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Launching Photos.Melbourne. Doing it my way.

Launching Photos.Melbourne. Doing it my way.

Trying to sell photos isn’t exactly simple. To me, selling anything – I struggle. I’m not really a sales-man guy. In fact, the idea of telling people to do something makes me really cringe. You watch YouTube, and every video ends with a call-to-action, “so hey, subscribe to my video, check my channel, *do what I tell you!*”. It’s just not me. My view is if you dig it, you’ll act. It’s all about the product, right? But in a broad sense, that’s not really the right approach.  Continue Reading..

Mobile Phone Wallpapers – Free Downloads

Mobile Phone Wallpapers - Free Downloads

Make your mobile a little more Melbourne!

So it's Christmas. I might no have a Santa Sack, but I've got some portrait pictures that might make your lock-screen look a little more local?

Feel free to download them and let me know if you do. Take a picture, show me how it looks! Thanks, hope you dig!

And if Sydney's more your style, check out my free Sydney mobile phone wallpapers.

Just click on the one (or few) you like, and download to your phone.

Best Camera? The one you’ve got.

Best Camera? The one you've got.

I’ve always taken pictures, but increasingly, not with a big and bulky camera. That’s not to say I’m using some smaller mirrorless camera over a traditional DSLR. I’m using my mobile phone. Something that just sits in my pocket and without thought. If you’re interested, it’s the Samsung Galaxy S9.

We know that cameras are getting cheaper and more accessible. But the capabilities of these little cameras is remarkable. For a long time, the control that was on a more traditional camera just wasn’t available. Full manual control, ISO, focus, shutter speed, variable aperture, RAW image shooting. But not any more.

Continue Reading..

I’ve taken the plunge & I’m starting a small business…

I've taken the plunge & I'm starting a small business...

I’ve worked for other people and companies all my life. It’s been great. I’ve got almost 15 years experience working in tech companies from small business, start ups to large enterprise. I’ve worked on big client facing projects in both B2B and B2C, as well as back end systems that aren’t directly visible on the outside. In the past 8 or so years though, I’ve diversified with regards to what I’m passionate about. Continue Reading..

Framing Federation Square

Framing Federation Square

Over the space of a few weeks, I was lucky enough to do the first Instagram Takeover of Federation Square. If you’re not aware, Fed Square sits right next to Flinders Street Station, and really is the meeting place of Melbourne. It was great to get some special access of this iconic Melbourne landmark, but equally awesome to get to eat my way around and get to know it a little better. Continue Reading..

Melbourne in 150 Megapixels

Melbourne in 150 Megapixels

Free Melbourne photo download and a thought about the future

Panoramic Yarra Views
Panoramic Yarra Views

If you’d like the full 150 megapixel resolution image, for non commercial use, download Melbourne in High Resolution right now. If you use it, please let me know. Either on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook or link to this regularsteven.com. It’s 33 megabyte file, so best not do this on your mobile. You can print this as big as you like if you like. Please, just don’t sell it or use it for commercial purposes.

As for the quality, here’s the picture at 100%. You can crop in almost anywhere and figure out how to frame a shot. Over and over, a new picture can be found – the quality is crazy!

Panoramic Yarra Views
Panoramic Yarra Views

And, not only, but this picture is cropped down from 330 megapixels. Check out the full view of what I captured while standing in the rain.

Panoramic Yarra Views
Panoramic Yarra Views

The potential detail you can get with consumer cameras is remarkable. This is a photo that has been generated from 50 individual shots, each taken at the same settings, each shot with some overlap from the previous photo, and then stitched up using Adobe Lightroom (actually very easy – select the shots, press Control+M, and it’s almost done). Each shot was captured at 70mm, which is rather tight, but I did that to try preserve straight lines while allowing for a ultra sized end picture result.

You could say this process is a hack. Sometimes, hacks lead to the future.

It’s me using tools to make for shortcomings in technology, but over time, this will change. I’m an early adopter with photography, but these kind of hacks and results are often what drive future technology.

In the future, there’s going to be all sorts of advancements in photography to the point that photography, as an art that it is today, will die. Or perhaps evolve…

There will always be those with an eye for a shot and an ability to compose on the fly to the point it’s second nature. But as technology advances, the need for those skills while on shoot are going to become less relevant with the progressing technology in post production.

Say you’ve got a camera that captures the following at:

  • More resolution than you need
    • This would give the ability to crop the shot you’d like in post, if you shoot wide enough
  • More focal points & depths of focus points than you need (i.e. multi
    • This would give you the ability to select which are you would like to focus on in post. Look at what Lytro are doing (at least trying).
  • A 360 degree field of view
    • This would allow you to crop in the section you like.
  • Multiple exposures all captured automatically
    • This would allow for shade and highlights to be manipulated easily – no issue of over or under exposed shots.

Now, my little future thought has issues. For example, portability with regards to optical quality. There are some rules of physics (with regards to light & capturing it) that will be very challenging. Equally, things such as barrel distortion make for surreal looking pictures (think of fish-eye), but again, this will increasingly be less of an issue; barrel distortion is getting better in consumer post production tools, and it’s only a matter of time.

What do you think? Will photography, as it is today, die?