I entered today’s photo in PXITE’s contest of the week. The theme is Halloween. I am submission #30.

Some other great Halloween photos posted today, not necessarily on PXITE, are on the following sites:

• A Daily Dose of Imagery
• Gareth Marlow’s Photoblog
• Shutter and Pupil

The RSS link on the banner is for Chromaticus’ main photo page. The RSS at the bottom of this page is for the Scriptum section only. I had to remove a link from an image description, because the feed did not like it.

http://www.gnomaticphoto.com…index=3&id=1003

The error I received due to the above (truncated) line was:

XML Parsing Error: not well-formed
Location: http://www.chromaticus.net/index.php?x=rss
Line Number 34, Column 228:

Anyone have any idea why the link to Matt’s site would have caused this to happen?

I have been debating for some time whether or not my next computer will be a Windows Vista PC, or an OSX Intel powered Mac. While I will probably never give up using Photoshop, the release of Aperture by Apple tips the scale slightly in their favor.

How many visitors does it take to get some comments on your photos? My stats are up, but very few people leave feedback. Praise and adoration are nice, but I do not want a bunch of whitewash comments to stroke my ego. I would actually rather see some constructive criticism.

On a related note, does anyone else wonder why some of the hot blogs on Photoblogs.org are hot? Not that I think I should be on the list, but just that I wonder how much popularity plays into it? It has to be at work, since there are so many photoblogs out there to sort through.

I found a technique for faking the lomo effect using Photoshop. I tried it out on a previous post. I like the result and offhand can think of a couple other shots to use it on.

One question I have is how much do I fiddle with the conversion of the RAW file, knowing that I am going to increase the saturation and hue in Photoshop? It was not an issue on my first attempt, as I only had a .jpg to work with.

Matt has successfully used a similar technique on several photos. My favorite is this portrait of me that I recently framed and hung in my home office.

I used Jason’s PixelPost hack to choose a specific stylesheet for each photo that I post on the home page. The interface on my PixelPost administration page looks like this.

Previously the stylesheet defaulted to a dark grey theme, but the viewer could also select from white, light grey and black backgrounds. I implemented the hack so that I could control the background color for each photo, as dark shots look better on light backgrounds (and vice versa).

As Napoleon Dynamite would say, “I’ve got skills.” While they do not include mastery of the bo-staff and nun-chucks, I am a self taught coiffeur. For those who do not speak French, that means I can cut guys’ hair. My grandfather was a barber and I inherited his equipment. Back in high school I started clipping my own hair and soon started cutting my friends’ hair.

Matt came over for a trim this morning. In return he gave me a mini-lesson on sharpening in Photoshop. He cleaned up this image for me (though unfortunately we lost the EXIF data along the way). Tonight I applied those lessons learned to this image.

Post processing is a dirty word to a lot of people, but I am beginning to learn that it is a lot bigger part of being a successful digital photographer. There will have to be a lot more haircuts and lessons before I feel like I am consistently in control of my images, but hopefully this is a good start.

We were out by Hobby Lobby today, so I stopped in to pick up some aluminum frame sections. They were 50% off the regular price. I used them to frame a couple 5 x 7 photos that Matt gave me. The frame sizes are 11 x 11 inches.

They are both portraits of me–one an abstract black & white and the other a color lomo effect. I think they are cool and am framing them as art. My wife thinks it is narcissistic to hang them here in the house. Check out Matt’s pro-site here.

I have to add that Hobby Lobby is the worst place to buy mat board. I will get it there if I need it for the mounting piece or as a cutting backer. Otherwise, it is usually too banged up and dirty. I purchased the board for the window mats at Michael’s, which keeps the nice stuff safe behind the counter.

If I ever get to a point where I am framing a lot I think I will mail order it in bulk. Even the pieces I buy from local art stores can have dings, dented edges and smudge marks.

This past Friday night Matt and I went out again to take some night photos. We started at Point Park and then headed over to Covenant College. Both places were way too lit, so we left the mountain and went straight to the Chattanooga Choo-Choo where we immediately started having better success. We finished up on the north side of the river at Coolidge Park. Once again, we stayed out way too late. I think it was 1:00 AM by the time I got home.

One of the things you cannot seem to completely avoid when shooting night photographs with your buddy is that you will end up with several similar shots, if not the exact same. It makes posting and processing them a challenge. So far we have not published the same shot on the same day…yet!

Luckily, there is one photo that we could not possibly duplicate–an image of the other person!