Day 23; Fotos are Magico

Today I'll write a little bit about FotoMagico. That's the piece of software I use on my Mac Mini to present my public slideshow. The software cost me only 30 bucks and it does what I need it for.

All in all it is a solid software which can create slideshows and play them directly from the computer in high quality. There is no need to render the show to a video file or so. I can show the slides directly from the software using a second screen, or in my case, a beamer. The software offers me all I need. I can put my slides together using a storyboard, mix it with music and add some titles. There are no extraordinary effects, but all what I need to work. The only thing I miss is the ability to create some standalone programs which show the slides. But it also works fine using FotoMagico in several instances. As the pictures are displayed in another screen, I can operate the show on my first screen without showing the interface of FotoMagico to the audience.

Another goodie is that an additional app for the iPhone is available, which allows me to control the show via iPhone. That cost me some more money for the app, but it's worth to invest those 20 bucks.

If you are interested in FotoMagico, you can download a 5 day demo from www.bonix.com.

Cheers!

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Day 22; The Garden of Eden

After staying two days in Cape Town we started traveling along the south coast of South Africa up to Jeffrey Bay. This part of the country is called "The Garden Route" and you have not to travel far to see why. The whole area is full of plants and flowers. Many of them are endemic, what means that they only grow at this certain place on the earth and nowhere else. In the bible is written that Adam and Eve had to leave the paradise, the Garden of Eden. But if you walk through this fantastic landscape, those garden the nature built up, you think that this story must be wrong. Because you are exploring the paradise with your own feet.

The main road to Jeffreys Bay runs manly a little bit away from the coastline. But you have a lot of possibilities to access the awesome coast which can be very steep at some points. Especially the way from George to Knysna, the heart of the Garden Route, has a couple of nice lookouts along the coast line. If you have luck, you can watch whales and dolphins out there.

Further on, the Storms Rivers Area and the Tsitsikamma National Park are worth a visit. Also you will pass a Bridge which has a height of more than 200 Meters and offers worlds highest bungee jump. All in all it was a wonderful trip. But after so many impressions we've been lucky to stay some days at the same place, in the small summer house of my friend Moosa in Jeffreys Bay.

Muizenberg Bay

African Penguins at Boulder Beach

Next time I'll write a little bit about the safari trip we did in Quatermain's Camp near Grahams Town.

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Day 21; Cape Turn

As promised, I'll start a series of small descriptions of South Africas beautiful landscapes. If you travel South Africa you normally have your first touch down in Johannesburg or in Cape Town. If you want to go for Kruger National Park, you'll start in Jo'burg. But we decided to travrl the Garden Route which goes along the south coast of South Africa.

But your journey starts directly after landing in Cape Town by visiting the cape. Of course it is a must do because it is so popular. The is the south end of Africa, the place which every ship had to pass on it's way to or from Asia. Until the Souez Channel has been digged out in the desert sands.

But the cape is not only popular. It is just fantastic nature, even if there are many tourists. There is the cape itself but also you can visit the penguin colony at Boulder Beach or have a look at the colorful beach houses at Muizenberg Beach. They are not for living in there, but to change your clothes.

The Cape of Good Hope

Dassie "on the rocks"

Cape Point

Lion's Head

View from Lion's Head ofter loosing some droplets of sweat

Sundown at Hout Bay

Next time we start our travel to Jeffreys Bay along the Garden Route.

Cheers!

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Day 20; My Work Flows

During my work on the slideshow, a kind of a complicated workflow came into my room and sat down on my desk. Then it started to crouch into my computers and now I can't get it away. But it works fine for me and so there is no need to chase it away.

The thing is that I have to swap in between my Mac and Windows PC. All the pictures and the slideshow software is on my Mac and Lightroom and the well calibrated and qualified screen is at my windows machine. So I have to do the sorting stuff at the Mac, copy the pictures to the PC, after Lightroom it goes back to the Mac for putting the pics together and if there are some corrections to do, I have to do them at the PC and overwrite the files on the Mac. I know, it is a little bit complicated. But it works well for me and, thats the important fact, it does work generally!

But I am open to read and hear your critique. Anyway I'd like to get some mails from you. Even if you only write nonsense like me! photopodary@lightpicture.ch Yes it is a .ch domain and not a .com one. Because... I'm a Swiss, did you know ;-)

Cheers!

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Day 19; Sunset Blues

Here in the northern hemisphere, the sunrise is in the east and sunset is in the west. But is it the same in the southern hemisphere? I never cane remember that so here is a memory hook for you (in German we call it "donkey bridge").

It's like in the alphabet. The E comes before the W and the S is in between. So the sun starts at the E of the alphabet, runs over the S and ends up at the W. That easy!

That works also for Germans. Then it is just the O for Osten instead of the E. Oh yes, as the sunrise and sunset in the southern hemisphere are celebrated in from the sun the same directions like in the northern one, my donkey bridge works all over the world. And even the sun stands in the north at noon it works. Because the N is also in between the E and the W. Only for the Germans in the southern hemisphere it doesn't works completely, because the N comes before the O. But there are not so many permanent Germans in the southern hemisphere. And for the tourists, the light version does it well!

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Day 18; The Travelplanner

If you do a travel, there goes some planningwork ahead. For a wedding you can book a wedding planner. That's the same for a travel. I think it's called travel office. But in my case I prefer to plan my travel by myself. That's more fun and cheaper.


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Day 17; Africa, Africa

In three weeks I've got the chance to show a part of my diashow which is planned to show in this winter. I'll show pictures from the USA, Australia and South Africa. I've sorted all the pictures already and also I've the music for the pictures. The last setp is now to put it all together. As I want to show the pictures of Souh Africa, I thought to introduce the Rainbownation a little bit. This will be a small series of explanations, experiences and locationscouts and pictures of South Africa within the next days in this podary.

Have fun and enjoy!

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Day 16; Virtual Photographing

Today I want to introduce a plugin for photoshop which is also available as a standalone, both for free. It's calle virtual photographer. This is a little bit like your alanog kitchen for digital photos. It allows you to do black and white transformations, colorize your photos or add artificial grain to it. If you never had a darkroom ar analog times, you've got it now. I you had one, you'll get it back.

You can download the tool at www.optikvervelabs.com. And again, it's free!

Cheers and CU

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Day 15; Plan T

This week it seems to be very difficult to do something in photography. There are so many other things which make it difficult to plan my photo activities. Some people plan every minute of their live. For me it's different. I don't like to plan too much but some amount of scheduling is essential to get all things done. To my luck my vacation starts next week. That means a lot of time to do undone things. So, today I will schedule up a little bit the next days.

CU and plan also some time where just nothing is planned :-)


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Day 14; It end in a disaster

As I told you, I've tried to install Jolicloud on my desktops using the USB-Installer. The problem was that I could not boot from USB. Either at my Windows 7 machine nor at my Mac Mini. It came even worster. The USB-Installer set up the install files onto my extended harddisk at my Mac! All the data on it has been deleted. To my luck there was not very important data on it.

Also the Windows 7 setup failed. Even with Jolicloud Express, a Windows install for Jolicloud. It started the download and installed Jolicloud. But afterwards I was not able to boot into it.

As good Jolicloud worked on my netbook, as horrible and time wasting the installation on my desktops was. I've learned to let my fingers off "idiot save" things. There is a list of tested netbooks at the Jolicloud homepage. I strongly recommend to install Jolicloud only onto those systems.

Next time I will go back to my photographic work and try to avoid wasting time like that ;-)

Day 13; Cloudsurfing

I've installed Jolicloud on my netbook. Jolicloud is an alternative operating system especially made for netbooks. It is very social because you have a lot of applications for social networking on it. It is very simple to use and also fast. Somehow it is a little bit like an iPhone or an iPod to use. There are hundreds of applications you can easily download and install.

Is shall also work on desktops. Therfore you can download a tool called USB-Installer. But so much I can tell you... I tried it and it ended in a disaster. But more about this in the next entry...


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Day 12; Fire that works!

Today it's national holiday here in Switzerland! That is a good oportunity to have a barbecue, to burn off fireworks and to take some pictures of fireworks!

First of all you have to know where the fireworks burns off. If your friends burn it of, it's not so a problem. If you like to photograph a public firework, you may ask the organisator previously where it will be burned off. If possible, choose a place which is a little bit higher, so that you get into a horizontal line with the firework. Using a tripod is essential. Change in to the manual mode (M) of your SLR. Go down with your ISO to around 100. Use a middle apperture around f8 until f16.

Now you can use a shutter speed in between 2 and 30 seconds. If you have a remote shutter control, use it! You also can use the bulb mode. If something happens at the sky, press the shutter until the explosion ended and then release the button. This way your shutter is open as long there is action in the sky.

Have a lot of fun and don't play with the fire ,-)

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