Lynda.com members have access to their existing accounts. Once logged in, you’ll see the most recent video you watched, whether you watched it on your iPhone, iPod Touch, or on your computer’s web browser. Just pick up where you last left off.

Other links:-

• The blog post on Trey’s site about his presentation.
• HDR Spotting

Even though the tower is a stationary object, getting the planned image is not as easy as one would think. When you get the opportunity you need to move fast.

First you have to get to the tower. Towers in rural areas are often located on hills or in isolated areas. Getting to the local tower took a 20 minute walk up a steep hill in the heat of the day.

Secondly you have to take into account the time of day and the direction of the sun. Communications towers are normally tall and antennas mounted high up, so taking the picture at the wrong time of day can result in too much shadow, lens flare, or glare from the metal. I had to wait until 3pm for the sun to light the tower from behind me and at the correct angle.

Lastly you have to wait for the right sky. Luckily on this day there was a patch of blue sky directly behind the tower at the angle I wanted to shoot it. Other parts of the sky were covered in grey cloud. Clouds move fast changing the background every couple of minutes. Many times I have gone to take the picture and clouds have moved in and changed the scene before I could get in position.

Microwave antenna and communications array for the cellular telephone system on a tower.
(Also available at: iStockphoto, Shutterstock, CanStockPhoto, Fotolia, BigStockPhoto, Dreamstime)

GSM and CDMA cellsite antenna and communications array for the cellular telephone system on a tower.
(Also available at: iStockphoto, Shutterstock, CanStockPhoto, Fotolia, BigStockPhoto, Dreamstime)

GSM and CDMA cellsite antenna and communications array for the cellular telephone system on a tower.
(Also available at: iStockphoto, Shutterstock, CanStockPhoto, Fotolia, BigStockPhoto, Dreamstime)

View other communications tower images in my Technology and Telecommunication gallery.

Hawksbill Turtle swimming over tropical coral reef ( Youtube )
Also available for download at: Fotolia

Hawksbill Turtle swimming in current over tropical coral reef ( Youtube )

Photos

Tropical coral reef – Agincourt reef, Great Barrier Reef
(Also available at: iStockphoto, BigStockPhoto, CanStockPhoto, 123RF, Fotolia, Dreamstime)

Leopard Blenny (Exallias brevis) on tropical coral reef – Agincourt reef, Great Barrier Reef
(Also available at: iStockPhoto, BigStockPhoto, CanStockPhoto, 123RF, Fotolia, Dreamstime)

Green smallscale scorpionfish (Scorpaenopsis oxycephalus) on tropical coral reef – Agincourt reef, Great Barrier Reef
(Also available at: iStockPhoto, BigStockPhoto, CanStockPhoto, 123RF, Fotolia, Dreamstime)

Much Desired Flabellina Nudibranch (Flabellina exoptata) on tropical coral reef – Agincourt reef, Great Barrier Reef

Giant clams – tridacna squamosa – embedded in coral on tropical coral reef – Agincourt reef, Great Barrier Reef

Video

Yellowfin goatfish on tropical coral reef ( Youtube )
Also available for download at: Fotolia

PRESS -RELEASE, 21 Jan 2010 :- Frans Lanting, hailed as one of the world’s greatest nature photographers, will visit Sydney in March to run his first-ever Australian photographic seminars.

Sydney is one of only two destinations the Netherlands-born, US-based photographer will visit while he is in the country – the other being the Central Coast. Lanting will also exhibit a range of his visually arresting images at the Ken Duncan Galleries at Sydney and Erina Heights while he is here. The free exhibition will run from 10am-5pm daily from March 12-15 at the Erina Heights Gallery (414 The Entrance Road, Erina Heights), and from 10am-6pm daily from March 18-22 at the Sydney Gallery (73 George Street, The Rocks).

Lanting, whose Australian visit is being hosted by landscape photographer Ken Duncan, has documented wildlife and the natural world from the Amazon to Antarctica for three decades to promote understanding about the Earth and its natural history. His work is prolific and appears in books, magazines and exhibitions around the world and is frequently commissioned by National Geographic, where he served as Photographer-in-Residence.

Lanting will appear at the InterContinental Sydney on Saturday, March 20 from 9am-4pm to present a multimedia seminar entitled Every Picture Tells A Story. His expertise and tips apply to a wide range of photographic styles and his seminars repeatedly play to sell-out crowds overseas. He will run a second seminar at the Ken Duncan Gallery at Erina Heights on Saturday, March 13. Numbers at these events will be strictly limited so attendees can have personal interaction with the master.

Additionally, on Friday, March 12 from 6pm, Lanting will host an intimate screening at the Ken Duncan Gallery at Erina Heights of his highly acclaimed epic audio-visual project, LIFE: A Journey Through Time. This is the first and only time the show will be screened during Lanting’s tour. LIFE is an original multimedia orchestral performance which chronicles the history of life on Earth. Lanting’s stunning photographs are transformed into moving images by visual designer Alexander Nichols and set to a score by Philip Glass.

Originally intended for presentation in concert halls, LIFE premiered in Santa Cruz, California, in 2006, and has been performed by world-class orchestras including the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and the Torino Symphony Orchestra in Italy. It is about to be performed by the London Symphony Orchestra. An adaptation of the presentation was performed in 2008 by the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande at the inauguration ceremony for CERN’s Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland.

Lanting’s Australian visit is part of an attempt by Ken Duncan to attract a wide range of internationally renowned artists to our shores to share their talents with photographic enthusiasts, and to raise the awareness of photography, which is the art form of the new generation. Any funds raised by the visit will be returned to Duncan’s Walk a While project – a photographic education program working with indigenous youth in remote outback locations. Lanting also has a strong connection to Australian indigenous art and is looking forward to assisting this cause.

Tickets to the Lanting seminars cost $440, while tickets to the LIFE presentation are $65. Both can be purchased for $490. Bookings: (02) 4307 8408.

For more information, images, or to arrange interviews with Frans Lanting or Ken Duncan, contact Stephanie Wilson on (02) 4307 8402.

More information:- http://kenduncan.com/index.php/component/content/article/2-featured-items/181-frans-lanting-visit

Confined to the office today while waiting for the next cyclone to hit, I decided to update some images on one of my commercial websites. Browsing various microstock sites, I was struck by the variation of image quality and lack of creative content.

I decided to update some of the images on one of my commercial websites, as they no longer represented the message I was trying to convey, and set about trawling the microstock web for replacements.

Free Microstock

I started by searching around some of the free microstock sites such as  Stock.Xchng, Stock Vault, and Dreamstime Free Stock.

There were a couple of good images in the free stock collections, but in most cases the variety of images is small and the quality is pretty poor.

I also came across the EverystockPhoto website, which interestingly collects photos from a number of sources, including indexing Flickr images. A couple of things surprised me:-

• The images from Flickr seem to be based on Creative Commons licenses. Depending on your privacy/usage selection in Flickr, it is possible images of your friends, family or even last year’s Christmas party could appear on this site for others to use.
• The site is caching the Flickr images. Clicking on a few of the images Flickr links, the browser goes to the Flickr site and says either the image has been deleted, or the user no longer exists. The worry here is that you may have thought deleting your image from your Flickr account gets rid of it, but in fact it can still exist on this and other sites…. (As a Flickr user, I am not sure I am comfortable with this.)
• The site uses an Attribution License System, but I wonder how many users would actually attribute the image to a photographer on their site, or in a document. It reminds me of the recent case where a leading newspaper used a Photographers image without consent.

Paid Microstock

Unable to find any satisfactory free images, I started browsing paid microstock sites such as iStockphoto, Shutterstock, etc.

It was an interesting experience being a buyer looking for particular images to illustrate a concept. Having a photography background and a particular requirement in mind, you tend to be quite harsh in critiquing others work. Thinking about how you could improve others images is an excellent learning experience on how to improve your own photography.

The image quality on the microstock sites seemed to fall into 3 categories:- professional, quite good, and poor….. and there were a lot of poor quality images.

The professional quality images really stood out, but I was surprised that many of them had just been thrown together without much thought put into layout and construction. E.g. I was searching for an image similar to that above, but could not find any from the 2000+ search results on iStockphoto, that contained a computer keyboard and notepad shot from a low angle. Many of the keyboard images were taken from a position directly above, and lacked any creative thought.  In several cases it appears the photographer has moved the elements around to make multiple images, but has not thought about composition or making a good image.

While digging around, I also found a number of images that would be useful for my elearning courses. With elearning taking off, the market for learning and web content will continue to expand, and in turn increase the requirement for quality microstock images.

In Summary

With free microstock images you generally get what you pay for. The selection is limited and the quality is not that great.

Paid microstock images are a viable solution for professional looking images for use in websites and eLearning courses, however the image quality and creativeness can vary widely.

As a photographer, putting yourself into the position of a buyer can be an excellent educational experience. It gives you a chance to critique others images and determine how you could do better, while analysing collections for niche gaps that provide possible business opportunities.

I learned quite a bit from being a buyer today, and in future am going to put more thought into the composition of my images.

Well its Friday….. and motivation to do any work is low.  When I worked in an office in the past, no one did any work on a Friday. They say never buy a car built on a Monday or a Friday, as there is a higher risk of something being wrong with it.

Tuesday next week is the national Australia Day holiday, so three quarters of the country is taking a sick day on Monday to make it a 4 day long weekend, despite pleas from the Prime Minister who claims it will damage the economy.

I normally go for a dive when I get in this type of mood. However, ex-cyclone Neville is heading this way and sturring things up. Dive visibility has gone from 16m to 6 m overnight, the wind is picking up to 35 knots, and the clouds are dumping the occasional amounts of heavy rain.

I hate sitting around, so in an effort to achieve something, I have busied myself with the following:-

1. Cleared my email inbox:- Some of those emails have been sitting in there for weeks.
2. Checked the cyclone forecast.
3. Listened to the latest lensflare35 podcast:- Today’s podcast was a round table about  Social and New Media Marketing for photographers. One of the things discussed was the use of profile photos, so……
4. Updated my Flickr, Twitter and Facebook profile photos:- The new photo is not the greatest photo of me (with one friend saying I look like Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now), but what do you expect when I am wet from diving and covered in suntan lotion. In any case it is still better than the last photo.
5. Checked the cyclone forecast.
6. Checked up on the latest shots from my Flickr contacts:- While doing this I happened to browse my favorites from other photographers page. Interestingly the selection above indicates I am drawn to the use of strong colors. Colour is also one of the things I enjoy about living in tropical Far North Queensland….. the strong greens of the foliage, strong blues of the water and sky, and strong reds of the flowers….. What does your favorites selection say about you?
7. Called the dentist to setup an appointment for a checkup, but they tell me the first available is mid February…. I guess the global recession has not affected their business.
8. Went to lunch at a local restaurant and read the paper:- There was an article about  Forty Mile Scrub National Park near Cairns, just north of the Undara lava tubes. Apparently at this time of year, thousands of butterflies hatch, and the rain forces the Macropanesthia rhinoceras cockroaches (the world largest cockroach that at 8 cm long are the size of a mouse) out of their burrows….. I need to put this one in the planner for a photography trip.
9. Checked the cyclone forecast.
10. Called cellular operator Telstra to complain about billing me for a service I had not requested.
11. Trimmed my selection of photos on Flickr and other galleries: – There was an interesting blog post from Scott Kelby in December called  How To Become Known As a Better Photographer, which talked about using a smaller number of images in portfolios to improve the overall quality.  Taking the message to heart, I went into several galleries and ruthlessly cut the number of images.
12. Updated my website listings and sitemaps on Google Webmaster Central, Yahoo Site Explorer and Bing Webmasters.
13. Backed up the computer.
14. Checked the cyclone forecast.

The one day cricket match between Australia and Pakistan has just started on television, so I guess my achievements for the day will have to stop there….

The usage indicator on my BigPond wireless broadband account has been broken since November 2009. There is some kind of server problem accessing the information for my account. I have a request in with BigPond technical support to fix it, but in the meantime I am not able to tell how much data I have used.

Last month I ran over my 10GB allowance due to having to reinstall Abode Creative Suites and eLearning Suite twice. They did not load correctly the first time, and each reinstall came with an 850MB update download…..Ouch!!!….. It must be time for CS5 release.

For a few days my broadband speed was limited to 64kbps, and this makes the whole internet experience quite different. Having to sit and wait several minutes for pages to download, if they download at all, can be very trying on anyone’s patience.

I remember in the old days of website development, you would optimize the page to download in less than 30 seconds @56 kbps.

The art of optimizing page download speed seems to have been lost, and I put this down to several factors:-

• The increasing availability of broadband.
• Most of the web designers today are too young to remember 56kbps.
• Auto coding web development programs.
• Photo and video content not being optimized.

Working on a Slow Connection

Several reputable sites I visited took over 3 minutes to load a page, and in the end I gave up on them.

There are still a lot of people out there using slow connections in remote areas and other countries, and site designers not allowing for low data rates, they are losing customers.

One of the big surprises was social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. For a long time I had thought they were basic in design and kind of ugly looking, but on my slow connection they all loaded very fast. There has obviously been some thought put into these sites under the hood, and this could be part of the reason for their popularity worldwide….  other site designers should take a lesson from this.

Experimenting Back on Broadband

When I received my high speed connection back, I did several experiments with page download times, while paying close attention to the connection download meter.

One on the most telling results came from reading entries linked to Twitter. I normally check a day’s worth of Twitter messages at one time, and opened 20 linked pages. The total data usage for this was 70 MB…. That’s an average of 3.5 MB per page….

Some pages ran over 5MB, and one static text page with lots of flashing bits on the sidebar  exceeded 7MB … How do these sites expect to retain viewers on slow connections with this kind of overhead??

I measured a plain text page on one of my own Wordpress sites today using the Yslow plug-in for Firefox, and was surprised to see the PHP page was 425kB with 41 different http requests. The same page in HTML is 12kB. It’s nice to have these programs auto coding pages, but it comes at the price of download speed.

It’s very similar to when computer memory became cheap, and all the coding optimization skills were lost in software development.

Some Common Sense on the Horizon

I was listening to web professional Marc Fuller on the Camera Dojo podcast with Kerry Garrison the other day. It was very interesting what Marc had to say about website design, SEO and Wordpress.

One point Marc mentioned was that in 2010 Google will be looking to focus on webpage download speeds, with fast loading pages benefiting more favorably in the page ranking algorithm.

We are also starting to see site caching become quite popular in software such as Wordpress.

I hope these developments will get website designers thinking a bit more about visitor friendly layouts and designs, and dropping a few of the “data heavy” bells and whistles.

As they say…. LESS is MORE …

Additional Information:-

• Googles Matt Cutts Talks Caffeine and Site Speed
• Tools from Google and other developers, and start making your site & web apps faster.
• Articles on web performance. Discover best practices that can make your apps faster.