Thomas Hawk - FriendFeed

posted an entry on Thomas Hawk's Digital Connection

Hot Donkey! Thomas Hawk is Getting Fiber! Internet is Gonna Fly Baby!

3 hours ago - Link

Zach Scott, Andrew Feinberg, Vezquex, Jon Dillon and 17 other people liked this

After 10 years of slooowwwww DSL, fiber finally makes it to my house! Awesome! - Thomas Hawk

Sweet! - Shey

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Wish we had the option here in Phoenix... - Tad Donaghe

So jealous! - Michelle Martinez

I liked this because thomas will be ab le to upload his incredible pictures faster!! - Cody Heitschmidt via fftogo

I just got DSL from 56k a year ago, spoiled! :P - Michael W. May via twhirl

Wow, I'm jealous. Maybe the service will be available in Fresno soon. - imabonehead

Thomas, are they actually terminating fiber at your house? From what I understand of U-verse, it's fiber to the neighborhood then DSL to your house. http://bit.ly/2LvRll - Jauder Ho

Damn you and your sweet, sweet fiber! ;) - Chris Luckhardt

Hey Thomas, you might consider reducing the amount of posts displayed on your blog. I'm running a fast DSL connection, and your page took around 30 seconds ot load because of all the pictures. Just something to consider. Good luck with AT&T! - James Mowery via twhirl

Jauder, it's my understanding that they put some sort of connection box on my street and that they connect in from there. Not sure exactly how all that works. - Thomas Hawk

good point on my blog James, maybe I'll reduce the number of posts on the page. - Thomas Hawk

Have had FiOS for over a year at 50 Mn down and 20 Mb up, it's heaven. Congrats ;) - Andru Edwards

*Jealous!* - Susan Beebe

FIOS would be great. I checked with Verizon even about 2 weeks ago and it said it wasn't in my area yet. But this is going to be a *huge* improvement for me. Previously I was only able to get about 1.5MBPS with the top DSL package from AT&T and that was $60 per month. Now I pay $109 and get fiber *plus* the whole TV package thing. - Thomas Hawk

also jealous! - asiriusgeek

Thomas ... moved from a new hot fibre 20M to DSL area few months back. Just made a bid on a house 20 mi from here with 20-30M service. (Really) The DSL isn't horrid for what I do, but miss the lightning speed...bad! When FIOS hits PA ... I'm there. - Charlie Anzman

Thomas, can you split one of your fiber lines and send one over to my house please? That'd be great! :) - Justin Korn

Fingers crossed that everything goes well for you with the install. Lets hope the AT&T Fiber service is all it's cracked up to be and starts appearing elsewhere ASAP - Jon Dillon

got fios when we moved back to dc - love the internet but the tv service has a loooooong way to go - Marco

Marco - where in DC can you get FIOS? - Andrew Feinberg

God that must be great. I would run the fiber myself if i could get that kind of speed. - Zach Scott

posted an entry on Thomas Hawk's Digital Connection

Photosynth Gets All Virtually Earthy Like

1 hour ago - Link

Zach Scott liked this

posted a link

Happy Birthday Chris Pirillo!!!!!

8 hours ago - via Bookmarklet - Link

Michael Forian, Kreg Steppe, Charlie Anzman, AJ Batac and 44 other people liked this

it is kind of cool how Facebook shows you when it's your contact's birthday :) - Thomas Hawk

yeah thats only kewl thing about FB and off course SCRABBLE :)- - Peter Dawson

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Such a beautiful couple! - Daynah

Lovely! - Mitchell Tsai

Happy Birthday Chris! :-) - Mathew A. Koeneker

Cute picture -- happy birthday bro. - Nicholas Kreidberg

Happy Birthday, Chris! Really great photo! - Cathryn Hrudicka

Happy Birthday. and you're both really photogenic :) - Andrea Baker

Facebook's birthday calendar rocks http://new.facebook.com/events... - Mitchell Tsai

Happy Birthday - - LPH

Happy birthday! - Mike Lewis

hehehe..I stopped by to say HAPPY B'DAY but got distractd by Thomas comments. Anyhoot, cheers to you and have a good BDAY !! - Peter Dawson

Happy B-Day. - Nice Fish Films

Happy bday bud - Jeremiah Owyang

Hurray Chris! How old are ya now? 22? kidding!! - Tad Donaghe

Happy birthday, dude-who-helped-me-impress-friends-before-I-found-the-Internet :) - Yuvi

Happy Birthday my geek brother from another mother. - Michael Narciso

Happy Birthday, Hope your presents this year are even cooler than last year. - Michael Markman

Happy Birthday !!! - Nir Ben Yona

Happy Bday! - Warner Crocker

happy BDAY! - Tyler Gillies

Happy bday! - Neal Jansons via twhirl

Love the photo! Happy birthday, Chris! - susan mernit

Like me, Chris married up. We're lucky dorks. Happy bday Chris. - David Risley

big ups shorty - adolfo foronda

Thomas, you rock so hard - it's not even funny. DId you catch my email RE: Gnomedex last week, perchance? :) - l0ckergn0me

a lil late to the party...happy bday man keep doing what you do. I'll have a shot for you later. (awesome hawk-shot!) - Carlos Ayala

Happy Birthday!! - Corie Allison

Happy Birthday to you, Chris - Les

Happy Birthday! - Shey

Happy Birthday! - John Samuelson

Just went to his site and wished it there, but I guess he's way busy on his ustream live geek stuff. Guess I shouldn't have sent it to the room, but in a PM. - Les

happy bday Chris! - Phillip Jeffrey

It's your berfday! Happy berfday... :-) - Lisa L. Seifert

~~~ HAPPY BIRTHDAY CHRIS!!! ~~~ - Susan Beebe

Happy B-Day Chris! :) - AJ Batac

Enjoy the day, Chris. - Chris Baskind

felicem diem natalem, Chris! - MiniMage via NoiseRiver

Happy Birthday man! - Anna Haro

Happy Birthday! - Derick Valadao

posted a link

HDHomeRun Dual OTA HDTV Tuner Offers Great Customer Support

5 hours ago - via Bookmarklet - Link

Johan Lieu, Robert Seidman, Russellreno and Eric Florenzano liked this

So I was pretty pissed off this morning when my TV on my Media Center PC stopped working after I upgraded my HDHomeRun tuner software. But I was very pleased when I was able to post on their forum and have them solve my problem and release a patch within 6 hours on a Saturday. That's *GREAT* customer support! - Thomas Hawk via Bookmarklet

You have this as well? I purchased it about a year or so ago but I never managed to get it hooked up properly with my Media Center. You're able to record HD no problem? I remember having problems with the Guide in Media Center. - James Hull

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This tuner is a great add on by the way if you have a Media Center PC. You simply plug it into your network and it can record Over the Air (OTA) free HDTV. With Media Center's DVR you can skip all of the commercials. I canceled my DirecTV after I bought this. At $170 it costs less than two months of DirecTV and I highly recommend it. It was originally recommended to me by someone on Microsoft's Media Center team. Awesome product and awesome customer support today. Thanks Nick! http://www.silicondust.com/wik... - Thomas Hawk

James, I had no trouble. Just plugged it into my network, ran the installation software and Media Center recognized it no problem. You might want to try again with the more current version of their upgraded software that they have out. They also have a firmware update as well that you might try if you haven't tried it in a while. Works great for me. - Thomas Hawk

Agreed. I've had this for about a year now, and I absolutely love it. - Eric Florenzano

Well then it's settled - I've got a new project to tackle this weekend. My wife thanks you. :) - James Hull

with the dual tuner it can record two shows at once. So if you have conflicts, like one show on CBS and one show on NBC at the same time you can get both. Also unlike TiVo there is no monthly fee. You simply buy it once, hook it up and Microsoft gives you the guide data free with Media Center. - Thomas Hawk

Just curious - you're running XP or Vista version? I've yet to upgrade to Vista (wondering if that could be the issue). - James Hull

James I'm running Vista, but it should work with both. If you have trouble try posting a thread on it to their support forum at the link above. They seem very responsive in fixing issues there. - Thomas Hawk

I've had this for almost a year now and it's the best. Their forums are pretty helpful as well with any issues you may encounter. - Johan Lieu

published photos on Flickr

4 hours ago - Link

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published photos on Zooomr

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Catch Me!

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Don't Talk to Cops, Part 1

Tuesday at 4:17 pm - Link

vicster, Glen Campbell, sdfx, Mark Interrante and 11 other people liked this

Part 2: http://video.google.com/videop... - Kevin Fox

Very interesting; both parts. Must view. - Mark Trapp

Good information! - Brian Bufalo

This is excellent information for photographers, and other people who end up with more than their share of undue police attention. - Dave Roth

posted an entry on Thomas Hawk's Digital Connection

My 2,000th Photo Faved 10 Times or More on Flickr, Thanks Much

13 hours ago - Link

Mike Fruchter, Dave Martin, mhmazidi and Sally Church liked this

1 out of every 7 of your photos gets faved 10 times or more, which is an incredible stat! Thanks for so many inspiring images and experiences. :) - Kevin C. Tofel

Yes incredible. - Russellreno

published photos on Flickr

12 hours ago - Link

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posted a message on Twitter

“Robert Scoble and I are doing a photowalk tomorrow at noon if anyone in SF can make it. Details here: http://tinyurl.com/5blwar”

Thursday at 1:11 pm - Link

Robert Banghart, edythe, Nicholas Kreidberg, Mitchell Tsai and 6 other people liked this

We are going to meet just outside of Taylor's Automatic Refresher at the Ferry Building tomorrow at noon. From there we'll walk down along the waterfront visiting some of the Piers and shooting some of the boats that are in town for the Festival of Sails. We'll end up down past Fisherman's Wharf at the Hyde St. Pier where the SS Jeremiah O'Brien is docked for the weekend. - Thomas Hawk

Some days I wish I lived on the left coast. Being able to go on a photowalk with Scoble and Thomas Hawk would be awesome. - Rob Diana

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Brian from Seagate. Nathan from Seagate is on his way to join you with some Seagate product! - Brian Ziel

Thanks Brian. Nathan is here now and we had a great time at the Cable Car museum. - Robert Scoble

I will one day go an a photo walk with you guys. - Russellreno

Glad to hear it worked out. I'll look for the pictures in a bit. - Brian Ziel

pouting over this. why couldn't it have been LAST week (she whined) - Karoli

Photowalk and Merchandise? Man, I missed out; I almost made it too. - Stephen Shelton

My dream would be to someday do a mashup of a Photowalk and a Sketchcrawl http://www.sketchcrawl.com/blo... - Andrew Smith

Thanks for the invite. Wish I could make it, but I'm in Ohio. Have a great time! - Mitchell Tsai

had a great time on the photowalk. Thanks to Nathan from Seagate for showing up with some drives. Also nice to finally meet Justin Korn in person. We shot Pier 27 and then the cable car museum. Then mrsth and I did some shooting just the two of us back over on Treasure Island. Awesome abandoned stuff. - Thomas Hawk

Darn. Saturday or Sunday I could have made it. - Michael Hocter

A little late joining in...I had a great time as well. It was a pleasure meeting you (Thomas Hawk) and Robert Scoble as well. Gotta do these things more often! - Justin Korn

favorited photos on Flickr

The First Night in the Invisible City of Luarium/ Invisible Cities

yesterday at 11:17 am - Link

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any opinions of the ping.fm/zooomr breakup?? - Noah David Simon

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bookmarked a page on del.icio.us

Tilt-Shift Photography Photoshop Tutorial | Miniature Faking | TiltShiftPhotography.net

Tuesday at 1:06 pm - Link

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Share: What are your favorite Photography based blogs out there? (Author - Link) - FriendFeed

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Photo Business News & Forum: SEO and Stock Photography Research

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Good sideburns are sweet... Bad sideburns are wrong. - Cody Heitschmidt

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artiste

yesterday at 10:45 am - Link

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SEO and Stock Photography Research

yesterday at 9:24 am - via Bookmarklet - Link

Bob, Kol Tregaskes, Bill Sodeman, Carlos Ayala and Andrew Smith liked this

"So, photographers who insist on adding watermarks to their images, and photographers who are making their images small, and especially photographers who are doing both, are doing themselves a disservice if their goal is to show up high in search engines."" - Thomas Hawk via Bookmarklet

Here is a good read on the science of stock photography. fta - "I was startled to realize that stock photo and video purveyors actually create material in anticipation of demand." http://www.slate.com/id/219523... - Andrew Smith

published photos on Flickr

yesterday at 8:25 am - Link

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published photos on Zooomr

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posted a message

“Ok, after spending time with Photoshop CS3's HDR functions which only sporadically work on some images and downloading a trial version of Photomatix's HDR software, I can officially say that HDR is a huge pain in the ass and definitely not worth my time or energy anymore.”

Thursday at 5:05 pm - Link

Kol Tregaskes, Russellreno, TDavid, Jauder Ho and 17 other people liked this

it's not worth your time. definitely not worth it. just another tool that isn't really necessary - sam b-r

Adobe really needs to work on HDR. With a lot of tweaking you can get good results. The secret is in the conversion to 8 bit. It will never do the overly-stylized effect of Photomatix. - Andrew Smith

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Even though I've seen some other people do some interesting things with HDR, all of the images that I played around with look like crap. Photomatix makes your images look like syrupy sweet and sickening cotton candy and Photoshop is just too frustrating to use when it's HDR processing only works on about 20% of my RAW files for no explainable reason. I'd expect more from software that I paid $700 for. - Thomas Hawk

Photomatix made me want to throw up. I did create a few images with Photoshop converting them back down to 8bit but CS3 would choke and crap out on about 80% of my RAW files that I tried to use so I couldn't really merge to HDR with the files that I really wanted to use. At least I can now say I've officially given HDR a run and it's not for me. Regular old processing in Adobe Camera RAW beats HDR hands down. - Thomas Hawk

Are you going to upload the HDR images somewhere? I'm actually experimenting with HDR, and would like to see some other HDR images. Edit: I know how to find HDR images on Flickr, but I am still interested. - possible248

possible248, they look like puke. definitely not going to upload them anywhere. - Thomas Hawk

Try doing merge to HDR > move the slider farther right than you think, making the shadows too dark. Then convert to 8bit keeping the gamma and offset too dark still. Then bring it back with Image > adjustments > Exposure - Andrew Smith

Thomas, I know what you mean. I have only done 16 HDRs in the couple of years that the fad has been out. I probably have another 20 that I have the images for I just cant get myself over the effort. I use photmatix. If only my HDRs weren't so "interesting" on flickr or I'd never do it again. I like Lucis art better but the programmer has gone dark and the new Lucis tool is going to cost $500. http://flickr.com/photos/pinho... - Mark Interrante

I think a Photoshop familiar person will likely have better results with simply manually blending multiple exposures. The HDR blend tries to "automate" something that people have been doing manually in darkrooms for ages. Multiple exposures are great for getting nice ground and sky in the same image when there is a lot of dynamic range in between. - Jason Wehmhoener

I'm tired of HDR photos. They look a little too good. - Sean Davis

On a related topic, does anyone know of an iphone app that would use the camera to take HDR? - Mark Interrante

HDR became hackneyed before I really ever started to play around with it. It does seem like a lot of work. - Matt

I tried HDR on a few photos - decided that I'd rather go back and reshoot in better light than do anymore HDRs if at all possible. :) - Patty Hankins

It is possible to make HDRs that do not have that HDR "look". I prefer to use HDR as a way of getting just a bit more dynamic range. See the first two on the link http://bit.ly/38IpH2 (made with Photomatix). Photomatix (actually HDR in general) requires quite a bit of tweaking so I am not too fond of the extra time needed to process things. - Jauder Ho

the HDR feature in Photoshop really isn't worth a dime. Photomatix and a bit of understanding of why you're doing what you're doing with the tonal mapping or light recovery and you're in and out very quickly. - Frank Jonen via Alert Thingy

Thomas, Your images have to be tone mapped after they are merged, otherwise they WILL look like crap. Photoshop CS3 is not the greatest tool for HDR. Photomatix is a very good tool if you learn how to use it. Here is a link to an article by Uwe Steinmueller who is an expert at HDR on how to shoot and process images in Photomatix. http://www.usa.canon.com/dlc/c... - Jeff P. Henderson

"they look like puke. definitely not going to upload them anywhere." - HA! I played with HDR in photoshop also and was completely turned off. Haven't tried photomatix yet. - Justin Korn

Here are a couple HDR images made from a single RAW file shot on a Canon 5D. http://www.flickr.com/photos/j... http://www.flickr.com/photos/j... - Jeff P. Henderson

Jeff, that's still too much HDR for it to be realistic. - Trebor Elbocs

Trebor, I was kind of playing around and made them have that HDR look, because I thought it looked interesting. You can do HDR images that don't look like the typical HDR. Check out Uwe Steinmueller's article above. He does many HDR images that you would be hard pressed to tell that they were HDR. It does take a lot of practice to do HDR correctly. I've seen HDR images that span the spectrum from cartoonish to completely undetectable. - Jeff P. Henderson

HDR on special ocasions...only when you know it'll make a difference. HDRing for the sake of HDRing usually isn't worth it. Although I personally do it a little more often than I should. (actaully I like the fake HDR done from a single RAW) - Stephen Shelton

A comment on the intent of HDR. The original intent of HDR photography, where several images of the same scene are taken at different exposure levels and then merged, is to produce a photographic image that has the apparent dynamic range of human sight. A single image taken with today's state of the art DSLR has the capability to capture somewhere in the vicinity of 10 to 14 stops of information. The human eye can see on the order of 24 stops of dynamic range, which far surpasses the capability of any digital camera or film. A good illustration of the limited dynamic range of a digital camera is to shoot a photo of a subject at high noon. You will often see that highlights are blown and that there is a complete lack of detail in the deep shadows even thought the rest of the image is properly exposed. If you look at the same scene with your eye, you will see plenty of detail in the shadows as well as the highlights. Creating a HDR image is an attempt to replicate the dynamic range of human sight. - Jeff P. Henderson

(CONT) When several images are merged, they often appear quite dark or just plain don't look correct. This is because no display or output device has the dynamic range to properly display it. To correct this, programs like Photomatix do a tone mapping which basically moves everything in the image into the dynamic range capability of your monitor or printer. The end result is that you now see detail in the deep shadows and the highlights, and nothing is blown out. Done correctly, this can look quite natural, providing an image that is very close to what you would have seen with your eye. Done incorrectly, (either by accident or intentionally) the results can look rather cartoonish. Some people like this effect and some do not. - Jeff P. Henderson

I disagree. I think HDR sometimes can add something to an image if applied correctly and with cause. I'm not sure what platform you are on, but Photomatix Pro on the Mac works like a charm. - Rutger Blom

This photo, while not the awesomest, would not be possible without HDR - handheld, no flash, 3 frames bracketed +1.33 0 -1.22 and 0 = f/22 1/30 iso800 http://www.flickr.com/photos/s... - Andrew Smith

Photoshop CS3 HDR frames side-by-side http://www.flickr.com/photos/s... - Andrew Smith

Your HDR frame needs more contrast. - Trebor Elbocs

Agree Trebor. Edited the order of frames now. It's not the best photo but it's an example. - Andrew Smith

HDR is certainly very time consuming and for that reason alone I can understand everyone who does not want to bother with it. But the results can look as realistic as you want. In Photomatix, a realistic look is achieved by setting all "Smoothing" controls (Light Smoothing, Highlights Smoothing, Shadows Smoothing) to high/very high values and be careful with introducing too much microcontrast. - Ole Begemann

Bert Monroy over at Rev3 has a recent episode talking about exactly this: CS3 + Photomatix - http://revision3.com/pixelperf... - Holger Eilhard

There's a group on Flickr that specializes in "Realistic HDR": http://flickr.com/groups/realh.... Not all photos in the pool qualify but it might be a good starting point for examples. - Ole Begemann

Have to disagree with you there, yeah there's some awful HDR imagery on the net but used well you can produce some very interesting pictures. I like it though it is just another way to get creative with your photography - Kol Tregaskes

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