…is in this informative film from 1932:
As a Sri Lankan I’m not sure whether I find this condescending or not, but it most certainly is rather hilarious. It’s also interesting to see how things have changed, in the cities at least, and have not changed in the villages.
If you follow tech related news, you might remember the launch of a "Google Killer" search engine announced last August called "Cuil". Although quite a Google fan boy, I eagerly tried it out hoping that we actually did have a Google competitor on our hands. After all, it was founded by ex-Google employees and had quite an impressive VC backing. On trying it out I was sorely disappointed. It didn’t return logical results and couldn’t find the site I was looking for even if I entered the URL into the search box. Not being a complete luddite when it comes to developing complex systems such as search engines, I thought I’d give it a try in a year’s time or so to give it a chance to settle in.
So I tried it again today. No change. It’s worth heading over there and searching for a few things just for the comedic value. In fact, of all the searches that I tried, the one with the most relevant results was a search for "Cuil sucks". This, is a lesson on how not to spend $33 million.
Incidentally if you are interested in trying something other than Google at some point, I highly recommend Bing from Microsoft. The results might not be as accurate but it does do some things differently which is refreshing and has on a few occasions provided results that I couldn’t (easily at least) obtain from Google. Bing’s video search is also downright awesome — just hover over a video thumbnail and you’ll see what I mean. Also, Bing’s image search is what inspired me to create Fluidr.
[NOTE: This is a photo post. To view any photo larger, click on the photo itself. The icons below each photo will 1) Display the photo larger, 2) Display information useful to photographers about the image and 3) Display the photo's location on a map]
In Part 1 I shared a video taken during the snowy days Cambridge saw early in February this year. In this post I’ll get back to what I do better – photography.
The snow started on a Sunday evening and as I hit the sack that day I planned to wake up early (something that I find pretty hard to do) and head into town to take some photos. It was a work day, so I needed to start early in order to get in to work at a respectable time.
I decided to spend my limited time around the Cambridge backs, mainly in Trinity and King’s colleges. I started out for King’s college and stopped by what is possibly my favourite grave. It’s a small tomb under a beautiful tree by the side of St Mary’s Chapel.
I’ve photographed this lovely scene multiple times (see here and here) and this time it was more lovely than ever. I’m not too thrilled with this shot and feel like I could have done it better had I not been too preoccupied with time.
After a few minutes around the chapel (and a few frames that didn’t make the cut) I entered King’s College. There were many people milling about the entrance with cameras and a few annoyed students trying to get to lectures through both the tourists and snow. Despite the ugly scaffolding that surrounds King’s Chapel, the fields and rooftops looked lovely in their new costume of white.
Snow was falling at a rate now, and I began to get a bit wetter than I had anticipated. My camera was all but dripping with water and I was concerned that perhaps it was getting a little too exposed. I regretted not bringing my camera bag along with me.
From King’s I moved on to Trinity College after a brief stop at the Clare College Tree which didn’t look as beautiful as I’d hoped. Trinity on the other hand was really lovely and greeted me with Great Court drenched in white
Walking over the bridge towards Queen’s street offered a lovely view of the Trinity Hall bridge with a good summary of all that is Cambridge: punts, the river, ducks and cyclists.
Just as I began to head back the snow stopped and everything took on a eerie stillness. There was no wind, or sound and the tension in the air was only detectable by the sound of snow falling off drooping branches. A short walk down a path I normally wouldn’t have gone down (all the best photos start like this in my experience) and I captured this scene of a snowladen tree and punts.
My camera was pretty wet by this time and I decided that I should begin the walk home before getting ready and cycling (carefully!) through the snow to work. Although I was wet, cold and unable to feel my hands, things had worked out well. Perhaps there was something to be said about waking up early… which is what enticed me to head into town the very next day. Photos from that in Part 3 of this series.
For the technically minded: all photos in this post were taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II and a Canon EF 24-105 f4L IS lens. They were then RAW processed in Lightroom and then handed over to Photoshop where editing may have involved either one or more of the following: cropping, sharpening, curves work and a soft focus filter.
So I was just about to check out on an online order and notices the gaping text box asking for a coupon code. Despite having seen similar boxes all over the place, this time my curiosity was piqued and I asked myself ‘where on earth do you get coupon codes from?’
I answered myself with the answer I find myself guilty of giving to others far too often these days: ‘just Google it!’ So I did and found sites which simply list the coupon codes if you click on a link for them (which usually link to the store offering the discount).
The site I ended up using was http://www.myvouchercodes.co.uk/ and 30 seconds later I had a coupon code and saved 15% on my order. So, the next time you have a question that you are about to dismiss, consider Googling it… it takes a few seconds and might save you some cash.
Persuasive speech is an essential skill to have in one’s social toolbox. It comes in use in many cases from requesting a pay rise to convincing your friend that a certain partner is no good for him/her. In my experience, I’ve found that the most important part of being a good persuasive speaker is understanding your audience. When you know what they care about and what makes them tick, you can appeal to these sensibilities for maximum effect.
Therefore what makes a good persuasive speaker is someone who has the ability to identify his audience quickly and accurately. If you see an older lady with a motherly smile, make her see you as similar to her son; if you’re friend has an insecurity about something, try and whip up an analogy between the thrust of your argument and something related to this weakness. If you have the time, it’s advisable to learn a little more about your target before ever broaching the topic.
All of this might seem a little manipulative and that’s because that’s precisely what it is. This doesn’t immediately make it a bad thing though – it’s what you manipulate your audience into being or doing that determines the ethics of your persuasion.
Sometimes a big difference can be made without advanced psychoanalysis as the following joke describes pretty well:
A disappointed Coca Cola salesman returns from his Middle East assignment. A friend asks, “Why weren’t you successful with the Arabs?”
“When I got posted in the Middle East , I was very confident that I would make a good sales pitch as Cola is virtually unknown there” The salesman explained . “But, I had a problem I didn’t know to speak Arabic. So, I planned to convey the message through a poster cartoon style.”
Scene 1: A man lying in the hot desert sand, totally exhausted and fainting.
Scene 2: The man is drinking our Cola.
Scene 3: Our man is now totally refreshed and jogs away.“That’s a great concept ! That should have worked!” said the friend, looking confused.
“The hell it should”, said the salesman, “I didn’t realize that Arabs read from right to left”
Apologies if you’ve already seen it somewhere!
Homework for the introspective: the last time you felt compelled to do something or found yourself nodding in agreement with something someone else was saying, try and identify what it was specifically that won you over. In many cases it is the sheer force of logic, but there may be other things in play as well. It’s a good way to learn more about yourself and defend yourself from being too easily compelled.
If you find yourself in the company of others who are agreeing to something someone is saying, try and find out what it is that has made them acquiescent, what you learn might help you (and them if you’re not Machiavellian about it!) some day.
As many of you may know, England received record snowfall during the early weeks of February. Although this caused chaos around the country, in particular London where public transport pretty much ground to a halt, it also made everything extremely beautiful. Or at least different.
The snow began early on a Sunday night and before turning in, I decided that I would get up early and head into town before going to work in order to photograph Cambridge’s colleges and the town in it’s new white outfit. Waking up early was definitely worth it and I got quite a few good photos.
In this first post, however, I’m just going to share a video that was made from clips taken with my Canon EOS 5D Mark II on this outing with the photos to come in another post. It was my first attempt at non linear video editing and so isn’t exactly brilliant. Also, the footage is a bit shaky since I was getting used to steadying a DSLR held away from my body (as it needs to be held when shooting video) and I was wet and freezing too! Enough with the excuses, here it is:
For the technically minded of you, I copied the video from the 1080p MOV files from the 5D Mark II into the MP4 container (this involves no transcoding and therefore no loss of data) and then edited the footage in Sony Vegas 9. I tried Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 but despite my being an Adobe fanboy, found Premiere to be a bit crashy whereas Vegas worked flawlessly. I’ll probably put up a video workflow post at some point.
Update: view Part 2
(Music credit: Celestial Aeon Project)
I’ve used Flickr for hosting and sharing my photos for a long time so when video uploads came to the site, I was initially a little skeptical. One of the main attractions of Flickr is it’s vibrant community, and I was a little worried that the advent of video would herald the arrival of the ‘YouTube crowd’ and creative comments on my photos would cease to exist. Thankfully, this didn’t come to pass largely due to the fact that video was limited to paying customers only.
Yesterday, Flickr upgraded it’s video offering to allow even free users to upload video content and introduced HD quality video for paying customers. Having recently purchased a Canon EOS 5D Mark II which captures HD video, I immediately tried it out.
Previously, I had used Vimeo for my HD video uploads due to it’s excellent quality and great design. However, it restricted free users to one HD upload per week which was inconvenient but fairly sufficient for my needs. Unfortunately Vimeo doesn’t allow HD capable embeds to free users, which was somethign that I wanted. Basically what this meant that if I embed a video on this blog, a reader will need to click through to the video’s page on Vimeo to view it in HD.
Flickr’s video (for paying users) has none of these restrictions, and since I’m already paying for Flickr anyway, I’ve moved to Flickr for video hosting.
Flickr’s video upload speeds are great (I use the web based uploader since the latest versions of the desktop Uploadr tool are broken as far as I’m concerned), and the speed of conversion is remarkable. Video quality is exemplary and the flash based player is low key unlike the gaudiness that is YouTube.
One downside to Flickr’s video (for the general user base at least) is that videos are limited to 90 seconds. This is because video at Flickr grew out of the idea of a ‘long photograph’. I find that this works well for the type of videos that I want to create and presents an interesting challenge — storytelling in just 90 seconds.
Another restriction is that each video upload must be less than 150MB which is a problem. The video in this post is only 30s, but was 150MB in size — it seems as if the Flickr developers have not considered the fact that high bitrate 1080p video (which the Canon EOS 5D Mark II uses) needs more than 150MB even when limited to 90 seconds.
About a month ago, I purchased a new Digital SLR camera from Canon: the EOS 5D Mark II. In many ways it is a massive upgrade over my previous camera (a Canon EOS 350D), but I found myself not really achieving anything truly breathtaking until several weeks of using the camera. Like many tools used in art, getting better equipment doesn’t readily translate into better artistic output — imagination, creativity and determination is still required, and the new kit only helps you realise more of it as you spend time getting familiar with it.
One of the major differences in my new camera is the ability to take very high quality video. I’ve done my share of filming with camcorders and even dabbled a bit in non linear video editing, but the quality and flexibility of the video output from the the 5D Mark II is truly outstanding… but also very hard to get right. Depth of focus is tremendously shallow, the ergonomics of a DSLR for steady handholding of video isn’t great and the file sizes are astronomical. I’m also realising just how surprisingly different videography is from photography.
I will be posting articles related to my exploits in video in the future, but in the meantime, here are a few videos that showcase what the 5D Mark II can do.
NOTE: These videos have all been resized and recompressed for web viewing. In order to view them in HD, you will need to click on the ‘HD’ icon at the bottom right of the video, and should view it full-screen.
Tight control of depth of field
As in photography, this can be used to great effect when you want to focus the viewers attention on a particular point. In videography, however, you can use it to actually lead a person’s eye through the image, only revealing certain details when you want to.
This creative opportunity is difficult to exploit since in order to get the best focus, you need to focus manually. While the camera can focus automatically extremely fast when taking photographs, during movie taking it is a little slower, and you can visibly see it hunting for a sharp image (this is due to the fact that the usual autofocus modules used during photography cannot be employed without an interruption in the video, and so alternate methods need to be used). In order to get the best of both worlds, you’ve got to get familiar with the focus dial!
Use of a variety of lenses
If you are familiar with photography, you may have heard of macro lenses (micro in Nikon-land). These lenses are designed to take pictures of very small things by allowing you to focus even when the lens is very close to the subject. A few examples of macro photography that I’ve taken can be seen here. When used in videography, you can show motion and things unfolding at very small scales.
The above video was taken of snow landing on a small strip of weeds that were, at their tallest, under a centimeter in height. If you look closely you can make out the individual details of the ice crystals at certain points. You will also notice that I had problems with depth of field. In these optical conditions, the depth of field (i.e. the range of distances from the lens where items will be in focus) is only around a few millimeters. In addition, as the lens is magnifying the subject, it also magnifies even the slightest shake caused by an unsteady hand.
With the wealth of lenses that are mountable on this camera, I’m excited with the possibilities… fish-eyes, extreme telephoto, tilt-shift lenses… To see some excellent videos taken by a bird photographer took with an extreme telephoto lens and this camera head over to his Vimeo page.
Excellent low light abilities
The Canon EOS 5D Mark II has what is known as a ‘full frame sensor’. This means that the actual image sensor which records the image that the lens presents it is exactly the same size as a 35mm film frame. This size, although it may seem small, is absolutely massive in terms of chip size: while a Core 2 Extreme processor is around 150mm2 in area, the sensor on the 5D Mark II is over 850mm2. What this means for photography is that it can collect a lot more light, and is therefore better at working in situations where light is scarce. Most high quality video cameras, including those used in movies and so on are far smaller and perform far worse in low light than this Canon does. In order to shoot night scenes, many tricks are employed to get usable footage.
The above video was shot around an hour after sunset and shows a lot more detail than I could see clearly with my eyes. At full size you can even see some stars (which I didn’t notice when there) and Venus nestled in the branches (which I did see). The footage is quite noisy, but this can be cleaned up quite well (it’s easier to do in video than in photos) and is only prevalent in areas where there isn’t much detail such as the blank sky.
So in conclusion, it looks like there are many ways to express one’s creativity with the new Canon EOS 5D Mark II. Despite this, the three videos above have been rather boring, so I’ve go my work cut out for me if I want to use this tool properly! Luckily I’ve managed to squeeze out a lot out of the camera’s photographic potential, which I shall post about in the near future.
