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Carrick — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 23:12:30 +0000

Westlake Center the day after Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving

Carrick — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 20:19:09 +0000

The football tradition begins

Bookmarks for September 27th

Carrick — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 00:31:06 +0000

Magnum Blog / Photo of the week: The last days of summer

Members of the Seattle Tubing Society in full float in 1953.

(tags: photo photography magnum )

Photo presentation in Firefox vs. Safari

Carrick — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 04:18:41 +0000

I was shocked, shocked! to discover recently that my beloved Firefox appeared to be reinterpreting the color and exposure of my photos when I viewed them online. The strange thing was that I noticed the difference in Firefox only when viewing my own photos on Flickr, then on my website (this one you’re reading now). Examples: here is a sample of how a recent photo of my daughter Julia looks on Flickr when viewed with Safari:

And this is the same photo as seen by Firefox:

Safari’s rendering is exactly how it should look. Firefox both brightens the exposure and softens the colors.

Another example, and this is the one where I first noticed the problem. Here is a photo taken specifically to highlight the bright red color. This is how it looks in Safari:

And here it is in Firefox:

The reds are much more muted in Firefox and it looks like a completely different exposure. Safari comes much closer to the original.

So what’s going on? Why do I only notice this for some of my own photos? Well, I think it must have to do with my photographic workflow. The photos above were taken in RAW format with my Nikon D50. I imported them into Adobe Lightroom, played around with the exposure and color a bit, then exported them to JPEG. There must be something about the process that messes with Firefox’s little brain and causes it to reinterpret how the images should look.

At least, that’s my guess. Does anyone have details on what this effect is and how to overcome it?

In the meantime, I’m considering switching to Safari when looking at photos online. It seems to most accurately present a photo as it is meant to be seen.

Happy fifth birthday!

Carrick — Mon, 07 May 2007 19:43:30 +0000

Five years ago today Julia was born. This is how she looked then…

This is her one month ago…

Amazing. I love that little gal.

My new photo blog

Carrick — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 04:28:25 +0000

Feeling the need to kick my photography habit up a notch, I’ve started yet another blog. This time it’s a photo blog. The intention is to focus my attention on crafting images worthy of their own place. Flickr is a great way to share lots of photos, and I will continue to post lost of photos to Flickr. But the new blog will be my place for highlighting the cream of the crop, such as it is. My hope is this will make me a better photographer. God knows there is plenty of room for improvement.

The site is a work in progress. Come by for a visit and let me know what you think.

Update: OK, so it really is a work in progress, which means it’s going to have a few issues. Like the feeds are little wonky and it’s a little slow to load. I’m working on caching and other tweaks to make it perform better. And navigation needs some work. I may even switch platforms mid-stream if this WordPress hack doesn’t hack it. Stay tuned.

Four years old

Carrick — Mon, 08 May 2006 03:38:38 +0000

Today is Julia’s fourth birthday.

I can’t believe it.

ThickBox

Carrick — Wed, 03 May 2006 19:31:27 +0000

Click the images below to view the overlayed versions. This is way cool.

ThickBox is Cody Lindley’s take on LightBox which is a technique for using JavaScript to overlay images on the current page. ThickBox takes it further by letting you overlay HTML pages as well.

Transparency

Carrick — Tue, 18 Oct 2005 03:45:48 +0000

As much as possible, I aim to associate with folks who aren’t afraid to post pictures of themselves in awkward moments of raw truth.

QOOP: not worth it

Carrick — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 04:20:32 +0000

I was pretty excited to see QOOP launch a printing service integrated with Flickr. Even though single prints aren’t in the cards, the photobooks looked like a nice alternative. Turns out they’re not so nice.

I ordered an 8×10 “perfect bound” photobook with color cover, color pages (double-sided), and a single 5×7 photo on each page. The total number of pages equaled 34. The cost including shipping was $22.74. (It was twelve days until I received it.) What I got is a booklet with a glossy color cover that is rather striking when seen from a distance, but inside the booklet there is much disappointment to be found. The paper is not photo-quality and the prints are what you might expect out of your inkjet printer. The colors are way off and the pictures grainy, even for photos of 2304×1728 pixel resolution. The layout and page design is very very plain.

Well, QOOP is in beta. It was an experiment for me. If I were to try it again I would pick the photos I want printed very carefully, including only the clearest, highest resolution photos. I expect that a lot of people who, like me, dash off a photobook without too much care will also be disappointed.