Tony,

I was reading your 70-536 MCTS training book, when I saw that that you were a photographer. I find that to be strange, considering the fact that I too am a programmer who is also a photographer. At first, I found what must be your old website (http://www.northrup.org/). Upon seeing that site, I said that this guy must be joking when he says that he is a photographer. However, fortunately there is a link to what must be your new website (http://www.northrupphotography.com). The pictures on that site are incredible. Not to mention the fact that the layout is very appealing to the eye. However, as a writer of many windows books, what are you doing with a PHP website? That’s like going over to the dark side. After I finish the 70-536, it is my plan to update my site in a manner like yours, however I will utilize Microsoft Silverlight. Well, thanks for the inspiration. Take care.

My (wordy) answer after the jump.

This is an interesting study between presentation and function. Both northrup.org and northrupphotography.com are current, and all the pictures you see at northrupphotography.com are also shown at northrup.org. Northrup.org has about 15,000 additional pictures–I only show my “prettiest” work at NorthrupPhotography.com. If you’re looking for a picture of a baby ostrich (and plenty of people are, surprisingly), Google will send you to northrup.org.

NorthrupPhotography.com gets like 20 visitors a day, while northrup.org gets thousands and thousands. NorthrupPhotography.com costs me a couple of hundred dollars per year to run, while northrup.org makes a very healthy profit from selling pictures and advertising.

I also sell my pictures as stock at all the big stock photo agencies. Everyone other than stock photographers would consider them quite boring, however, because they’re meant for business use.

Re: Silverlight vs. Flash–I’ve dabbled in both, but the Flash I use on both northrup.org and NorthrupPhotography.com was written by other developers. In fact, NorthrupPhotography.com (including the PHP and Apache hosting) is a site I bought from BluDomain.com. I know my strengths and weaknesses, and creating pretty user interfaces is a weakness. So, I bought Flash components for both websites and just plug my pictures in (though everything but the slideshow interface on northrup.org uses a .NET Framework back-end that I wrote and Microsoft server software).

About 95% of my visitors have Flash installed (the rest are probably on an iPhone). I don’t even know how many visitors have Silverlight installed, because my analytics don’t track it. This site does, though, and it seems to be about half:

http://www.riastats.com/

I simply can’t use Silverlight right now because it would leave half of my users without an important component of the user interface. The SilverLight people have already made amazing progress getting it installed on half the browsers out there, and in a couple of years I’ll be able to migrate from Flash to Silverlight.

In summary, I use the .NET Framework for all my own programming, and all my client and server computers run Windows 7/Windows Server 2003/Windows Server 2008. I’m not trying to re-invent the wheel, though, and I’m happy to use pre-programmed Linux/PHP/MySQL/Flash components–as long as someone else is managing them :).

Tony

i have an old windows xp limited gb 60 or so. should i learn on this or get a different pc.so as to transfer from her camera
or how does she send them to walgreens for making copies etc. seems like an easier way and i would like to help her.ps what kind of camera for her would be best. middle beginer?

thanx for your time.

dave

do i need a pc with memory reader card?
Hiya, Dave. Good news–you don’t need a new computer. Your current computer should be fine for digital photography (though I do love the newest version of Windows, Windows 7).

I don’t know what type of camera you have, but most cameras can be connected to your computer using a standard USB cable. Check your camera for a USB port, as shown in the picture above.

Or, you can buy a USB memory card reader for your computer if it doesn’t have one built-in, like this one. But like I said, you probably just need to plug a USB cable into a camera and your computer–I bet you already have one.

For a middle-beginner camera recommendation, I’d recommend going to a Target/Wal-mart and finding cameras that are small enough to carry with you everywhere and that feel good in your hand. Write down several cameras’ model names, and then go to Amazon to search for reviews and find better prices. I’d push you towards either a Canon or a Nikon, because their accessories are so widely available and can be transferred to new cameras. There are just so many good models available that I can’t recommend a particular one.

Good luck!

Any of us who need to change the shape of an object or correct a lens’ chromatic aberrations will appreciate the new warping capabilities. Simply specify points on an image that can and cant move, and CS5 will allow you to move objects around while maintaining their shape. The demo below shows repositioning a referee’s arms into different calls. I just wonder how it would work with a real background instead of solid white–certainly it would require more work.

The demo also shows how to warp a picture to correct distortion at the edges of a wide-angle lens.

 Is there a way I can get the MS Scanner and Camera Wizard on my laptop that has Vista?  I really do NOT like the way the pictures download with Vista (no preview available to see the pictures I want to download before the download starts and save, is my biggest peeve).  Plus I must immediately name the group and it’s too quick to ask me if I want to delete them.

I don’t usually delete photos from my camera/card until I have downloaded and burned them to a disk.  So if I take more pictures, when I go to do the download, it gathers ALL the pictures I’ve taken and groups them.  Grrrrrrrrr

Maybe I’m being stubborn to change, but I tried playing around with the Vista download from my camera for over 2 hours (trying different things) and I still wasn’t happy and went back and downloaded the pictures on my PC with Windows XP.

Is there a way to change settings for the picture download in Vista (I can’t seem to find them) or is it possible to get the MSSCW on my laptop.

Thanks a bunch!

Answer:

Hi, Holly. I get a lot of questions like this, because many “little” things changed in Vista, and since you’re already used to XP, it’s very disorienting.

First, I don’t know any way to get the Microsoft Scanner And Camera Wizard onto Vista. Instead, my advice is to check out third-party products that might better meet your needs. Your camera almost certainly came with software to download pictures (check your camera vendor’s website for a download). Adobe Photoshop Album and Google Picasa are free and might fit your workflow better.

Or, just change your workflow to fit what Vista can do. I just download everything to my computer at once, reformat my memory card to leave room for new pictures, and then selectively delete the bad pictures from the computer. I set Vista up to automatically backup my pictures to an external hard disk, so I’m not worried about losing them. If something does happen to my hard disk before the backup runs, I can recover pictures from the memory card after formatting it–so that backup still exists.

Hope that helps. Check out my pictures, if you’re bored.