I Want It That Way

This Backstreet Boys song seems to be an inspiration for many Youtube video makers. The video above has been watched more than 1 million times. The Backstreet Boys are looking for the group on the video to sing a duet!



My favorite is still the one from the Dormitory Boys (2005).
 

The next 5000 days on the web

Here is another favorite TED video of mine. In 2005 Kevin Kelly talked about the next 5000 days on the web. We are right in the middle of these 5000 days!

Wish list 2009

This is my wish list for 2009. I will add things to these list when I think of something. So revisit this post to see up to date information!
The links are for information purposes only.
Items in strikethrough are already claimed (Thank You!)

• mini HDMI to HDMI cable to connect a Canon 50D to an HDMI TV.
• GP Recyko+ battery charger. Next generation of Recyko technology - holds charge longer.
• Cap lamp. For when I am taking night shots and can't see what I am doing.
• Honl Photo System Carrying Bag. To store all my HONL flash stuff.
• The Digital Photography Book Volume 3, Scott Kelby.
• The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 for Digital Photographers book, Scott Kelby.
  
• Panobook 2010.
• Strobist collection by Rosco + Lumiquest.
• Magnetolink rookmelder bevestiging (three pieces). The link is for illustration purposes only. You can buy this at Gamma.
• Book Exploring the light, Rick Sammon.
• DXO Optics Pro 6 Upgrade (Since I have a DXO Optics Pro v5 license I get a special upgrade price of EUR 39 until 31 December 2009).
• DVD+R discs (just realised I have only 5 left).
• Boekje "Netwerken werkt", van Rob van Eeden
  

TED ideas worth spreading

TED is a phenomenon coming from the USA. It started in 1984 to bring together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED!).
This video is one of my favorites. Taryn Simon displays her photographs of secret sites of the USA, and also tells about the obstacles she had to overcome in order to make the photographs.
Here is a direct link in case you have trouble playing the video.

VIDEO: Wubbo Ockels on time and gravity

TEDxAmsterdam: Wubbo Ockels from TEDxAmsterdam on Vimeo.

Interesting presentation from TEDxAmsterdam of Wubbo Ockels on 'time'. I think I have to watch it again to understand what Wubbo means...

Did You Know?

Diez atracciones gratuitas en Europa

The Spanish must like the Verzetsmuseum a lot! Here is another article featuring one of my photos.

Wikilovesart /NL aftermath

Photos I released with a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license for the Wikilovesart /NL project are slowly being used.
The Verzetsmuseum seems to be a popular subject
A Spanish web site uses one of my photos in an article about the Dutch Verzetsmuseum. The photos is hyperlinked to the source, nice!

Another Spanish web site lists the top 10 free attractions in Europe. Number 10 is the Verzetsmuseum.

A German web site writes an article about heating buildings and uses a photo of a transmitter in a suitcase. I don't understand the connection...

And last but not least: The local TV station AT5 has used my photo of the front of the Verzetsmuseum in an article about the director of the Verzetsmuseum.

LAC 2009

I attended the Landelijk Architectuur Congres 2009 at NBC Business Center, Nieuwegein. The opening session was very refreshing. It was a wake up call to all IT architects: spend less time on your models (like TOGAF) and spend more time on explaining what is possible with IT in simple terms (story telling). I liked this message so much that I decided to tweet about this.
At the end of the session the real-time twitter feed of #lac2009 was put on the main screen. You can see my tweet - it is the third on the list (-:

My colleague Erik Kiel did a presentation on 'a contextual approach to IT architecture'.

Productivity Future Vision

Nice future vision of how people can interact with computers in the future. Pay close attention and take a look at the ' boarding card of the future' (1 minute into the video), and how to navigate and meet someone in the airport of the future (2:03 minutes, and the airport actually exists today - it is Hong Kong Airport).

Spandau Ballet Live at the O2 DVD

As you can read in my previous posts, I visited Spandau Ballet at the O2 in London. A DVD of the live performance will be released at 30 November 2009. The Youtube video above gives you a preview!

Evening photography - View from Westerdok Apartment Building

I got a chance to take some photos from the Westerdok apartment building (thanks Hans!).
First an interesting building in the neighbourhood (who can tell me the name of this building?)

Canon 50D, Canon EF-S 17-55mm f2.8 IS USM @ 17mm, 20 secs @ f8, ISO 100
I like the metal structure and the lighting. It 'lifts' up the building.

The view from the Westerdok apartment building is magnificent!

Canon 50D, Canon EF-S 17-55mm f2.8 IS USM @ 17mm, 30 secs @ f8, ISO 100
Top left is the Prorail building. At the bottom you can see Cafe Restaurant Open. This restaurant is situated in an old turn track bridge dating from 1922.

Canon 50D, Canon EF-S 17-55mm f2.8 IS USM @ 42mm, 17 secs @ f8, ISO 100
Detail shot of the Prorail building. I like the trail of the moving train next to the building.

Canon 50D, Canon EF-S 17-55mm f2.8 IS USM @ 55mm, 30 secs @ f8, ISO 100
Photo of the Posthoornkerk and the Westerkerk (background).
You can see the train passing by at the bottom part of the photo.

And to end the series, here is an abstract one:

Canon 50D, Canon EF-S 17-55mm f2.8 IS USM @ 55mm, 10 secs @ f8, ISO 100
Can you see the train I followed?

Fourth evening at the photography course - The rough patch

Second and final stop of the evening photo shoot was the location defined as "the rough patch of Amsterdam". Luckily it turned out to be not that bad. It was the Westerdokskade near the rail tracks.

Exposure details: 20 secs @ f8, 18mm, ISO 100

Same place, but with some light painting:

Exposure details: 30 secs @ f8, 18mm, ISO 100

Exposure details:15 secs @ f11, 20mm, ISO 100
Graffiti was light painted with a Fenix L2D LED flashlight.

Exposure details: 15 secs @ f8,ISO 100, 21mm

I made a second photo with double the exposure time

Exposure details: 30 secs @ f8,ISO 100, 21mm

Fourth evening at the photography course - Brouwersgracht

This evening we went for a photo shoot in the city to learn how to take photos in low light situations.
Technical details: pictures were made with Canon 50D, Canon 17-55mm f2.8 IS USM lens on a tripod and the RAW images were processed in DXO Optics Pro v6.
First stop: Brouwersgracht, Amsterdam.

Exposure details: 30 secs @ f11, ISO 100, 17mm.
I chose Tungsten white balance when converting to JPG.

Exposure details: 45 secs @ f11, ISO 100, 20mm.
I like the light trails left behind by the cars (and the circles of course).

Exposure details: 30 secs @ f8, ISO 100, 17mm

Exposure details: 20 secs @ f11, ISO 100, 49mm, Gorillapod, tungsten white balance selected during raw conversion.

After shooting these pictures, we went to the next stop: a more "rough patch" of Amsterdam. For pictures of this dangerous place see my upcoming blog post.

Photos for EP - Part 2

I selected some photos for my 'Eigen Project' (own project). As a working theme I have 'contrast'. Examples: light/dark, young/old, short/tall, male/female. Another topic which could be a theme is something with architecture.

This is a staircase in Theatro Museum Dali. I walked past by, and returned to take this photo. What's special about this photo is that it looks like I have converted the photo into black and white. But this is not the case. The light and colours are exactly as what you would have seen when you were standing next to me.

This art piece is hanging in the lobby of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. I like the light and colour of it.

This is the restaurant on the ground floor of the Victoria & Albert Museum. The photo is an HDR image consisting of three photos: the normal exposure, the 2 stops below and 2 stops over normal exposure. This way you can see the detail in the glass, as well as the individual lights in the light ornament.

This is the view from the restaurant of the National Portrait Gallery, London (HDR image consisting of three photos).

How To Calibrate Your Monitor

Calibrating your monitor means adjusting your monitor and PC/Macintosh to make sure the colours of your photos are displayed correctly. Prints on paper should look the same as the photo displayed on screen.
An easy solution is to calibrate you monitor manually. The problem is that people are not too good at judging colours. Minute changes in colour will go unnoticed because your brain constantly adapts to its surroundings. We know that a sheet of paper is white, so that paper will be seen as white, even though the light falling on it could be slightly red or blue.

Because the human brain works that way, it is very difficult to calibrate your monitor using your eyes only. A better solution is to use monitor calibration tools. These tools usually consist of software and hardware. The sofware displays various different colour hues on the monitor. The calibration hardware is attached to the monitor so it detects these colours and passes on information about the displayed colour to the software. The software detects the changes between the colour displayed and the intended colour to be displayed. After the calibration procedure the software generates an ICC profile. This ICC profile is used by Windows or MAC OS X to render colours correctly on screen.

Calibrators discussed on the photo course where:

• Datacolor Spyder
• PANTONE huey 

 Printer calibration is also possible, but only necessary when you use your own printer.

Third evening at the photography course

I attended the third evening of my photography course.
Topics were:

1. hints and tips for the upcoming evening shoot
2. how to calibrate your monitor
3. how to choose a correct white balance for your photos
   
4. photos by (William Eggleston)
   

The first three topics warrant a blog entry on their own.
Return to this blog to read the entries when they come available, or even better: subscribe by e-mail or subscribe to my RSS feed.

Fazal Sheikh

Our teacher at the photography course gave us the following tip.
An exposition with photos of the photographer Fazal Sheikh can be seen at Stiching Huis Marseille museum voor fotografie in Amsterdam. This exposition will close at 2 November 2009.

The American photographer Fazal Sheikh (1965) held previous exhibitions at the Netherlands Fotomuseum and the photography Festival Noorderlicht. Fazal is well known for his portrait photogaphy. Since the next lessons in the photo course will be about this topic, the exposition can serve as a good introduction.

3D Photos without computers

In this day and age with digital photography we rely on computers and software to create HDR and 3D photos.
I salute the people who did all these things before the digital age.
As an example: 3D stereoviews made in Japan by T. Enami (1859-1929).

Moon

Moon
This is a science fiction movie in the true spirit of classics like Silent Running, Outland and of course 2001: A Space Odyssey.
It looks like this movie went unnoticed in Holland.
Fortunately, I got hold of a copy...

To see what I am talking about, take a look at the official trailer!

Sneak Preview E-book Word succesvol via LinkedIn

A sneak preview of the LinkedIn e-book I use is available on http://www.justconnecting.nl/10112/1/sneak-preview-e-book-word-succesvol-via-linkedin.html (Dutch only). The sneak preview contains the table of contents of the e-book.

LinkedIn e-book

I have just received the LinkedIn e-book which accompanies the LinkedIn workshop given bij Vincent Smit. The e-book is in Dutch and explains all the hints and tips (and more) in detail and gives some extra tips which were not mentioned in the workshop.
Vincent's tips have helped me to increase my number of connections, and to be of more value for my connections.



Free LinkedIn tips can be found on http://tinyurl.com/gratiszelfstudie (Dutch).
You can buy the e-book on the the web site 'Word succesvol via LinkedIn'.

Elliott Erwitt - Retrospective - Gemeentemusem Helmond

For the first time in Holland, a collection of photos from the famous American photographer Elliot Erwitt is displayed in the Gemeentemuseum Helmond.
More than 130 photos are shown from 13 October 2009 to 17 Januari 2010.
I find his photos funny and intriguing and I will surely visit this exposition.

Hints and tips for the evening photography session

Today we heard the hints and tips how to prepare for the evening photography session of the photo course next week.

The hints and tips can be divided into two categories:
A. Stuff handy to have
B. Recommended camera settings

A. Stuff handy to have
This is the list of things which are handy to have (besides your camera):

1. Fixation device - Tripod, Gorillapod or bean bag.
   A tripod is well known by everybody.
   A Gorillapod is something new - a kind of tripod with flexible legs.
   A bean bag is a bag filled with macaroni, rice, beans or other stuff.
   
2. Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II lens.
   Nikon users have the equivalent of Nikon 50mm f/1.8 AF Nikkor.
   These lenses have a good price-performance ratio. That is the reason why they are recommended.
3. A remote release (cable or wireless).
   Canon 40D or 50D users can choose the Canon Remote Switch RS-80N3 or Canon Timer Remote Controller TC-80N3.
   The Canon Timer Remote Controller TC-80N3 is more versatile than the RS-80N3 (but also more expensive).
   Canon 350D users and higher (400D, 450D etc) can use wireless controls like the Canon RC-1 Wireless Remote Control.
   Cheaper alternatives (check compatibility with your camera):
   Hahnel HRC-280 (cable).
   Hahnel HW-433 (wireless).
   
4. Flashlight.
5. Lens hood.
6. Optech Rainsleeve .
7. Light gum.
   A small black circle on a black stick.
8. Spare batteries for the camera.
   
9. Warm clothing.

My recommendations:

10. Gloves .
    
11. Something to eat.
12. Tissues.

B. Recommended camera settings

1. Turn off auto focus. Use manual focus.
2. Turn off all noise reduction functions in the camera.
3. Switch off the lens image stabiliser (only if your lens has one).
4. In the camera turn on your histogram display.
5. In the camera turn on your highlight exposure warning (or the 'blinkies' as I call this function).
6. If shooting in JPG, select low contrast mode.

My recommendations:

7. Shoot in RAW so you can worry about the colour temperature later. 
8. If you are lazy (like me) shoot in RAW+JPG mode. This way you can try to set the settings manually. If you got the settings right you can use the JPG. Otherwise you can have a second go on the RAW image with your favorite RAW converter.

I will use DXO Optics Pro to process the images.

How to use Linkedin

 I have attended a workshop on how to optimally use LinkedIn. The workshop was given bij Vincent Smit. He explained that you can use Linkedin to draw attention to your profile and capabilities, rather than actively contacting people to ask if they need your skills or expertise. More and more people start using LinkedIn to look for employees, or find people who can solve a problem for them.

To make sure someone finds you in LinkedIn, you must configure LinkedIn correctly.

Some basic tips are:

• Use your full name in LinkedIn.
  This way you are easier to find.
• Put a profile picture on your profile where your face can be seen clearly and people will recognize you when they meet you in real life.
• Change your LinkedIn URL into something more recognizable and memorable.
  The standard LinkedIn URL you get ends with a bunch of numbers. You can change it into something like http://www.linkedin.com/in/mchangsp
  This URL is easier to memorize. You can change your public URL in Account & Settings / Public Profile.
• Visit your Public Profile and check if all items are visible which you want to share. It could be you have entered information, but have switched off visibility in Accounts & Settings...
• Use an email signature like the one at the end of this article.
  

Vincent has many more tips on 'Word succesvol via LinkedIn' and on http://tinyurl.com/gratiszelfstudie (in Dutch only).

You have a problem, I can solve it for you.
Marc Chang Sing Pang Enterprise IT Architect, Schiphol Group mchang@gmx.net http://www.linkedin.com/in/mchangsp My blog http://mchangsp.blogspot.com My photos http://www.flickr.com/photos/mchangsp
See who we know in common	Want a signature like this?

Nemo fish at a private motu near Bora Bora

The fish in the Bora Bora lagoon swim really close to your feet. So close you think you can catch them. But because they are also very fast I could only catch them on video, and not in my hand.

Easy reading

Everybody is lazy, so I don't expect my readers to surf to my blog each day. That's why I have provided two easy ways to follow the entries my web site:

• email subscription
  You get an email the moment I am publishing a new entry on my blog
• RSS feed
  My updates are also available as a RSS feed which can be used in a RSS reader like Google Reader.

Click on the entries above, or in the right sidebar  to use one of the options. Less clicks, more reading time...