Photographers Notes:

These photos were all taken with simple digital cameras, Olympus 340R and a 3030Z, which have been my first (happy) experiences with an instant satisfaction digital type camera where high quality gives way to expedient publishing on the world wide web.

I have found that as with 'real' cameras it pays to use a tripod.  I now keep a mini tripod attached, which also aids camera grip.

The digital darkroom, using software to alter pixels, has opened new horizons for chemical free subtle photo retouching and image altering.

I soon found the panorama stitching software QuickStitch from Enroute, and began using it. Once you decide between perspective or cylindrical, the program merges 2 - 3 - 4 or more individual shots into one panorama. These will need some cropping and minor retouching. This allows a 1 mega-pixel camera to include much more digital information in each photograph. I have now moved on to Panorama Factory software on Win2000.

Photo storage on the road is a problem because one is dependent on any number of cables, power supplies, and the security of your notebook. It seems that a zip drive or a CD-RW on board with multiple mail backs of data is the only safe way to go, and remember some extra cables too! Also forget about the serial port download, it's way too slow. Use a PCMCIA to SmartMedia reader instead, or use a USB direct cable. Test ALL your hardware and software BEFORE you leave. Burn an Apps CD with ALL your critical photo and camera software on it. 

Photoshop 6.01 was used to squeeze the graphics down in size from an average 400 kb and to make the thumbnails. I now prefer to retouch with Adobe Photoshop, which has a steep learning curve and a deep set of image manipulation tools, all of the retouching was done in small increments to change the contrast, brightness and  intensity with levels and curves. The sharpness was enhanced with the oddly named 'unsharp mask'. The sepia process involves converting to a grayscale image, tweaking the contrast curve down so as too not over saturate the image shadows, then applying a tri-tone of warm brown, deep gold and gray. Much like the chemical version, in Photoshop you first 'Bleach Out' the image, then apply the 'Sepia Toner' over it in Photoshop.

Remember to do your editing on a bit mapped file (.bmp - .tif) or Photoshop .psd format with saved layers and then just save once to a jpeg file. I have just bought a Nikon D1 2.7 mega-pixel camera!

Pernel