Blog entries from EmilyK

To Blog or not to Blog

Emily K Williams — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 08:00:00 +0100

It has become abundantly clear over the last few months that the internet is going through an awkward adolescent phase complete with acne and growing pains. With questions of net neutrality and a movement from free to subscription based on the horizon, it's not surprising that the blogosphere would start to get in on the action....

Lighten Up and Shoot

Emily K Williams — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 21:23:57 +0100

What do you get when you drop two pro-photographers with a sense of humor and little Spanish language skill in Columbia? Hilarity! Thank goodness Andy and Michael are blogging their experience so we can laugh along with them, and maybe even learn something.

Andy and Michael's blog "lighten up and shoot" documents their ph...

A Quirky flash for your iPhone

Emily K Williams — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:55:16 +0100

Ever tried taking a picture with your iPhone at night? Not pretty results. Well the folks over at the product labs at Quirky have been hard at work on an iPhone case, with a flash.

The Beamer is a hard plastic case with a built in LED flash that turns on at t...

And She's Back!

Emily K Williams — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 20:24:25 +0100

Hi all! Sorry for the delay in posts. I have spent the last week and a half battling a flu virus. Not. Fun. But it looks like I'm not alone. This flu season has been a doozy so far, but you don't have to take my word for it. Just take a look at the bells and whistles on Flu.gov.

This colossal Web site serves as a workin...

Look Out! Here Comes Kodak's Ad Rampage!

Emily K Williams — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 07:00:00 +0100

Kodak is in the process of rejuvenating their brand image.With the new "It's Time to Smile" slogan, it appears that Kodak has gone the way of American automakers. Get out your rally hat.

This summer, Kodak began pushing their Facebook page. Today they have over 44,000 friends. Their wall is filled with positive me...

Goodbye Roy DeCarava

Emily K Williams — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 21:50:58 +0100

The sad news came through today that Roy DeCarava has passed away. Roy died of natural causes in Manhattan on Tuesday at the age of 89.

Roy spent his life documenting black America. Born in Harlem, he armed his self with a 35mm camera and took to the streets of New York and captured over four decades of struggl...

How you are unknowingly working for Google Books

Emily K Williams — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:00:36 +0100

We've all encountered them. Those squiggly words that make us prove that we are human. But did you know that odds are when you are deciphering the gibberish, you are lending your services to groups like Google, the Internet Archive and the New York Times?

They are called CAPTCHAs, an acronym for "Comp...

How the SEIU reported on the SEIU rally

Emily K Williams — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 22:12:55 +0100

All politics aside, whenever a group manages to pull out the stops and organize a demonstration with thousands of protesters it is impressive. But when the main stream media does not deem the event newsworthy, it falls upon social media to provide coverage, and it looks like the SEIU was up to the challenge.

T...

Ditch your kite for a mini-copter!

Emily K Williams — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:25:39 +0100

So, moments after posting the last blog raving about how cool kite aerial photography technology is, I came across this baby. Let's just say, I'm ready to trade up to the AeriCam.

The AeriCam is a remote controlled mini-helicopter and brain child of fashion photographer Jason Lam . It made one of its first appear...

Let's go fly a kite!

Emily K Williams — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 16:02:33 +0100

Aerial shots are sweet, but lets face it, most of us don't have a plan hanging around that we can use on a whim. Well it turns out a plane is not the only way to get your camera airborne. A number of ambitious photographers are attaching their cameras to kites to get that birds-eye-view shot.

The mental image that appears when ...

Aviary: a digital art playground for the everyman

Emily K Williams — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 18:48:00 +0100

Photoshop is great, but not everyone can afford to hand over a few hundred bucks to Adobe for the software. Now, there's an online alternative for all the budding digital artists among us. It's called Aviary, and they have big plans.

Aviary is a start-up out of Long Island that offers free online image and ...

Hodgman and Perrotta on the new artistic community

Emily K Williams — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 17:32:11 +0100

Living in Boston has it's advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand, it is the second most expensive place to rent an apartment after San Francisco. On the other hand, I can take a two dollar train ride and hear John Hodgman speak... for free.

In case you live under a rock, or just don't care to learn peopl...

La-la-la-Lightroom 3 beta!

Emily K Williams — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 07:00:00 +0100

The seasons are changing and warm weather is about to be a thing of the past for many of us in the northern regions. What better chilly fall activity than cuddling up with a blanket and playing around with the new Lightroom 3 beta? It's free!

One exciting new feature is the ability to include watermarks on yo...

Annie Leibovitz and the Obamas

Emily K Williams — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 21:41:47 +0100

The White House released the official portrait of the presidential family today, and guess who the photographer was... None other than our favorite down-on-her-luck pro, Annie Leibovitz.

If you haven't been following along with the blog, you can get the back story here, and here. When the deadline came to pay the $24 mil...

Rediscover pre-revolution Russia in Color

Emily K Williams — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 17:43:36 +0100

The Library of Congress has done a terrific job at creating an online source for historic photography. Among their recent claims to fame are the color images of a turn of the century Russian photographer who documented his country just before the 1918 revolution.

In the early 1900's, Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii,...

Tiny Camera Documents Life For You

Emily K Williams — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 07:00:00 +0100

Ever wish you had your own personal photographer that would follow you around and snap photos of your day? Well one British design firm has created a "lifelogger" that will do just that.

The SenseCam by Microsoft Research in Cambridge, is a small camera, worn around the neck on a lanyard, that uses a fish eye len...

Print Photos from your iPhone!

Emily K Williams — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 07:00:00 +0100

Cell phone photography is on a rampage... and a good one at that. Canon has released an iPhone app that lends a new air of legitimacy to cell phone photos and promotes their new wireless printers at the same time.

The Canon Easy-PhotoPrint app allows iPhone users to ...

Outside Programmers Try to Fix Up Flickr

Emily K Williams — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 07:00:00 +0100

Recently, Yahoo decided to assert its ownership of Flickr by tacking on "from Yahoo!" to the end of the traditional logo. Needless to say, Flickr devotees are not happy with this change. In response, several programmers have developed patches that do everything from cover the Y! to amp up the site.

For Firefox there's t...

Canon tries for a bigger slice of the pro market

Emily K Williams — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 17:35:34 +0100

Pixels, and Sensors and HD video... Oh My! Canon released the EOS-1D Mark IV today, adding another contender to the heavyweight pro-level camera crowd.

The mantra for this new EOS Digital is to give the consumers what they ask for. With this in mind, Canon has done everything from tweeking the white balance to ...

Free Photoshop on your iPhone!

Emily K Williams — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 04:02:01 +0100

Hear ye! Hear ye! Adobe now offers a free Photoshop app for the iPhone! Grab your cell phone and get to downloading!

The app is set up as a companion to the photoshop.com site, also free to use. The features are similar to the site, with your basics like flip, rotate, crop, color settings and filters. The app l...