Protecting your photos

After seeing how my blog posts have been republished without my permission, I realize that the same thing is likely to happen with my photos (and most likely already has happened). Most photographers add a visible watermark or copyright notice to identify their photos. Although Aperture can embed a copyright notice and author info in the EXIF data, it doesn’t have a way to add a visible identification.

One way to do it is to edit in Photoshop and add a text layer. As an alternative, I started to write an Aperture editing plugin that can add text to a photo. I hope to have it ready for public release next week.

Watermark
Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!

Trying SmugMug

I’m trying out SmugMug as a possible alternative to Flickr. They have a Flee Flickr 50% off deal, although I’m still on the 14 day free trial.

I’m not leaving Flickr, but with the co-founders leaving Yahoo, I want to be prepared just in case it goes away. I really hope Flickr survives, since it’s one of my favorite sites. I’ll most likely keep both services.

I really like SmugMug, although it still feels a bit alien. It doesn’t seem to have Flickr’s community-oriented features, but the galleries look gorgeous. Unlike Flickr, SmugMug lets you change the theme & layout of your galleries instead of always displaying your photos on a solid white page.

You can visit my SmugMug homepage at mike3k.smugmug.com/.

mike3k : photos : Fort Lauderdale Photowalk- powered by SmugMug
Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!

I survived the Photowalk

I had a great time at the Fort Lauderdale Photowalk today, and the weather cooperated, at least most of the time. We met at Las Olas Riverfront at around 9:30 AM. After the introductions, we went north on Brickell Avenue to SW 2nd Street.

Riverfront

Fountain

We then went west, across the railroad tracks, to the Museum of Science & Discovery.

Railroad tracks

Old Fort Lauderdale

Museum of Science & Discovery

We then turned south to River Walk, where we continued back to the Riverfront plaza.

River Walk

River

Riverwalk Bricks

Double Tree

Under the bridge

At this point, we stopped for some group photos and a few people left. We decided to cut the route short, since it was hot and most of us were tired. Instead of continuing to Las Olas Blvd, we went to Briny Pub for lunch & drinks.

Briny Pub

The group

It turned out to be a good decision, since it started raining while we were having lunch. By this time we were down to only 8 people, including Paulo, his wife and his son.

We decided to wait until it stopped raining, but it didn’t show any signs of stopping.

Rain

Finally, Paulo had to leave, so the 5 of us who remained went indoors since we were getting wet on the covered patio. While we were waiting, we took some pictures of the fish tank.

Hiding in the coral

Finally, we made a run for it, even though it was still raining pretty hard. In all, we had a great time and I learned a lot from some of the professionals about focus, exposure, color balance, and photo processing.

There were more Canons than Nikons, and most of the Nikon owners had a D300 or other high end models.

I posted a full gallery of my photowalk pictures at Flickr.

Photowalk this Sunday

I’m really looking forward to the Ft. Lauderdale Photowalk this Sunday.

Paulo Jordao posted some final details:

We are going to meet around 9:45am at Las Olas Riverfront (300 Southwest 1st Avenue Fort Lauderdale, FL 33312). They have a little outside water-fountain that is going to be our meeting point.

If it rains, the meeting point will be the first floor, close to the escalators.

Photo of the day

When I was walking home from the gym this evening, the sunset was really spectacular, so I rushed home to get my camera and take a few shots. Since time was running out, I didn’t bother taking the tripod. Here’s a 3 exposure HDR made without a tripod, using Photoshop’s Merge to HDR & Photomatix Tone Mapping.

HDR Sunset 06-16-2008