park, a large leisure area and many odd characters. No matter what time of year, or time of day, you pass through you are bound to meet interesting sights and people.

Here are a few impressions from this Saturday:

 

Impressions of the Vienna Naschmarkt

The Vienna Naschmarket, or simply Naschmarkt, is the biggest and most popular market in Vienna. Since the 16th century it’s been the place to get fresh fruit and vegetables. Today you can get nearly everything from all around the world, ranging from exotic spices to rare fruit and vegetables, to fresh fish and meat. I love shopping here.

Lately it’s also become a hipster hot-spot. Many trendy restaurants and cafes have settled here, making it an awesome place for breakfast and people watching. Every Saturday the regular market is expanded by a traditional flea market where people sell the weirdest things.

Here are some impressions from last Weekend:

 

Fashion Camp Vienna 2011 #fcvie

Yesterday, on the 10th of September, the Fashion Camp Vienna 2011 took place at the the Hub Vienna. A gorgeous bright loft which describes itself as: “An inspiring place for people with ideas for a better world to work, meet, learn, connect.” and which it truly is. For fashion camp, bloggers, designer and fashionistas from germany and austria met up to do just that. In a day filled with sessions the participants discussed, learned and networked with each other.

Personaly I found the first session on the topic of copyright, which was held by Dr. Anderl and moderated by Susanne Liechtenecker, to be the most interesting. Further session included Cybermobbing, held by Jasmin from Tea & Twigs, from blog to brand, lead by Stylish Kids in Riot, with Anna Frost and Kathrin Wittich, and discussions about how firms deal with social media and Vienna as fashion metropolis. Unfortunately I missed these last two.

On the whole the fashion camp was well organized and a fun event. My 2 cents what could still be improved: make the event 2 days long, there is enough to be discussed and although the input from our german friends is valuable, don’t make the event too germany focused since austrias fashion and online scene is completly different. Otherwise well done and I look forward to next year.

Ps: the catering by 12 munchies was pure awesome!