I published an updated to my Photoshop calendar-template-building script today. The script, which runs on Photoshop CS2 or CS3, creates the components of a calendar as a many-layered PhotoShop document that you can then change and tweak (adding photos, etc.) as you like.
The upgrade is from Version 3 Beta 1 (a major upgrade released a month ago) to Version 3, and incorporates these enhancements:
- The “February becomes March” bug has been fixed.
- You can now have weeks start on any day of the month, not just Sunday or Monday as before. Apparently, a calendar starting on Saturday is useful in Arab and Islamic countries.
- I added sizes A3 and A5 to the list of paper sizes.
(The picture in the calendar above is from when Anthony turned five last week.)
You can download the new version from the script's page.
Geeky Programmer Stuff Follows
The “February becomes March” bug was reported almost right away, but I could not replicate the problem, and now I know why: it only happened when you ran the script at the end of the month. That also explains why I started getting reports on it again yesterday and today.
The problem was with how I was using Javascript's Date object. In Version 3b1, I had this code to create a Date object representing the first day of the target month/year:
var d = new Date(); // for some reason, new Date(year, month-1, 1) always ends up with January d.setYear(year); d.setMonth(month - 1); d.setDate(1);
Silly me, I didn't pay attention to the repercussions of the fact that new Date() creates a date object representing the current date and time. If the current date is the 31st like today, for example, then on the setMonth line when I change the Date object's month to a requested month with less than 31 days, I'm asking for the impossible (February 31st? I don't think so).
At this point, all bets are off because of my mistake, but it turns out that it resolves the conflict by changing the month to one that fits. Hence, February becomes March.
The easy fix is to put the setDate line first, then setMonth and setYear, but while I was there I decided to figure out the issue mentioned in the comment. It turns out that year was sometimes a string (e.g. “2008”) rather than a number, so judicious use of parseInt where required took care of that.
In the new Version 3, that section of code is now simply:
var d = new Date(year, month-1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0)
Lighting a scene to photograph in a pleasing way is either a matter of luck, or the combination of two skills: knowing the physics of light (that is, knowing the results you'll get from lighting decisions), and having the creative sense to use that knowledge toward an aesthetically-pleasing end.
For my part, I generally go with the “luck” option, but that's about to change.
I've recently started reading Light — Science & Magic: An Introduction to Photographic Lighting, and the first chapters have made me positively giddy with expectation.
As I lamented once before, good photographers apparently make bad writers (with the most poorly written book I've ever seen, on any subject, being by a photographer). There are plenty of great writers – Bill Bryson is one of my favorites, and those books about a hairy potter are apparently pretty good – but time and again, the books I see about photography are horrible.
So, it was with growing excitement that I read the early pages of Light: Science and Magic (third edition, by Fil Hunter, Steven Biver, and Paul Fuqua). It was clear early on that these guys are excellent writers, knowing both what to say and how to say it.
From the introduction, where they talk about the history of the book (whose first edition was published 17 years ago)....
Styles of photographic lighting have changed and will continue to do so. Light — Science and Magic does not go out of style because it was not, is not, and will never be based on style. The book is based on the behavior of light, and its principles will not change until fundamental physics does.
This is clear and concise, letting the reader know that this book addresses the first of the two skills required to set up good lighting. Since no one ever reads the introduction, it's repeated in the first paragraphs of the first chapter:
Light — Science and Magic is a discussion, not a lecture. You bring to this discussion your own opinions about art, beauty, and aesthetics. We do not intend to change those opinions and may not even influence them very much. We will be more bored than flattered if reading this book causes you to make pictures that look like ours. For better or worse, you have to build your own pictures on your own vision.
What we do have to offer you is a set of tools. This book is about technology. Science. Brass tacks. Information for you to use when you please, if you please, and how you please. This does not mean that this book is not about ideas, because it is. The basic tools of lighting are principles, not hardware....
A few paragraphs later, they sum up what the book really intends to convey...
To photographers, the important principles of light are those that predict how it will behave. Some of these principles are especially powerful. You will probably be surprised to find how few they are, how simple they are to learn, and how much they explain.
In this first chapter they then go on to list three important principles before moving on to other introductory things like “Film or Digital?,” how they chose their examples, etc.
The book offers photographic exercises, and under the heading “Do I Need to Do These Exercises?” they offer advice to the various segments of their readership (teachers, professional photographers, etc.) To those learning photography without formal instruction, they suggest that...
... you try all of the basic examples in this book. Do not simply read about them. What happens in your head is the most important part of lighting, but the eye and the hand are still essential. Guided experience coordinates the three.
Wow, that's excellent writing.
Chapter One's introductory material eventually ends with...
What is the “Magic” Part of this Book?
Learn about the light and the science. The magic will happen.
Well, probably not in my case, but again, excellent writing.
Chapter Two covers the basic physics of light. Early on they introduce their intent...
In this chapter we are going to talk about light, the raw material from which we make pictures. You, reader, are already familiar with most of the ideas we will discuss. This is because you have been learning to see since the day you were born. Even if you happen to be a novice photographer, the occipital love of your brain has enough information about the behavior of light for you to be a master.
We want to attach words and labels to some of this unconscious and semiconscious information. This will make it easier for us to talk about light with other photographers, just as musicians find it easier to say “b flat” or “4/4 time” instead of humming a scale or tapping a rhythm.
This is the most theoretical chapter in this book. It is also the most important, because it is the foundation for all that follows.
Okay, so that first paragraph is a bit wordy, but their presentation is just excellent. The book not only tells you what you need to know, but they frame it so that you know why you need to know.
The chapter then describes some of the basic physics of light, and then uses that description to clarify common concepts like brightness, color, and contrast, all in tangibly-meaningful ways. It talks about how the subject being photographed can affect light (refraction, transmission, absorption, and reflection). It shows lots of photos that illustrate what they're talking about.
Chapter Two then ends with....
Reflection is light striking a subject and bouncing off. You know that and need no further explanation from us. The concept is easy because we use it daily. Reflection makes vision possible. We do not see objects; we see light. Because most objects produce no light, their visibility depends entirely on light reflected from them. We do not need to show you a photograph of reflection. Almost any picture you have on hand will serve the purpose.
However, the familiarity of reflection does not mean that it needs no further discussion. On the contrary, its importance demands that we devote most of the next chapter to it.
Writing this good is not born in a vacuum. I get the distinct feeling while reading that these guys spent a lot of frustrating years reading poorly-written books on photography, and decided that dammit, they weren't going to produce the same crap as everyone else. Their writing is not simply good, but purposefully good (whatever that means; I'm not exactly sure myself, but it seems to be somehow appropriate).
I'm only a short way into the book, and on the content front, the first two chapters have me looking very forward to the remaining ones. But on the writing front, already this book has taught me something wonderful: it is possible for a photographer to write well.
From the “Words Really Can't Do It Justice” department, rummaging around in my image library I found these shots that I took with my cellphone last year, on Route 1 in Yamashina (Kyoto, Japan).
Hello Kitty Van
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR @ 52mm — 1/1250 sec, f/4.8, ISO 500 — map & image data — nearby photos
Shortcut
As I earlier posted from our trip to Miyajima an island near Hiroshima, Japan, one of the main photographic attractions is the large main gate of the Itsukushima Shrine (厳島神社、宮島). It's off the coast in the intertidal zone, so when the tide is in, it's in the water and really pretty. There's a nice daytime shot of it at high tide at the end of this post, and on another post, some night shots.
Perhaps it's just the geek in me, but I think there's a certain interest to it even at low tide. I like to see how things work, and how they're built, and, of course, it's easier to get close to it when it's not surrounded by eight feet of water.
I got up early the morning after the Kousuke Atari concert, and was delighted to find that it was a very low tide, with up to a quarter mile of extra land exposed. It was occasionally muddy, but mostly just damp sand and rocks, so I could freely walk out and wander around. The guy walking his dog in the shot above was likely just using the opportunity of a low tide to take a shortcut.
Nikon D200 + Sigma 30mm f/1.4 — 1/1250 sec, f/1.6, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Sand · Seaweed · Water · Gate
There were large areas of light-green seaweed that looked like grass from a distance, but up close, it looked more like small squares of slimy paper. It's quite tasty.
Nikon D200 + Sigma 30mm f/1.4 — 1/1000 sec, f/1.6, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Sandbank · Pool · Gate
The intertidal zone also had a lot of large sandbanks, which are entirely under water at high tide, but at low tide create little lakes.
The gate itself is quite large, although you don't get a sense for really how large until you get right up to it.
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR @ 46mm — 1/500 sec, f/4.5, ISO 500 — map & image data — nearby photos
Solid
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR @ 18mm — 1/2000 sec, f/4, ISO 500 — map & image data — nearby photos
Imposing Figure
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR @ 200mm — 1/160 sec, f/5.6, ISO 500 — map & image data — nearby photos
“Itsukushima Shrine”
This shrine (and the whole island, for that matter) are one of the most famous tourist spots in Japan, but it was miraculously uncrowded the whole time we were there, as if it was our own private resort. During my stroll this morning, I saw less than a dozen others, including some guy at the edge of the water who, I presume, was looking for clams.
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR @ 135mm — 1/160 sec, f/5.6, ISO 320 — map & image data — nearby photos
Muddy Business
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR @ 22mm — 1/640 sec, f/4, ISO 500 — map & image data — nearby photos
Stream · Gate · Shrine
There was a steady stream of water still flowing outward, which I thought at the time meant that the tide was still going out. Had I thought about it even a little, I would have realized that it wasn't the tide going out (the tide was already out), but an actual stream that likely originated in the mountains. It wasn't very deep or wide, but sufficiently both that it was difficult to cross wearing only street shoes.
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR @ 200mm — 1/180 sec, f/5.6, ISO 500 — map & image data — nearby photos
The Shrine Proper
The shine itself is almost entirely over the intertidal zone.
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR @ 40mm — 1/400 sec, f/4.5, ISO 500 — map & image data — nearby photos
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR @ 18mm — 1/750 sec, f/11, ISO 500 — map & image data — nearby photos
I like the clouds in this last picture. Despite the morning's overcast, the clouds were thin so things were quite bright, making exposures a challenge (for me, at least).
More pictures from Anthony's birthday the other day.
We had a couple of those pull-the-string-and-streamers-pop-out party favors....
Yet just 0.69 seconds later....
A present from Grandma and Grandpa had him looking for assistance...
Inside was an “age 8+” radio-controlled car that I'm sure we'll see more of in a later post, and a book that got an immediate and thorough inspection...
Fumie's mom made a wonderful spread for dinner. Anthony and Fumie's brother are playing with Anthony's new train in the background of the next shot....
The foreground bowl is rice topped with egg (the yellow stuff), cucumber, ikura salmon roe (orange orbs), thinly-sliced octopus, and dried, shredded seaweed.
To the near left is sesame cucumber, Anthony's current favorite.
To the right are kabobs with wieners, quail eggs, cucumber, chikuwa, and cheese.
The covered casserole dish had roast beef that was so incredibly tender that it had the consistency of butter. Warm butter.
Wrapped in foil in the rear left are broiled fish.
It was all very, very yummy.
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 26mm — 1/60 sec, f/3.2, ISO 320 — full exif
Anthony Starts with a Kabob
It was a matter of some fun trying to guess what the kabobs were stuck into, so Anthony enjoyed finally being able take the tinfoil off....
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 17mm — 1/60 sec, f/3.2, ISO 320 — full exif
Unwrapping
(but not a present this time)
It turns out that my guess of a kaki (Japanese Persimmon) was
correct. I felt no small satisfaction having guessed it correctly when
Fumie and her brother, who grew up eating kaki, weren't able to. 