Month: September 2013

Nitro Milk Stout

I wanted a beer but also had an itch to uses my camera. Why not combine the two needs? I haven't picked up my camera in a while. I've reached that stage where I'm not inspired. I want something new to try. I have, by no means, do it all. I've barely scratched the surface of the body of knowledge and expression of photography. I'm just feeling some ennui. Thank goodness, the Scott Kelby World Wide Photo Walk is coming up. I need to get outside with my tribe.

I have a theory that a lack of restful sleep causes my ennui (am I using that word correctly). I’ve been going to bed late. I feel like I’m watching too much crap television. I could be reading or learning a new skill. I want to go to bed earlier tonight. I think by 10 PM.

About the beer. The Nitro is a Milk Stout. It’s not sweet but not bitter, either. It’s smooth. Ok. I have no idea how to describe it, but it’s delicious.

At first, I tried shooting with my Nikon SB600 speed light and a Gary Fong Lightsphere. I didn’t like the results. The images seemed flat. I wanted something like the photos I saw on Gizmodo. I sat and stared at the iMac’s screen glow when I noticed the cheap desk lamp I bought for a DIY lightbox. I put the lamp on the living room floor, put the glass of beer on the ottoman, and turned off the room lights. I like what I saw.

How to post Pressgram images to App.net[Quick Tip]

Pressgram has built-in support for publishing links to your images (and associated blog posts) to Facebook and Twitter social networks. But what if you prefer the App Developer Network? There are two solutions that I've used that seem to work but both involve publishing your photo a WordPress blog first.

IFTTT

If This Then That (IFTTT) is a service that lets you connect various online services (channels) and do actions based on simple rules triggered by actions. The combination of online service and rule is called a recipe. I created a IFTTT recipe to push links from my WordPress blog that have been tagged "#pressgram-photo" to my app.net stream. When I want to post my Pressgram image to ADN, I follow the same procedure that I would for posting to my WordPress blog but I add the tag "pressgram-photo' to the tag field in the bog information section, and hit the check mark to publish. It may take some time before your image is posted to ADN. It depends on when IFTTT checks your blog for updates.

PourOver

The second method involves using PourOver. PourOver is an ADN service that uses the RSS feed from your blog to publish links to your ADN stream. My WordPress blog already has an RSS feed so using PourOver involved the trivial task of authorizing to my ADN account and pasting in a link to my RSS feed. Now, every time I post content ( any content ) to my WordPress site a link is posted to ADN.