Personal Technology Tips in Plain English
Photography
DIY Passport Photos for $0.19
May 22nd
If time flies when you’re having fun, I must be having a heck of a time.
It’s been 10 years already, and now it’s time to renew my passport.
In the past you would go to a photo booth or a local pharmacy photo center and get a passport photo made up for 10 bucks or so for the duplicate photos you need to submit with your US Passport Application at the USPS post office or through the mail.
But these days, you don’t have to cough up that much money to get the photos done with all the digital magic we have available at our fingertips.
Here’s how I got my required duplicate passport photos created and printed for a mere $0.19. You can too!
First, I got out my digital camera and computer and went to work (well, it wasn’t really much work at all actually).
While in the past I used manual online passport photo generators to create the photo image, this time, I relied on a fully automated face-detection enabled website to properly crop the headshots for me.
IDphoto4You.com does it all. Just upload a decent headshot with enough background to play with and it automatically crops the photo and creates a single 4×6 photo file for you to download and bring to the photo store. They even have options so that you can have it sent online to get printed quickly for you as well.
I opted not to print out the photo at home on my photo printer and instead wanted a “real” photo that came out of a photo processing machine at Walgreens. $0.19 and the single 4×6 has the required two copies of the photo on one photo sheet.
It won’t be long till I get my passport back I hope – or at least track. . .
QUESTION: HOW MANY COUNTRIES HAVE YOU TRAVELED TO IN TOTAL?
How To Boost Your Ebay Sales With A Single Click
Nov 2nd
With so many listings, it is vital to capture your audience at first glance when you are selling your merchandise on eBay.
Customers often become inundated with the overwhelming number of like items available for sale on eBay. Your job is to catch their eyes and pull them in. The best way to do this is, take better photos.
If you just take a little extra time to setup a simple photographer’s set, it will be worth it. The best part is that you don’t need fancy equipment or dedicate space in the house. You can achieve this by using everyday items found around the house, you will be able to sit back and watch as your eBay views and sales skyrocket.
The best part about this competitive edge is that you can create your own professional looking photo set with items that probably are already in your home. Here’s a look at how to boost the look of your eBay listings with ease . . .
• table/stool
• white sheet/table cloth
• 2 chairs
• rope – about 10ft
• light (softbox if possible)
• white pillow case
First, place your table near some large windows with one chair on each side of the table. Between the chairs tie your rope — this is used to create a white backdrop by draping the table cloth over the cord.
Use a very light table cloth that will diffuse the light from the window, but be careful not to use to thin or thick of a sheet. This could result in a gray background, or over exposure from the sun.
Then place a light/softbox in front of the table. If you do not have a softbox use the pillow case to cover the light. This will help create a soft lighting effect. Lower and adjusted lighting as needed. While shooting be sure to keep make sure only the white from the sheet is in the photo. Also keep an eye out for random shadows.
When shooting your eBay product photo, be sure to get as much light as possible on the item you’re selling on eBay. This will allow users to view small details better.
That’s it! This is a really quick and simple way to create a better product shoots with every day household materials. Once you start to post some better photos of your items, they’ll stand out in the eBay gallery and search listings.
Hope this mini tutorial teaches you about one CLICK (of the shutter!) that you’ll want to master which leads to more sales and higher winning bids!
Matt Johnson – Social media guru, with a love for connecting with people around the world. His passion for food and photography are evident in his two personal blogs BibleDogMan.com and NoGrilledOnion.com3 Must Visit Resources For The Photographer In You
Sep 2nd
Everyone is a photographer these days. But some just end up with much better photos than others. Most of the time, there’s a bunch of good reasons for that.
I had a chance to connect with Matt Johnson, who seems to have a permanent attachment to his body — his personal DSLR. And his photos look just smashing.
I asked him to share with me some of the places where he spends his time learning new photography skills, tactics and tips. Here’s a guest post sharing some of his wisdom with us.
With the cost of DSLR drastically dropping more and more people have access to better equipment, but most never take the time to learn how to use it.
Shooting in pre-sets should never be an option.
As a photographer your job is to, as Bono says, Dare to fail!
The best way to do this is to look, look, look.
As a photographer your eyes should be on others’ work daily. From photos to tutorials. From camera reviews to lighting setups.
You should be constantly pushing yourself to learn more.
Here are my top 3 photography sites for doing just this.
- Photo.Tuts (http://photo.tutsplus.com/) – With a wide verity of tutorials from Photoshop use to setup. This website has something for everyone.
- Digital Photography School (http://www.digital-photography-school.com/) – With gear reviews, photography tips, and post production techniques; this place has it all. Make sure to checkout the community forms.
- My Shutter Space (http://www.myshutterspace.com/ ) – This community offers the best of the web in one place. User’s re-post tutorials from around the web. The forum here is also a great place to learn.
Challenge yourself this week!
Pick one tutorial that is out of your comfort zone and try it. Make this a weekly goal and you will be amazed!
Matt Johnson – Social media guru, with a love for connecting with people around the world. His passion for food and photography are evident in his two personal blogs BibleDogMan.com and NoGrilledOnion.com
Everyone is doing it….(video that is)
Feb 14th
2007 is the Year of Video and it seems with YouTube catapulting to the top of everyone’s lists. But that’s not the only way to get all those quirky you-would-never-know-people-would-be-interested-in-THAT videos online. If you have a blog or website, one of the quickest ways to post a video clip is using a neat little service from Hellodeo.
All you need is an internet connection and a webcam with Hellodeo. Simply click to start recording, stop recording and then submit. Instantly, your video clip is avialable for viewing and posting online. They give you the HTML code you can copy/paste to your blog or any webpage.
Here’s the sample code snippet that’s generated after recording a clip:
http://odeo.com/flash/hellodeo_player.swf” flashvars=”external_url=http://
media.odeo.com//files/4/3/3/3051433.flv&thumb_url=http://images.odeo.com/
7/3/9/8757763.jpeg&audio_id=8757763&audio_duration=60.049″ quality=”high”
bgcolor=”#ffffff” width=”230″ height=”140″ name=”hellodeo_player” align=”middle”
allowScriptAccess=”always” wmode=”transparent” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash”
pluginspage=”http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer” />
One note is that certain platforms will need a < / embed> closing tag at the end of that code to make it work – like if you’re using Blogger.com
And this is what you get when you put that html code into a web page or blog post.
Neat, huh? The instantanousness + the fact that it’s so easy makes it soooo appealing. So go on, give us a hellodeo right now!
Get Out Of The Country! (Wait, you need a passport photo!)
Jan 3rd
If one of your resolutions for this next year is to be a jetsetter, you’d better be ready with a Passport in hand. Instead of heading over to CVS and paying them a whopping $7.99 for passport photos, do it yourself for 50 cents!
You can easily take a photo yourself with your digital camera at home.
The US Department of State website gives 7 clear rules for the perfect passport photo. Basically, you just have to take it on a clean, white or off-white background and make sure it’s a nice clear headshot.
You can also download all the Passport Application forms and avoid the long lines at the post office as well!
Now all you need is the print out the photos to the correct size. Forget about re-sizing, editing, cropping, etc.
Just hop over to ePassportPhoto.com to auto-generate perfect photos to print out!
You can upload any photo from your own computer, rotate, crop, etc and then it will auto size it and layout the photos so that you can easily print out a 4×6 photo at home or at the store.
I printed the 2 required passport photos out for $0.25 at CVS (you need 2, but the 4×6 photo generated gives you more than two)!
They looked so good that when I brought up the photo to pay for it at the register, they initially tried to charge me $7.99 for my DIY photos (that is the price of THEIR regular passport photos)!
My clerk was so confused how I could walk-out with passport photos for only 25 cents…and don’t forget that you can upload the final photo to Shutterfly or Kodak EasyShare Gallery – they both offer free prints promotionally, so it could be totally free!
Hey, once you submit your passport application, you’ll probably want to know when you’ll actually get the finished passport back, right? Usually you’ll receive it within 6 weeks, but just to be sure, the US Department of State has set-up an on-line passport application status check.
QUESTION: WHAT COUNTRY ARE YOU TRAVELING TO NEXT? (OR WANT TO TRAVEL TO NEXT?)
How to Create Photo Slideshows From Your Digital Camera Photos
Dec 23rd
It’s that time again, the “look back at 2007″ time. Wherever you turn, there seems to be a memory-filled montage of photos and stories from this past year. How do you make your own?
I’ve been experimenting with a couple of different ways to make slick slide shows complete with transitions and music backgrounds. One application that I first saw at CompUSA on the shelf was Microsoft’s Photo Story 3 for Windows for over $30. It comes bundled with a photo editing/organization application. However, there’s a little known secret – Microsoft actually gives away Photo Story 3 for Windows totally free on the web. A full-version of the program is available for you to download and use right now!
Here’s the link for the download page: http://tinyurl.com/4f869
It’s a neat basic program that allows you to import the photos you want to include from your hard drive. Set-up the order of the photos. Select custom transitions between each photo slide. And also “tween” beginning and ending spots for each photo (basically set-up the pan/zoom effects for each photo when you’re viewing it in the movie).
It’s very easy to figure out without a manual.
And last but not least, you can also import mp3 music files to set the background music for the slide show.
I’ve been very happy with PhotoStory so far. It does have some limitations, but for 90% of users, this is a great program.
If you want to burn a DVD of your PhotoStory, you DO have to purchase a $19.99 add-on that basically is a Sonic DVD burner application, but it’s specific to this Microsoft program. I actually purchased and used this add-on, and it worked as advertised. You can create menus of several photo stories on the DVD, so you can make separate photo stories of each vacation, event, etc and then later create a DVD for all of them and ship it off to Grandma + Grandpa.
When you get a little advanced, you might start to envision some features which are available on higher-end applications like Nero, etc. I personally made some photostory movies and then imported a couple of separate photostory files into Windows MovieMaker in order to incorporate some more of the text narration and better 3-d narration effects to the final movie.
But if you’ve never created your own photo slide show, this is a GREAT starter package — and it’s free, which makes it even better and totally risk-free.
I love tech, gadgets and the web. Hope you pick-up a useful tip or two here today that helps you use technology to your advantage! Better yet, why not share your own expertise in a comment on a post today to help the other readers that land here for answers!