Entries tagged with “travel” from O'Reilly Digital Media Blog

When in Hollywood, as the saying goes, be sure to visit Universal Studios. I just did on an unusually slow day and had a great time exploring how theme-park designers create an immersive experience through clever technology and storytelling.

What do you get when you combine a higher-end off-the-shelf cruise vacation with a choice selection of on-board seminars presented by well-respected Mac experts, plus some 170 passengers who are died-in-the-wool Mac-heads?

Courtesy of my MacBook and a Lufthansa ticket, I am typing away at this blog post en route from London to Munich, cruising along at some 30,000 feet. Which is just the right environment for writing about what to bring along when traveling with your geek equipment.

You can find some great stories at the Audio Engineering Society show. This one bordered on the legendary: A photographer snatches a $2,500 digital audio recorder from the jaws of death.

Hey All Check out this video that I have on YouTube. I created it on my Mac using Keynote, Garage Band and Snapz Pro X. Basically, I first created a slide show in Keynote. Next I selected some cool music in Garage Band. Then, playing the slide show and the music, I recored the whole thing with Snapz Pro X for a cool presentation.

Hey All! Just back from Papua New Guinea (PNG) - one of the last great adventures left on the planet. An adventure due, in part, to the clan wars that have been going on for generations. The other parts? I'll share some stories at Photoshop World. Hint: has to do with two machetes!! Here is a favorite shot - which did not, like all my PNG shots, make my new O'Reilly Face to Face book, which was actually published when I was there...

And now for something completely different: A special journey to the bottom of the world! f you go, here are some important tips: - ask your Dr. about seasickness pills; you will be traveling through some of the roughest waters in the world. once you get there, seas will be relatively calm. - snack on ginger and Skittles during your journey; helps to settle your tummy. - get the best gloves money can buy for shooting in the cold. try on a few different pairs. i use Windstoppers. - pack a polarizing filter to reduce glare on the spectacular blue ice.

The camera looks both ways, in picturing the subject, we are also picturing a part of ourselves. Keep this expression in mind when photographing people, and you'll see that the mood, energy, emotion, etc., that you project will be reflected in your subject's face. So, you'll get a higher percentage of "keepers" from a photo session. Another important thing to remember is that it's often important (or essential) to control the light when photographing people.

I am sure some of you use this technique in Photoshop for fixing the keystone (falling over backward) effect you get when photographing a tall building with a wide-angle lens from close up: Select All > Edit > Transform > Perspective - and then pull out from either of the top anchor points. It's a cool technique, and I use it when I want the building to look as though an earthquake had not struck the site.

Hey All - Just back from Carnival in Venice. Here is one of my favorite photos. More to come. Just wanted to share a photo.It's a daylight fill-in flash shot. I balanced the light from the flash to the daylight - so it does not look like a flash picture. The technique: meter the scene with your camera on Manual and set the exposure. Turn on your flash. Set the +/- exposure compensation to - 1 1/3 for starters. Check your camera's LCD monitor. Fine-tune your flash exposure compensation until no shadows (from the flash) are visible.