Photograph of Kaylee from Australia for People of the Globe

Kaylee is of Aboriginal descent. She's incredibly beautiful.

Bertien van Manen: Let’s sit down before we go - wayneford's posterous

Photographer Bertien van Manen in wayneford's posterous:

I have to like the people I photograph. I need to feel an attraction, a fascination.

I feel the same way. Luckily, I've had a connection with most of the people I've photographed over the years, but there have been a few occasions when we just didn't click. I don't know what it is or why it happens, but if that attraction and fascination are not there, the resulting photographs show it. There's something missing.

This attraction is not necessarily physical. It's relatively easy to find a pretty person and really not that hard to get them to agree to pose for a photograph. Most people are flattered that you want to shoot them. The pretty ones tend to like it.

No, it's more than just looks. It's a connection that goes beyond that. It's an admiration for the other person, who they are, what they do, what they believe in.

iMedia Browser for Multiple Aperture (and iPhoto) Libraries - ApertureExpert

If you have your photographs in multiple Aperture (or iPhoto) libraries, this post at ApertureExpert regarding iMedia Browser will be of interest. I used to have several libraries back when having too many photos in a single one caused Aperture to choke and become slow and unresponsive. However, Apple fixed this in an update for Aperture 3 (at least it did for me) and I consolidated everything into a single, managed, library.

Kiss by photographer Andy Barter

I just discovered, via The Curious Brain, this beautiful series titled "Kiss" by photographer Andy Barter. It's a series of portraits of two people kissing shot from above. All different couples in race, sex, and age. Go have a look, you won't be disappointed.

Fotoshop by Adobé

A very interesting parody by Jesse Rosten about Photoshop and what can be done with it.

Stanley Kubrick’s New York | VandM

Stanley Kubrick is one of my favourite filmmakers. There's no doubt he was a gifted storyteller and his vision led him to direct some of the best films ever made.

But before getting into the moving image, Kubrick was also a talented still photographer. As VandM's explains:

Even at the age of 17, Kubrick was an immense talent. In 1945, for $25, he sold a photograph to Look magazine of a broken-hearted newsvendor reacting to the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. A few months later Kubrick joined Look’s staff to become the youngest staff photographer in the magazine’s history. He continued to work for Look until 1950 when he left to pursue filmmaking.

VandM and The Museum of the City of New York have gone through thousands of Kubrick's negatives and selected a series of 25 photographs to put up for sale. Amazing work.

Photograph of Janey from Vietnam for People of the Globe

I shot this photograph of Janey 3 years ago for the People of the Globe project. The shoot was fairly informal, it was just Janey, a friend/assistant helping with reflectors and lights, and myself as photographer.

We shot pretty fast as the sun was setting and the light was quickly going away. The plan was to do three sets to get three different looks. We started with a swimsuit series, of which I got several great photographs, then a fashion set, and we finished with this night shot for People of the Globe, which was the main goal.

However, Janey is such a beautiful and amazing model that we decided to combine them and did a series of swimsuits at night. Those also turned out great.

Janey needed minimum direction. She's a natural model, extremely photogenic, and very comfortable in front of the camera. I ended up with so many keepers after this shoot that it was difficult to choose my favourites.

The iPhone Lens Dial

Over the years there have been a lot of photography related accessories for the iPhone. Everything from stands, tripod-like gadgets, and even lens mounts. Some are a bit too ridiculous and some are pretty cool.

Here's another one I just came across at Photojojo. The iPhone Lens Dial. It's a gimmick, but it could be fun to play with. Here's how they describe it:

The iPhone Lens Dial boasts three optical-quality coated glass lenses: Wide Angle, Fisheye, and Telephoto. All wrapped up in a slim aircraft-grade aluminum jacket equipped with two tripod mounts (for portrait or landscape shots).

I'd like to see this as a built in feature of the iPhone. Imagine a small rotating dial on the iPhone that allowed you to choose between 3 lenses with different focal lengths. It'd be great to have a wide angle, a normal, and a telephoto lens built in.

How to calibrate a monitor - The Dell 2408WFP Ultrasharp 24" Display v2

For most of us, understanding how to colour calibrate a monitor is no easy task. There are so many variables to consider that many tend to just give up on calibrating their displays or choose to ignore it and hope for the best.

But photography enthusiasts do, and should, care. Spending countless hours working on your photographs only to see them look very different in print, or in somebody else's monitor, is extremely frustrating. Even if you rarely print your photographs, if your monitor's colours are way off, they'll look weird (or at least different than you intended) on other displays.

Before I get into the details of how to calibrate your monitor, specifically the Dell 2408WFP Ultrasharp 24" Display, let me start with some background.

Why I got into colour calibrating my monitors

For years, I've always used Apple Cinema Displays and never really bothered to calibrate them. They were always close enough that it wasn't a problem. I got used to the slight colour shift and could easily work with it. Several years ago I moved to a different country and couldn't take the monitor with me, so I sold my beloved Apple display.

A few years ago, when the time came to buy a new monitor, Apple had just released the new ones that used the then new Mini Display port. My MacBook Pro was incompatible with it, so I ended up buying the Dell 2408WFP Ultrasharp 24" Display. It was horrible out of the box. It was extremely bright and the colours were not only wrong, but super saturated. As it was, it was useless for photography.

So, for the first time, I found myself having to learn how to calibrate a monitor.

Colour calibrating my first monitor

I quickly realised that calibrating a monitor is way harder than I expected. Visually calibrating using the built in tools in Mac OS X is next to impossible. I ended up having to buy a hardware calibration tool. I settled for the i1Display2 by X-rite. While it worked well at the time, X-rite never updated the software past the PowerPC era, so it always relied on Rosetta). Even after 10 years of Apple moving on from the PowerPC chips, X-rite didn't seem to care. WIth Lion it's now useless.

Anyway, as I explained back then, calibrating that Dell monitor wasn't easy and it took a lot of trial and error, but I finally managed to get it close enough. I found the colour shifted slightly as time went by and recalibrating every couple of months or so was enough.

Then Snow Leopard came out and I refused to install Rosetta. I emailed X-rite asking if they planned on updating the software. They said no.

Right about that time I bought a new MacBook Pro that came with the new display port, so I also got an Apple Cinema Display. As before, the colour was beautiful and I didn't need to calibrate the monitor. It does have a slight pinkish hue, but it's close enough that it doesn't bother me.

The Dell display was used as a second monitor and sat uncalibrated for a long time. Then I moved into a single monitor setup and the Dell went into storage. But a few weeks ago I pulled it out and hooked it to an old MacBook Pro running Leopard (with Rosetta) and I decided to see if I could calibrate it and compare it to the Apple Cinema Display.

Michaela from Croatia for People of the Globe