Microsoft Photo Community Blog

by Amy Sorokas /

Inspired by all the great photographers, images and videos I encounter every day, it is time to share some of that inspiration. In an attempt to get those creative juices flowing and make you pick up your camera and go shooting, it is time to launch the Monthly Theme Assignment.

The best way to motivate and get yourself out taking photos and video, is to see great work that makes you say, “wow, I want to try to take a picture like that!” So, in that spirit we have created a group out on Flickr called “Monthly Theme Assignment.” And that is exactly what it is going to be, a theme will be posted at the beginning of the month and then all the members of the group can contribute images or videos that display that theme. Your interpretation of the theme can be literal or creative.

Everyone is invited to join and participate!  Don’t worry about your skill level.   

The July theme is “places.” Make what you will of it, but here in Seattle it is that time of year when people head out to places near and far to have a vacation, or sometimes just a weekend getaway, or perhaps the latest fad of the “stay-cation.”  Wherever you are or plan to go, take your camera along and submit an image or two to the group to share and inspire others. 

Links:

Monthly Theme Assignment

Microsoft Photo Community and Icons of Imaging websites:

###

By Amy Sorokas /

There are always exciting things happening around the office, but today we got to announce the winners of the 2009 Microsoft Future Pro Photographer Competition, a photography contest for students designed to discover and showcase the talent of today’s emerging photographers. Full time college and university students around the globe submitted over 3,000 entries in three categories, landscape; people and portraits; sports and photojournalism. Renowned photographers Art Wolfe, Peter Read Miller and Joyce Tenneson acted as the final judging panel for the competition.

Neil Losin, a graduate student in the department of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) was named the grand prize winner for his photo titled, “Twilight Flight”. Losin took the winning photo in 2006 of the burrowing owl.

Yeang Chng of Harvard Medical School won first place in the nature and landscape category for his photo titled, “Silvertip Scrub”. Chng’s photo captured a silvertip shark accompanied by rainbow runner fish. Alper Dutkin of Canakkale Onsekiz Mart University (Turkey) won first place in the people and portraits category for his portrait titled, “Blurry Lives”. Dutkin shot his photo in the impoverished Canakkale district in Turkey. Thomas Simonetti of Western Kentucky University was awarded first place in the sports and photojournalism category for his image titled, “Kentucky Rodeo”. Simonetti photo captures horses and cowboys at the Kentucky High School rodeo.

It is always exciting to see work of aspiring photographers. You can check out this year’s winners as well as prior years’ winners here.

Links:

2009 Microsoft Future Pro Photographer Competition

Microsoft Pro Photo Community and Icons of Imaging websites:

###

by Amy Sorokas /

I had the pleasure of speaking with many of the Icons of Imaging this week, and man, are they busy! A quick round up of what just some of them are working on might make your head spin. So hang onto your hats!

Bob Rosato just got home from shooting the NBA finals and his shot is on the cover of this week’s Sports Illustrated. You can check that out here. As you might guess, Bob said that it was a really fun series to shot.

Phil Borges is preparing for his trip to Tibet next month to work on a project about maternal mortality with One HEART. Phil’s work is always stunning and I am looking forward to getting updates from him and seeing the photos. And just a couple of weeks ago another organization he is very involved in, Bridges to Understanding, held its annual fundraiser where some of the great new student projects that help connect youth around the world were highlighted. You can look at all the recent work by the talented students here.

Matthew Jordan Smith has been busy with work but took a few moments and followed inspiration from a trip to the Natural History Museum in LA’s bug fair. He created a series of images called “Madame Butterfly.” Amazing hair and makeup paired with Matthew’s ability to highlight beauty made for some great images. Oh, and it sounds like he watched Frost Nixon with some very surreal coincidences!

Bambi Cantrell is busy with the wedding season and still finds time to get the cover of Metropolitan Bride Magazine!

Hopefully, that was inspiring and you are ready to break out your cameras no matter where you are this weekend – happy solstice!

Links:

Bob Rosato

Phil Borges

Matthew Jordan Smith

Bambi Cantrell

Microsoft Pro Photo Community and Icons of Imaging websites:

###

Insight into the Life of a Professional Sports Photographer

by Amy Sorokas /

Managing massive volume comes to mind when Corky Trewin starts talking about just how many frames get fired off on the sidelines of a typical Seattle Seahawks game. He says typically it is about 100 to 200 frames per point scored. The math starts to make my head spin.

Recently, we got to chat with Corky and learn a bit about how he got started as a photographer, what inspires him and what are some of his favorite images. You can read the full article here. And like many photographers we get to talk to, Corky is always looking to the future.

When asked about his personal favorite over his many years as the Seahawks photographer, Corky says, “My favorite photo is the one I'm about to take. I never feel like my best work is behind me because every photo I take informs the next photo I'm about to take. It's a learning process.”

© Corky Trewin

If you are interested in seeing more of the photos taken by Corky and the Seahawks photography team, take a look at the media lounge here.

Thanks to Corky for the time and sharing stories about what (I’m guessing) many photography enthusiasts think is one of the coolest jobs out there. I sure do!

Links:

Q&A with Corky Trewin

Seattle Seahawks Media Lounge

Microsoft Pro Photo Community and Icons of Imaging websites:

###

Free Applications from Microsoft Make Your Workflow Easier and More Fun

by Jim Lewallen /

Microsoft is continually investing in big and small ways to create solutions for photographers through software and services. In this post, I want to point you to some free applications from around Microsoft that can make your photographic workflow easier and more fun. Some of these you have seen here in the pro photo blog before, others are making their first appearance. Without further ado, on to the applications.

Image Composite Editor from Microsoft Research

Microsoft Research has created an application to help you build panoramic images from a few or many photos, as well as tools that make it easy to view large panoramas on the web. This is an active research project as well, so they continue to add new features and tweak the tools.

The Image Composite Editor (ICE) can be found at:

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/ivm/ICE/

There are links there also to the HD View, and Silverlight Deep Zoom tools.

Microsoft Photosynth

Photosynth has been mentioned here before, but for those who haven’t read the backlog, I’ll introduce it here again. Photosynth is a new way of looking at your photos. From the official page:

Photosynth allows you to take a bunch of photos of the same scene or object and automagically stitch them all together into one big interactive 3D viewing experience that you can share with anyone on the web.

In short, Photosynth proves true the adage that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Even if you’re not really interested in creating one yourself, there are a number of other synths other users have created that can be interesting to look through. Did I mention it’s free?

Photosynth can be experienced at:

http://photosynth.net/

Windows Live Photo Gallery

Microsoft ships for free a great set of tools in Windows Live Photo Gallery; everything from organization tools to image editing, panoramic stitching, online printing, upload to sharing sites and even creating Photosynths. Windows Live Photo Gallery also supports the various RAW formats generated by cameras these days through downloadable plug-ins (called codecs). Windows Live Photo Gallery ships for free from:

http://download.live.com/photogallery

Microsoft Synctoy

Synctoy is an easy to use application that will help you to make sure you have duplicate copies of your important files, including but not limited to all your photos, images, and music. It works really well, and has just enough configurability, without adding complexity. You can find Synctoy (currently version 2.0) here, or at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads.

Pro Photo Tools 2

It’s been mentioned here recently, but worth mentioning again. Microsoft’s Pro Photo Tools 2 helps photographers manage their photos; assign metadata, associate geo-location data with images, and view them on a map. There’s a lot of functionality here in a free download direct from the Microsoft download center.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/

That’s all for this time. Next time I’ll do an overview of some of the online services Microsoft offers for photographers.

Links:

Image Composite Editor (ICE)

Photosynth

Windows Live Photo Gallery

Synctoy

Pro Photo Tools 2

Microsoft Pro Photo Community and Icons of Imaging websites:

Triple Scoop Music Provides Award Winning Music to Photographers

by Amy Sorokas /

My experience is – add music and people will watch longer. No matter what there is to watch, music makes it more engaging and if you can add award winning music as the soundtrack to your photographs, why wouldn’t you?

Triple Scoop Music is a premier licensing service that has photographers and videographers in mind. Four of our Microsoft Icons of Imaging have even taken the time to put together their own collections of tunes from Triple Scoop Music as the soundtracks to their work.

Jerry Ghionis, Bambi Cantrell and Denis Reggie and Matthew Jordan Smith’s Triple Scoop Music Collections

Talking to Roy Ashen from Triple Scoop Music got me thinking. He asked me about how photographers choose the music to present with their work. We discussed what could happen if you were shooting a wedding and the music you decided to lay over the slideshow you present to the happy couple contained a song that reminded the bride of a dearly departed relative or perhaps even an ex-boyfriend rather than her very own special day. How do you recover from that?

Instead, choose high quality music that conjures the emotions you want and not those old memories. That is what Triple Scoop Music offers photographers and making sure you add the right music is a good lesson for anyone presenting their work. Take a look at Bambi Cantrell’s website as great example of how to put the right music behind fabulous images and make the whole experience of viewing them even more powerful.

Make the most of your images with music!

Links:

Triple Scoop Music

Roy Ashen’s music at Triple Scoop Music

Bambi Cantrell’s Website

Microsoft Pro Photo Community and Icons of Imaging websites:

By Jeff Greene /

I'm a big Bruce Springsteen fan....

This comes as no surprise to my family and friends since I own every E Street Band album, numerous tour T-shirts, a few bootlegs, and have been to dozens of concerts since the late 70's.

My unbridled enthusiasm was, however, a complete shock to my General Manager here at Microsoft.  A couple of years ago he scored a couple of last-minute tickets and backstage passes to the band's concert at Madison Square Garden in NYC. After hanging backstage with Little Steven, we joined 20,000 true hard-core fans from New York and New Jersey for one of the most memorable concerts ever.  That night Kostas saw a whole new side of his marketing manager since I was constantly on my feet, singing every song, and high-fiving complete strangers when the band played the first few notes of an old E Street classic.  It was perfect.

So why is this relevant on the Microsoft Pro Photo blog?   Because I'm equally enthusiastic about photography as I am rock 'n roll and have discovered a cause that combines these two passions that will help a lot of families who have fallen on hard times...

For decades, Bruce Springsteen has encouraged his fans to support local organizations that fight poverty and feed the hungry, describing food banks across the country as “on the front lines" in this battle. This effort has become more difficult during the current economic crisis, especially as the need grows while the support dwindles. The past year alone has seen a 20 percent increase in the number of people seeking assistance in the Garden State.

Photographers Against Hunger

To aid the cause, BackStreets Magazine has launched the "Photographers Against Hunger" program encouraging fans of Bruce Springsteen to donate $25 to the Community FoodBank of New Jersey. This is an opportunity to donate to a very worthy cause and also get a chance to bring home an extraordinary work of photographic art, thanks to the generosity of 14 noted photographers who have taken some iconic photos of Bruce and the band over the last 30 years.

See the complete gallery of images here

©Lynn Goldsmith                        ©Eric Meola                           ©Danny Clinch

©Neal Preston           ©Anton Corbijin                     ©David Michael Kennedy

©Albert Watson             ©Timothy White                 ©Annie Leibovitz

©Frank Stefanko         ©Mary Alfieri                                       ©Pamela Springsteen

©Barbara Pyle                                        ©David Rose

A one-in-a-thousand shot...

For each $25 contribution you donate, you’ll receive an entry in the drawing for an original photographic print by one of the Photographers Against Hunger. There is no limit to the number of donations you can make.

The goal is to reach 14,000 donations, after which 14 very lucky people will be chosen at random to receive one of the signed prints that the photographers have given to the cause. The prints will be awarded randomly to each of the 14 randomly selected donors.

This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for to own an original, signed print by the photographers who have made the iconic images of Springsteen’s career.

Links:

"Photographers Against Hunger"

Community Food Bank of New Jersey

Backstreets.com

Microsoft Pro Photo Community and Icons of Imaging websites:

###

Just 2 Days Left to Enter....

By Jeff Greene /

Only two days left to enter the 4th annual Microsoft Future Pro Photographer Competition. 

Entry deadline is Thursday, April 30th, 2009 at 11:59:59 PM (PDT)

Judges for this years competition are:

Art Wolfe world renowned travel & nature photographer

Peter Read Miller Sports Illustrated staff photographer.

Joyce Tenneson, acclaimed portrait artist.

This is the most lucrative and influential international student photo contest in the world. The Grand prize is $20,000 and some great photo gear, but more importantly, it provides all four winners the opportunity to kick-start their careers.

Full time college and university students from around the world are invited to submit their three best photos in one of three categories;

• Nature & Landscape,
• People & Portraits,
• Sports & Photojournalism.

There are no entry fees and all rights remain with the photographer.

Prizes include a $20,000 Grand Prize and three 1st Place prizes of $3000 for each category.  In addition, winners will receive an Epson printer and a five year membership in the Professional Photographers of America (PPA).

The 2009 Microsoft Future Pro Photographer Competition is open to ALL full time college and university students world-wide (except where prohibited by law - not our fault... read the rules) For more information including complete Rules and requirements, please visit the Microsoft Pro Photo website...

Links:

Microsoft Future Pro Photographer Competition. 

Past Winners Galleries page.

See last year winners at the Summit

Microsoft Pro Photo Community and Icons of Imaging websites:

###

By Jeff Greene /

As part of our ongoing effort to keep you updated about Microsoft’s efforts in digital imaging, we have now added a Microsoft_Photo Facebook page. 

In addition to Facebook, our online presence also includes the Microsoft Pro Photo Community web page,  the Microsoft Pro Photo Blog, and Twitter/Microsoft_Photo.

These sites are part of our ongoing effort to engage in online Social Media and we invite you to “Friend” and “Follow” us to keep up on the latest news and information regarding digital photography.

Feel free to mention the Microsoft Photo sites in your blog posts, “Tweets”, and other personal status updates. Our goal is to engage digital imaging enthusiasts worldwide to discuss products, techniques, and all activity in digital photography. The web site, blog, Twitter; and Facebook will provide multiple channels for conversation between Microsoft, photographers, and the digital imaging industry.

Join us....

Links:

Microsoft Pro Photo Community and Icons of Imaging websites:

###

By Jeff Greene /

The last Sunday of every April is Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day, which is this Sunday, April 29th.

The day is set aside each year to celebrate the wonders of images created by pinhole camera or, camera obscura. The WPPD site offers plenty of information regarding the history, technique, and construction of pinhole cameras and also has a gallery where photographers can upload their photos and view each others' work.

The only stipulation is that photographs must be created with a pinhole camera sometime on April 29th, 2009.

Pinhole cameras can be constructed from most any container that can be made light-tight. Cameras have been fashioned from oatmeal boxes, pringle cans, large trucks, and even an airplane hanger!. It's photography at it's most basic and a welcome respite from today's high-tech gadgetry.

If you miss this years event, the next Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day will be Sunday, April 30, 2010.

Links:

Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day

Pinhole Camera Resources

Photojojo Pinhole Special

Photo.net pinhole article

Pinhole Camera search

Microsoft Pro Photo Community and Icons of Imaging websites:

###

Name Your Dream Assignment Winner Announced

by Amy Sorokas /

I am not very good at suspense so..., the 2009 Name Your Dream Assignment winners are... the Shutter Sisters - specifically Jen Lemen and Stephanie Roberts with their assignment “Picture Hope”.

The Name Your Dream Assignment contest awards Jen and Stephanie $50,000 to bring their winning dream assignment entry to life.  The concept of the contest was for photographers of all backgrounds to submit their most creative, inspiring, and compelling "dream photo shoot".  All entries were voted on by the public with the top proposals then reviewed by a panel of judges to determine the winner. 

The Shutter Sisters:  Jen Lemen  & Stephanie Roberts 

The Shutter Sisters - "Picture Hope"

The Shutter Sisters “Picture Hope” project will be an inspirational journey tracing the path of people who found hope in different places and circumstances.  The project will provide images that capture the feeling of hope and can be shared with the world.  As the entry describes;

“At each new destination, we will introduce you to a person who has become for us a living icon of hope. We'll then invite you to respond with geo-tagged finds from your own lens as together we excavate hope wherever we live, wherever we go. This body of images and video will become a visual catalog for our hopeful world.”

I am looking forward to seeing the Shutter Sisters’ project come to life and following their journey meeting and sharing the experiences of their inspirational subjects. 

In the meantime, check out the Shutter Sisters’ ‘One Word Project’ for the month - April is Hope - for the images that are already inspiring hope on their site. 

Additional winning entries won a Lenovo ThinkPad W700’s

-  The World in a Bubble

-  The Travelling Poet Project  

All top 20 finalists (really 23 since there were some ties in the popular vote) will receive special recognition and a copy of Microsoft Expression Media 2.

I will continue to check in with the winners and keep you updated on their progress. 

Congratulations to all the finalists and thanks for dreaming big!

Links:

Name Your Dream Assignment

Lenovo

Shutter Sisters    Picture Hope

The World in a Bubble

The Travelling Poet Project

Expression Media 2

Microsoft Pro Photo Community and Icons of Imaging websites:

###

Microsoft Deep Photo Zoom

by Jeff Greene /

Microsoft has announced DeepZoomPix, a web demonstration of Microsoft® Silverlight™, Deep Zoom and the Azure™ Services Platform. Using Silverlight’s exclusive Deep Zoom technology, DeepZoomPix enables photographers to interactively explore and share photos with the following features and functionality:

• A very fluid and seamless experience for navigating large numbers of images regardless of Internet connection quality.
• A “tactile” method of navigating that offers a more natural method for exploring and interacting online with photographic images.
• Multiple layout options: Arrange images in different configurations and styles including a calendar style view by date.
• Dynamically zoom in on photos without having to navigate to higher resolution versions.
• Dynamic filtering: Tagged images can be filtered interactively with live updates to the displayed set of images.
• Interactive slideshow: Users can zoom into and pan around images while they are playing a slideshow. Includes custom slide intervals and navigation options.
• Import photos from the web: DeepZoomPix can access images from Flickr, Facebook, and most other online galleries.
• DeepZoomPix mini-viewer: Embed slideshows into blogs and websites.

DeepZoomPix is a technology showcase that enables photographers to view their images in an exciting, yet familiar manner. It also showcases the capabilities of Silverlight for enabling smooth, fluid, and seamless online sorting of images. And finally, it demonstrates how developers and designers can use various Microsoft technologies to create rich online imaging environments.

by Amy Sorokas /

Happy Earth Day!

In celebration of Earth Day, I am personally hoping that the weather holds out here in the Pacific Northwest and I get a chance to take the camera out and get some shots of the beautiful spring flowers that are beginning to bloom everywhere.... 

In the spirit of the day, it was gratifying to see that our friends at Lenovo are noted by AZoCleantech to be the PC industry leaders in use of recycled content. Lenovo makes the W700 series mobile workstation PC, which is full of photography friendly options.  In fact, their green friendly approach to making their PCs and monitors allowed Lenovo to use more than 2.2 million pounds of post-consumer recycled plastics in 2008. 

Here are Microsoft, we take our environmental impact very seriously.  Our compostable cutlery and the Connector bus service make positive impacts every day. On average Microsoft recycles 141 tons of materials per month which is impressive for a company that houses about 50,000 employees on the Redmond, WA main campus. 

The Connector, a free Microsoft bus service available to full-time employees, eliminates approximately 800 vehicle trips and 32,200 miles of travel each day, resulting in the a reduction of approximately 3,800 tons of carbon emissions annually.  We also participate in some unique programs where Redmond-based cafeteria kitchens direct more than 1,000 gallons of used fryer oil to a Seattle area bio-diesel refinery each month.

Get out there and do some shooting and enjoy the day.

Microsoft Pro Photo Community and Icons of Imaging websites:

###

by Jeff Greene /

OK, so we're no Ashton Kutcher or CNN Breaking News with their millions of Followers, but our little marketing team is darn proud to have @Microsoft_Photo named one of the top "20 Photography Twitters Worth Following" by Popular Photography Magazine.

As a big thank you to our 1.155 Followers, we're immortalizing each of your Twitter thumbnail images on this blog to be forever viewed by future generations....

Our Loyal Followers:

Links:

@Microsoft_Photo on Twitter

@PopPhoto on Twitter

Get your own Twitter mosaic here.

Microsoft Pro Photo Community and Icons of Imaging websites:

###

Record Your Piece of the World on Earth Day

by Jeff Greene /

Photographers around the world can contribute to an ambitious project that will attempt to create a photo-composite of the world on Earth Day.

 

The Earth Mosaic project started out as a wild idea to do something truly significant, involving photography. Something world-wide.

 

With the Earth Day momentum, the project had an idea, an aim, and a deadline. Now, they're asking for your help and participation. It really doesn't matter if you're hot-rod D3X or 1Ds Mk III pro-shooter, or a student with a 1.3MP cell phone camera. We all share this planet, and should contribute and share in creating this mosaic.

 

The success of the project depends on getting hundreds of thousands of images. Each one represents your tiny block of our life on earth. Even though you can't see your picture at first, you can see the result, and you know that you're part of that. Everyone is. Everything we do, affects our planet. Submit your picture. Ask all your family, friends, Facebook friends, Twitter followers, Flickr buddies; even people who aren't on those services to capture a piece of their world and submit an image. Everyone gets in. Let's make our pictures a commitment to do better for our home, Earth.

A Few Rules:

• All images must be taken within the 24 hour period,local time, on 22 April 2009.
• Set your camera to the correct Day / Date. Each image has to have readable EXIF, so we can check the date
• You may send in more than one image taken on the day.
• Only JPEG images, up to 500KB in size
• Spread the word and help make the project as far reaching as possible.
• All images must be uploaded by 30th April 2009.
• By submitting your image to EarthMosaic.org, you agree to license the image as: Creative Commons (Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike

Every attempt will be made to place each image on the map as close to the country where it was taken.  However, to allow an even spread of images across the map, this may not be possible.

Links

Earth Mosaic

Creative Commons

Microsoft Pro Photo Community and Icons of Imaging websites:

###