Liu Bolin is a Chinese artist who has seemingly perfected the art of disappearing into the background.  I think my favorite is the first one in front of the soda aisle.  But I think he blends in the best with the dump truck.  I didn’t even know he was in the picture at first glance; it was his hair that gave it away.  It needed to be more orange.

According to the NY Times article, it takes several hours to setup a shot, and they use paint and makeup to blend him in on site. I can’t imagine standing still that long, especially in the heat and humidity of Beijing.  Hope he does his shots in the winter.

Mpix.com now has magnet prints.  Looks like the perfect vehicle for sending save the dates, graduation announcements, engagement announcements, baby announcements, etc. They probably wouldn’t make bad Christmas cards either.

And they’re priced fairly reasonably, starting at $34.50 for twenty-five 4″x5.5″ and going down as you order more.  They even include the envelopes!

I also love the fact that the tool used to create them comes with some pre-defined templates to help you get started, or you can just upload an image of the correct dimensions, and create the card from that.

If you don’t mind “beta” software, are a Windows 7 user, and you convert your camera’s RAW files to the Adobe DNG format, then this “release candidate” DNG Codec is for you.

According to Adobe:

The DNG Codec provides a method for Windows 7 customers to view DNG files in the Windows Explorer and Photo Gallery.

The biggest downside, in my opinion, is that it doesn’t offer support for OSes prior to Windows 7. Then again this is 2011; I suppose we should all be on the latest and greatest OS, unless you count this one.

If you’re new to photography, particularly cameras with “advanced” controls like aperture/shutter priority or manual mode, then this Camera Simulator might be helpful to you.  It shows the various effects that lighting, distance, focal length, ISO, aperture, and shutter speed have on a photograph.

Nifty…

I’m currently reading through Scott Kelby’s book, The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 Book for Digital Photographers. It’s a fantastic book and classic Scott Kelby. In Chapter 2, Scott makes the case for using flags over ratings or colors to sort photos.

On his blog, Matt Kloskowski, agrees and elaborates. He gives us 3 (and a half) Reasons to Use Flags Instead of Ratings in Lightroom. It was enough to convince me.

If you’re a Lightroom user, check it out, and see if you’re convinced.

I’m just beginning my foray into using Lightroom as a part of my photography workflow.  One nagging issue came to a head this afternoon, as I was trying to sort through some photos.

For some reason, the count of photos in the toolbar wasn’t counting all my photos.

I couldn’t figure out where the three missing photos had gone.

Fortunately, a search on the Adobe Forums turned up this article. And then I realized that because I had some photos stacked, they weren’t available to be selected. Unstacking them then allowed me to select all 144 photos:

So there you go! If for some reason, Lightroom won’t let you select all your photos, check to make sure they’re not stacked.