Category Archives: Photography

Facebook Photos : Bigger, Better and a Slideshow!

To most of us who are on Facebook, this social networking site is no longer just a place where we connect with people. It has developed into a more diverse website. One of the many functions of Facebook now is it serves as our modern day photo album, where we chronicle important events in our lives by sharing photos ranging from what we’re eating, your baby’s cute photos, or anything you feel like sharing. There are even people who post photos for their own consumption or for safe-keeping (I personally have albums that are only visible to me).

Facebook Photos

This is why Facebook is continually improving our photo viewing experience. And I think the latest updates on Facebook photos are just amazing, and I believe that businesses with a Facebook page will greatly benefit from this too. 🙂

 

Bigger Album and Photo Thumbnails

THIS is what I love most about this update – bigger album and photo thumbnails. ‘Nuff said. 🙂

If you check the contents of the album or if you go to the middle tab, you’ll see how tightly the images are now arranged. I love it! And I bet you already know about the fullscreen view, right? 🙂

Tighter photos, larger thumbnails on Facebook

 

Photo Slideshow on Hover

I am a very visual person and when I view photo albums, especially when I’m “stalking” someone, I quickly browse the cover images for each photo album. If they look interesting enough, I click through.

This time, you can view the first 5 photos of the album just by hovering or placing your mouse cursor on the cover image. It’ll be shown to you through a slideshow. Cool, eh?

 

 

Like or Comment on Photo Tabs Directly

You can now like or comment, or see those who have, on the photos without having to click on each image individually.

Like or comment directly on the Facebook photo tab page

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New Pinterest Categories and My Features Wish List

One of the fastest growing social media sites to-date is Pinterest. We are all born visual, meaning images can grab our attention quickly and easily, which is why Pinterest is considered to be one of the most addictive sites there is, after Facebook and Twitter. I usually spend thirty minutes to one hour per day to check out what’s new that I can pin, and I love the quotes people create and share on Pinterest. So, I was ecstatic to learn that they have added new Pinterest categories!

New Pinterest categories for Quotes, Tattoos and Weddings

They have finally created Pinterest categories for Quotes, Tattoos and Weddings! I’m sure a lot of Pinterest active users will be happy about this too. 😉

What’s good about this is you can improve how you categorize your pins and boards, making it easier for others to see what you’re sharing. I post all my favorite quotes or my own ones under My Thoughts EXACTLY, so I can now categorize it under Quotes instead of My Life.

My Pinterest board 'My Thoughts EXACTLY'

 

If you also enjoy sharing or reading inspirational or funny quotes, then, it’ll be easier to find them for your posts elsewhere. 😉

Pinterest new category for Quotes

 

If you’re on Pinterest, follow me? 😉

Follow Me on Pinterest

 

I also see artists sharing their own tattoo designs on Pinterest. Now, they have their own category! If you’ve been inked, this is also where you can show off! 😉

Pinterest new category for Tattoos

 

And for those who are planning a wedding for a friend or for themselves, Pinterest makes it easy for you to find ideas, inspirations and tips with the Wedding category.

New Weddings category on Pinterest

 

Oh, did you know that Pinterest has a category for Geeks?

Geek category on Pinterest

 

They also modified the categories “Pets” to “Animals“, which I find most appropriate. There are photos of animals that are worth sharing and they’re not necessarily considered pets, just like that cute Otter at the lower part of my screenshot below. 😉

Pinterest category for Animals

 

My time browsing on Pinterest is spent on browsing for cute photos of pets, fashion for women,  ideas for my bedroom, kitchen setups, nail art and shoes! Well, that’s just 40% of my time because the rest of the time, I’m looking at food porn and I pin them for our food blog. 😀

Certified Foodies Pinterest page

 

 

My Pinterest Features Wish List

Since I’m one of the active Pinterest users, I have my own wish list of features I hope they’d add in the upcoming updates. For sure, this will increase how organized we can be with our boards (for the OC people like myself):

  • Option to rearrange boards while viewing them in a list form OR the ability to rearrange the boards in alphabetical order. This will extremely be helpful for those of us who have a lot of boards and want to organize or move them quickly on my main Pinterest page. Having to drag the boards from the bottom of my browser up 10 rows of boards can be a little hard, especially when I’m using my laptop and my trackball mouse.
  • Ability to move pinned items or everything in a board to another board. I have recently decided to add a completely new board for some pinned items because I felt like I’ve grown my interest in them. So, I need to quickly move some of the old ones I pinned and categorized differently from other boards to the newly created board. It’s been tedious, so I end up with duplicates.
  • No duplicates on main page. I see people I follow repinning the same thing. I hope they can add a feature where we won’t see the same item over and over again. I especially hate the repetitiveness when I’m doing a search.

So far, those 3 are the only ones I’m hoping they can implement the soonest time possible. How about you? Do you Pinterest? 😉

Pinterest

Food Photography Tips

If you are a keen photographer, then you have probably tried a whole range of styles, from wildlife photography to sports photography. If you are looking to expand your portfolio and enhance your photography skills, then why not consider taking up food photography?

Food photography might sound easy but there is a lot to learn. There is more to food photography than simply taking a picture of the dish. You have to consider the lighting, the composition and the angle. If you are keen to learn more about food photography, why not leave your online game of Solitaire or Cheekybingo for later and check out the tips below?

These are tips based on what I’ve learned so far as I take photos for our food blog. I don’t claim to be an expert, but I’ve learned a lot over the past months as I continue to read and practice.

 

Fill the Frame

If you want to create the atmosphere of a packed table full of food at a dinner party, try utilizing all the space in the frame. Pick one dish and make it your subject for the frame. Use a small aperture, so the main dish is in focus and the surrounding food is softly blurred out.

Fresh Fruit Halo-halo with Gata

 

Getting a Classy and Minimalist Effect

If you want to show a dish which is classy, simplicity is the best effect. However, simplicity is different to having a bare or empty frame, so make sure you look for an angle that doesn’t make you feel like you’re wanting more substance. This can be tricky, but with practice, you’ll soon have the eye for it.

Cinnamon Raisin Bread - CertifiedFoodies.com
 

Composition

Some food can be arranged just how you want them. Things like scallops look very effective when they are all lined up neatly. This works really well if you use a shallow depth of field because this really isolates your subject from the background.

T.G.I. Friday's Burger Sliders - CertifiedFoodies.com

 

Have Your Cake and Eat It

Food is intended to be eaten and enjoyed. There’s something charming and appealing about seeing crumbs scattered around a half-eaten pie dish. A few crumbs scattered about, a rumpled cloth napkin in the corner of the frame or even an open sugar packet and half-drank espresso all adds to the atmosphere.

A shot of ristretto with Van Houten semi-sweet chocolates

New Canon PIXMA Photo Printers : More Efficient and Earth-Friendly Printing Solutions

Over a week ago, I was invited to the launch of 5 new Canon PIXMA photo printers. Being a Canon printer user myself (I currently have 2 in my computer shop), of course, I didn’t pass up the chance to find out what’s new.

First off, let me tell you why I am a Canon printer user. It’s all about the printhead. I love the fact that if the head fails, I can easily replace it without having to take all the parts out or without needing to replace the whole printer completely. This is extremely important for a business like mine where they take on the challenge of printing a ton of documents weekly. Most of my customers print their resumes in multiple copies (in preparation for applying to various ERP Jobs probably), photos they got from Google for their research or assignments, etc. My Canon printers don’t just save me money, but they make me more efficient ‘cause they’re heavy-duty compared to other printers I’ve tried.

Here are the 2 Canon printers I use:

Canon PIXMA MX416 All in One printer with Fax

I am IN LOVE with my Canon PIXMA MX416 printer. It’s a scanner, copier, fax machine and printer in one! Plus, you can send print jobs to this baby wirelessly! Cool, eh? 😉

I got rid of my old all-in-one printer because I needed a copier that can handle long or legal-sized paper / documents. This printer has a feeder at the top so you can use it for copying those long documents or if you don’t want to manually open the scanner’s cover for every document you’re copying. Just leave them all on the top feeder and wait. 🙂

This other printer I own, a Canon IP3680, is no longer available in the market the last time I checked. It’s a photo printer and have been really good to me. Now, I use it primarily for document printing because it no longer feeds photo paper properly, probably after moving it around during typhoon Pedring.

Canon IP3680 Photo Printer

But, this printer has delivered to its promise. After a couple of adjustments with the color settings, it printed out photos just like how I see them on the screen. I wish to buy a new  photo printer very soon so I can achieve that photo print quality again. 🙂

Anyway, going back to the launch event of Canon’s new printers, Allen Chang, marketing manager of Canon, proudly shared with us that the brand have grown since 2007. They are now leaning towards products that are environment-friendly and energy-saving, but still with sleek features such as high-definition quality and even wireless printing. These were the new PIXMA printers that were introduced to us that night:

Canon PIXMA MP287 printer

Canon PIXMA MP287

It’s a very compact all-in-one (AIO) printer. The design reminds me of my old AIO printer from a different brand, but I love Canon’s because of the texture and overall look. I love black, that’s why. 😉

It’s also very affordable. For only Php 3,495, you get a fully-functional all-in-one printer for you to scan, copy and print your documents. 🙂

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How to Ward Off Content Thieves and Google Chrome’s Loophole on No Right Click Sites

Content thieves – we all hate them. One of the things we bloggers hate the most is other people copying our contents, especially our images, and posting them like they’re their own. Being familiar with coding and photo editing software, I know there are a hundred ways for other people to get what they want from your blog even if you have installed plug-ins or scripts to disable this and that.

Prevent content thieves from stealing your contents - blankpixels.com

Don’t worry, I won’t be sharing HOW one can steal your contents. This post is actually about some ways you can make it more difficult for others to do so. Yes, HARDER, not impossible ‘cause, again, there are ways, really. (Okay, I need to stop before I eventually give in and tell you how else you can take someone’s contents. :D)

 

Ways to Ward Off Content Thieves

Most content thieves would easily give up when you make it harder for them to steal your images and texts. So, here are some of the ways I’ve tried myself to cause them more hassle than the usual:

 

Watermark Away!

It may be troublesome placing watermarks on your images, but it does fend off those who’s in the business of stealing photos. Again, they can still cut or crop your watermarks out of the picture, but some are too lazy to edit so they choose those that don’t have any.

Photoscape can be used for batch watermarking - blankpixels.com

Most of the people I know use Photoscape for their batch watermarking needs (it’s also great for quick photo edits). I personally use Visual Watermark. It’s not free though, but I won the license from a giveaway so I’m using that.

For small number of photos, especially when I want to place the watermark somewhere else other than the lower left or right of the photos, I use Adobe Photoshop.

 

Disable Highlighting of Text

Did you know that people can steal your content by simply highlighting and copy-pasting them on Windows Live Writer or even their online blog post editor? Yes, including your images and they even end up leeching your bandwidth!

Leeching – Direct hotlinking of images or files uploaded to your own server by others. Also referred to as offsite image grabs or piggy-backing where the content owner’s bandwidth is stolen as well.

I haven’t personally used any script on Blogger for disabling highlighting of text so I can’t recommend anything for now. But, you can check out these search results. I may update this post with a recommended script.

For WordPress, I use the same plug-in as for disabling right-clicking. See below.

 

Use Scripts or Plug-ins That Disable Right-clicking.

Why disable right-clicking? This is to prevent others from right-clicking your images and saving them on their computers. It also stops others from finding out where your images are hosted so they can’t leech your bandwidth by simply getting the image location or link.

For WordPress, I use the plug-in WP-CopyProtect. What I like about it is it can disable highlighting of text too. Plus, it gives you the option to use a popup message to notify your reader that right-clicking is disabled. Here’s the plug-in’s settings page:

WP Copy Protect settings page for WordPress - blankpixels.com

 

!IMPORTANT NOTE!

There’s actually a loophole in Google Chrome for content thieves to steal your contents when you have the popup message enabled.

When they continually right-click on your blog, they will eventually get this message:

Google Chrome can prevent further popup message to enable right clicking again - blankpixels.com

When they check that box and click on OK, they can continue on your blog and right-click away. So, my tip is to not show any notification message anymore. Most of our readers now anyway are smart enough to realize that you disabled highlighting and right-clicking on your site… well, after a couple of attempts. 😀

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