Lightroom is a Digital Photographer's Best Friend

There's a hidden cost in digital photography, and it's tied to one of the medium's greatest strengths -- the ability to take as many photos as you like for "free".  The cost is time, and it's the reason why I am so back-logged on my photos.

But as you may have noticed, I'm on a Flickr-uploading spree as of late, and it's all due to my favorite new digital photo tool, Adobe Lightroom.  It combines photo management, workflow, and editing seamlessly into one brilliant tool (that happens to integrate perfectly with Photoshop, mind you).  It's been saving me time, and allowing me to catch up on loads of photos.

Now my only problem is deciding when enough is enough...

Photo Contest

Although I don't stand a chance, I decided to enter a photography contest put on by NWA. I figured what the heck, right? I've entered these two so far, simply because I think they're somewhat unique:










Any suggestions of other favs from my Flickr site that you'd think would be semi-worthy?

Picnik Lives Up To Its Name

Take lots of photographs? Wish you had an easy way to remove aunt Mildred's red-eyes? How about crop out your unkempt laundry hamper? Or perhaps make your pasty-Norwegian-white skin not so transparent looking?

Look no further than Picnik. It's free (for the time being). It's super easy to use. It offers the features that 90% of consumers need. It can integrate seamlessly with Flickr and Facebook. It's online. You don't have to download a thing.

And possibly most impressive of all -- once your photo is loaded, editing with Picnik is done super-fast in real-time. No waiting for the page to reload. No annoying banner ads (for the time being).

I wanted to give it a whirl, and edited this photo. I uploaded it straight to Picnik, made a few incredibly painless tweaks, and chose to post the new and improved photo straight to Flickr. By doing so, I also chose to link my Picnik account to Flickr. I heart collaboration and APIs.

You know I couldn't resist...Picnik is a picnic.*

*Although Picnik is a great photo editing tool, the name is not. I forgot if it was picnic.com, piknik.com, picknik.com, etc. It took me 10 minutes to find the thing.

FlickrWalk in Nordeast

This past weekend I attended my first Flickr meet-up photowalk. We met at the ever-cool looking and sounding Pierre Bottineau Library up in nordeast Minneapolis, and as you might have guessed, simply walked around and took photos.

It was a great experience, and I will definitely do it again. It is helpful to look at everyone else's photographs and see what subjects they photographed, what perspectives they used, how they composed their pictures, and (hopefully) learn a few things along the way. Not to mention meet some cool people that share a similar hobby (oddly enough, in a city of >4 million, I ran into one of the members the following day. Not odd, however, is the fact that she was taking pictures).

Quick, Quick, Look Quick.

As you may know, not only does Wikipedia change often, but it changes fast. That's why you should check out the current Wikipedia entry on Minneapolis. An editor recently emailed me and mentioned that he would like to use a couple of my Flickr photos for the entry.

One is under the Geography section, and labeled Autumn, Lake of the Isles. The other is under the Sports section, labeled Twin Cities Marathon (a photo in which you can see Robbie's right arm trying to take a picture, and Amanda cheering on their friend Colbey.)

It's no gallery, but it's better than nothing, right?

Digitize your Memories

Have a big box overflowing with photos, waiting for some magic elf to come along and sort through the mess and stuff them meaningfully into a photo album?

Wait no more. Check out ShoeboxReprints.com. For $49.95 they will scan in 1,000 photos and burn them onto a CD, at 300 pixels per inch -- not stellar quality, but good enough for the average point-and-shooter.

Sure, they don't (or can't) name them for you, nor will it create an instant easy-to-use photo album. But it's definitely a step in the right direction.

Programmers Love Flickr Too

You can spell anything from Flickr.