London 2012

On the eve of the Summer Games, Well Wishes, London!  We all look forward to 17 days of sport in its purest form, at the highest levels, and in one of the great cities of the world.

Let the Games Begin!

Vog

(A current animated version can be viewed -Here-)

What is Vog?  The University of Hawaii's School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (UH SOEST) defines it as follows:

Vog is primarily a mixture of sulfur dioxide (SO2) gas and sulfate (SO4) aerosol. SO2 (invisible) reacts with oxygen and moisture in the air to produce SO4 aerosol (visible). SO2 is expected to be the main problem in areas near the vent (Hawai`i Volcanoes National Park, Pahala, Na`alehu, Hawaiian Ocean View Estates) and SO4 aerosol is expected to be the main problem at locations far from the vent (Kona and farther north and west).

In LA or NYC they'd call it Smog.  The sources may be slightly different, but the effects on people and plant life are largely the same.  In Hawaii it's a natural process and results from eruptive activity at the Kilauea Volcano.  As the graphic above shows, the areas most affected by the vog here are those immediately west of the eruptions themselves that lie on the path of normal trade wind patterns.

Over the years I've posted a number of photos showing what the sky looks like at sunset when vog is particularly evident... but until you see where it comes from and where it goes it's kind of hard to grasp what the effect is here.  The SOEST graphic above is updated frequently and is part of an ongoing Vog Measurement and Prediction Project.  It shows output in graphical form from the HYSPLIT dispersion model.  Those who live here really don't need a reminder.  We've seen it just about every day since Halemaumau blew up in April 2008.

"vog" sunset taken above Puako Mar 7, 2008

Shooting Fireworks

(Click for an even larger view)

You never know when you might see a fireworks show. It could be on the 4th of July in the USA, Bastille Day in France, Chinese New Year in Hong Kong, or after the Friday luau at the Hilton Hawaiian Village in Waikiki, Hawaii. Whenever it happens if you want to take good photos of it you need to know how. You can watch videos on YouTube, find a magazine article, or go on a Google search and end up here. Shooting fireworks effectively is the topic this week.

Adaptive Lens Corrections

Russell Brown is the Sr. Creative Director at Adobe Systems and a great innovator in the use of Photoshop. Until I discovered his new video above I wasn't even aware that Photoshop CS6 had the capability of adaptively correcting lens distortion. I frequently shoot various wide angle lenses and have long been a devotee of panoramas, but this will take future creations to an entirely new level.

Have a look at what Dr. Brown has done here, and if you have CS6 be sure and give the new Adaptive Wide Angle filter a try. This video is sure to help you learn how to process images with this amazing filter correctly!

Enjoy!

Higgs Boson

Oh, great.  Now everybody is going to want one!

The Higgs Boson is no longer the theoretical particle of the Higgs mechanism that physicists have believed would reveal how all matter in the universe gets its mass.  Physicists at CERN pretty much confirmed today that their experiments have found the particle.  They did it with the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland... otherwise known as "the Big Bang machine."

Most amazingly, Peter Higgs, the theoretical physicist from England who predicted the particle in 1964 in a paper that was rejected by an academic physics journal edited at CERN, was on hand in Geneva today when the formal announcement was made.  The guy who admitted to being "incompetent" in science in the lab was just surprised to be alive when his theory was proven correct.

You can get your very own Higgs Boson particle at the ParticleZoo while they last.  9.95$US plus shipping... Fair warning tho': They tend to live very short lives! :)

Still don't know what any of this is all about?!  Me either.  But the video below might help.  These guys do know!





Enjoy!

Export Settings in LR4

Here we go with another Lightroom 4 video.  Again, this is in response to a question I received recently about how to set up LR4 to save (Export) photos in a format other than TIFF.  This one was kind of fun to produce because I used my new headset/microphone setup for the first time... so you get to hear my "Charlie Chaplin" voice.  :)  But I also messed with ProShow Producer to add background music.

You learn, I learn.  That's how it works, so I hope this helps someone out there.  I know of at least one person who will find it useful.  By the way... this is not meant to be a definitive instructional on this aspect of LR4.  It's just how I do things.  What works for you is what matters.  With that being said,

Enjoy!