Flickr has a way of measuring the popularity of a photo. They call in “interestingness”. Here is their definition:

Besides being a five syllable word suitable for tongue twisters, it is also an amazing new Flickr Feature.

There are lots of elements that make something ‘interesting’ (or not) on Flickr. Where the clickthroughs are coming from; who comments on it and when; who marks it as a favorite; its tags and many more things which are constantly changing. Interestingness changes over time, as more and more fantastic content and stories are added to Flickr.

We’ve added some pages (and changed some existing ones) to help you explore Flickr’s most interesting content. Before you start though, you might want to take your phone off the hook, send your boss to an executive training session and block off some time on your schedule, because we don’t think you’re going to be walking away from your screen any time soon. Beautiful, amazing, moving, striking - explore and discover some of Flickr’s Finest.

Each day their “interestingness” engine (or maybe people behind the curtains) identify the previous days most interesting photos, and place them at http://www.flickr.com/explore. I have personally never had a photo make it into this feature. But I am curious about which of my photos people like. Fortunately, someone made a tool to determine this.

You can see my most interesting pictures. If you have a Flickr account, you can use the following URL to see what yours are (make sure to bookmark it): http://interestingby.isaias.com.mx/pm.php?id=xxxx&theme=white - to use this URL, replace the 4 x’s (after id=) with your Flickr User ID (something like 21716481@N07). You can find your Flickr User ID by going to http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/dna.php and entering the email address you use for your Flickr account.

I am really interested in seeing other people’s “interesting” photos. Take a moment and post a link to yours in the comments. The photo above is the #1 result for mine.

Model Jenn from the Colorado Strobist beginners workshop held at the North Denver Photographers Studio

jenn-9-web, originally uploaded by Dizzle @ 2*3 Photos.

I attended my first gathering with the Colorado Strobist group from Flickr. It was a beginners workshop put on by Curtis Bullock at the North Denver Photographers studio. I had a blast!

While I have been playing with flash photography for the club stuff I have been doing I haven’t really done much more than slap a flash on top my Canon 40D and go off to shooting.

Curtis showed me, in about 15 minutes an amazing world I have been missing and one that I plan to fully embrace. We played with wireless triggers, shoot-through umbrellas and soft boxes. Playing with how things as simple as changing your shooting angle can change the effects of the light.

The model for the night, Jennifer, was amazing and really fun to work with. This was also my first time shooting in studio with a Model Mayhem model and I have to say it was a great experience. I do hope to be able to work with more models like Jennifer.

As I say all the time, I am always learning and growing as a photographer and I think this 3-hour workshop has gone a long ways toward enhancing my work.

I have finally finalized the pictures for the Lakewood High School Spirit Squad (cheerleaders). The last step was to put the “squad” photos into a template with the name of the school, the year and “team” and some mascot logos.

It was during this process that some small details started to shine through. The biggest one that jumps out from the photo above is that not all of the girls were holding their arms the same way. The devil is always in the details. The unfortunate thing is I didn’t see it until it was too late. While I feel like I am doing some things well, clearly I have a lot to learn still.

It’s not too late to get caught up with Adorama’s 100 Digital Photography Tips in 100Days event already in session.

Adorama Camera of New York City serves the photographic community not only by supplying merchandise, but by providing great, free, digital photographic tips. The company already has two successful series under its belt. Now, Adorama has recently started the thrid installment of their “100 Tips in 100 Days.”

Here are the latest  Adorama digital photography tips.

Here’s the link to the original Adorama 100 Digital Photography tips.

 Here’s the second edition of the Adorama 100 digital photography tips .

Trying to determine where to host an online gallery is a pretty big deal. There are a plethora of choices, from software to host your own on your own website, to full fledged service offerings that will host all your images, maybe do some marketing for them, and offer a shopping cart system. It seems that every day a new one crops up, and one or two fold. It’s pretty difficult to keep up with them. On top of that, they all have different pricing, which factors into decisions as well.

So, what is an up and coming photographer to do? I have sat back for as long as I could and watched how other people built their sites and learned from them regarding what they did and didn’t like about certain sites. And then I decided to wait until I had to make a decision. For normal hosting of my photos, along with the community features, I really like Flickr. But Flickr doesn’t offer any ecommerce capabilities, and that site isn’t really geared towards sales at all.

Then I stumbled across Imagekind (via Flickr). They have an entry level offering that is free, so I put some pictures on it to see what happened. I linked to it from this site (”Prints For Sale“). I have 16 images there, and they have garnered 96 views, 3 comments, and 0 sales. Certainly I was hoping something would sell, but so far, nada.

Then I did the Lakewood High School cheerleader shoot last weekend, and I needed substantially more capacity, along with some other features. I took this as an opportunity to try out another service - Zenfolio. They have a two week free trial offer that gives you all of the features of the top level account, but limits you to 1GB of storage. There are some pro’s and con’s to the service, but all in all I am happy with it. So much so, that I have subscribed to it for a year. I am not 100% sure how I am going to market my prints on this site, but it definitely made it easy for me to keep the cheerleader pictures private for each girl. Additionally, I was commissioned earlier this week (at the last minute) to do a corporate headshot. I was able to quickly setup a “gallery” for the headshot proofs to go into. After the shoot, I uploaded the pics, my watermark was automatically applied, and the company was able to choose which image they wanted to buy. The bonus? That commission covered the cost of the Zenfolio site for the year. Now, anything I make off of print sales from the cheerleaders will be profit. Not too bad a deal at all.

I am aware that Smugmug is the heavy hitter in this industry, but for some reason I didn’t like what I saw there. I certainly have some issues with the Zenfolio people, but I have taken it up with them and it sounds like they are working on things. I’ll continue on there for the duration of my subscription, but I will also keep an eye out on the competition. If someone clearly does it better, at a similar price point, it would make sense to move. But if Zenfolio proves they can meet my needs, I’ll stay on, and likely become a strong advocate (for whatever that is worth). I work in a customer service type of industry too, and I know what my standards are. Let’s see if Zenfolio can keep up.

BTW - I am probably giving up on Imagekind for now. I’ll still keep the WordPress plugin for Imagekind up and running. I don’t know for sure if anyone is using it, but I suspect some are. Let me know if you do.

Came across this via one of my LinkedIn groups…sounds interesting and if I can get off my duff I will probably find something to enter and then send my LA family over to check it out.

The Los Angeles Center for Digital Art is accepting entries for its fifth annual SNAP TO GRID: the UN-Juried Exhibit. Every submission is shown in its 1200 foot storefront gallery in the downtown arts district in the historic core of Los Angeles.

Description:
LACDA announces an open call for our un-juried show featuring digital art and photography: “Snap to Grid”. All entries will be printed (8.5″x11″ on heavyweight paper) and shown in our gallery arranged in a grid. Entrants submit JPEG files of original work. Multiple entries are permitted. Seperate registration required for each image. Exhibit is limited to space available, early entry is advised.

All styles of artwork and photography where digital processes of any kind were integral to the creation of the images are acceptable. Digital video stills and screen shots of web/new media are acceptable. Documentation shots of digital installation and digital sculpture are acceptable.

Location:
This call is international, open to all geographical locations.

Show Dates:
October 9-November 1, 2008

Deadline for entries:
September 30, 2008

Opening Reception:
Thursday October 9, 7-9pm

Entry Fee:
Registration fee is $30US.

Submission Rules:
Registration and submission are done online only. File uploads are the only accepted submissions maximum of 3MB each. Please do not send materials to LACDA. All materials sent to LACDA will not be viewed and cannot be returned.

You can submit more than one entry with each entry requiring the $30 submission fee. Sounds fun and you can tell all your friends you had your work shown in a major gallery show. Who knows what might come from it…

When it comes to posing subjects, my natural gift of interacting with people helps them achieve comfortable positions for shots. But I have trouble posing group portraits and making sure I carefully pose a subject to flatter their figures. To get a more sound understanding of the fundamental skills needed to pose men, women, couples and groups, I picked up acclaimed photographer Norman Phillips book, “Professional Posing Techniques for Wedding and Portrait Photographers.”

The book is a comprehensive, must-have tool for photographers new to portraits, but it’s also got enough new tricks to keep old hat photographers interested as well.

I loved the chapter on slimming techniques. The photographers who get the most business are the ones who are aware of making their subjects look their best. I also found the group portraits chapter indispensable. Phillips’ decision to split his examples into groups of two, three, four and larger were extremely helpful in learning how to keep subjects visible, evenly lit, and showing some type of affinity for one another. The important of placement of arms, hands, feet and legs is simply, yet effectively, explained to make sure one subject doesn’t dominate another. His design strategies for group portraits offer reliable concepts a photographer can arm himself with no matter the shooting situation.

Highlights in the book include:

Understanding the goals of good posing, and the most common obstacles to success.

Styles of posing, from formal to casual

Critical differences between posing me and women

Understanding body language and how it impacts the viewer of a portrait

Tips for making each part of the body look its best

Standing, seated, and floor poses

Strategies for posing group portraits

Before and after sequences showing common posing problems and how to fix them

Using careful posing to flatter every figure type

Arrived in Phoenix and drove to Tucson to see a few things. This is the underside of the Kitt Peak Solar Telescope.

I have been patiently waiting for Canon to reveal the specs of the 5D MKII with baited breath. I was hoping that they would drop something that just totally blew the latest Nikon offerings out the water.

Sadly, no. The specs were relased a few days ago and while they are impressive, they are not what I was hoping and looking for.

This 21 megapixel DSLR (CMOS full frame sensor) has an ISO range of 50 to 25600, HD movie recording (seems to be the way we’re going), Live View framing of images on it’s 3.0 inch LCD (920,000 pixels), burst mode of up to 3.9 frames per second, DIGIC IV processor and sensor dust reduction.

This beauty will set you back $2699 USD (body only) when it hits stores in November this year.

Nicely decked out. But 3.9 frames per second? C’Mon! My 40D is 6.5 fps.

Now take a look at it’s main competitor, the Nikon D700. I was so hoping that the 5D MKII would be at least in line with this…

The Nikon D700 is a 12.1 megapixel full frame (FX), professional DSLR. It’s bundled up in a body that is virtually the same as the Nikon D300. In essence it’s the Nikon D3 feature wise (with a few modifications) in a smaller magnesium alloy body.

The Nikon D700 features five frames per second shooting, image sensor cleaning (vibration cleaning) and the first professional DSLR to come with an in built flash. It has an ISO range of 200-6400 (boostable up to 25600 and down to 100), support for DX lenses, a viewfinder with 95% coverage and a 3.0 inch LCD.

The Nikon D700 will have a retail price of $2999 USD (body only).

5 fps and can hit 8fps with the battery grip. Now I am sure many will jump and say well the 5D MKII is 21mp and the D700 is only 12mp. Really? Are we still only looking at megapixels? That is such a entry-level consumer selling point on a pro level camera.

Right now I am having a hard time deciding if I should:

1. Stick with my 40D setup
2. Test the waters of the 5D MKII
3. Make the switch to Nikon and get a D700

Decisions, decisions…