Technology

Podcasts

I am a great fan of podcasts stories and each week a I sync my favourites to my iPhone so I can listen to them whilst travelling between jobs. When walking I use my iPod, synced with the same podcasts and extra audiobooks.

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I follow Tony Smith’s Sci-Fi podcast and this week for the third year in a row, his Starship Sofa has been nominated for a Hugo Award (a pretigous, international Sci-Fi award).

StarShipSofa No 233 Gwyneth Jones | StarShipSofa.

Amy H. Sturgis

This show is particularly good – it has an excellent article by Amy H. Sturgis about English author Samuel Youd, he wrote The Death of Grass and The Tripods. The show also includes the story “Vicar of Mars” by Gwyneth Jones – this is a story that includes aliens and spaceships, what else do you need!


I have listened to several other really good podcasts this week.

Journey Into…: Journey #29 – All At Once by Nathaniel Lee.

EP339 – “Run,” Bakri Says : Escape Pod.

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Black and White Processing

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I took the original shot with the Pro HDR app, on my iPhone 4. I prefer the HDR (High Dynamic Range) results from this app over the Apple camera app, the results are more dramatic. However for the best results from Pro HDR two things have to be considered.

  • The camera must be held as still as possible – Pro HDR goes through a sequence of several seconds to detirmine the required exposures and then takes two shots with about a second between them. If you move too much the combined image will be ruined.
  • If there is a lot of movement in the subject you are photographing then the delay described above with spoil the results.

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Pro HDR

Once the picture is taken you can adjust several image qualities before saving the picture – I increased the colour saturation.

I then imported the image into Photogene2 for more editing – having tried a number of editing apps for my iPhone I particularly like Photogene2, it is easy to use, with a well thought out interface, based on “dial a function”, so you can find the effect or tool you want very quickly.

Photogene2

I cropped out a section of the original image – I included a large section of the clouds that I was interested in and less of the green field. I also cropped for the distinctive line of trees, loosing the hedge and the larger trees.

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I then applied the “simple black and white” effect.

Photogene2 simple black and white

To get the results I wanted, I increased the exposure and the contrast.

Photogene2 exposure and contrast

The final thing to do is to save the finished image to the Camera Roll and post it to my blog.

Note – during the process the save the intermediate images as I make changes, so if I am unhappy with any of the results I can back up and try again.

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