Where will it all end?

It seems candid professional or casual photography, be it of people or places, is getting harder and harder, especially in the US.

Two US states have recently introduced legislation to prevent certain types of photography.

For example it is now a felony in New Hampshire to take images of a person’s residence from the air by a satellite, drone, or any device not supported by the ground. Is that the end of Google Maps for New Hampshire?

There is also a proposed bill in Pennsylvania that would make it a felony to photograph a farm, if it is passed there will be no more cute lambs photos or rustic farm scenes from Pennsylvania. Apparently farmers are worried that they may be depicted in an unflattering manner, but hey no one cares if I’m depicted in an unflattering manner so why should farmers get special treatment

It’s bad enough that innocent Photographers around the world are being abused for doing nothing illegal but with legislation like this life is going to get harder and harder.

Lets hope that we can be more intelligent about this here in Australia …

Source: PhotoBizCoach – Felony Photography

Artistic interpretation of an artists cafe

We were at Taylor’s Art and Coffee House in the Swan Valley a few weeks ago doing another photo shoot for the City of Swan and wow what an amazing place!

Owned by artist Jude Taylor the whole place is like a piece of art, it’s full of old machinery, rustic buildings and little nooks and cranny’s where you can sit and eat. You really have to see this place to believe it.

I knew as I grabbed a few shots around the grounds that some serious HDR processing would be called for to make the most of the scenes, hope you like them

Did you now you can follow our Facebook Page to keep up to date with what we’re up to at MADCAT Photography

Getting to know the Swan Valley – Day 3 in Guildford

Day 3 in Guildford focused on eating and drinking in some of Guildford’s iconic spots.

The day started at the contemporary European styled Jezebelle’s Restaurant on James Street where we took shots of a young group dining, a couple sharing a tapas plate and a glass of wine and group enjoying cocktails.

Next we visited “The Lounge Room”, a coffee shop with a decidedly quirky feel to it as you can see from regal feeling of the purple room in the pictures below.

Finally we finished off at the Woodbridge Hotel showing a couple of mates having a typical Aussie beer.

Young group of friends dining at Jezebelle’s Restaurant

Young couple enjoying wine & tapas at Jezebelle’s Restaurant

Getting to know the Swan Valley – Day 2 in Guildford

Day 2 in Guildford focused on lifestyle for the middle aged couple.

We started at the “Rose & Crown” again with meal in front of the roaring fire, followed by a stroll through Stirling Square and tea at “Maddison Cottage Café” on James Street.

We then continued along James Street into one of the many Antique shops followed by an Art Gallery called “Stories on the Wall” and finished up with a casual stroll window shopping the many shops along James Street.

Finally we traveled to “The Hollies” Bed & Breakfast on Swan Street to get a shot of a couple booking in.

Couple dining by the fireside in the Rose & Crown

Couple strolling through Stirling Square

Getting to know the Swan Valley – Day 1 in Guildford

We have been commissioned by City of Swan to undertake a series of photo shoots over the coming year to expand & refresh their library of tourism related images.

We’re particularly excited about this opportunity as the Swan Valley is an area that I have very few images of in my Fine Art Collection so here’s hoping we can address this issue over the coming year.

Last week we started in the historic town of Guildford with Day 1 involving photos in the Rose & Crown Hotel, & Panache Living gift shop.

I have to say that whilst I have always liked Guildford I have never really though of it as a place to visit, however, once you get to know the place there is much about this historic town that is unique and well worth the visit.

Here are some of the photos from Day 1:

Young couple checking in to the Rose and Crown Hotel

Young group having a social drink by the fireside in the Rose and Crown Hotel

The Low Down on Choosing ND Filters

I had a question on my Facebook page today about Variable ND (Neutral Density) filters and my answer turned into a full on guide to selecting and understanding ND filters which deserved it’s own blog post.

So thanks to Michele for suggesting the topic and I hope I answer your question

History

Back in the days of film photography a professional photographer would have had a wide variety of filters in their camera bags but these days Photoshop has replaced nearly all of them, thankfully!

Pretty much the only filters a professional photographer will carry these days are a Polarising filter and a set of ND filters. I won’t go into Polarising filters here except to add that with the popularity of ultra wide angle lenses and images stitching they are becoming less and less used.

Another of Photoshops Dirty Little Secrets!

Have you ever noticed apparently random *_MVM_*.tmp files being generated at the root level of your hard drives?

For ages I have been wondering where these files came from and worrying that they may be the result of some sort of file corruption, so finally I decided to find the source of these files.

It would appear that these files are created by Adobe Photoshop CS5, or more accurately by the Mondo Framework that Photoshop uses for certain functionality such as Liquify & Saving to PNG. Whilst these tmp files are supposed to be located in your PC’s TEMP folder (as defined by your systems environment variables) that isn’t always the case.

Now I very rarely use Liquify but as a Web Designer I am constantly saving PNG images so it would appear that this is the cause of my random temporary file problem.

It’s a Big Relief that it’s nothing to do with corrupt files but incredibly annoying that these tmp files are generated by Adobe Photoshop CS5 in but not tidied up. Apparently I’ve got it good as my tmp files are all 0 bytes in size where some people are finding tmp files 100′s of MB in size chewing up all their free disk space …

The other problem this scenario causes is that Photoshop functions can be slowed down considerably if it chooses to create these files on slow drives such as USB drives or older HDD’s completely circumventing that expensive super fast SSD drive you bought for Photoshop caching.

So the good news is that everything is “Working as Intended” and nothing is corrupt. Sadly though there appears to be no fix for this problem until Adobe take it upon themselves do the right thing and sort it out.

If you’re interested in reading more on this matter then here are a few links I found useful

http://www.naturescapes.net/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=208685
http://forums.adobe.com/message/3257006
http://forums.adobe.com/message/4081007