You live in yours, we live in
ours. Some live in it northly others southerly some westerly and
even
others eastishly, but we all live in it. It envelopes our thoughts,
our work and our television, it is all around us. This weeks flickr
theme is REALITY and we
want to see yours!
Rockin image by Matthew Dingemans
You spent the day at the park/running errands/in a business meeting and you flop down at your desk exhausted. Most days the last think you want to do is pull out your point and shoot, rip out the SD card, shove it in your computer, open up the files, edit them, post them to flickr and after all that struggle to your blog.
Those days are long gone. Introducing Eye-Fi, the WiFi enabled SD card. Now you can upload to your computer or the Internet wirelessly and without popping out that clumsy little SD card. If they make this stuff any easier I might just go out of business!
It's true the Eye-Fi will set you back about a hundred bucks but the ease of use alone is worth that not to mention the extra time you will get to spend with your friends and family.
At bLUR we enjoy a lot of web 2.0ish photo enhancing websites, but this one blows nearly all of them away. It's called PicLens and it works with just about any website with a JPG. In a nutshell it allows you to quickly, and beautifully view your images (or anyones images for that matter) like a blazing portfolio.
There are a lot of pro's with this download but there are a few cons as well. The main issue is the scroll over magnifier that pops up on just about everything when PicLens is active. This is easily controlled by turning off PicLens in the bottom right hand corner of firefox.
Despite its few cons this download is definitely worth it.
Note: this application only works with firefox.
Working with a lot of photos to upload can be a pain, especially with
any sort of web-based interface. No matter how well-designed the
interface is, you're still in a web browser and suffer from the
limitations therein. The answer to effectively organizing and uploading
tens, or even hundreds, of photos to Flickr is to use a desktop
application specifically designed to help you accomplish this task.
Enter Photonic.
In addition to letting you upload your photos in an easy and Mac-like
fashion (complete with snappy, snazzy, and non-gratuitous Core
Animation feedback), Photonic is also a Flickr 
browser. Keep track of
your contacts, groups, and even the past several days in Explore, all
from Photonic. When you care to interact with a photo, right-click on
it and you can be taken straight to the page on Flickr where you can
read and leave comments as usual. Photonic enhances your
already-excellent Flickr experience — we'd never try to take that away.
Launch Photonic
Yesterday brought the launch of the new Macbook and Macbook Pro. If you are confused by all the hype let me explain it like this; they got new processors. It would be like if you could remove your muscles and replace them with Wolfs from American Gladiators. Its faster, stronger and better looking. O.k. it actually looks exactly the same, but it does boast a longer battery life. Should you sell your current Macbook and go out and buy a new one? That's up to you, we currently run Photoshop CS3, and In Design all while surfing the net and watching a movie. So at this point I would say no, but in the end its ultimately up to you and you know the old saying ... some people have more cash then sense.
If you have ever shot a sporting event next to a bunch of other photographers you have no doubt seen some of the massive lenses that are on the market. Seeing those beauties has no doubt caused you to have lens envy. Do not be dismayed, this is a normal reaction for photographers. Unfortunately there is no cure at this time however Amazon.com does provide a pretty sweet "fix" in the form of a wish list. That way you can admit to the world that you have a problem and your friends can cure you by purchasing you extremely expensive lenses.
So far you guys have been rockstars when it comes to posting to the flickr theme of the week! You have no idea how much we appreciate you (and your cameras) for it!
This week's theme is a bit different. It will require you to shut down your left brain and spark the right side. This weeks theme is LINES. You see them everywhere, in everything but LINES are often times overlooked.
So get creative because we are giving away Jon Foreman's
(front man for Switchfoot) amazing Winter and Fall EP's.
When we started blur we had five photographers we just had to have on board as monthly contributors. We didn't need these photographers because they were close personal friends, the truth is, we have never met any of them face to face. We needed them because they brought something awesome to the table, a fleeting something that a lot of photographers have either lost or never had. So far we have four of the five (the fifth hasn't been asked yet) and a bunch of amazing photographers contributing to the theme as well!
Introducing Steven Bush (one of the blur5 as we like to call them) a photographer with a huge heart and an uncanny knack for grabbing the grittiness of emotion. Enough talk though, we will let his images speak for the shooter.
Launch Bush's Bio
Launch Bush's Portfolio
Launch Bush's Blog
It's no secret that we are completely ripping off some of JPG Magazines ideas. Our content is made up of images contributed by readers, JPG does that. We have contests with prizes, JPG does that. We have a website, well .. uh, everyone has a website.
BUT ANYWAY ... Issue 14 of JPG Magazine is out and on shelves near you. We think you should go pick up a copy.
AND mad props to a start up self published photographers mag like JPG, we at BLUR salute you and hope to be just like you when we grow up!
Note: BLUR doesn't endorse every image in JPG, there are things that some may find offensive.
Don't forget our current flickr theme: RED. We will be issuing a sweet prize for this one and let's be honest, who doesn't like sweet prizes? On the other hand, we can see why you wouldn't want to take the .002 seconds to add your amazing RED images to our flickr group ... we wouldn't want you to get a pointer cramp.
