haniblog

We spent a few days in France last week to celebrate my Father-in-Law’s 70th birthday. I fell head over heals in love with the Dordogne. We stayed in a lovely and spacious gite called Le Peyrat in Saint Martin de Guscon about an hour away from Bergerac. We even had a French chef cook two nights for us and the food was just… so amazingly delicious

More photos here. I took the photo above on the Grand Etang de la Jamaye lake.

We had a fantastic time in Portugal. The highlight was going to see wild dolphins and we were very lucky to see over 40 of these graceful creatures hunting. More in my Flickr stream.

Stunning wallpaper for your brand-spanking new iPad from 50FT Shadows.

My good friend Tim suggested we take the kids and their bikes down to the River Lee this afternoon. I had my camera with me and managed to take a few photos. Spring has finally arrived. More photos here.

Meet our new neighbour. She spent 15 minutes or so looking around over the garden wall. More photos here.

The Big Picture does it again. Stunning photography of the journey of the Olympic Torch from Greece to Vancouver for the Winter Olympics. That site is going to become my home page.

I’ve been playing around with two apps that perform simple grading adjustments: PS Mobile, which Adobe finally released worldwide; and Mill Colour, an app written by London/New York/LA post house The Mill. Before I start, there’s a really good article on Phil Green’s site which helps with the grading terminology.

PS Mobile has a nice simple interface with a menu bar in icon form at the top of the screen and undo/redo controls at the bottom, whether the iPhone is in Portrait or Landscape mode. The icons at the top perform image functions, exposure and saturation operations, filters and finally effects. The colour controls are quite intuitive, though not the most responsive. There’s a lag when you drag sideways to affect the saturation or exposure for example.

Here’s what the interface looks like.

As I mentioned earlier, it’s a nice simple interface and it’s simplified further when grading the photo. Here’s the saturation control which is increased or decreased by swiping across the screen.

And this is the colour tint interface.

Aside from the frequent performance lag I would’ve wished for more fine-grained controls as well as separate RGB curves. PS Mobile is a free download from the App Store.

A disclaimer first before I start on this app. I used to work at The Mill years ago. I often think of the place as my alma mater!

I wanted fine-grain controls and here they are! With Mill Colour photos can be graded by adjusting Lift, Gamma and Gain and each with individual RGB sliders. Actually, can I have slightly coarser-grain controls now? The sliders start at 1.0 and then increment up or down by .02 values. It would be a lot more useful to be able to adjust those increments.

In performance Mill Colour is everything that PS Mobile isn’t: the interface keeps up with you, doesn’t have any lag issues and looks clean and uncluttered.

As with PS Mobile, Mill Colour has a set of looks and in this app they feel more professional. To demonstrate the subtlety of some of the looks here are the Print and 70′s look.

There is one thing in the interface which is really distracting and not in the iPhone aesthetic: the horrible button feedback glow-flare.

Aside from the controls adjustments and the button feedback issue, the app is a joy to use. Mill Colour is a free app as well.

The Big Picture is the Boston Globe’s photo blog and the content is usually stunning. The latest update is about the wet and dry 2009 Formula 1 season and has amazing photographs of the latest race in Bahrain, like the one above and this action shot of Hamilton.

Make sure you grab the RSS feed. Whenever the blog is updated, be prepared to lose a lot of time looking through the superb photography.

This month’s Esquire cover features the lovely Megan Fox. What’s unique about the photo is the camera used to take it: the Red ONE.

Greg Williams, the photographer, in his own words:

“It allowed her to act,” Williams says. “She could run scenes without being reminded by the sound of a shutter every four seconds that I was taking a picture. As in still photography, a lot of it is capturing unexpected moments. This takes that one step further.”

Is this crossover the start of something new? Will photographers be encouraged to use new digital cameras like Red? Isn’t it exciting when new technology crosses over old barriers, when these tools are used beyond what their creators intended?

There’s more on the Esquire site including a live cover photograph!