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The nice little story of this couple seeking advice from a counselor: Mr. Pixel and Mrs. Grain. In three parts.

A nice story ending for those who love digital photography…

Via F/1.0.

Some of you may be interesting in giving us some information leaks. It may seem that your privacy may be difficult to be kept in the process, but there are a few ways to protect it.

I can give you some information and some advice.

• I would not divulge the sources of my information if you merely ask me to keep it quiet.
• Use the contact form providing a wrong address (please, make it clear in the text).
• If you feel that this is not enough (or if the information you are providing would be really asking for additional protection), you can send email to Yves2006@YLovePhoto.com (just replace 2006 with this year, 2009 or 2010, to make it actual), without leaving traces by using one of the following services:
  • SendAnonymousEmail.net
  • CyberAtlantis
  • AnonymousSpeech
  • Anonymouse
• You can also send us paper mail. It may be very ‘old economy‘-like, but it’s quite safe to understand that I will not keep the document for more than a few hours. And it won’t allow to track you…
• You can also install a system enabling its users to communicate anonymously on the Internet, like TOR which will bring an additional level of security and anonymity, but at the price of a much higher complexity.

Feel free to use or adapt these advices. For my part, I will do my best to ensure that our exchanges will do you no harm.

All that being said, remember that I always prefer a well-known source (if not 100% identified) and I may chose not to publish some leaks when I do not feel sufficiently at ease with its origin and/or credibility.

Don’t forget to go outside and play with your new photography gifts!

Photo credits: katielips.

EXIF date changer

The EXIF data hold a lot of useful technical information about your photos. One of these is the date and hour of the snapshot. This is quite pleasant, useful and nice up to the moment when your camera internal clock fails or starts lagging. Or when you need very precise synchronization with another device (like a GPS geo-marker, for example). Here, you need to correct precisely the hour (or worse, the date) written in your photos and -generally- you have to do it on dozens of photos at once.

How to do this? Under Windows, ask to EXIF Date Changer from Relik Software. This utility program will allow to correct this information in a matter of seconds.

A minor feature that may appeal to some of you: I found a way to present the web site in the form of a traditional newspaper in PDF format for easy handling (you can take it with you and travel far from Internet).

You may be willing to test right now one of the two language versions of the YLovePhoto web site:

• PDF in English
• PDF en français

Example

A technology developed and distributed by FiveFilters.org.

Up to now, the YLovePhoto web site was available in only two languages:

• English
• Français

I don’t intend to start doing simultaneous real-time translations into several languages at a time, but I thought that it would be intersting for some of our visitors not fully mastering those two native languages, to get access to automated translations provided by Google. They may not be perfect, but they may be helpful.

It’s easy to use, you just have to click in the lateral menus on the links beside the small round flags:

Or there is a small Google widget to offer an even wider choice of 35 languages:

Melissa Brandt just wanted to take a photo of her husband and herself. But, as it happens sometimes, an intruder came into the frame. Except that this time it is a ground squirrel from Banff National Park who came checking the photo camera.

Taking advantage of the sun during August, I will take some holidays for a couple of weeks. The immediate consequence is that the YLovePhoto web site will be updated much more slowly (mostly pre-scheduled posts; I’ll try to keep an eye open anyway).

Be sure to also cool down a little (this is good to start in a healthier state in a few weeks) and be patient with me.

Example of tags at the end of a post

A minor update to the YLovePhoto.com features. I now added a Tag feature to all posts. It works a little like ‘themes’ but is a little more flexible, of a finer grain.

One is not replacing the other, mind you. It’s simply a matter of offering you a few more options when tracking/following the news on YLovePhoto.

A list of the most common tags, currently used on the web site:

• airport
• autofocus
• backup
• Canon
• CD
• discontinued
• DIY
• download
• drive
• DVD
• EVF
• expert
• firmware
• free
• fun
• idea
• lens
• manual
• nature
• Nikon
• Olympus
• online
• panorama
• Pentax
• Photoshop
• plane
• repair
• review
• rumour
• safari
• Samsung
• Sony
• storage
• studio
• test
• time lapse
• tip
• Travel
• tutorial
• upgrade
• video
• vintage
• wildlife
• Windows
• YLovePhoto

To stay fully up-to-date with the latest posts on YLovePhoto, there was already the RSS threads and the electronic mail. But some of you wanted to get even more flexibility. Who am I to deny you this right?

Today, you have the possibility to receive tweets for each update of the YLovePhoto.com web site. The twitter page is:

http://twitter.com/ylovephoto_en

I am quite sure that it will attract people who fell in love with this modern and quick way to be kept informed. Maybe some of those who do not know it yet will feel the need to check and discover Twitter, this web site and mean to post short messages (no more than 140 characters, a little like or mobile phone SMS messages) and to subscribe to the messages/tweets from other people.

YLovePhoto merely publishes short messages showing the title of each posted article followed by a hot link to reach it directly.

For example:

Sample tweet from YLovePhoto

Join our followers

A reknown photographer (Joe McNally), a desert, an elephant, a top model and a full studio.

Link love

Those are the best links found recently:

• 5 Elements of Composition in Photography: Pattern, Symmetry, Texture, Depth of Field, Lines.
• 5 More Elements of Composition in Photography: Framing, Perspective, Space, Balance, Color.
• The 100 Most Popular Photoshop Tutorials of 2008
• A camera obscura can be as large as a room

Most-read articles

The news YOU want!

• Pentax K30D, re-evaluation from Samsung
• Images of the Nikon D400 (but you should also check the Nikon D400 category)

Most visited categories

Wider issues that are at the center of your attention:

• Pentax K30D
• Nikon D400

If you are one of the fastest typing commentators on this web site, you may find yourself interested in the newest little widget on YLovePhoto.com. The most prolific commentators are now highlighted on each and every page (in the side bars).

If you have correctly filled your web site affiliation, this will count as a link back to your own web site too.

But don’t even think about spamming. Akismet and me are actively removing anything looking remotely like a spam comment.

Congratulations for Ted’s participation (slowing down these days).

Here it is! I shifted into high gear in terms of user interface and web site look. After the first few months of operation, it became more and more important to make the site really very usable and as comfortable as possible. A few days of calm allowed me to develop and test a new design that I invite you to visit with me.

In order to help you, I even decided to provide a guided tour to give you some more data. You will not have to wander around looking for things. Isn’t it nice?

Explore the new site look and its prominent features described below

1. A completely new design chart with sober colors in order to avoid readers perturbation. Some readers may have noticed the progressive appearance of some of its elements in the recent days.
2. Choose the edition you prefer in your own language (English or French).
3. Use the search engine on the YLovePhoto web site as well as on the whole world wide web.
4. The navigation bar guides you toward the most important sections of the web site.
5. Highlighted topics are those that attract the most visitors currently.
6. An extensive database of digital Single Lens Reflex (dSLR) cameras with their feature set, their strong points (Up) andweak ones (Down) and the best analysis you can find about them on the web.
7. Subscribe to a news RSS thread in order to never miss an important announcement in the future.
8. Find the news organized according to their topic to reach for your critical issues.

Even if it is not really part of the new interface, I wanted to draw your attention to the week’s portfolio. Up to now, this may have been less obvious, but I decided to make it an integral part of the web site. I want to present each Tuesday a new photo artist (not necessarily a pro) whose work has some astonishing ring. A prominent place for a prominent photographer. If you want to point me to somebody whose work pleases you, feel free to leave me a note.

Now, it’s time for you to visit and comment back if you find something that is not working as well as you could expect.