Photo workflow and free stuff

Hi all,

I am asked on a regular basis how I shoot, organize and post pictures on the blog, so I thought I would give a quick tutorial.

I am shooting with a Canon Digital Rebel camera (but just about anything will do). (here is the best review site).

I use two different cataloging programs, but I want to point you to Picassa as the better for most people for three reasons: It's completely free, it's completely integrated with Blogspot and it has a quick and easy photo editor that is nondestructive. That means that you can edit a photo (crop, change the color and contrast, even make it black and white) and the original file isn't changed. You can come back six months later and simply hit the undo button for that photo and it's back to where you started. check out: picasa.google.com.

Picasa organizes all the shots in chronological order so it's easy to find any pics (it's great that digital cameras write the date and time in the photo code on every shot). There is also a companion application called Hello (also free, also made by google) which allows additional connection to the Blogspot site.

And a new thing just came out (although it's still in testing mode and ha limited availablilty): Picasaweb. This takes whole groups of shots and posts them in high resolution form on the web in albums that are very easy to organize, share and distribute. Anyone viewing the album can actually download a high resolution version of any of the shots. AND visitors don't have to sign in (the best feature).

So... in addition to this blog, we will now have photo albums available on the web. Check out...
picasaweb.google.com/davidsadd for our albums. Or you can click on the topmost link to the right where it will live from here on out.

L8R all!