Chris Casciano’s Place Name Here

Commercial photographer and serial iPhone camera user Chase Jarvis has recently popularized the idea that “the best camera is the one that is with you” in a big way. Armed with a camera small enough that you’re willing to carry it everywhere you become free to capture moments, record mental notes, and other save images that would have otherwise passed you by. Though his weapon of choice is a cell phone camera my weapon has recently been an artifact of a decade ago picked up off of eBay — the Casio WQV-1 wrist watch camera. Though it only takes postage sized [120×120 pixels] black and white images it does so in a way that satisfies my bestcam needs.

There is something in the air and its causing a shift in the overload of internet based discussion about photographic technology into discussion of content and subject. Under the idea that you can “improve your craft without buying gear” humanitarian photographer and author David duChemin has self published a series of eBooks on content and composition now at Craft & Vision. The takeaway message from Chase Jarvis last week had more to do with what you’re doing with the camera in your hand then how to use it or which camera it should be. And last week the project The Daily Shoot was launched on twitter.

Even if your weekend is booked with other events, when you see a tweet like this you jump at the chance and figure it out later.

Chase Jarvis Meetup

I was quite happy to find out that I had made the cut and got and invite to meet, learn and hang with photographer Chase Jarvis and his crew last weekend. Chase is a commercial photographer, who has been making sure he spends time giving back to the community of photographers out there. But if you didn’t already know that you should run now and check out Chase’s blog and check out his book of iPhone photographs The Best Camera Is The One That’s With You.

Its been a hectic month or so at the day job making web sites, but its also been busy month of photography related happenings anchored by the PhotoPlus Expo and the peak autumn colors here in New Jersey. Most recently I’ve had a photo published in New Jersey Life Magazine and posted a few fall landscape and flower prints to the store.

A little while back I mentioned that I had reclaimed an old domain of mine and was looking for something to do with it. It took about two months to pull the free time together to design and build it, but I’ve just relaunched the site: Hike New Jersey.

View Slideshow

In the vein of events like 24 Hours of Flickr and Scott Kelby’s Worldwide Photo Walk a local photographer recently used Flickr and other local web sites to organize 48 Hours of Maplewood, an event where people in town were asked to go out on a nice summer weekend and document their suburban New Jersey neighborhood.

Each Monday night throughout the summer a local car club gets together at the Galloping Hill Inn hot dog stand to show off their cars and hang out with other car enthusiasts. These photos were taken last Monday night.

• See these photos on Flickr
• Galloping Hill Cruisers Official Site
• Info on other NJ Car Shows at njcarshow.com

Last week I had the pleasure of attending an evening talk followed by a full day workshop by wildlife and landscape photographer Moose Peterson. The event was hosted by Adorama and Nikon.

Presentation Night – All About Food & Sex!

Thursday night at Adorama’s workshop space on Moose gave a nice presentation both on his photographic passions — shooting endangered wildlife and other little critters on the west coast — as well as some instruction on his compositional technique and working with light and your environment. Moose has been shooting for 30-some-odd years and shared with the group his top tip for getting close to animals in the wild

After another order of test prints arrived in the mail this afternoon [ordered Thursday, arrived today!] I’ve selected the images and papers I liked most and added a bunch of new prints to shop.placenamehere.com. With these additions the New Jersey landscapes and parks album is starting to fill out nicely, and hopefully has some familiar sights if you live in the norther half of the state.

I’ve just added two autumn prints from a 2007 trip to Watchung Reservation to the Landscapes of New Jersey gallery at shop.placenamehere.com.

Many photographers on Flickr and across the web have come across Project365 in the last few years. As described by early driving force Photojojo, along with other benefits:

Taking a photo a day will make you a better photographer. Using your camera every day will help you learn its limits. You will get better at composing your shots, you’ll start to care about lighting, and you’ll become more creative with your photography when you’re forced to come up with something new every single day.

I’ve thought about joining in each of the last few years — hey, I already take photos a few times a week, what’s a few more? But that’s why I never have. I already shoot a few times a week, carry one of my cameras almost everywhere and spend more time then most looking around for a potential photo op. In the end I just didn’t think taking more photographs would advance my skills.

After reading Moose Peterson’s blog post on the Nikon GP-1 GPS Device I need to correct a bit of misinformation from my earlier post Nikon D80 To D90 Upgrade First Impressions.

There I lamented the fact that you could only plug in the Nikon MC-DC2 remote cord, or the GPS unit, but in fact the GPS unit has a remote plug in is so you can daisy chain the two devices. Also in the blog post, Moose mentions the GP-1 includes a clip to attach it to your camera strap instead of the hot shoe leaving the hot shoe free for flash usage.

Though I’ll continue using my off camera geologger for now, with these two options the GP-1 design looks much better and it will be an alternative I’ll consider should the time come that I want to change up my system.

The Boston Globe’s high resolution photo blog The Big Picture has been one of the highlights of photojournalism on the web in 2008. It seemed to have kicked off a slew of similar sites willing to post high resolution news imagery on the web so that we at home can really appreciate the work of photojournalists around the world.

Not just first, but The Big Picture has seemed to be best when it comes to the tireless curation of the editor Alan Taylor and use of multiple images to really provide impact and lend life to a story in the news. That theme cannot be illustrated better then with their 1st part of a 3 part series The year 2008 in photographs.

2008 has been an eventful year to say the least – it is difficult to sum up the thousands of stories in just a handful of photographs. That said, I will try to do what I’ve done with other photo narratives here, and tell a story of 2008 in photographs. It’s not the story of 2008, it’s certainly not all stories, but as a collection it does show a good portion of what life has been like over the past 12 months.

I recommend that everyone take a few minutes over the next few days to really dive into the 120 stunning photographs being posted over the course of the next 3 days.

After a long fight that started when I handled the Nikon D90 Digital SLR camera at the PDN PhotoPlus Expo in October I finally lost my battle against the upgrade bug and bought one to replace my 2 year old Nikon D80. I had been on the fence about the upgrade being worth it. I knew the D90 would be a great camera, but my D80 doesn’t yet feel like yesterday’s technology and I wasn’t convinced the newer body given my expectedly light use of big bang features like video would pay off for me.

This past week brought the PDN PhotoPlus Expo to New York City once again. The show is a photo gear geek’s dream — where you can handle the swankiest new gear from the likes of Nikon, Canon, Adobe and Epson. And if gear isn’t your thing there are lots of demos, presentations and signings from famous photographers like Joe McNally, Moose Peterson, Vincent Versace, Jay Maisel and Scott Kelby.

Update 2/1/2010: I’ve written a new post about my current workflow for geotagging photos based on information from my iPhone

While some cameras and camera phones have the ability to geotag digital photos as they’re taken, most still don’t. However you can still geotag your photographs accurately and automatically with the use of an external GPS enabled device like a cell phone, navigation device, or a dedicated GPS logger. Any device that can record a “GPS track” that can be transfered to your computer can be used to tag photos. And photos taken with any digital camera can be tagged in this manner.

Here I’ll explain how I use GPSPhotoLinker on OS X to batch tag many photos from a day’s photo shoot with GPS tracks recorded on either a Sony GPS-CS1 or a Nokia N95 cell phone in order to create mapped photo galleries, like this one on Flickr.

Comment on this photo at Flickr

I’m usually not one to enter photo contests and other events, but the Great Destinations NJ book project was interesting enough and the rights grab wasn’t too bad so I’ve uploaded some images. to the project.

Its sort of an Everywhere — or JPG — style book and DVD project showcasing the diversity of the Garden State.

There’s now 4 days left to contribute by uploading photos of New Jersey or voting on your favorites. So head on over. You can start by voting on my photo contributions.

Last Friday, Flickr held its second 24 hours of Flickr event where it asked photographers to take a photo sometime in the 24 hours that made up August 8th, 2008 and contribute to a giant pool of images from around the world.

Above is my humble contribution, taken late friday during a break on my regular bike route at Verona Park, in Verona NJ.

Those who read photography blogs may have already come across the dustup, but the discussion over [ab]use of the Flickr API and application developers not respecting copyright on content should be of interest to the web developers out there as well.

The discussion centers around the realization that last weekend Every Flickr Photo Ended Up on Sale as cell phone wallpaper at MyxerTones.com

Jaromir Jagr’s 2nd goal puts the Rangers up 3-0. Stanley Cup Playoffs, 2nd round, Game 4. May 1, 2008

comment on this photo at flickr

comment on this photo at flickr

comment on this photo at flickr

comment on this photo at flickr

They do. And I never do a good enough job of pointing their efforts out, so here are a few new products to check out.

Seems like a good time for a little update on my contributions to other sites around the internets…

I’m looking for your vote, if you think the shot is worthy, on this image of seedlings for the JPG Magazine ‘Breakthrough’ theme for their next issue.

And last weekend was the Lunar New Year parade in Chinatown, the weather was pretty good and the costumes better. A bunch of photos from the event are now up in a new Flickr Set

Yay! I really dug the free 10 pack of Flickr MiniCards from Moo.com and had to have more. Now my order of 100 is on their way.

Lately it seems I’ve been carrying some bad luck with me when it comes to interesting photographic subjects around town.

Case 1: The Delicious Chicken Dinners sign.

Now gone after the store got a new awning.

Case 2: The old swing set at a nearby park.

Now removed along with some other (newer?) climbing things.

JPG Magazine, started by Derek Powazek and Heather Powazek Champ a few years ago, went through some big changes a few issues ago and have turned themselves into a very creative take on using a ‘community’ to submit to and create content for their print magazine (yes, I said print).

Does the world need another Web2.0 Community Video Sharing Massive Group Social Networking site? Treemo thinks so, and I might agree.

On my trip through my feed reader this morning I ran across a post by Jason Kottke talking about how he recently picked up a Kodak Duaflex II camera in hopes of taking some digital shots through the lenses of the old camera.

It just so happens I had sitting on my shelf as decoration (has a few cracks and dings that prevented me from trying to use it for its intended purposes) a Duaflex III. 4 minutes with the cardboard insert from an Amazon shipment for the sides of the hood and the last bits of a roll of gaffers tape and I have my own TTV ‘contraption’.