A few quotes that I highlighted along the way:

“The era of one-size-fits-all is ending, and in its place is something new, a market of multitudes.”

“The great thing about broadcast is that it can bring one show to millions of people with unmatchable efficiency. But it can’t do the opposite — bring a million shows to one person each. Yet that is exactly what the Internet does so well.”

“Seen broadly, it’s clear that the story of the Long Tail is really about the economics of abundance — what happens when the bottlenecks that stand between supply and demand in our culture start to disappear and everything becomes available to everyone.”

Mini-connoisseurs … mass customization

Definitely worth the read.

As more of a “note to self” but happy to share with you, here are the goodies that I got from watching it:

• Hook the ball – all good golfers do this
• Grip:
  • palms facing each other
  • softer grip promotes a hook (tigher = slice)
• Stance:
  • feet, knees, hips, shoulders all parallel to a line left of the target
  • weight set like you are fielding a ground ball
  • weight distribution – irons are 55% left side, woods are 45% left side
• Back Swing:
  • lower body resists, turn the upper body (coil) on axis
  • eyes should be level during the turn
  • wrists cock naturally up & down – not horizontally which is my bad habit
• Down Swing:
  • hit the inside portion of the ball
  • swing faster! don’t be afraid to let it rip
  • driver – turn your right foot out a bit to promote a bigger turn

• a sound and consistent pre-shot routine
• playing one shot at a time, staying in the present – it amazes me still how much golf and life are alike!

While he’s lead a pretty darn interesting life, it just didn’t read well for me. What I got out of this book (or the first 100 pages that I read) -

• work your ass off
• you will make plenty of mistakes and bad decisions, just keep on trudging ahead and don’t be afraid to screw up. be sure to learn from your mistakes!

Not bad, eh!  For comparison, here’s a regular photo of the same shot (what I normally would have produced before the magic of HDR) -

Pretty amazing difference.

Here’s a quick screencast on how to create amazing HDR photographs using Photomatix Pro:

Here’s another video on using Photomatix that gets really specific on Tone Mapping.

Just for my own notes:

• Nikon D60 on A (Aperture) mode
• manually set exposure to +2 / 0 / -2 for 3 consecutive shots
• batch process in Photomatix Pro

I messed around with the Nikon this morning and learned a lot about exposure and such.  There’s a ton to learn but it’s actually really interesting to me.

Here are two example photos.  On the bottom is the one that is HDR merged from Photoshop.  I definitely need to learn more about editing the photos in there but at least this time I learned how to export it as a jpg.  Had to adjust from 32-bit to 16-bit.  I guess this means the amount of data (in bits) stored in the actual image file.  I think 32-bit is just too much data for a jpg to contain so Photoshop wouldn’t even let me save as jpg until I made it 16-bit.

On the top is the middle of the 3 photos (0.0 exposure).  I’ve included it for comparison as it is pretty much the regular shot I would have taken before all this HDR stuff.

In comparison, the HDR (bottom) does have better color in the highlights of the plants, but the laptop is totally washed out.  Oh well, got some more experimenting to do I guess, but this is fun!

Menu > Release Mode > Continuous

• P: Programmed Auto – camera sets shutter speed and aperture for optimal exposure. Recommended when there is little time to adjust camera settings.
• S: Shutter-Priority Auto – camera automatically adjusts aperture for optimal exposure
• A: Aperture-Priority Auto – camera automatically adjusts shutter speed for optimal exposure
• M: Manual – you control both shutter speed and aperture