Here are some links to resources on the web that may be of interest to our members and the public at large. If you find a resource you think may interest us, send an email to us at webmaster@nwphoto.org. Also let us know if any of these links stop working!
Click the headings below to show various web links.
May we suggest?
Here are some links suggested by our members. They may be links to their personal websites, or favorites they wanted to share with you.
- Suggested by Justin B
- Suggested by Mary Ann B
- Suggested by Derek C
- Suggested by Grace D
- Suggested by David E
- Suggested by Mike H
- Suggested by Jason H
- Suggested by Shona L
- Suggested by Matti J. L
- Suggested by Natalie Q
- Suggested by Tony v
Local Photography Clubs
Some links to some other photography clubs in the Lower Mainland area.
- Burnaby Photographic Society
- Cowichan Valley Camera Club
- Langley Camera Club
- Surrey Photography Club
- North Shore Photographic Society
- Additional Photo Clubs (via CAPA National)
- Additional Photo Clubs (via CAPA Pacific Chapter)
Online Photography Clubs
Some links to "community" sites where members can share information about photographs and photography. This may take the form of public galleries, online forums, reviews and contests.
- FredMiranda.Com: a site with weekly "assignments", public galleries, product review, discussion forums and some software links.
- Photo.Net: one of the larger and well known online photographic community sites with articles, review forums, photo critiquing and rankings and lots more. Basic membership is free, extended benefits by donations.
Educational Links
Links to pages that have tips and tutorials about various photography related subjects.
- Sim Cam: a really good set of simple camera "simulators". Don't know why or when you should change aperture and shutter speeds? Then you need SimCam! Shows you the effects of different settings on photographs.
- Photoshop Killer Tips: Get your daily video dose of the coolest Adobe® Photoshop tips, timesaving shortcuts, workarounds, and undocumented tricks with Matt Kloskowski.
- Photoshop User TV: Watch each week as “The Photoshop Guys” (Dave Cross, Matt Kloskowski, and Scott Kelby) from the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) share the hottest Adobe Photoshop tutorials, the latest insider tricks, and the coolest timesaving, job-saving shortcuts to make your time in Photoshop more productive, more efficient, and more fun.
- Lunar Photography: a short primer on things you should know about taking photos of the moon, especially during lunar eclipses.
- Common obstacles in night photography: A discussion of the issues you run into in this tricky subject area.
- PhotoNotes.org: a free information resource for the internet photographic community
Gallery Links
Links to pages featuring interesting collections of photographs.
- Eclectic Image: online galleries of images for sale.
- Julian Beever: Not exactly photography related, but this street chalk artist is world famous for his 3D drawings. Viewed from the right angles, the sense of depth is amazing
Informational Links
Some links to informational web sites. These sites have information that may be useful to photographers, even if they're not directly related to photography.
- Local Sunrise/Sunset: the hour around sunrise and sunset is often called the "golden hour" when light is at its most interesting. This site allows you to find sunrise/sunset times for various cities. This link takes you to the monthly calendar for Vancouver (and you can find other cities by following links on that page). This calendar will also show moon rise/set as well as moon phases.
- Canadian Photography Rights - laws in Canada are different from the US, so don't assume because you can take a certain kind of photo in the States that you can do it here! This page has information on your rights as a photographer in Canada.
Miscellaneous Links
Some links to miscellaneous web sites.
- Canadian Association for Photographic Art: (CAPA - National Site)
- CAPA Pacific Zone: (more localized content)
- CAPA Newsletters
- Photo.Net: peer critiquing, forums, informational articles
- Dpchallenge.Com: online photography competitions, peer review and judging, forums, tutorials
- Dpreview.Com: reviews of digital cameras
- Multiple Electronics: Recommended by member MaryAnn B: "6978 Victoria Drive, Vancovuer – carries cameras, lenses, tripods, new and used equipment - can get almost anything you want – at pretty decent prices."
Software
Some links to photography and image related software web sites.
- adionSoft Fast Image Resizer: a small and simple application for resizing/rotating photos (e.g. when preparing photos for upload to our site!). If you have problems with your current software, perhaps give this one a whirl. And it's free! (if you really like it, the author takes donations)
- Adobe Lightroom: part of the PhotoShop family, it is a photography workflow management system designed with professional photographers in mind. Available for PC and Mac users. With its 16 bit colour space, your images no longer need to be mashed down to fit a restricted colour range. Works directly with raw images, allowing many basic alterations and simple edits without ever opening an editing package. And all changes are non-destructive so you never lose your original photo. A bit pricy for low end consumers but if you take your photography seriously (e.g. you always shoot in RAW mode!), you should consider it.
- Adobe Camera RAW: This plug-in works with PhotoShop, PhotoShop Elements 5.0 and Premiere Elements 3.0. It allows importing of images from your camera's RAW format, allowing you to do a number of pre-adjustments similar to what you could have done in camera (and a lot more besides .. "Fill Light" alone is worth its weight in gold!) The plug-in itself is free and the download link is found on this page.
- Dynamic Photo HDR: This application allows you to create HDR (High Dynamic Range) photographs by combining bracketed exposures of a single scene. HDR images allow you to create a photo of a sunrise over a mountain, keeping the sun lit peaks and deep dark shadowy valley properly exposed. There are several HDR applications out there, but this is one of the cheapest I've come across (for now, introductory offer at $39 US) yet appears to have a good mix of features.
- Photomatix: This application allows you to create HDR (High Dynamic Range) photographs by combining bracketed exposures of a single scene. This is a decent application available as a standalone application ($99 US) or as a photoshop plug-in ($69). It is available for PC and Mac (OS X) users. They even have a freeware version (limited to blending only 2 exposures). The trials don't expire but instead write a watermark on any images created (some say the watermarking process also reduces image quality)
- FastStone Image Viewer: (Free for home use!) An image browser, converter and editor that supports all major graphic formats including BMP, JPEG, JPEG 2000, GIF, PNG, PCX, TIFF, WMF, ICO and TGA. It has a nice array of features such as image viewing, management, comparison, red-eye removal, emailing, resizing, cropping, color adjustments, musical slideshow and much more.
- FastStone MaxView 2.1: (Free for home use!) A tiny, very fast and innovative image viewer that supports all major graphic formats. Its intuitive layout and commands allow everyone, from beginners to professionals, to view and manipulate images quickly and efficiently.
- FastStone Photo Resizer: (Free for home use!) An image converter / resizer intended to enable users especially digital camera owners to convert, rename, resize, crop, rotate, change color depth, add text and watermark to images in a quick and easy batch mode.
- Picasa 2: Photo organizer and basic editor, free download
- Microsoft Movie Maker: (Free!) For windows XP users -- a basic video editor. If you have a FireWire (IEEE-1394) card it will also handle video capture off your camcorder and other such devices.
- Microsoft PhotoStory 3: (Free!) For windows XP users -- this application allows you to take still images and create a video slideshow. It allows a variety of output options, from Web Videos to high quality PC playback streams or even MPG files suitable to importing into other Video projects (e.g. a DVD of your vacation photos!). It's easy to use and best of all it's FREE!
- The GIMP!: (Free!) Source code is available for this "almost photoshop" image editor if you're into that sort of thing. With so much functionality, like PS, it takes a while to learn, but it's FREE!
If you don't want to compile your own version (e.g. for LINUX users), then you can go straight to the Windows installers (requires: Windows XP, 2000, 2003 or Vista, LINUX. Sorry, no Mac version yet(?) ). Many feel it's just as capable as Photoshop, but without the $$$ pricetag!