Spondicious Photography and Illustration

I found this site along with afew others and I have to say it is a marvellous resource. If you want to build your skill level then you should be looking for new tutorials each week or day depending on your present skil level. There is always something else to learn. Often I look at a tutorial and I know how to do what is being shown but then at one point there is that single gem of information that makes viewing of the tutorial worthwhile.

This Illustration class site is particularly good and full of good things to learn. I recommend it highly. There are various titles and downloads on each of the blog posts. I just downloaded on called continuous line which is on a blog post about a certain type of drawing. Just looked in the zip file and it is full of jpegs and some notes in English and Spanish too. Looks interesting.

I have a Wacom tablet attached to my iMac 24in and there extra programs on an accompanying CD. One of them was the Painter program from Corel. I was pleased to have a play with the program and I also saw it mentioned on a blog by Ray Frenden. He has videos on his site showing how he uses Painter to ink up his comic style drawings. I found it interesting enough to have a try myself. The trouble was that the version I had was an older version that was missing some of the things I saw in the Frenden videos.

So I looked on the Corel site to see how much to upgrade. Amazing - as in Bloody Expensive. 200 to upgrade. So I went to google to see what other painting programs were around for the Mac. I saw Art Rage and nearly didn’t bother because the last time I tried it it crashed so often it was unworkable. Still it was some time ago and programs do get worked on and upgraded. I downloaded the trial version and was pleased with it right from the off. So much so that I was happy to buy the full version. Besides the price to upgrade was only 20 Euro

So now after a few day working with it I have to re iterate what I said already and tell you that I am delighted with Art Rage. I love the way I can rotate the canvas when it suits me to draw a line from the other side. Sometimes you can get a better curve or draw the line straighter by doing some rotating. Zooming is really easy, hit the Z hot key and then move the pointed one way or the other to either zoom in or zoom out.

The painting part of the application is what makes it interesting. You have paint brushes that give you a good approximation of applying paint. pencil, pen, paint roller. I like the stencils and you can even make stencils from something you have drawn. I think it maybe possible to make a stencil from a photographic image some how. I have not tried that yet though.

Art Rage does lack a select, copy and paste though, but according to the forum it is to be addressed in the next version which is number three. I wonder what number was the one I tried before.

I am not that keen on the felt tip pen tool. It has strange shapes at the ends of a line, either the start of a line or the end. You can set up various setting for each of the tools that affect the behaviour in a way that is similar to a real tool. How much thinner in the paint and pressure on the brush. This gives effect like there is thick paint put on and there there is a palette knife you can spread the paint around with.

Anyway if you have a Mac I definitely recommend Art Rage. If you have Windows. I will feel sorry for you but you can still try out as there is a version for that too.

There are a few ways you can follow what I am doing online and one place is FriendFeed it aggregates mini blogging posts from various places, like Twitter and Stumble upon and my blog postings.

I like the mini blogging for quick and dirty postings on the fly as it were and then use the Blogs I do to put in the larger chunks of content. I avoid the life blogging types of post that I see some people doing, you know the ones - I just had bacon and eggs for breakfast and then finished it off with a cup of tea - I mean who wants to know about that. And besides I am a vegetarian anyway, so no bacon for me…..

The mini blogging posts relate to finds on the internet such as the details I found recently on how to make Ubuntu look a bit like MacOSX or something I have seen on someone elses beting blog that I think is worthy of noting and letting people know about. I might tell you what I am about to bet on or what I just did with a trade.

I also have Bebo, Facebook, tumblr, identica and a few other social sites that I post on so that I can spread it out a bit, getting the word out there. FriendFeed is a good one thought to get an overview though. If you do this sort of thing you might get a client program like Twhirl to have the mini posts come in as you are doing other things online. Perhaps you will post a few things yourself. Get Twittering……

Seeing as the Olympics is about to get started in China here are some tips related to sports photography. I think the best one of the tips is  - Get in Close - And I think that is good for any type of photography. The amateurs stand back and try to get everything in the shot and end up with no interest in the shot and a poor composition.

In the spirit of anticipation for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China starting this Friday August 8 until 24, iStock wants to share some tips for shooting fantastic sports stock, even if you’re not a pro photographer. You never know where a few tips and a little practice might take you.

1. Capture speed — Most sports happen quickly, so set yourself up to capture the action. Make sure your shutter speed (length of time a shutter is open) is the same or higher than your lens’ focal length (e.g. if you’re using a 50 mm lens, make sure to shoot at 125 or faster)
2. Stabilize your lens — If you don’t already use a tripod or a monopod, now’s the time to get one. With a monopod, you have more flexibility to move than a tripod and you can lock your focus, check your focus, on where the action might be in a few minutes or seconds with ease. Some lenses also have a feature called image stabilization which will partially correct minimal camera shake.
3. Tell the story — Don’t be afraid to get in close to an athlete. The sweat on a brow, the guttural growl of aggression, the arms-raised cry of victory, the pain of exertion — each of these moments help to tell the story behind the story of sport.
4. Juxtapose — Mix an expected athlete with an unexpected environment just for added effect (e.g. football player tackling a manager on a business boardroom table)
5. No logos — iStock wants the raw rush of adrenaline, not ads for athletic wear.

Whether you’re looking for a winning image, shooting stock or just snapping some great shots of your kid’s soccer game, you’re well on your way.

I tried a few different ways to convert a file I have as various EPS, AI, and PDF formats so that I could import it into CorelDraw in order to save as a CDR file, after getting a request for that type of file from a customer in Dreamstime.

No luck whatsoever. I tried moving it via my Ubuntu machine even in case the problem was to do with Mac - Windows incompatabilities. I suppose if I kept trying I might eventually do it but I won’t need to that every day of the week so ….  But then you never know when the might be the need again to have a file that will have the CDR extension.

I think in the past I have got Illustrator files into CorelDraw and I know I have imported EPS files in. Trouble is, that there are so many variations of the EPS format.

Reposted due to Wordpress problems

 

 Spondicious Podcast Two Microstock: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

reposted due to wordpress problems

 

 Spondicious Podcast one Microstock: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Back online later today I expect