Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
Here is a sweet tip we got from Adam Frimer about managing your cards while on a shoot. You start with a bunch of clean formatted cards. Place them all in a hard case facing up. This way you can see the data on each card. (Those hard cases are about $10 on amazon)
After using the card and filling it up, return the card to the case with the text facing downwards. This will indicate that the card has been used and it is not empty.
If you like Cinematographs, you are going to love Plotagraph. In a nutshell, Plotagraph can convert any single JPEG into a cinematograph. This is great news to anyone who likes Cinematographs because creating those is a tedious and cumbersome process while (at least judging by the tutorial) Plotagraph is fast and very intuitive. Actually it requires no premiere/photoshop/after effect know how. It is all based on moving arrows around.
Most of us have a fairly solid order of priorities in our lives. Family comes first, then photography, then everything else. For some folks, those first two are the other way around, but whatever allows us to spend more time with our family or our camera is a good thing.
I don’t really consider sitting at a computer to be photography, and as such, I want to spend as little time doing it as possible. So, I use shortcut keys. In this video, photographer David Justice shows us how much time we can save by letting go of the mouse and using keyboard shortcuts.
External dials and gizmos have been common in the movie industry for years. Their sole purpose in live is to help speed up workflow and productivity, assisting with things like editing and colour grading. Now, they’re starting to become more popular for the regular desktop and stills editing with Photoshop.
BrushKnob, developed by Japanese concept artist, Wataru Kami, is a very inexpensive attempt to bring this kind of capability to the masses, releasing the entire project as OpenSource; circuit, code & all.
If, like some, you spend the same amount of time playing Doom 4K as you are editing videos, you will absolutely like this hack for using a game controller to control premiere.
Editor Casey Faris has a pretty sweet setup using Logitech Gamepad controller (about $20). The secret sauce is the actual mapping of the buttons. Casey uses a free software called xPadder (here is a link to the free version)
Of course, using the gamepad only makes sense if it actually expedites your workflow, if it makes you go slow, there is no point in using it. And the magic to making it fast is mapping the right buttons to the right shortcuts. And what do you know, Casey shares his layout on the video link.
This is one of those subjects in the photography world that is strangely controversial – like Nikon vs. Canon, DSLR vs. Smartphone and Prime vs. Zoom … the idea that you should delete your sh!t – or in other words – why you might want to permanently delete most of the photos that you’ve ever captured (on purpose)!
Lets start with a universal truth.
99% of the photos that I take, that you take or that any other photographer takes are junk that nobody will ever see, or ever want to see.
So in this article I am going to encourage you to trash everything except your best work – after hitting delete you’ll feel better, I promise.
If you are editing a lot of videos, you know that shortcodes and hot-keys are essential for fast editing. We actually shared a tip on using gaming keyboards for editing becasue they have more keys that you can assign macros to.
But LinusTechTips just upped the game of adding shortcodes by creating a whole 87-shorcut keyboard form a cheap $15 keyboard. Of course, the video editor from LinusTechTips is kinda of an extreme-case in the sense that he already has his entire letter-set, numbers, shift, alt and control combos assigned to macros and he needed MORE macro buttons.[Read More…]
With Adobe’s long standing global domination and the current buzz around Affinity’s recent announcement of impending Windows versions of their software, it’s easy to forget that there is another application out there that can satisfy the needs of a good number of photographers, especially those who run Linux.
That application is GIMP. One of the struggles with GIMP, however, is the shortcut keys, especially if you’re already used to working with Photoshop or another application that has a similar default shortcut key setup.
1. They leave the drama to HBO.
You will get sucked down faster than a cold beer on a hot day when you engage in the dramatic dealings of certain people. I’m not naming names; you know who they are. Everyone knows who they are. Heck, THEY know who they are. It’s just not worth it. It’s like wrestling with a pig: all that happens is you get dirty and the pig likes it. Yeah, you have to pay for the drama on HBO, but at least when you’re done, you can turn it off.
If you are reading this blog, you know that we are big fan of keyboard short cuts, but for some programs, working with a mouse is unavoidable. I was talking with an editor friend, Ariel Hadar from Kaveret, and he showed me quite an awesome was to utilize a gaming mouse and keyboard to get the benefits that you would get when working with a keyboard while working with a mouse. The best of both worlds.
Of course, this means that you are the type that likes working with shortcuts, and just want to take it up to the next level. If you like working with menus, move along, this is not the hack you’re looking for…
You can find out more about John on his website and follow his adventures on YouTube and Facebook.
can change a lens mid-rappel, swap a memory card while treading water, or use a camel as a light stand.
To see more of his work please visit his studio website blurMEDIAphotography, or follow him on Twitter, 500px, Google Plus or YouTube.
JP’s photography is available for licensing at Stocksy United.
Find my work on My website or follow me on Facebook or My page
