Well, Klaus Shuler recently wrote me to point out that while aperture blades do affect the quality of bokeh, they can’t possibly do so when the lens is wide open. And he is absolutely right. More important than aperture blades, Klaus writes, are other lens qualities such as spherical aberration correction. I have no doubt he’s write on this, too, although looking for these measurements on a potential new lens purchase certainly get down to the nitty gritty in a way I’m not sure many of us would do.

Nevertheless, Klaus is trying to do something pretty exciting by standardizing a test for bokeh in various lenses. Essentially, he wants to do for bokeh what others have done for sharpness, etc. And that sounds like a great idea to me.

Check out Klaus’ website and you will see, as he acknowledges, he has “a long way to go.” But I’m excited to see him try and I’ll be watching what he develops very closely.

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE INTRODUCES ‘MY SHOT’
INDIVIDUALIZED PHOTO WEB PAGES FOR USER-GENERATED CONTENT

NEW YORK (Feb. 28, 2008) — National Geographic Magazine has announced their latest innovation, “My Shot.” “My Shot” allows photographers of all skills to create their own web page at www.ngm.com to display their best photographs.

“My Shot” members are able to upload and save up to 100 photographs on their own “My Shot” page. Members will also be able to use a drag-and-drop version of NGM.com’s cutting-edge jigsaw puzzle generator on their pages. Any photo saved to “My Shot” can be turned instantly into a jigsaw puzzle. There is also a custom version of a popular memory-sorting game that users can create from their own photos.

“My Shot” members can also submit their photos to National Geographic’s popular “Your Shot” feature, where a dozen photos are selected each day by editors to appear on-line, with those photos being rated by readers. At the end of the month, the winning photo will be published in National Geographic Magazine itself, which reaches 40 million readers worldwide.

For more information, log onto http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/myshot.

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Nope.

Try one hundred options. Seriously.

Over at the Virtual Hosting blog, Laura Milligan has compiled what certainly must be the most comprehensive list of online photography sharing sites. And she’s been thorough enough to break them out by category (Popular, Community, Travel, etc.) Very cool and you should definitely check it out.

Contact: Andy Shearer (212) 843-8061 / ashearer@rubenstein.com

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE’S ONLINE SITE LETS VISITORS CHOOSE TOP READER-SUBMITTED PHOTOGRAPHS
Monthly Winner’s Photograph Will Appear in Print in
National Geographic Magazine

National Geographic magazine’s Web site, www.ngm.com, has launched an online version of the popular “Your Shot” page, where National Geographic photo editors feature two reader-submitted photos in the magazine every month. Currently, both photographs are chosen by editors at National Geographic. Starting in October, Web users who visit www.ngm.com will have the power to choose one of the reader-submitted photographs that appear on the magazine’s “Your Shot” page.

Online, the feature is called the Daily Dozen. Visitors can go to www.ngm.com to view a group of daily top-12 images shot by amateur photographers. Images for the Daily Dozen are chosen from photographs submitted to National Geographic by photography enthusiasts from around the world (go to ngm.com/yourshot for details on how to submit a photo).

Each week, visitors to ngm.com can vote on a gallery of images from the prior week. At the end of the month all votes will be tallied, and the photograph with the highest cumulative ranking will be published in an upcoming issue of National Geographic magazine. Viewers can vote for each week’s images one time only.

Check it out.

But it’s always worth examining the techniques of master painters because some of what they do — arguably even a lot of what they do — is directly transferable to the medium of photography.

The beautiful painting I’m featuring here is the work of an outstanding Vietnamese painter named Dao Hai Phong. His paintings have a very unique and beautiful style and if you’d like to see more of you can check it out here. I highly recommend that you do.

Dao is known for his bold use of colors and it’s exactly that which prompts me to write about him here. I have written before about the power of using color in your photographs. And I don’t just mean shooting in color. I mean using color.

I could go off into a long elaboration about color theory here. And certainly there are many resources on the Web if you want to learn more about it. But the bottom line is that colors are like people. You meet one, and it’s sure to introduce you to another. And some get your attention before others.

Why is this important? Because in any photographic composition, just as in any painting, the human eye will be drawn to certain colors first. Take a look at Dao’s beautiful painting above. Where does your eye go first? (more…)