Since Sharon has shared the view from her office I decided to do the same. (In form of a slideshow: click any image on this post to see it). Luckily, being a free-lance, office means wherever I can bring my notebook to.

Today, I woke up and it was snowing. After a winter with almost no snow, it was nice to see it on the third day of spring and wanted to share some of pictures.

I’m lucky to have a beautiful view from the alps from my window so I actually like to work at home, but when whether allows I also work in the park, in the lake or I could even work in the mountain, but that would be too much effort. Generally when I go to the mountain is just for the view and the exercise.

Yep, I’m working on sunday, but I’m lucky to work with this view!

How about your view? Were do you like to work, or where you’d like to?

Update: Since the light is wonderful this evening, I’ve added some new pictures!

• Some physics background related to photography
• The pinhole camera and the basics of camera building
• The lenses: Zoom, Focus and Aperture
• The ISO value: Films and CCD sensors
• Mastering the Shutter speed

Finally, we have seen all the necessary elements to build a camera. The black box, the lens, and the shutter.

Traditionally, there were two kinds of film cameras. Cameras with Direct Viewfinder and SLR (Sinlge Lens Reflex, or just Reflex) cameras.

Direct Viewfinder cameras have and eyepiece that allow to look at the scene to be photographed and the lens that captured the image to be projected on the film to make the picture.

This camera is very simple to make, but brings up a problem. Because the scene you see and the scene you shot are slightly displaced the picture might not be what you expect, heads sometimes are chopped off the picture, and things like that.

This problem is called Paralax Error, and becomes more of a trouble as the the object photographed is closer to the camera. For landscape photography might even be no problem at all, but for close ups is a huge deal.

SRL camera internal diagram

SLR cameras work in a very different way. The image you see on the viewfinder is the same that will be photographed. This is accomplished by reflecting the light inside the camera with a mirror and a pentaprism.

Do you remember refraction we talked about on the first post? When a light passes from a medium with higher refractive index to one with a lower one the refracted angle is wider than the incident angle.

Well, when the incident angle is wide enough the refraction angle will be 90 degrees, and what if the angle is even wider? Then an effect called Total Internal Refraction in which the surface behaves like a mirror. This is also how to Optical Fiber works.

Total Internal Refraction

A pentaprism is a pentagon extruded on the third dimension. Just like a cilinder but with a pentagonal base, instead of a circular one.

If a pentaprism is made with an adequate geometry and refractive index, it is possible to make light to enter it perpendicular to one face, reflect internally and leave it perpendicular to another face.

Then, the light enters the camera through the lens, reflects on a mirror put at 45 degrees, and enters the pentaprism perpendicularly (see the image for details).

When the shutter is pressed, the mirror is lifted, the curtain behind it is opened and the image is formed either on the film or the CCD.

Now a question, where is the image formed when the mirror is down? It can’t be directly on our eyes, mostly because the image must be formed at a certain distance that is the focal length, and would be very hard to make this to be our retina.

Actually the bottom face of the pentaprism is what is called Unpolished Glass. That means that is a rough, translucent surface, just like the translucent paper we used on the black box model. Because the surface is rough the image forms on it, but because it is translucent the light goes through, then looking from behind, through the pentaprism one can see the image formed on it.

All this is very nice, precise and sophisticated, but is not all rainbows. A camera like this is heavier, more expensive, more noisy and inherently more fragile because there are more things that can break.

Modern digital cameras are also categorized in compact cameras and Digital SLRs (known as DSLRs). While some compact digital cameras still have Direct Viewfinders, they can also use the sensor to capture the image and show it on a digital viewfinder that is not only more comfortable, but also don’t have paralax error. Because most people prefer use this digital viewfinder, more and more, digital compact cameras are coming without the direct viewfinder.

A DSLR camera works exactly like the traditional SLR film cameras, except they have a CCD instead on film. Because the sensor is exposed only at the very moment of taking the picture, there is no way for it to continuosly display the image on the LCD viewfinder, you have to use the eyepiece and.

A compact digital camera’s sensor is continuously exposed to the light that comes from the lens. When taking a picture, it just saves one of the many frames that it is continuously receiving. This is very handy, but by far is not as precise as the mechanical scheme of a SLR that can achieve speeds of 1/8000 of a second and faster.

• Some physics background related to photography
• The pinhole camera and the basics of camera building
• The lenses: Zoom, Focus and Aperture
• The ISO value: Films and CCD sensors

By now, we have seen that, by changing the ISO value we can change the amount of light needed for a picture, in exchange for quality. We have also seen that, by changing the aperture value, we can change the amount of light actually entering the camera, in exchange for bigger and smaller depth of field.

But increasing the Aperture value is not the only way to increase the amount of light in a picture.

In a film camera, you need light to make the silver halides react, hence a clear solution would be just to increase the time the film is exposed. The more time the film is exposed, the more light it gets, the more it reacts, even with few light.

Curiously, this is another similarity on digital photography. The more a sensor is exposed, the more light the photo sensors accumulate and the brighter the picture becomes.

You might want to close the aperture to get more sharp pictures and you can compensate this by increasing exposure time, if you have a tripod and a still subject you can take a very slow picture with bad lighting conditions and closed aperture and the picture might look great.

The rule is simple. Camera apertures are measured in f/ stops. Each f/ stop multiplies or divides the amount for a certain factor. To compensate, divide or multiply the exposure by the same factor.

If you half the aperture you must double your exposure time. Simple as that. Most modern cameras can handle this by themselves, and even if yours don’t you don’t have to do the math all the time, the camera photometer will do this for you and signal when light is Ok.

Pictures taken with speeds of 1/90 and 1/500 of a second. The water in the slowest picture is blurred while in the fastest is sharper. Regard that the slowest picture had a closer aperture and hence a deeper depth of field. You can see the background is sharper in the slowest.

Altering the shutter speed has a trade-off, of course.

What happens in a long exposition is that the sensor collects more light to analize and create the image, but the problem is that this light has to be the same. If the intensity or color change during the exposure the results won’t be accurate.

Typically, if either the camera shakes or the subject moves, the light reaching the sensor will change and will interfere.

If a single pixel on the sensor receive light information from different sources, then multiple images will impress the same region and the same object will be imprinted on many regions of the sensor, as a result the image will be blurred.

Now, there are at least two ways you can take blur to your advantage. One is when part of the picture is in motion and you want this part to be blurred while the rest is sharp, one common use for this is with running water.

The second one is called panning and consist in photographing a moving subject by following with the camera while it moves, by doing this, the background will have a motion blur and the main subject will be focused. This is, of course, much difficult that the first one and requires some more experimentation.

In case you wonder how would that be o film, it is the exact same, but is the silver halide instead of the sensor pixel.

This is the 4th part of a six-part tutorial about photography basics. So far we’ve seen

• Some physics background related to photography
• The pinhole camera and the basics of camera building
• The lenses: Zoom, Focus and Aperture

We have seen how it is possible to project an image on a surface, but we haven’t seen so far how to transform the projected image, into a photography that can be seen further in time.

In this post, we will see basics of how films and digital sensors work and how to use ISO value on your own advantage.

A little bit of Film History and the Digital Sensors

Originally photography was brought to existence because some extremely brilliant people were able to use the knowledge of some chemical substances that react to light and become other substances.

When exposed to light, these substances form sliver cristals which are opaque and dark, hence enabling people to capture black and white images based on whether the light has or hasn’t hit the surface on a particular point.

One of these cases is the family of the silver halides. That is, compounds made of silver and a halogen, usually chlorine, bromine and iodine.

Many years have passed and countless improvements over this led to very high quality photography material and further, enabled people to think on electronic, not chemical, devices capable to do the same, that is, capture images and represent them as a matrix of points, instead of an array of silver cristals.

And digital photography was born.

As you see, film photography and digital photography walk hand in hand for a very long way, despite the internals are completely different, the way they behave is very similar in many aspects, that is why the basics for film photography are very much the same than the basics for digital photography.

Sensitivity and ISO values

Two pictures of the same scene, taken with ISO200 and ISO1600 respectively. The image taken with ISO 1600 has visible noise.

In film, there is something called sensitivity of film. The more grains of silver halides in the film, the more sharp the image, but also, the more light you need. That is why film sensitivity is also commonly nicknamed film speed.

Film speeds where classified by agencies like ASA and DIN in standards like ASA 100, ASA 400 or DIN 27. Then ISO took standards over and films where named ISO 100 or ISO 400.

These standards describe the amount of light needed to take a picture with a film, the lower the ISO value, the more light needed and, usually, the higher the quality.

There are many other factors that influence the speed and quality of film, but roughly speaking, the amount of silver halides is the main reason. The amount and size of grains are equivalent to what is known in digital photography as resolution.

Digital photography has adopted the ISO film standards to describe sensor speeds and the trade-offs are about the same: the higher the ISO, the less light you need, but instead the lower the quality, which means that the image definition, contours and details, is poorer.

In digital photography, the ISO doesn’t affect the amount of pixels of the final image, hence the resolution. Instead, affects the quality of each individual pixel.

The higher the ISO value set on a digital camera, the less light you need, but also, the harder it gets to detect an image through the incoming light, producing noise on the picture.

The noise produced by a high ISO digital photography is similar, but not the same than low quality of high ISO film photography, which instead of noise is called granulation.

Anyway, roughly speaking, the trade-off with digital ISO is the same as in film ISO, you need more light to get more quality.

• Some physics background related to photography
• The pinhole camera and the basics of camera building

We have seen in the previous post, that by isolating rays of light through a tiny hole, we can separate and project images of objects. The smaller the whole, the sharper and darker the image, and vice-versa.

It would be really great if we could find a way to widen the aperture of the camera and correct the rays of light and project all diverging rays of light the same point, isn’t it? That would provide a sharp image that is also very illuminated.

In this post, I’ll show you the lens basics and how to use focus and aperture to your advantage in pictures.

Magnifying glass on a sunny day

Thanks to this properties, we have the magnifying glass. If you put a sheet of paper under the sun, infinite sun rays are projected on the paper. These are images of the sun, casted on the paper and they cover all the extension of it.

By using a magnifying glass, it is possible to change direction of the sun rays and make them converge to one single point. This point is called focus. By doing this on a sunny day, the amount of energy in the focus is so great, that you can, literally, burn the paper.

Well, that is the way to go, by using these properties to build lenses we can put in the black box we can increase the size of the hole and keep the focus at the same time.

As you might have guessed already, the focus of the lens must be exactly over the projection surface (translucent paper, photographic paper, film, CCD). So the longer the box is, the greater the focal length should be, and vice-versa.

A correction lens in the aperture of the camera to correct divergent rays of light.

A single lens like this would only be able to focus objects at a certain distance, just like a magnifying glass. By combining multiple lenses you can have a focusing ring that allows you to chose the range in which objects will be focused. Objects positioned closer or farther that this value will be blurred.

How much the objects off-distance will be blurred largely depends on the size of the opening in the lens, the smaller the diameter the less blurred, but the darker the whole scene becomes. The greater the diameter the lighter the picture, but the more blurred the off-distance images become.

The range that will be focused at a certain aperture is called Depth-of-Field.

Deep depth of field at aperture f/32

Shallow depth of field at aperture f/4.8

This is obviously a trade-off and that is why almost all lenses for professional cameras and even a lot of the amateur cameras as well come with an aperture device that, roughly speaking, allows you to control the diameter of the inner hole of the lens.

The aperture of a lens is measured in f/ stops like f/2.8, f/4.6 or f/32. What these numbers represent is too technical and is outside the scope of this tutorial, but you should keep in mind that the smaller the number, more luminous the lens and better… and more expensive.

On the inner side of the camera, using a similar idea, we can also lengthen the focal distance of the lens and keep the focus over the projecting film or CCD while putting the lenses closer or farther to it, changing the approximation and perspective accentuation of the image. This is called a zoom lens.

Another trade-off, of course, is that all this technology is more expensive and requires more knowledge to handle, so you end up having a huge range of cameras to buy, from cheap to obscenely expensive and from very simple to very complex ones.

The more you understand about this and the more the camera lets you explore your knowledge, the more you are able to take gorgeous, fantastic photos and hopefully, this is why you are reading this text.

• Some physics background related to photography

In the previous post on this series, we have seen that light incident on a rough object is reflected, also called difused, in many directions and this create so many unordered images that the eye mix them all up and we can’t distinguish them, like in a mirror reflection.

In this post we will see how to isolate and project images to understand the basics of a photographic camera. Principles of all cameras even the most modern digital SLRS and even webcams.

By any point of a room infinite rays of light are passing, but any one of these rays come from different source points of it, but if you could isolate just one ray, from one source passing through one specific point you could build an image.

Did you ever hear that only one line passes through two points? Well, this is true. So we must define two points and get the single ray of light that passes through it. This is the idea behind the black box.

A black box is something you can do at home and have a lot of fun out of it. It might seem childish but it is interest for grownups too.

A black box can be made of black thick paper. You cut and glue the paper in order to make a box that is much longer in one side. Well, It doesn’t have to be square though it can be as a regular telescope if you like.

One end of the box will be covered by the same black paper of the rest of the box. The other one, though, will be covered with translucent paper. In the very center of the dark end of the box, you will open a tiny hole the size of a pin. The device is depicted on the picture above.

A rough object, put in front of the black box, will reflect light in every possible direction, but the hole on the black box will only let one ray from each point to enter the black box, all the rest will be reflected. As a result, an image will be formed inside the box.

Because the box is black, all light that hits the side walls of the box will be absorbed, but the light that hits the end of the box will create an image on the translucent paper. Because the paper is translucent you’ll be able to see the image from the outside.

Believe it or not, this is the basics of how any photographic camera in the world words. In fact, this black box is named pinhole camera and could take a real picture if you put photographic paper instead of translucent paper, what you can actually do if you know how to use a photography lab.

We live on the ages of digital photography, so imagine a CCD instead of the photographic or translucent paper. You’d have a digital pinhole camera.

Focal length: 18mm

Focal length: 34mm

Focal length: 50mm

Focal length: 100mm

Focal length: 220mm

Focal length: 300mm

Now, what is the relationship between the length of the box and the size of the image? The longer the box is, the smaller the angle of the projected region will be and the greater will be the approximation and consequently the bigger the image.

At the same time, the longer the box, the more close to parallel the rays of light will be, hence, it lessens the sensation of perspective. What it happens is that the perspective is flattened.

On the other hand, the shorted the box gets, the greater the angle of the region and hence the more accentuated the perspective.

It is also true that a pinhole might be very small, but is not punctual, that is, it does has dimensions, hence it is not true that only one ray of light from each points goes through. The hole could not be punctual, of course, but it can be as small as we want, provided we have a pin thin enough to make it.

The bigger the hole, the more offset images of the object are created, and the more blurry the image becomes. On the other side, the smaller the hole, the less light enters and the more difficult is to see the image on the translucent paper or to impress either the photographic paper or the CCD.

If you take it to extremes, what would happen it you just remove the cap on the pinhole end? Looking to the translucent end you would see it lightened, with no recognizable image formed. In fact, images are forming there, but there are so many of them overlapping that they blend and you can only see white, just like when you watch a white wall.

Visual properties of objects

Every material, has some visual properties like color, brightness and opacity. Visual properties are directly related to what happen to incident rays of light.

Say you are on a room with white walls, illuminated by an light bulb. We see the walls because the light that is emitted by the bulb is made of light rays that, as they hit the walls, are reflected. The ability of reflecting the rays is a property of these walls.

But the wall is a rough surface, even a wall that is smooth to the touch has enough ups and downs to be rough to light dimensions. So, any point of it will reflect light like if there was a mirror, tangent to the wall in the very point of the incident ray.

The light ray will be reflected with a reflection angle that is equal to the incident angle, but because the wall is rough, every light ray will arrive in a different angle and each one will have a different reflection angle, as a result, any ray of light will go to a different direction, in a very unordered way.

That is why, when we look at a wall we don’t see an image reflected on it, like we do when we look at a mirror. Nevertheless, what we see on the wall is an image of everything on the room that is emitting or reflecting light.

At the same time, any point of the wall receives rays of light that come from many (we could say infinite) other points of the room. So, any point of the wall is reflecting light from infinite other points that come in many colors. The red one from a shirt, the blue from the flower vase, the green from the leaves, the yellow from the flower, and so on.

A red object is red, because, it absorbs all rays of light except the red ones that are reflected. The light that reflects in a red object and the reflects to our eyes is darker than the original, because two thirds of the incident light will be absorbed by it. It will also be red, because those the third reflected is made of only one frequency range: the red range.

Still on the subject, blacks are black because they absorb every single ray of light and none is reflected, that is why we say that black is the absence of color.

What makes a wall white? Well, is just that it has the ability (or property) to reflect all kinds of colors and absorb none. When all these rays of light hit your eyes, the light is “added up” and you don’t see all the individual rays, but the sum of them.

The structure of the human eye

Human eyes have photoreceptor structures called cones that can detect red, green and blue rays of light. No other color is perceived by the human eye, what happens is that the brain mixes amounts of these three seamlessly and we feel like seeing other colors.

People use to say that red, green and blue are primary colors because they are the primary components of white light. This is not untrue, but we must realize that this is only true when associated with human perception of light, not with light itself.

Anyway, ultimately, all light we see can be divided into three parts, and we can rely on understanding only these three to study all the light we see.

Subtractive colors

As you probably know since kindergarten adding paints does not bring white into the picture. The more colored paint you add, the darker it gets.

That is because the paint absorbs all the incident rays except the ones on the paint color, that are reflected. So, the more paint you add, the more rays are absorbed, eventually fading to black.

The Newton’s Color Wheel

Just because adding colored paint turns into black, it doesn’t mean that “white is the sum of all colors” is not true, fiction or just a theoretical model, but you have to make sure you are adding light, and not only paint.

We can do an experiment that shows that the sum of colors is white. Take a disc and divide it in three circular sectors, then paint each one with one of these colors: red, green and blue.

If you nail the circle by its center and spin it fast enough the circle will seem white. Looking at any point of the circle will make you eye receive a rapid succession of intermit red, green and blue, so fast that the eye will blend them together and see white.

This is called the Newton’s Color Wheel.

Conclusion

A rough object, like the wall on the example, reflects light on every possible direction and builds infinite images that are projected all around the place and mix with images of other objects.

Our eyes only see reds, greens and blues and they are sent to the brain that mixes them, based on amount of light, incapable of separate the different rays or images formed.

To take a picture we need to isolate one of these images from the others and keep it.

As a part of the course I wrote a tutorial that was quite handy for some people over the years and now, in a time when film photography is almost extinct I thought it was time to refresh the text and make a handy manual on photography in six parts.

Every three days, on August 9th, 12th, 15th, 18th, 21th and 24th I will publish each one of the six parts of the manual, see the list below.

• Some physics background related to photography
• The pinhole camera and the basics of camera building
• The lenses: Zoom, Focus and Aperture
• The ISO value: Films and CCD sensors
• Mastering the Shutter speed
• Compact digital cameras Vs. DSLR
Zo'C powerblogroll - A plugin to make powerful blorgrolls with favicons, descriptions, notes and RSS links]]> http://www.z-oc.com/blog/2007/08/understanding-cameras-and-photography/feed/ 2 http://www.z-oc.com/blog/2007/05/sunset-at-work/ http://www.z-oc.com/blog/2007/05/sunset-at-work/#comments Fri, 01 Jun 2007 01:58:14 +0000 Guilherme Zühlke O'Connor http://www.z-oc.com/blog/2007/05/sunset-at-work/
Sunset taken with my Nikon D70 after some failed attempts of taking it with my cellphone.

Just wanted to share some pictures I took from the window by my desk at work today.

Yesterday, by the end of the afternoon the sky was amazingly red and I hadn’t my Nikon D70 with me, so I had to take some under-optimal pictures with my mobile.

Today I went to work with most of my equipment hoping for another great sunset.

So this is the outcome, enjoy.







Zo'C powerblogroll - A plugin to make powerful blorgrolls with favicons, descriptions, notes and RSS links]]> http://www.z-oc.com/blog/2007/05/sunset-at-work/feed/ 8 http://www.z-oc.com/blog/2007/02/pictures-of-toronto/ http://www.z-oc.com/blog/2007/02/pictures-of-toronto/#comments Sun, 11 Feb 2007 19:57:52 +0000 Guilherme Zühlke O'Connor http://www.z-oc.com/blog/?p=29 I just came back from a 12 day vacation on Toronto, Canada with lots of pictures.

I am uploading them gradually, you can follow the uploads in my Toronto set in flickr.

Zo'C powerblogroll - A plugin to make powerful blorgrolls with favicons, descriptions, notes and RSS links]]> http://www.z-oc.com/blog/2007/02/pictures-of-toronto/feed/ 2 http://www.z-oc.com/blog/2006/11/sessions-with-anna-stripes/ http://www.z-oc.com/blog/2006/11/sessions-with-anna-stripes/#comments Wed, 08 Nov 2006 21:20:40 +0000 Guilherme Zühlke O'Connor http://www.z-oc.com/blog/?p=22



This weekend in a moment of inspiration Anna and I took a wonderful photo session.

This is one of my best works as a photographer and probably some of the best pictures featuring Anna, even though Anna’s pictures always looks good.

You can check the pictures at flickr by clicking on the pictures on this post.

Check all publihed pictures featuring her on my flickr.

Let me know what you think about the pictures!

Zo'C powerblogroll - A plugin to make powerful blorgrolls with favicons, descriptions, notes and RSS links]]> http://www.z-oc.com/blog/2006/11/sessions-with-anna-stripes/feed/ 1 http://www.z-oc.com/blog/2006/11/guide-to-photography-publishing-on-the-web/ http://www.z-oc.com/blog/2006/11/guide-to-photography-publishing-on-the-web/#comments Tue, 07 Nov 2006 18:47:22 +0000 Guilherme Zühlke O'Connor http://www.z-oc.com/blog/?p=21 These days, everyone and his brother are building blogs and sites and publishing photographies online. Publishing content, both graphic and writen is at reach of virtually anyone.

People now have better ways to show their work without the “patronage” of an employer. Even good ways to promote their work in order to get a first job in the first place.

If you compare with, say, 15 years ago, when news were printed and pictures appeared only in books and magazines you’ll see that today anyone can be a photographer, designer or a journalist-a-like. Not necessarily a good one, though.

In this article, I will give some hints for people that aspire to sucessful publish pictures online for a big audience.

Do not show too much of a good thing

It is common to take lots, sometimes hundreds of pictures of a subject that we are atracted to and, for the surprise of many newcomers, most professional photographers take endless amounts of pictures on a single essay just to pick a couple of them.

There are two reasons for that.

1. If you show two pictures that are very similar, eventually one of them will be more appreciated than the other, and because there are too similar, the worse will take away the bright of the other.
2. If you publish several pictures that are the similar, eventually the viewer will get bored of them all, even though he may have found the first one fantastic.

Did you ever wanted to eat only the filling of a lot of chocolate cookies when you were a child? Well, if you ever did it chances are that you found that it was too much of a good thing and you ended up not liking it as much as you expected. The same goes for pictures.

Do not publish learning material

If you have two pictures of the same subject that you find both have qualities and defects and it would be nice to have qualities of both, congratulations! Your eye as a photographer is getting better and you are learning from your pictures.

However, those are probably not publishing material, there are still things you want to improve on them. Refrain from publishing them, go back to your subject and try to apply what you’ve learned from the previous session.

However, keep in mind that on photography is not only the technical merit that counts. If you have two pictures of a very unique event that you wouldn’t be able to shoot again then you may have very nice material on your hands. Choose one and publish, make a wise option between them, but keep in mind the first hint.

Think about your audience

One thing in photography is to shot what people want to see just for the popularity. You should take pictures of what you want and for your own pleasure, based on your own criteria. However, publishing pictures is something else.

That nice picture you took of your grandma that is a major favorite among your family may really be uninteresting for anyone that doesn’t know the good old lady. A generic viewer won’t have a sentimental regard of your personal picures. The same goes to the pictures you took clubbing with your friends or on vacation.

If your intended audience is friends and family this may not apply to you. Maybe you can have the most visited blog of your college or workplace, but if you intend to reach a bigger audience you must think what may be uninteresting for them and keep this to those who really may like to see it.

Be patient

This is one of the most important hints in about anything in life.

Nobody can build a nice portfolio in a couple of weeks. Be patient and dedicate yourself to the pictures, follow the previous hints and be conscious about what you publish.

Sure you want to have a thousand pictures on your site and be an awarded photographer, but, also, you would like to have a flawless portfolio, and recieve only nice comments from people.

This just won’t happen if you publish about anything that you shot. There are millions of galleries of random pictures around, there is no reason for someone to come back to yours unless this person is friend or family. If you bore your public they won’t come back.

If you keep your submissions at a nice pace, with only quality pictures, they probably will end up singing up to your newsletter, reading your feed or bookmark your site to come back later.

If you dedicate yourself to work the pictures instead of the volume of the site one day you’ll wake up and find that you have a reasonable amount of pictures and far more page views that other fellow photographers that publish ten times as much as you.

Have fun!

Zo'C powerblogroll - A plugin to make powerful blorgrolls with favicons, descriptions, notes and RSS links]]> http://www.z-oc.com/blog/2006/11/guide-to-photography-publishing-on-the-web/feed/ 2 http://www.z-oc.com/blog/2006/10/submissions-to-jpg-magazine/ http://www.z-oc.com/blog/2006/10/submissions-to-jpg-magazine/#comments Thu, 26 Oct 2006 19:16:28 +0000 Guilherme Zühlke O'Connor http://www.z-oc.com/blog/?p=19 Submissions are open to JPG Magazine, I’ve submitted one picture on each theme.

Please check my pictures, and if you like it, I’ll be glad to receive votes.

My submissions:
Tourist theme
Intimate theme
Embrace the blur theme

Check also Anna’s submissions:
Tourist theme
Intimate theme
Embrace the blur theme

Have fun

Zo'C powerblogroll - A plugin to make powerful blorgrolls with favicons, descriptions, notes and RSS links]]> http://www.z-oc.com/blog/2006/10/submissions-to-jpg-magazine/feed/ 3 http://www.z-oc.com/blog/2006/10/give-a-name-to-the-fictional-band/ http://www.z-oc.com/blog/2006/10/give-a-name-to-the-fictional-band/#comments Wed, 18 Oct 2006 22:24:14 +0000 Guilherme Zühlke O'Connor http://www.z-oc.com/blog/?p=17

A couple of weeks ago, Anna and I were in Buenos Aires and I took some pictures that look like a band cover art of us and Pablo, one of my Friends from Argentina.

I would like to know what name you would give to the band depicted. Also, I would like to know what kind of music do you think this band would play, in which language(s), etc.

Please leave your oppinions on comments here at this post on the blog, or on flickr, on any of the photos of the fictional band.

See pictures of the fictional band here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/guioconnor/tags/fictionalband/

Zo'C powerblogroll - A plugin to make powerful blorgrolls with favicons, descriptions, notes and RSS links]]> http://www.z-oc.com/blog/2006/10/give-a-name-to-the-fictional-band/feed/ 5 http://www.z-oc.com/blog/2006/10/buenos-aires-pictures-at-flickr/ http://www.z-oc.com/blog/2006/10/buenos-aires-pictures-at-flickr/#comments Wed, 04 Oct 2006 17:05:18 +0000 Guilherme Zühlke O'Connor http://www.z-oc.com/blog/?p=12 We’ve been to Buenos Aires, Argentina last week for a vacation. The city is beautiful (though I knew the city and lived there for some years, I haven’t been there for 8 years), the food is great.I am putting pictures of the trip on my flickr account at http://www.flickr.com/photos/guioconnor/

For those of you that read feeds and are interested in following the pictures as I add them this is the link to the RSS feed
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and this is the link to the Atom feed
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Have fun!

Zo'C powerblogroll - A plugin to make powerful blorgrolls with favicons, descriptions, notes and RSS links]]> http://www.z-oc.com/blog/2006/10/buenos-aires-pictures-at-flickr/feed/ 0 http://www.z-oc.com/blog/2006/09/rainy-evening-at-higienopolis/ http://www.z-oc.com/blog/2006/09/rainy-evening-at-higienopolis/#comments Tue, 19 Sep 2006 05:40:38 +0000 Guilherme Zühlke O'Connor http://www.z-oc.com/blog/?p=11 I am very much fond of rainy urban days and evenings [and even nights] which is rare to have at south east Brazil because of the tropical weather.

But this weekend we went to São Paulo to watch Franz Ferdinand and we stayed at Anna’s brother apartament.

Luiz’s apartament is located at Higienópolis, one of the nicest neighborhods in São Paulo and his apartament has a beautiful view to Mackenzie University and São Paulo’s skyline.



To complete the perfect urban scene eventually a light rain started to fall while we were waiting for the time to go. I’m so lucky I had my camera with me.

Unhappily, I didn’t wanted to take the risk of getting my camera to the concert.

Zo'C powerblogroll - A plugin to make powerful blorgrolls with favicons, descriptions, notes and RSS links]]> http://www.z-oc.com/blog/2006/09/rainy-evening-at-higienopolis/feed/ 0 http://www.z-oc.com/blog/2006/08/toy-hot-rods/ http://www.z-oc.com/blog/2006/08/toy-hot-rods/#comments Thu, 31 Aug 2006 22:09:20 +0000 Guilherme Zühlke O'Connor http://www.z-oc.com/blog/?p=8 What I find amazing in toy photography is how much you can express with characters that, ultimately, are not alive.

One of the things I like best in toy photography is that you can be sure that whatever you see it’s only in your mind. Well the Aesthetics is great too.


Saturday Anna and I went to Renato’s house for a Toy Hot Rod photography session.

Renato is a matchbox cars collector, and a very good one. Not only he has a few handreds of them, but they are also classified by style.

Renato is not quite a fan of driving himself, but he enjoyes cars aesthetics, so he says: “Why would I need an expensive collection of real cars, when the toys have the same look.” And With some help of pictures, he can really make a few millionaire collectors envy.

Funny as it sounds, in the verge to complete 30 years, I can say that saturday I went to my friend’s house to play with his matchbox cars.

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