August 2008, I went for a 2 months self-drive journey into main National Parks & Game Reserves of Botswana & Namibia. During this trip more than 6000 photos were taken and following friends advise, I have now published a coffee table book which contains the Best 100 shots.

A preview is available online.

Tags: botswana, cedric favero, chobe, etosha, moremi, namibia, nature, nomadcom, okavango, photo, Photography, safari, Travel, wildlife

Years after years, Newspapers & Photo agencies propose their traditional review of the Year in pictures.

Here below a quick selection for 2008:

• The Boston Globe proposes a selection of 120 photos. Part 1, 2 & 3
• Sports Illustrated comes with 56 images from 2008 sports events.
• The New York Times has selected 8 different categories
• French Newspaper Liberation published its review here
• Reuters news agency review is here

Any other review that you would recommend ?

Happy New Year 2009 !

During the Web 2.0 summit in San Francisco, Kevin Kelly, co-founders of Wired magazine explained simply the History of the Web and sketched what could be the next 6500 days.

3 chronological phases brought the Web to what we have today:

1. Computers are connected together. The Net is used to share “packets”. (No intimacy, nothing personal).
2. Documents are linked together. We start to share links. (a bit more intimate and personal as they are documents).
3. Today, we share data. We establish links among information which are inside the pages. We share our data and information.It’s where we are today.

So, what next ? How the Web will continue to evolve ?

Kelly says that the Web will be quite different than what we know today. It may look like a big machine with clouds which will contain all data. The Web will be tomorrow’s Operating System which will catch everything. We will access to it though lots of different kind terminals (computer, phone, fridge, TV, car’s GPS, etc..).

Kelly characterizes three elements which are already on the way :

1. A broad trend inclines to move everything to clouds.
2. At the same time, a broad displacement of all documents to databases which become the foundations on which the whole system relies on.
3. Then to make it works, to create a dataflow and to give signification to all these data: sharing is the key element which makes the machine to work.

According Kelly, in 6500 days our life will always been connected. We will be totally dependent of the network connectivity. New values will have to be invented to collectively managed the rules related to the sharing of these data which will be the essence of our tomorrow’s lives and collectives values.

Scary ? Unavoidable ? Already on its way ? or just a vision from a Silicon Valley geek  ?

Watch Kevin Kelly’s speech during Web Summit 2.0 last week in San Francisco.

Please enable Javascript and Flash to view this Blip.tv video.

Sources: Transnets

One of my first shot using the Telephoto Sigma 50-500 f/4.5 – 6.3

• Distance : ~376’351 km away
• Speed :1/250
• Aperture : f/8
• ISO100
• Post treatment : Crop + S curve in Lightroom 1.4

Tags: 500mm, Bangkok, full moon, moon, photo, planet, sigma, space, telephoto

Note: Nothing to see with usual posts on these pages, just a great wildlife video sequence. Enjoy.

It was a chance encounter that could have ended with flying fur and bloodshed in the snow.

Wildlife photographer Norbert Rosing was taking pictures of a team of huskies in Canada's frozen north when a polar bear gatecrashed the party.

Along with dog handler Brian Ladoon, Mr Rosing watched helplessly as the bear and one of the dogs approached each other. 

Source: dailymail 

Tags: arctic, bear, canada, churchill bay, dog, encounter, husky, polar, unusual, video, wildlife

London police launched on 25th of February a new advertising campaign. Posters and TV ads are urging Londoners to turn in people who might be taking pictures of CCTV cameras.

"Thousands of people take photos every day.

What if one of them seems odd ?

Terrorists use surveillance to help plan attacks, taking photos and making notes about security measures like the location of CCTV cameras.If you see someone doing that, we need to know.

Let experienced officers decide what action to take." 

Other posters target households:

"you see hundreds of houses every day. What if one has unusual activities and seems suspicious"

as well as mobile phone users :

"Thousands of people have mobiles. What if someone with several seems suspicious?"

What's going on in London ? Is the Metropolitan police not busy enough ? did they become completely paranoiac ? or do they need some budget increase ?

Where is this so famous British phlegm ?

As a response, many people have already redesigned the posters to point out the absurdity of them. Some samples are available on BoingBoing.

Tags: 2008, advertising, ATT, attack, blog, camera, civil liberties, counterterrorism, CTU, design, february, fon, ia, ict, im, King, lan, launch, location, london, mobile, mobile phone, nomadcom.net, officer, paranoia, PDF, phone, photo, photographers, Photography, picture, police, post, posters, public, security, snitch, suspect, terror, terrorism, uk, USA, user, wp, www, XP

Since, mid-2006 mobile phones with a built-in 3 MP camera and optical zoon are available on the market and already represent an alternative to low end digital camera. More than 70 models are available today with a 3 to 5 MP resolution. One of the first phone with a "real camera" was the famous one Nokia N93 and its Carl Zeiss Optics.

Samsung is now putting even more pressure on camera makers with the soon release (first on European market) of its G800. A 5 MP digital camera with 3x optical zoom into mobile phone… or is it the opposite? 

The specifications are rather attractive:

• Quad bands (900 / 1800 / 1900 / 2100  )
• Data network HSDPA 7.2 Mbps
• 2.4 inches TFT display with 256K colors
• Size 101x52x19mm for 129 gr (25% lighter than the Nokia N93)
• Standby 220 hours, talk time 3.5 hours.
• Memory 160 MB + MicroSD slot
• Document views (Office, PPT, PDF,)
• Email (POP3, IMAP), SMS, MMS,
• Connectivity: Bluetooth, USB 2.0, PCSync, OutlookSync, etc..
• FM Receiver, Java embedded, MP3, etc..

and indeed the built-in camera:

• 5 Mio Pixel
• 2592х1944 pixels
• autofocus
• video recording mode: MPEG4, 3GPP, H.263, H.264
• xenon flash
• 3x optical zoom /4x digital
• 4 shot modes
• 4 quality settings
• brightness adjustment

 All other specs are here

The big plus is definitively the 3x optical zoom which makes the difference with other 5 MP phones.  The resolution race continues as Samsung (them again) Electro-Mechanics announced on November 15th that 8 MP camera phones may be available by next summer following the successful development of a 10.5 x 11.5 x 9.4mm 8 megapixel CMOS censor.

Will camera makers develop new "point and shoot" camera with built-in phones  and multimedia facilities such MP3 player and FM receiver ?

I'm impatient to have one "box" less to carry when traveling…

What will you drop first ? your camera or your phone ?

Tags: 2007, 5 MP, 8 MP, api, ATT, blog, camera, ces, connectivity, development, digital, europe, flash, fon, gap, ia, im, lan, light, map, megapixels, memory, mobile, mobile phone, models, network, nokia, nomadcom.net, PDF, phone, phones, photo, point and shoot, press, release, resolution, samsung, sms, sun, Travel, uk, usb, video, wp, www

As part of the various and numerous initiatives taking place in Thailand this year, a multimedia event names "Thailand: 9 Days in the Kingdom" marking the 80th birthday of His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej on 5 December has now been revealed to public.

‘Thailand: 9 Days in the Kingdom’ project invited in January 2007, 55 of the world’s leading photographers for a photo shoot throughout Thailand over a nine-day period. Result of captured images shows different facets of Thailand: its peoples, traditions, landscapes and cityscapes, commerce and industry.

‘Thailand: 9 Days in the Kingdom’ is now completed and released to public in three parts:

• A wonderful 304 pages large-format pictorial book which portrays Thailand today (50 USD).
• A multimedia exhibition of photographs taken during the shoot held at CentralWorld Event Gallery.
• Two documentary films on the project.

‘Thailand: 9 Days in the Kingdom’ includes seven photos-essays made by some of world famous photographers on various themes:

• reverence for the King (Anuchai Secharunputong, Thailand)
• the ongoing events in the south (Abbas, France; Charoon Thongnual, Thailand)
• Thai boxing (Greg Gorman, USA)
• the harvesting of birds’ nests (Éric Valli, France)
• the care and treatment of AIDS patients by a Catholic priest (James Nachtwey, USA)
• and the country’s colourful cabaret scene (Greg Gorman, USA)
• aerial views of Thailand (Yann Arthus-Bertrand).

In short, if pass by Bangkok before the 5th of December, don't miss the exhibition. For the others, if you like Thailand, the book and its DVD is a must have (available in English and French).

More : 9 days in the Kingdom, A glimpse of the exhibition

Tags: 2007, 9 days in Thailand, art, Bangkok, Bhumibol Adulyadej, blog, book, event, exhibition, Flickr, HP, ia, ict, im, industry, King, lan, launch, LED, nomadcom.net, photo, photographers, Photography, project, public, release, Thailand, Thailand: 9 days in the Kingdom, theme, upa, USA, world, wp, www

As previously announced on this site, Adobe released earlier this week, Lightroom 1.3 as well as Camera Raw 4.3.

At the same time Adobe Labs offers a public prerelease of its Software Development Kit (SDK) Lightroom 1.3 export. This kit allow developers to enable communication with Lightroom 1.3 and 3rd party tools, web sites and devices. More plugins will certainly available soon on Lightroom Exchange site.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 1.3 Export SDK comes with two very useful plugins: 

• FTP Export
• Flickr Upload.

Once dowloaded and uncompressed, plugin modules have to be installed on your computer on locations where Lightroom can find and load them.

• Windows XP: ..\Documents and Users\username\Application Data\Adobe\Lightroom\Modules
• Mac OS: ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom/Modules
• Windows Vista:..\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Lightroom\Modules

I just quickly tried the Flickr upload module and found it easy to use and indeed very convenient as it avoids to export files on a local folder and then upload them using Flickr Uploader page or tools.

Something tells me that these plugins will become very popular  

Tags: 2007, adobe, art, blog, camera, camera raw, ces, communication, computer, development, event, export, find, Flickr, im, install, lan, LED, light, lightroom, location, nomadcom.net, pda, photo, plugin, press, public, quickly, raw, release, sdk, user, vista, web, windows, windows vista, wp, www, XP

Adobe has just released the latest versions of Lightroom and Camera Raw.

Lightroom 1.3 comes with the following improvements:

   

New file formats supported in the 1.3 release are:

• Canon 1Ds Mark III
• Canon PowerShot G9
• Nikon D3
• Nikon D300
• Olympus E-3
• Olympus SP-560 UZ
• Panasonic DMC-L10

Following issues have been correct:

• Performance issue on writing XMP metadata
• Printing with the native resolution option enabled no longer sets the wrong dimension for portrait oriented images
• Bayer demosaic and luminance noise reductions algorithms
• Canon & Fuji compressed Raw formats supported.

New enhancements:   

• The import dialog now offers the option to render 1:1 previews   
• Export dialog layout has been enhanced
• Lightroom Preview Export SDK is available for developers to create and distribute Export Plug-ins.

This update also brings OS X 10.5.x compatibility with Apple’s new Leopard OS.

Windows version is here
Mac OS version is here

Camera Raw 4.3 has also been released.

Windows version update is here
Mac OS version is here
 

Tags: 2007, adobe, apple, blog, camera, camera raw, editor, ia, im, lan, LED, LG, light, lightroom, nikon, nomadcom.net, olympus, pda, photo, Photography, post processing, power, press, raw, release, resolution, review, update, upgrade, windows, wp, www, XP