Photography

One of the wonderful things about digital photography is the creativity that you can engage in once you’ve got your image on your computer and in photoshop. All kinds of effects can be achieved to make your shots look any number of ways. Here are twelve in-camera hacks to experiment with to get more abstract and artistic shots

My old camera, a Canon Powershot A10, is now more than 5 years old. Time for an update. This 1.3 megapixel camera served pretty well, so I decided to look for a new Canon camera (never change a winning team). I first thought about getting me the Powershot A710, but after some reviews, I decided I wanted a camera with some more zooming power. Enter the Powershot S3, a 12x zoom camera with 6 megapixels. Some nice features are color enhancements; have a look at this example.
Boy, I though there would be a threshold about the number of pixels cameras would support, but the race isn't finished yet : I see cameras featuring 10 megapixels. How on earth do they keep the noise out of these ?

As Christmas and New Year approach, many geeks expect shiny new toys. Imaging-resource.com has many detailed helpful reviews of digital cameras.
Dpreview.com allows one to review several currently available cameras side-by-side.

There's nothing more startling than rising from your lazy couch at evening dusk, and seeing a hot air balloon landing in the field behind your garden. This baby, marked with advertisement from a technology education center in Mechelen (100m from my work !), dumped itself in a corn meadow. 5 minutes later, the companion car arrived and the great folding could begin.
Mark the dark spot above the ballon in the picture. Even at higher resolution, I have no idea if this is a bird (maybe a bit large, no ?), a blow of hot air, or a piece of venting sail from the balloon.

We regularly have other animals eating the dog's food, but this evening I found something very unusual sitting in the dog's bowl : a hedgehog. It's the first time I could see one of these creatures from nearby; very cute, but alas covered in thicks, so I didn't even think of touching it.

The little guest didn't bothering me watching, and continued quietly eating the dog's food. After 5 minutes, it had enough, and continued its journey.

White shores - palm trees on the beach - pancakes with chocolate and French toast for breakfast - free cocktails - unknown stars and constellations (I spotted Andromeda and Pegasus high in the east) - pimps waking us up in the middle of the night, showing us their 'merchandise' - Wolfsheim music in the lobby - sun strokes and inner ear damage :

Back in Belgium after a two week vacation in the Dominican Republic. Very hot out there, and very cold in here. Luckily, we still get a warm feeling by looking at our pictures.

Lessons learned :
1. transatlantic flights suck
2. I have way too many black t-shirts.