If don’t already know, I use Adobe Lightroom as my photo manager and developer. I won’t get into all the specifics here, but suffice it to say that it has a ton of features advanced amateurs and professional photographers alike will find useful.

One of the killer features of the program is the plugin support. You can add plugins to perform specific actions to streamline your workflow beyond the features built-in to Lightroom. I have been using the flickr exporter for a while.  I finally installed another plugin which performs several operations, but I was specifically interested in the border feature.  The plugin is called LR Mogrify, it was written by Tim Armes.  Check out Tim’s page for a quick howto and installation guide.  It’s pretty straight-forward, I had the plugin installed and running in under 10 minutes.  As I am running Vista, I had to also the ImageMagick conversion utilities prior to the plugin installation.

The nice thing about this plugin is that it is actually called a post-process filter, which means you can use the features on any of the Export functions in Lightroom.  This will allow me to get a consistent output if I am generating a jpg to upload to my website or sending an image to flickr.

There are lots of options to play with, but here is a quick example of a simple 2-border option I created.  I plan to do some more experimenting with the plugin to create more advanced “matte looking” borders.

Canon has recently been running one of their semi-annual sales.  They usually run for a few weeks twice a year.  After reading many lighting blogs and forums on Flickr, I decided it was time for me to start the journey of off-camera lighting.  I picked up the Canon 580ex Mark II Flash.  I had already ordered and received my Maha battery charger so the batteries were fully charged and ready to go.

My first thought after taking the flash out of the box and loading up the batteries was that this will be heavy on my XSi body.  The overall construction of the flash is very solid and feels durable in your hand.  One really nice upgrade I noticed is the slide-lock mechanism used to attach the flash to the camera.  No more twisting a large locking screw, just slide and done.

As I just ordered the flash at this point I was not able to do any off camera work.  It’s just as well as I barely knew what all the modes and dials on the flash did.  I had done some basic reading about the 580 while I was waiting for it to arrive so I have some basic understanding of its usage.

I took about 20-40 pictures the first night of various objects and scenes around my house.  Here is one of the better ones I ame up with.  I’ll post more information as I explore the features of the flash and get my off-camera accessories.

I found this courtesy of A Photo Editor’s blog, but it appears that famed Photographer Vincent Laforet is selling some limited edition prints for a special project he has cooked up.  This is the Vincent Laforet that received much fanfare when he released his promo movie short showcasing the 1080p video capabilities of the Canon 5D Mark II.

Vincent is selling some limited edition (and one regular edition) prints to fund a scholarship for interns.  He is promoting a new feature from Photoshelter that allows you to embed photo galleries in web pages.  Nothing earth shattering by any means, but none the less necessary to keep current.  Personally, I think that Photoshelter has some work to do on their end to clean up this gallery feature.  Regardless I already went shopping.  Check out the gallery below.

Original post here.

I have been reading Chase Jarvis’s blog for a while now.  He specializes in sports and location photography.  I love his passion for photography and his willingness to share his knowledge.  He posts several video shorts in a video series he runs off his blog.  Topics can range from photo assignment setups to gear to customized laptop cases.

Chase recently published a photobook detailing pictures of his home mountain, Stevens Pass in Washington.  He put together a video composed of 3,954 still images from various shoots.  Check it out below.  My birthday is coming up soon, maybe I’ll be able to post a book review, hint hint.

The Denver Post has a nice news photo blog called Captured.  I first found this link from a post on A Photo Editor’s site.  The Captured post on November 5th features Damon Winters from the New York Times covering the campaign trail of President-Elect Barack Obama.  Some of the pictures are stunning, in terms of lighting and composition.

I noticed one image of Obama getting into an SUV.  The frame has a photag to the right of the frame with a tapped camera.  He has basically turned his professional DSLR camera (Canon 1Ds III??) into a $10,000 point and shoot camera.  He could have at least used black gaffers tape instead of neon orange.

Basically what the photag has is taped up the settings on the camera so all he has to do is aim and fire away.

Check out the image in question along with the rest of the gallery.

After many false starts and reviewing ideas about what I wanted to publish, I have finally taken the first few steps in publishing my site.  I don’t have explicit goals for the site at this point, only loose ideas.  I want to use this as a place to showcase my interests and hobbies.  You should expect to see topics ranging from photography, hiking, sports to work trends and issues.

If you are curious, you can check out the about me page to read up on my background.  That’s about all I have for now.  Time to do a little more CSS tweaking and then call it a night.