Blog of Leonid Mamchenkov

I finally saved enough courage to order some more stuff for my photo toolbox.  It’s been a really long while (more than a couple of years) that I wanted to get a new lense, which would have a wider angle view than anything that already have, and a proper flash unit.  And here I am, a proud owner of Canon 17-40mm f/4.0L USM lense and a Canon 430 EX II Speedlight flash, plus a bunch of new batteries, filters, hoods, and such.

As with any other new gadgets, there is a lot to read, learn, and try.  But I am already happy with how it fits and how it works.  Above you can see a self-portrait, practically the second image I took in almost fully automatic mode.  Georgeous!  This picture has all chances of becoming my new avatar or something.  And, of course, a few more images were uploaded to my Flickr photostream.  More to come.

Being a huge fan of Flickr, I am always trying to bring more people to the service.  Because more people = more images and more comments, which, of course, means more fun and inspiration.

One of the most frequent reasons NOT to use Flickr that I’ve heard coming mostly from amateur and professional photographers was that Flickr is only available with white background and only with up to medium-sized images.  That is true.  While Flick is constantly improving their service, some features are still not there.  And maybe they are not coming any time soon.  But.  That doesn’t mean that there is no work around.  After all, the world of technology is blessed with plenty of excellent open source software these days.  So, here is how you can solve the problem of size and color, if you are one of those people who prefers it the other way around.

1. Get yourself a copy of an real web browser - Firefox.
2. Install Greasemonkey extension for Firefox.
3. Install Flickr On Black user script for Greasemonkey.

Once you’ve done the above steps, go to Flickr and find a picture that you want to enjoy on black or in a different color.  On the image page, scroll down to the part where you can see “Additional information” on the right side.  Among them, you’ll see a few new links.  “View on black: Regular, Large” will be among them.

Click, and you are done.  The link will take you to another page, which will look something like this.  You can switch between Regular and Large size, as well as between black and white backgrounds right on that page.

P.S.: While you are getting Flickr on Black user script for Greasemonkey, look around.  There are thousands of other scripts to customize anything and everthing from Google search results and GMail to IMDB movie information and Twitter messeging.

P.P.S.: Alternatively, you can take a look at Flickr “Lights Out” or “Flickr in mostly black and orange” user scripts for Greasemonkey.

P.P.P.S: Many Greasemonkey scripts work perfectly in browsers other than Firefox - Opera, Safari, etc.  But I’d still recommend to use Firefox.

Famagusta Gazette reports that a partial Lunar eclipse will be visible from Cyprus tonight.  For the photography fans among you, it’s probably a good time to review moon photography tips.  The thing to remember is that even though shooting at night, the moon is lit by the sun, which means you’ll need to use pretty much the same settings as for the bright daylight - tele-zoom lens, tripod, f/16, 1/80 - 1/100.  Good luck, and don’t forget to share your pictures after!

Flickr user Amsterdamned! published this compilation - “The Flickr Portrait Gallery Hall of Excellence 2007″.  Click on the image  above to go its Flickr page, which has links to the original images in larger size.  These are so good - they are an absolute must see!

Flickr has recently added support for videos.  Many thought (and some still do) that it was an April Fool’s joke, because the information broke out on the 1st of April, but it seems that it was no joke after all.

When I heard about it, I was a bit surprised, and had a slight negative feeling about it.  Flickr seemed to do just fine as they were.  The photo site community is very different from the video site community. And don’t we already have YouTube, Google Video, Metacafe, and a tonne of other video sites?  Why Flickr should be spoiled by videos?

But after I spent some time reading about and checking the implementation, I have to say that I like it.  There is a FAQ about this new feature which does a good job explaining the idea behind it.  There are many ways to define what a video is and how it should be handled.  Flickr went for a very nice definition - “a long photo“.  They have imposed a 90 second time limit on all videos, as well as allowed uploads to Pro accounts only for now.  That’s about as right as it could have been done.

Indeed there is a need for short video support on Flickr.  I do have a YouTube account, but it’s not what I need right now.  I am not doing a lot of videos, and the ones I do usually complement the photos nicely.  Most of my videos are very short and rather personal.  For these needs, YouTube is a bit too much with its noisy community, channels, and subscribers.  But Flickr videos seems to be spot on! I suspect there going to be a few changes and adjustments to the current functionality in the near future, but even as it is now, it’s pretty handy.

Have you tried Flickr videos?  What do you think?