Fun with Photography

Hauppauge, NY—The Tiffen Company announced that Photo fx Ultra, an Apple iPad version of Photo fx, its award-winning photo enhancement app, is now available. The app offers a new user interface to take full advantage of the iPad’s increased screen size.

Included with the app is a new color-correct filter, more filter presets and parameter choices, search capability, and the ability to share filter effect setups with Tiffen’s Dfx digital filter. Multiple layering, masking and finger-painting controls are now accessed from the user-friendly icons that border the large image area.

Key features of Photo fx Ultra include: 68 filters organized into seven filter groups; a total of 836 presets; 65 color or black-and-white film looks; the ability to add realistic diffusion to photos using a library of 50 textures; creation of natural lighting effects using 117 patterns; 27 grain presets to simulate popular motion picture film stocks; the ability to add multiple filters without saving, selectively apply filters by painting a mask, and modify filters with sliders, on-screen controls or presets; high-resolution support up to 2,048 pixels; and the ability to edit in portrait or landscape mode, to crop, rotate and straighten, and to zoom into an image with the close-up lens filter.

The app, which includes integrated help, is compatible with the still image editions of the Tiffen Dfx digital filter software. It’s priced at $5.99. tiffen.com

Tampa, FL—On July 24, 2010, the whole world will be walking again with Scott Kelby, president of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP), as he hosts the Third Annual Worldwide Photo Walk.

Hailed as the “world’s largest global social photography event in the history of photography,” the Worldwide Photo Walk takes place on the same day around the world where photographers of all walks of life and skill levels gather together to socialize, learn new tips from each other and explore their corner of the world through photography.

“In 2008, we had 241 walks,” said Kelby, founder of NAPP, editor-in-chief of Photoshop User magazine, president of Kelby Media Group and #1 bestselling computer and technology book author. “Last year, we had over 900 walks with over 32,000 photographers participating. We did the math; your average photographer will take upward of 300 photos during a photo walk. That means that nearly 10 million pictures were taken in that one single day that may never had happened otherwise. I think that’s pretty cool, and we all can’t wait to see what happens this year.”

There is no fee to participate, but pre-registration is required at the Worldwide Photo Walk site; photographers can find a walk nearby them and join in the fun. If there is no Photo Walk in their area, they can register to lead a walk of their own. Anyone can participate; all they need is a camera—any kind of camera, even a single-use model.

Kelby credits the success and popularity of the event to the social aspect of photography the world over. “Photography is usually viewed as a solitary activity, but the truth of the matter is that people love to shoot together, compare notes and just have fun with photography,” said Kelby. “The Worldwide Photo Walk is a social phenomenon. I’ve had group leaders contact me to tell me they’ve turned their walk into a monthly event. Other people tell me they’ve made friends at the very first Photo Walk that they’ve kept to this day. It’s the joy of shooting with friends, new and old that makes this event so special.”

The social aspect of this event has also transcended into the online world of social networks as well. Participants in the Worldwide Photo Walk post updates to Twitter before, during and after the event under the #WWPW hash tag, they share their pictures on Flickr and get updates from NAPP via its Facebook page.

In addition to enjoying a day of photography with like-minded individuals, participants may also be eligible to win prizes from the Worldwide Photo Walk’s sponsors if their photo is chosen as the best photo of the day by their walk leader. Each winning walk photo is then entered into a global competition where Kelby picks the single “best photo” of the event along with 10 runners-up.

Dover, DE—CriticalPast launched one of the world’s largest online resources for royalty-free, historic footage and photos. Available now at CriticalPast.com, the collection spans thousands of hours of video and millions of still images, all of which are available for free viewing online, or for immediate download.

CriticalPast includes some of history’s most iconic moments from over 4,000 locations worldwide and dating as far back as the 1890s. Key themes in the collection include Early Motion Pictures, World War I, World War II—including scores of clips related specifically to D-Day and Pearl Harbor—the Korean War, Vietnam War, American Presidents, the Great Depression, Civil Rights and the Cold War.

The site’s library of more than 57,000 video clips is drawn from government sources and digitized, making it easy for users to search CriticalPast’s extensive collection, then stream or download a video. Videos in a customer’s requested format are available for download in minutes, rather than in days or weeks. CriticalPast offers downloads in a choice of more than 10 image formats for every clip on its website.

“The market is ready for a fresh approach that addresses the numerous hurdles, inconsistent pricing schemes and waiting times that professionals and consumers currently endure when trying to secure video footage and images,” said Andy Erickson, cofounder of CriticalPast. “No other provider delivers the kind of service we’re offering at CriticalPast, and we’re challenging the status quo in the archival stock footage and stock photo business.”

As a result of its unique technology, CriticalPast has generated a never-before-seen collection of over 7 million historic still images, which are created from moving video images at a cadence of one per second.

For professional TV and film producers, CriticalPast offers a variety of standard- and high-definition broadcast-ready formats. Professional clips are priced between $30 to $180, depending on duration and format, which represents a significant savings compared to most stock footage providers. Clips average about three minutes in length, allowing professionals to buy only the scenes they need and not pay for an entire reel of footage. Professional “screeners,” with time code burned in, are offered for $5, providing producers with convenient, low-cost preview images for the edit suite.

“We’ve made it easy for users to find clips on CriticalPast by including a description for each video and making the collection browsable as well as searchable by keywords, dates, locations, and more,” said Jim Erickson, cofounder of CriticalPast. “To further engage users, we’ve also integrated features such as a Your Birthday in History search tool on the homepage, along with a This Week in History MediaRSS subscription feed.”

Each video clip on CriticalPast is featured on its own page with related still photo images. Each page features Related Clips and Related Links tools to assist users in finding related footage or in further researching a clip’s subject matter through direct links to third-party resources such as Wikipedia and Google Maps. Crowd-sourcing features allow users to provide improvements and additional details for any clip’s description, and discuss any clip with others in the CriticalPast forum.
In addition to online streaming and downloads, CriticalPast can ship orders worldwide, including professionally printed photos in rigid mailers and video files on USB flash drives. All video clips and still images purchased through CriticalPast are royalty free. criticalpast.com