Photographe Paul Galipeau Ottawa Canada | lechampiondumonde.com

30 Photoshop shortcuts

Here’s a link to 30 awesome Photoshop shortcuts that aren’t exactly “secrets” but they aren’t really well known either.

From the list, here are some of my faves:

• 12. Hide other layers (option-click)
• 14. Blending modes (option-shift-letter, i.e. luminosity: option-shift-y)
• 19. Toggle between tools (shift-tool shorcut, i.e. brush: shift-b)
• 23. Flatten all layers without flattening all (command-option-shift-e)
• 24. Change workspace background
• 25. Fill background or foreground color
• 26. Switch between document windows (control-tab)

Photojournalism doesn’t traditionally do much heavy Photoshop work but it does rely on speed. Shortcuts like these can save a lot of time if you get into the habit of using them.

See the whole list!

Interview with the NYT picture editor

This is fairly old, circa July 2006, but I couldn’t pass up sharing this collection of great reader questions fielded by New York Times’ Assistant Managing Editor for Photography, Michele McNally. There are several questions, asked by people with varying degree in photography or simply, people curious about what the professional culture at the New York Times is like.

For people working within photojournalism, there are a lot of questions are worthreading. A lot of the answers are quite long so I will post a short one that tilts its hat at Denmark.

Q. Is there any publication abroad that you really like for the quality of its pictures?

– Giovanni Carozzi

A. The best are the Danish newspapers, with Politiken leading the way. I look to Stern and Paris Match after big news; they will publish 25 double-pages of great photography if the news warrants it. German Geo usually has something and photographers love working for Mare.

Check it out.

HOW TO be creative.

Hugh MacLeod of gapingvoid.com wrote a list of ways to be creative that can be applied to nearly all “artforms”. It doesn’t pretend to have all the answers but it is a great list to start with and if you want more, he goes into detail further into the article.

PS: I found it on another Ottawa photographer’s blog.

Fires in Denmark.

My old Danish neighbourhood is being burnt to the ground…sort of.

Those yellow bricks on the right? My old apartment. Foto: Emil Ryge Christoffersen

Foto: Lars Skov

Foto: Susan Thygesen

This has already made international headlines but essentially, what prompted these arsons and other riot acts was the arrest of three men who were suspected to be conspiring to assassinate Kurt Westergaard, one of the cartoonists responsible for the Mohammed illustrations that got all eyes on Denmark in 2006. The big deal is that these suspects lived minutes from my Danish apartment, in what is officially considered to be the largest ghetto in the country.

When I was still there, It was common to see burnt scooters in pedestrian underpasses, there were fireworks on a nearly nightly basis (great to watch from my bedroom window) and after a local arab man joined the Danish police, others decided to bomb his car.

Now, I heard that after buses were pelted with stones in the area of the city, they are refusing to provide service there.

My European experienced exposed me to a continent that, with the exception of Germany who is very careful about how it openly views immigrants, is new to the idea of immigrant populations and perhaps has some difficulty dealing with the newcomers. We saw it in France in the Parisian suburbs in 2005 and now we’re seeing it for a second time in Denmark.

Europe does a lot of stuff better than North America…bread, chocolate, cars, public transit, cell phones… It needs to start figuring out newcomers though.

Here’s a Danish rap video shot in Copenhagen.

APC surge protector warranties

When my computer’s battery crapped out in Denmark, it was really easy to get a replacement. “They have me in their computer,” I figured. But, when four of the eight outlets on my APC surge protector decided to stop working, I figured I’d have to buy a new one but I tried my luck and contacted them anyway.

A few e-mail exchanges later and I was trading in serial numbers for a new surge protector! I didn’t even have to give my credit card number. There was a stipulation that said there’d be a return mailer so that I could ship the busted one back to APC but when Purolator came to my house, they didn’t have one. So now, I basically have one and a half surge protectors. APC, if you read this, you can have the broken one back if you want it.

All in all though, a happy and easy experience. Exceptional, in fact.

Wish I could say the same about cell phone service in Canada. 5 months in Denmark and I spent about $60 on pay-as-you-go service (including the cost of a SIM card). Not even a month into my return to Canada and I’ve already spent about that. Also, locked phones in Belgium are actually illegal. Amazing, right?

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