The newest eBook release from David Duchemin (called Vision is Better) is simply stellar. This is a compilation of 50 articles from his website that have been rewritten and attached to some beautiful images that illustrate the point. If you’ve never read David’s writing before, now is the time to start. If you have read his stuff before, this is a fantastic opportunity to go back and read (or reread) some of the best and most poignant articles that he has presented in the past.

David’s motto “Gear is Good, Vision is Better” is very easy to understand and to agree with, but it’s much harder to implement. For me it’s one of those things that I have to pound into my brain over and over again. Going through these articles reminded me how brilliant and how important this thought is, and I urge you to read this book.

The really great news is that the book is very inexpensive at only $5. It gets better though because there is a 20% discount available if you buy the new book between now and midnight on May 4th. If you use the promotional code VISION4 when you checkout then you can have “Vision is Better” for only $4, OR use the code VISION20 to get 20% off when you buy 5 or more books from the Craft & Vision collection. These codes expire at 11:59pm PST MAY 4, 2010.

A few interesting links about Photography, Technology, Social Media, and Gadgets that I’ve come across recently. Some are smart, some are funny, and some are just plain dumb, but they are all interesting for one reason or another. Have a look and let me know what you think:

• Photographing Children – Photographing their Art
  Making images of the art your children create is a a great way to preserves it long after it has gone, AND takes away from the guilt on inevitably trashing it while they’re not looking.
• 70 Of The Best Photoshop Actions For Enhancing Photos | Creative Nerds
  I use Photoshop less and less as Lightroom gets better, but I do occasionally go there for special effects. Actions are a really great way to make that process fast, and some of these actions are excellent!
• Eye Contact in Photography
  An interesting article about how an image changes depending on whether their is eye contact with the subject or not.
• Lens Rentals Canada
  Renting cameras and lenses in Canada used to be ridiculously expensive, largely due to the cost of shipping. With the arrival of Lens Rentals Canada on the scene that all changes. Return shipping is included in the rental prices, which is already much more affordable than the big camera stores offering.
• zarias.com :: The blog of editorial photographer Zack Arias » Zack Arias :: Sucksessful Commercial Photographer
  Want a sneak peak into the life of a sucKsessfuLL commercial photographer?
• BBC Wildlife Magazine
  Free PDF "Masterclass" articles from BBC Wildlife Magazine. These are good reads and beautifully prepared.
• 5 pro tips for shooting birds in flight | Pixel Photography
  5 pro tips for shooting birds in flight
• Canon 5D Mark II Completely Disassembled
  If you’ve always wanted to see what a Canon 5D Mark II looks like opened up, you’re in luck.
• The Flash Blog » Apple Slaps Developers In The Face
  A direct response to Apple from an Adobe employee regarding the recent tactics Apple has used to keep Adobe products off the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch. "Go screw yourself Apple."
• Frommer’s Now F’ing Both Freelancers AND Photo Enthusiasts! « Photo Traveler
  The ongoing trials and tribulations of the stock photographer, and some bonus content about giving away the farm by entering rights-grabbing photo contests.
• LearnMyShot – learn how to photograph anything
  Watch Photography Tutorials, Free Photography Lessons, and Live Instructional Videos
• Adobe Photoshop CS5 Learning Center | Learn Adobe Photoshop CS4, Lightroom and Digital Photography | NAPP
  Scott Kelby and the “Photoshop Guys" from Photoshop User TV host a series of video resources dedicated to showing the new features in CS5.
• gskinner.com: gBlog: Return of the Blue Lego
  Apple is continuing to sidestep the irritation iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch who are frustrated that the devices don't support Flash websites. This article is an attempt to return the focus back to where it belongs.
• Cameras – Canon Canada Inc.
  WOW!! Canon Canada has finally updated their website. It now looks like a modern website instead of the Geocities style site they've used for years!
• Chase Jarvis Blog: Introducing creativeLIVE.com: Worldwide FREE Creative Education [updated]
  A brand new free photography education resource pulled together by Chase Jarvis, showcasing some fantastic photographers as instructors!
• Digital is Better than Film: 5 Situations
  Although he has become increasingly fanatical about shooting film instead of digital, Brian Auer does see a need to shoot digital on occasion.
• Mark IV (discount offer!) & 7D User’s Guides Info, Charlotte Harbor Schedule, & BAA Bulletin #322 « Arthur Morris/BIRDS AS ART
  Users Guides are now available from Canon Explorer of Light Arthur Morris (Birds As Art) for the Canon 1D Mark IV and the Canon 7D
• 4 Lights | A Step By Step Guide | Jake Garn Photography
  A step by step walk through showing how a photographer built up the lighting to create an image.

I recently realized that I had forgotten to change the copyright notice on some of my websites. I had changed it on all of my still and video cameras and in the metadata fields for Breeze Downloader Pro and Adobe Lightroom; I had even changed it on some of my websites. But somehow I missed a couple.

Instead of just fixing it now for the sites that I missed in January, I wrote some Javascript code to do it automatically based on the year. You can see the resulting text in the Copyright Notice for this site at the bottom of the right sidebar.

Here’s what the code looks like. Note that it automatically updates the year and it links to your email address from your name (in a method very unfriendly to spam harvesters). If you want to use it simply copy and paste into a widget or into your wordpress header or footer and it will start displaying.

NOTE – You must to update the 3 “var” fields to ensure that the code uses your own Name and Email address.

If you want to use this code in a post or a page then it will be much more difficult to make it work. You will have to refer to the WordPress Codex for information on how to use Javascript in a post or a page.

I recently started using a WordPress theme for one of my sites called (Modern Business 3 Dark for WordPress) that has built in code for a jQuery based lightbox clone called prettyPhoto. This is a beautiful theme, and a very nice implementation of a lightbox. In fact prettyPhoto is very similar to Lightview, which is the lightbox clone I normally use.

Unfortunately prettyPhoto requires some different code to indicate that images or video should be opened in the lightbox than most of the other clones I’ve used. Typically each image must be tagged with something like rel=”lightbox[ID]“, but for prettyPhoto the required tag is rel=”prettyPhoto[ID]“.

I use lightbox clones all the time, and of course there is no tagging standard between each clone, so for a long time I’ve been using a WordPress plugin called Add Lightbox that automatically adds this code. I modified that plugin to work with prettyPhoto, and I thought I would share my mod here. This really was a very simple mod, but I’m sure that there are thousands of other people using the same theme that I am that have the same problem that I did.

Note that this plugin does not add the the files required for prettyPhoto (it only adds the rel=prettyPhoto[ID] tag)! You have to insert the required files for prettyPhoto into your theme yourself, or use a theme such as Modern Business 3 Dark for WordPress that already includes the code.

Installation

1. Download the Free OD Add rel=prettyPhoto WordPress Plugin
2. Unzip the file
3. Upload it in /wp-content/plugins/ of your WordPress installation
4. Activate the Plugin
5. That’s All

Changelog

0.2
Minor update to change the name and update the documentation.
0.1
Initial release. Adapted from the Add Lightbox Plugin for WordPress.

Please let me know if you find any issues, bugs, or have ideas for improvements.

For a long time I have had a theory that Nikon photographers are more likely to be Mac OS and Apple Aperture users while Canon shooters tend to use MS Windows and Adobe Lightroom.

Please tell us what you are most likely to use as the primary set of tools in your photography workflow:

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