Adobe Slate is "For the Birds"

Described as a way to "..transform your next book report, newsletter or travel adventure into a delightful read on any device..", Adobe Slate is a brand-new iPad app that helps users put together multimedia photo essays in just a handful of minutes.

I would describe it as "plug-and-play". Slate is an extremely user-friendly app (effectively dummy-proof), and you don't need anything more than photos and some text to create a cool, parallax-esque, multimedia article. My only gripe is that I wish I could import video as well as photos, but hopefully, that's on the way soon (especially since Adobe Voice, Adobe's "plug-and-play" video creation program, was launched around the same time).

To test out the app, I dug up the text and photos from a couple of my old "For the Birds" articles, and recomposed them into Adobe Slate Stories. The results are below (and were a lot easier to create than my original PDF articles).

Overall, Slate is a fun app for photo-geeks, and I'm looking forward to using it again on more stories.

Pictures from the Depot Tour

I don't always get pictures of me, well, taking pictures. When I do, it's usually a shot of me contorted in the floor (what I call "photographer's yoga") trying to get a shot. I can be shockingly compact sometimes, so I totally understand the comedy of it. BUT, I am really excited when I get a couple of photos of me simply standing.

Here's a couple of photos from my visits to the Holly Springs Depot. My first visit, I toured with artist Randy Hayes and shot some of my favorite still photos (a couple are on Flickr now). During the second visit, I caught some short video clips for a small personal project (coming soon!).

The pictures in this post were taken by Alexandra Ashmead of the Holly Springs Depot. More are featured on the Holly Springs Depot blog at:

http://thehollyspringsdepot.blogspot.com/2015/05/april-artists.html

From iPhone 4s to iPhone 6

I'm one of those photographers who's always on a tight budget, so I usually hesitate to upgrade equipment. When I do upgrade, I'm careful to pick the most important pieces first (computers, camera bodies), and then look at extras (flash, softbox, tripod). I always buy with the expectation that it needs to last for the next 3-5 years.. depending on what it is.

That said, I've been working with the iPhone 4s since my iPhone 3GS was stolen in early 2012 (I guess the kid did me a favor; God knows I made him work for it though). I know, it's ridiculous, technology changes so much in that time. But with limited resources, upgrades have to count.

So I just started the next wave of serious upgrades. I traded my iPhone 4s for an iPhone 6. My 4s was still pristine, thanks to one super-janky Otterbox, but the iPhone 6 had me with the promise of shiny pictures, and shiny Retna display. It's quite possibly TOO shiny for creating gritty b&w Hipsta shots (my favorite on Instagram), but that may prove to be a small sacrifice, eventually.

It's definitely a huge improvement for social media and product pictures. Everything looks pretty. I also love that Apple went a little wider with the lens (from 35mm to 29mm), and opened up the aperture from f/2.4 to f/2.2.

I hear there's an added exposure control and image stabilization too, but I've been too amazed with Hipstamatic's insane quick-processing to play with iPhone's native camera app. Hipsta cranks out the shots on the 6 (including near-instant tintype and double-exposure turnaround; on my 4s it was a toss-up as to whether or not the app would crash while birthing just one or two of these images). I'm super excited to put it to the test over the weekend.

To see a comparison of the 4s and the 6, check out this fantastic link:

http://www.phonearena.com/phones/compare/Apple-iPhone-6,Apple-iPhone-4s/phones/8346,5257

Sorry, no photos from me yet! But the shots in this article from FStoppers demonstrate the iPhone 6's prettiness:

https://fstoppers.com/contests/17-outstanding-photos-apples-shot-iphone-6-world-gallery-61493

Site Redesign

Between a flurry of shoots and freelance work in April, I squeezed in a redesign of the site! Now it's easier to navigate and easier to browse through my portfolio. I also tidied up several pages and added a contact form. Check out the redesign at: http://www.meganwolfephoto.com/