alreza.smugmug.com

This post may be a tad late. I finally decided to subscribe to smugmug (thanks to fox for the introduction)!! This service provider is among the 3 largest and most popular for photo image storing and sharing besides the famous flickr and photo.net.

Although all have communities, flickr appears best for the masses with extensive group communities. Photo.net I would say are more for professionals (you should see the amazing gallery they have) and it is great for peer review of your own work though I would not recommend it for the faint-hearted as these guys look like they're seriously of the pro community. They also offer equipment reviews and have a learning centre. I prefer registering with smugmug because they back up data to 3 data centres and if you take up the moderate to full membership, you are able to modify the look and feel of your site and you can even set print prices to make profit (pro account users only). To see a review of the differences between flickr and smugmug click here and here.

New Additions from National Geographic

Got myself National Geographic's 'Ultimate Field Guide to Photography' quite a while back. Ignoring that its from National Geographic, I must say its a very useful book as it gives a very good overview. It also has a chapter dedicated to camera phones! Perhaps this may be good for those thinking of competing in NG and SE (sony erricsson) competition 'Windows into Asia'.

Recently I also received gift vouchers for MPH and told the giver that I will put it to good use. So I did and got myself NG's (again) latest edition of 'The Ultimate Guide to Landscape Photography' as I'm very much into landscapes. For me, this is another great book and it does give plenty of insights for approaching landscape photography.

You can check out both book's review at Amazon...as I'll be ending this post and finishing up digesting the latter book mentioned above ... ;)

Sigh.. Photography is such an expensive Hobby

It has been about 6 months since my entry into serious photography with the purchase of Canon's 400D. Naively I thought 'Get a good overall lens, a flash...that should be it'. But no, I seem to be getting addicted. Its true they say (and I agree) that use your existing gears to the best of their abilities and not get better gears to do more but sigh... I just can't help it. Sometimes it is the necessary evil. Sometimes..

My current existing equipment includes:

1. Canon 400D (with battery grip BG-E3 and kit lens)
2. Canon 28-135 f3.5-5.6 IS lens (hope to replace this next year with the 24-105 f4L)
3. Canon 17-40 f4 L
4. Canon 50 f1.8 (this is on loan - planning a 50mm of my own: the f1.4)
5. Canon Speedlite 580EX
6. Manfrotto 055Pro tripod (with the 468MGRC2 Hydrostatic ballhead)
7. Lowepro Nova 3 AW (shoulder bag)
8. Lowepro Dryzone Rover (backpack)
9. Maxtor 300Gb external harddrive (for all my storage needds ;) )
   

And still I have dreams. My current wishlist:

1. Canon 70-200mm f4L IS (next target before Japan GT 2007)
2. As mentioned before, Canon 50mm f1.4
3. Canon 100mm f2.8 Macro (this has been put on-hold as a colleague has recently purchased this - but this is a fun lens to get)
4. A monopod (research not done on this yet)
5. That National Geographic book titled 'The Book of Photography' ( this is a good book on the history of how the different styles of photography evolved, I believe that to be a better photographer one has to also develop an understanding of how the entire field has evolved, for eg. how people like Ansell Adams, co-founder of group f/64, has revolutionised modern photography, etc etc)
   

Sigh.... this is where is seems all my salary will go to in the near future. Hope it ends on the wishlist...oh but then there is also that Fish-Eye lens, the Tilt-Shift lens and a bloody PC that has at least 2Gb worth of RAM and a decent monitor with at least 120Gb of space (so working on photoshop does not suck big time)......sigh.....looks like it never ends..