During the past few months I have been trying to locate all of my old slides and negatives from friends and relatives houses around the country. I have also been looking into purchasing a new Nikon ICE scanner to turn these slides into a digital format. After a lot of research and reading on-line reviews, etc. I decided to use a scanning service called ScanCafe, which is based out of California. I don’t remember how I came across this company, but I think I must have found them while reading a review or in Google. The moment I saw their professional looking website, I bookmarked it and have been reviewing their services and company for over a month now. I must say to this point I am very impressed with my interactions and use of their service. Not only do they have the most affordable prices in the industry, but they are very professional and customer service oriented. Their website is top of the line and shows you exactly what stage of the scanning process they are in for your order. Although, I have just today sent my slides to them, I can tell the next eight weeks will be worry free.

My wife preparing slides to be sent to ScanCafe.

How Scan Cafe works: Basically, you send them your slides and negatives and eight weeks later they send you a dvd with all of your images. Besides having great prices, the best thing I found was you don’t have to keep or pay for all of the images you send them. You only need to purchase a minimum of 50% of the actual amount you send in. This is a great advantage…you don’t have to sort all of your negatives and slides before hand. Just send everything in and select the ones you want later. They make all of your images available on-line for viewing and selecting. I’ve included a chart below to show the entire process.

The standard price for a 3000dpi slide scan is $.24 and $.19 for a negative. I opted for the professional scan which is $.09 more per scan and adds another 1000dpi to the resolution (4000dpi). These are the best prices that I was able to find on-line, by a long way. You may be wondering why they can have such low prices? Well, it’s outsourcing. They send all of your originals to Bangalore, India to be scanned. When I called their office in California, the women said they send everything over by Fedex in a large bundle, so nothing gets lost. They have 24hour security at the facility there with over 400 workstations. It seems like a good operation they have going and I’m not worried at all about losing my slides or having them be so far away. I’ve sent many international packages via Fedex and have never had a problem. You can see some more information about their Bangalore facility here.

Like I said, I’m still at the beginning of this process, but I look forward to seeing the final digital images and I’m excited to have found such a great service. Be sure to check back in a few months to see some of these images in my stock gallery.

A box full of my slides and negatives getting ready to be shipped.

I was able to use the Nikon Creative Lighting System (CLS) for the inside of the house and I am learning more and more about the power of this system. There are many sites out there that have great resources for the CLS including the Strobist and Joe Mcnally’s Blog. I hope to blog more about Nikon’s CLS in the future with some tutorials, etc.

For now, I have included a few pictures here to show what I have been working on. A little bit of Photoshop, yes. Some NIK filters were used for the outside color image and I added the moon for the evening shot. Actually, the moon was there while I was shooting the image, however, I wasn’t able to get a sharp picture of it to use. I was borrowing a tripod and it was really shaky…invest in a sturdy tripod if you plan to shoot at night! I can’t wait to get my tripod back.

Let me know what you think of the images.

A group of 22 photographers met online sharing the same passion, sharing their talent in photography. Their relationship bud into a great friendship, which despite being miles away found time to discover, develop and master their craft through each other.

A global co-operation between the photographers from 5 different countries has brought “Borderless: Places and Indigenous Faces”

Country Organizers:
Philippines: Aly Reyes
USA: Donna Samonte
UAE/ KSA: Jeff Vergara

Organizer: Cez Jarlyn Young

Major Sponsor: Digiprint

Grand Opening: 19th of June 2008
Glorietta 3 (in front of Zara)
6:30 in the evening
Ayala Malls, Glorietta 3
Makati City, Philippines

In cooperation with:
CARD (Center for Autism Related Disorder)

Digital Photographer Philippines

“Summer is finally here, and we under-sunned desk turds want to see what fun looks like. Remind us what it is to be young and capable of joy again with a skillfully captured frame.”

See photo contest details and submit a photo!

Photography & Photojournalism Contest-

Beyond the Stick is an open category competition for Filipino photographers and graphic designers at Amateur, Advanced Amateur and Professional levels.
Participants are asked to submit photos and images that unmask and expose the “socio economic” dangers of cigarette smoking and the tobacco epidemic.

The object of this Contest is to submit an original photograph or photo with graphics, personally composed by the participant for judging before a panel of judges selected by FCAP. Photos will be evaluated on how well it conveys the theme: “Beyond the Stick” FCAP is especially interested in photographs that depict the societal and economic costs of smoking.

The Contest Period begins on February 15, 2008 and ends on March 18, 2008. All entries must be received by FCAP by 5:00 p.m. of the closing date in order to be eligible to judging.

Contest is open to all persons regardless of nationality or age. Those under 18 years of age must include the written consent of their parents or guardians along with their submission. Employees of FCAP may not participate.

It is a photography and photojournalism competition that allows the participants to submit plain photographs or published works that speak for themselves or those combined with other visuals, texts, tag lines and slogans.

Participants may use any Digital or Film-based camera. Images should be printed on an 8 x 10-inch photopaper. Inkjet or photolab prints will be accepted. . Black and white images will be accepted, but duotone images are not eligible. Digital images will not be returned.Those who submit in digital form will not be accepted.

There are no restrictions as to the use of creative effects at the time of exposure, such as multiple exposures, flash fill, lighting, filtration, etc. or Manipulation of main images, digital retouching and full manipulation (density, contrast, cropping on composition, burning, dodging and global adjustments, layering etc.. )

The photograph may or may not have been taken or executed during the competition period. Entries MUST NOT have won any other contests/competitions. The name of the participant should not appear on the face of the entry. The images and the texts must be original creation and MUST not be owned by another individual.

Continue here for the official competition website

Dan Heller is a stock photographer from California and has one of the most successful individual stock websites on the web.

You can purchase his books online from his website. His site also has a lot of useful information I believe taken from his books that is available for free. It’s not too often that you find someone who is willing to share information like this with everyone.

I also just started another book of his that I ordered at the same time as “Profitable Photography in the Digital Age.” This book is called “How to Make Money with Digital Photography.” It looks like there is some overlap of information in the two books, but just the first few chapters. The second book has a lot more pictures and is printed in full color. I’ll be sure to let you know my thoughts after I have read through it all. So far I have found that the first book provides more information that pertains to what I am looking for.

* 1st – Erwin Lim
* 2nd – Mikhail Arrogante
* 3rd – Mikhail Arrogante

See all the winning entries.

Erwin Lim’s Grand Prize Entry

Mikhail Arrogante’s Second Place Entry

Mikhail Arrogante’s Third Place Entry

CONTINGENT CATEGORY
1. Mikhail Arrogante
2. Elmer Philip Lim
3. Mikhail Arrogante
4. Venecio “Cio” Datan
5. Mikhail Arrogante
6. Mikhail Arrogante
7. Mikhail Arrogante
8. Mikhail Arrogante
9. Mikhail Arrogante
10. Mariter Arrogante
11. Mikhail Arrogante

B. FLUVIAL / SOLEMN PROCESSION
1. Wenceslao “Junjie” Mendoza
2. Gifford Perral
3. Jacob Maentz
4. Jannet Datan
5. Joseph Calinawan
6. Wenceslao “Junjie” Mendoza
7. Mikhail Arrogante
8. Christopher Colinares
9. Alex Badayos
10. Erwin Lim
11. Myrel Martin Wong
12. Cyril Camporedondo

C. FLOAT / HIGANTE / PUPPETEERS
1. Melvin Tezon
2. Elizabeth Ybañez
3. Charles Tanting
4. Regel Zamora
5. Lemuel Basilio
6. Christopher Colinares
7. Fabie Villasencio
8. Marvin Maning
9. Lito Tecson
10. Armando Lorico
11. Armando Lorico
12. Edgar Castañeda
13. Teddy Uy

D. SIDELIGHTS / ROUTE / ON SITE DÉCOR
1. Daniel Ybañez
2. Christopher Colinares
3. Mikhail Arrogante
4. Lara Rudolfo
5. Rene Ybañez
6. Wenceslao “Junjie” Mendoza
7. Regel Mendoza
8. Mikhail Arrogante
9. Allan Restauro
10. Jacob Maentz
11. Yenny Sugeng

E. FESTIVAL QUEEN
1. Allan Restauro
2. James Pepito
3. Jaypee Nochefranca
4. Mikhail Arrogante
5. James Pepito
6. Christopher Colinares
7. Elmer Philip Lim
8. Radke Carsten
9. Ted Madamba
10. Arnold Aranjuez
11. Reniel Jose Castañeda
12. Amper Campaña

AWARDING CEREMONIES Thursday, January 31, 2008, SM Entertainment Center.

I had two entries that were selected, Third Place in the Fluvial / Solemn Procession and Tenth Place in Sidelights. Below are my selected entries.

Third Place Entry in the Fluvial / Solemn Procession

Tenth Place Entry in Sidelights

Original image (left) and image after quick edit in Photoshop (right) - It may be hard to see the difference in the two photos if your browser doesn’t read embedded color spaces.

First, I make a duplicate layer of my background to work with.

Next create a new blank layer and go to: Image>Adjustments>Color Balance

This is where you can remove most of the color cast that underwater photos will have. Generally, I will increase my reds and decrease my blues. Just play around with the sliders until you are happy with the result. *Keep in mind - you will also be able to reduce your color cast later using Selective Color.

Next highlight your duplicated background layer. This is where I use a third party filter called Nik Filters. Open Nik Filters from your Filter menu and select Sunshine. Try selecting the four Light-Casting Algo to see which one looks the best for your picture. I generally use A or D(off). Click Ok.

Most of the time the Sunshine effect is too much for the photo and looks unnatural. Most often I will highlight my Sunshine Layer and reduce the Opacity to my liking.

Next create a new blank layer and go to: Image>Adjustments>Selective Color

Here you can take more control of individual colors within your image. I find for underwater images you need to increase your magenta (within the Cyans) and also add some yellow. The best thing to do is to experiment with all the colors and all the sliders. See what works best for you.

The last thing I do to my underwater images is increase the contrast. (You will need to flatten your image before doing this or merge your background and sunshine layers together).

Highlight the flattened layer and go to: Image>Adjustments>Contrast

I will generally increase the contrast of an image with the amount depending on the picture itself.

That’s it. This is one way to quickly improve the quality of an underwater image.