Nearly forgot about this; so fired up the trusty Canon 7D @ ISO160 F11 with my 70-300mm IS onboard. It was pretty cloudy, but managed to grab a couple of shots.
Nearly forgot about this; so fired up the trusty Canon 7D @ ISO160 F11 with my 70-300mm IS onboard. It was pretty cloudy, but managed to grab a couple of shots.
As I mentioned I might, last Tuesday morning, with my tripod strapped to my bike, and my camera, lenses, and MacBook Air stuffed into a backpack, I headed up to North Head, Manly to shoot the passing of Cunard’s Queen Mary 2 and Queen Elizabeth as the passed into Sydney Harbour. Some things worked well, but I must admit that overall I came away disappointed with the fruits of my labours.
This post has little to do with photography, but it perhaps does answer some of the most common questions I have heard at trade shows, in forums, and the like… What’s your setup? What do you use? Many will lament the complete lack of photographic merit in those questions, but as a tech head, I will indulge my inner geek.
I recently started reading a great set of interviews where IT personalities give an overview of the hardware and software they use personally called “The Setup”. I really love the format of these interviews, being very breezy, not getting bogged down in the details, while still providing some great insight, tips, and hints for helpful tools and software. I doubt I would ever be invited to feature in “The Setup” but I will try to write this post in the same style.

I recently subscribed to an excellent blog entitled “Serious Amateur Photography” by Jeff Lynch. In particular I liked his how-to posts, i.e. how to achieve a certain photographic result. So in that spirit, I want to share how I created the image above…
Those few hardy souls following my Twitter stream must be wondering what’s going on with some bizarre posts. I have been working away with giving my website a fresh lick of paint, and testing the changes at www.jonathanbourke.ie. It’s coming along nicely, but it will be a few weeks yet. The new site, while looking similar to the existing site, will have a more consistent structure to it and will greatly ease gallery posting.
In the meantime, here are some interesting links I came across:
Getting my images from Lightroom to my website has always been a bit of an ordeal:
If this sounds like you, then you absolutely need this Adobe Lightroom Export plugin from Luc Renambot called “Dossier De Presse”. Read on for more details and a sample gallery.

Adobe Lightroom 2
In my previous post on Digital Asset Management, I briefly outlined some of the entry level contenders for DAM software such as Google Picasa and Adobe Photoshop Elements. In the rest of this series, I will look at some of the heavy weights, the professional asset management systems. I will start with the one I use most — Adobe Lightroom. Not sure if this is a good idea as I it is the product that I am most intimate with, knowing its strengths and weaknesses. Let’s get started…

20 Years of Adobe Photoshop — But is it Still Relevant for Photographers?
That said, it really has been a phenomenon; so much so that it is often used as a verb:
That image looks photoshopped!
A result of that is that in popular culture it now stands for all that is wrong with magazine images of skinny models. It is accused of being complicated, difficult to learn and use, and extremely expensive. So much so that it must be one of the most pirated pieces of software on the internet.
Still amazing software though…