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» Saturday News Nuggets

Saturday ain’t stopping me from sharing some news nuggets with y’all!

• One of the most debated things this week has been the iPhone application, I Am Rich which was priced at $999 and just showed a mantra if you bought it. Now, I say was because Apply removed it from the Apple store for unknown reasons, something many think is not fair. Sure, it is pointless, but if you want to buy it, you shouldn’t be stopped. Anyway there are a full eight people who apparently bought this app before it came to an end. Where do people get their money from?
   
• An article in the New York Times this week caught my eye. In it they wrote that "Tibet" can’t be in any hotmail address and suspicions arised that it was political. Now Microsoft has spoken and said that it isn’t Tibet that is blocked but that they are blocking usernames with names of banks and other similar to prevent fraud. The word that’s being blocked is actually "Tib" since there’s a bank with that name. A bit too much? Perhaps so…
   
• I want to send out the congratulations to my buddy Will King who will be getting to shoot college football games all the coming year from the sidelines, official! Congrats Will!
   
• To finish off this Saturday I’m going to send you looking at an incredible article a member of the Photography Corner forum wrote. It’s about how to shoot animals in the best way! It’s really really good!

That’s it for today, stay tuned for some tutorials tomorrow!

» Late Tipster Tuesday

There are a lot of sites on the web close to being too many to find. Here I share four that’s just generally cool.

• NAPP (National Association of Photoshop Professionals) is the first place I start up (apart from my own sites) and check in on the member forums to see what is going on. I just love the place and could rave about it for long. It’s great folks from start to finish. 
   
• Photography Corner is one of the more amazing photography forums I’m visiting and it’s just great all over. From contests to the comments and the members. I’ve learnt so much there over the years that I can’t recommend it enough.
   
• Another great site is CSS-Tricks where you can get a lot of great CSS tricks and learn how to do everything really in a good way using CSS.
   
• The final tip here would be to go and check out the Lexar Digital Photography site section where you can find tips and tutorials from leading photographers in the world.

That’s it from me today and I’m signing off now and going to bed to enjoy another nice day tomorrow! The shot above is also from today’s mini-hike!

 

» It’s Thursday

 I couldn’t think of a good topic for todays post so, it is Thursday will have to do. Couple of tidbits for you today as always.

• Pro wedding photographer, David Ziser has a cool post series on his Digital ProTalk blog today that all deals with some business tips (every thursday is "Business Day Thursday" on his blog). 
   
• If you are a flash designer you’ll find this blog post from Smashing Magazine very interesting. It’s a showcase of some very creative flash preloaders that should get your creative juices flowing!
   
• Photographers also get another thing on the board today. If you haven’t already you should get to checking out the amazing and helpful community over at Photography Corner. It’s basically a photography forum where it all centers about the community spirit. With helpful members who are actively commenting on the photos in the feedback sections and helping out in the gear and help sections you just have to love the place. They also have two monthly contest, Contest Corner Challenges - where you are supposed to shoot a photo to match a specific theme; and also the Photograph of the Month - a contest where photos get nominated by members and then voted by members to which is the best photograph, every month!
  Really do check out Photography Corner!
   
• I’m working on a review of my new Eizo FlexScan S2201W and I think it should be coming in the end of the week!

» Sunday Quick Stuff

 Alright, so after the jam packed updates this weekend we are soon onto a new week with a lot of things happening (at least for me) before a full week vaccation that I have from school in the week after. Onto the news:

• As you can probably see, the site has been updated with some new buttons here and there, a new header look (quite similar to the old, yet a litle updated) as well as a new footer, which I think works great.
   
•  If you remember, I wrote about the Photography Corner, Photograph of the Year contest a while back. The contest is now finished and voting is over. The winning entries have also been announced and I’m astounded on the good quality of the winning entires, and I would like to congratulate them all (especially my buddy Younes Bounhar for winning it all!).
   
• Speaking of contests, the Photoshop User Awards are over as well and you can find the winners right here. Some of the winners are just amazing!
   
• If you are into the blog reading, Joe McNally has launched a brand new blog that you can check out right here.
   
• I’ve had some more time to watch the classes over at Kelby Training and some of them just blows me away and makes the whole month membership I’m signed up for worth it, in just one class. I can really recommend the Photoshop Extended in Motion class by Corey Barker as one of the best I’ve taken in a long time. You can read my review on the service right here.

That’s about it for my Sunday Quick Stuff. I’ll be posting here again tomorrow for some more cool stuff that always happens on mondays!

» Monday Newsflash

Some cool things do happen on Mondays as well despite you think everyone is still left in their weekend mood. For me it is back to school tomorrow with a lot of school work, client work and project work to do on the same time however I have made it a new-years resolution to plan better this year, hope I continue with it as well otherwise it is only going to come down on myself. Anyway, over to the news

Sony announces A200 dSLR!

Today, Sony has announced their latest dSLR, the successor of the A100 is the brand new A200, featuring a 10.2 megapixel sensor, 2.7″ LCD screen and most notably an increased SteadyShot™ function that offers 2.5-3.5 steps anti-shake performance with all ? lenses. Sounds pretty cool really, price appears to be somewhere around $700-$900 kit-wise and they have continued support for all Sony and Minolta lenses Read more about it here.

ACE Boot Camp training course from Matt Kloskowski

Over at Kelby Training, Matt Kloskowski has just released a new cool training class that prepares you for the Adobe ACE  (Adobe Certified Expert) Exam. Matt has teached this is a pre-con class along with Dave Cross from time to time at Photoshop World and it is now available at Kelby Training in their subscription based online training service. Check it out!

 Lightroom tutorials in works!

I’m currently working hard on expanding the Lightroom tutorials booth with written text tutorials and recorded video tutorials. In this process I’d love to hear from you all what you want to see tutorials on as well so you get what you want So please leave a comment with what you want to see, also note I’m taking ideas on all the suite products so it doesn’t have to be Lightroom.

Photograph of the Year contest at Photography Corner

Photography Corner is still holding their Photograph of the Year contest and it is open to entrants until the 15th January! It’s just too cool to pass with over $20,000 in total prices and about $5,000 for the first price winner, prices ranking all the way down until the 10th place and that still is some pretty darn cool prizes! So go over to Photography Corner and check it out!

» Recapping 2007 - What’s happened

Very soon 2007 is past history and we are into the new year of 2008 before I’ve even begun to write this post I’ve already picked half of the categories that I post into because a lot has indeed happened. If you want to read some more what’s happened in ‘07, check out the posts by Scott Kelby and Matt Kloskowski, Scott covers Adobe, Photography and NAPP and Matt covers what’s been happening to Lightroom in 2007. Because there have been two lengthy and I must say great posts from them about that, I’ll not venture into that as much in my post but I will cover on how 2007 has been to me.

For me, 2007 has been a very good year with a lot of things kicking up to speed, especially in the second half. I’ve had the tough periods this year that I very much hope that next year won’t have with a lot of personal things happening although I finally do feel that they are easing off and I’m a more happy person now.

Beginning of 2007…I hardly remember much of it really except that I’d just gotten my Nikon D50 and was shooting a lot and I mean a lot of experimental photos and slowly but securely started to gear into landscape photography. Also my web design business, XLD Studios, started to advance a lot as I got quite a few clients, one that continues to approach me with new and great projects. I think the whole beginning of 2007 was very photo centric especially in march when I got to do work experience in a camera store, the store where I now even get called in when they need someone extra.

I can’t say a lot important for this post happened until after the summer, I mean, life rolled on and school rolled on and it was soon holidays. Now after the holidays things started to happen that is now reflecting me to who I am, I really felt my design business kicking of and especially my photography, mostly during the summer. I got several very nice shoots (if I may say so) that I’m happy with and what’s made my year is the fact that I’ve won four photographic awards, Image of the Week at NAPP, Editors Choice at NAPP, Daily Deviation at deviantART and Photograph of the Month for December at Photography Corner. I want to send a thank you to the NAPP staff for selecting those awards, to the folks at deviantART for their awesome support and especially thanks to Kev Lewis who featured my photograph with a daily deviation, also a big thanks of course goes to the Photography Corner community whom I’d been away from most of the year because I was very busy but now returned to and they are as awesome as ever, thank you for your ongoing support.

Now, there are some people I really must thank extra that I really can’t thank enough for their ongoing support;
First off, Tove, Ellen and Johanna, my three best friends in the world! You are just awesome, I can’t put more words on your awesomeness, because there are none in this world!!!

Secondly and this is where all the other folks come I need to thank extra, because I really do only have two steps, I want to thank Tim L. Walker for his support, trust and everlasting projects, it has been a fun year ; Susanna Cotter for her everlasting support and for being there all the time (and also for her apparently everlasting featured as well ;)) ; Juha M. Kinnunen for his so inspirational work ; my family, for their support and trust in what I do and for allowing me to continue doing it, finally also I want to extend a more general thank you to every viewer of this site whether you read the blog, watch my tutorials or watch my photography, an extra special thanks to those of you that find time to comment on the posts.

Finally I want to end with the current state of my sites and what I plan for them; Starting with XLD Studios, it is progressing very well and I have some great plans for the site that I will not reveal as of now because they are only in the planning stages, you will find out later on though This site, I’ll continue updating it with new stuff, blog posts, tutorials and some other resources that I will launch now in the new year as well, I hope this will be the year of this site, I will also continue to update the CST&T podcast but I do need to find another host site for it since it is currently draining all my bandwidth and thus I can’t update it right now. As some of you might be aware, I recently launched Bernskiold Photography, a new kinda site that is based on Smug Mug, where I won a years pro membership, now it has been awesome these weeks I’ve had it up and I will keep on using it for long so it is there you’ll find my full photo home from now on I’m also going to be continuing to be active on booth deviantART and Photography Corner as well, because I think booth communities are great (oh and Smug Mug as well).

So to all of you reading this and to your friends and families I wish you a very Happy and Prosperous new Year and that you will find nothing but joy this year and if you have any problems as of now, I hope they will solve as we enter another exciting year that will for me at least, be filled with a lot of new (and therfore scary) things but also a lot of wonderful and cool things as well!

HAPPY NEW YEAR

» It’s “Finally Friday”

Today is “Finally Friday” and I really mean it, I’m so happy it is Friday again and weekend because I’ve been so very busy during the week I’ve hardly gotten time to be on the computer. Anyway this was always going to be the most busy because it is the end of the term and yeah it is always most busy then. So here are the weeks hottest stuff

I won the contest I was nominated in…

I gotto start with some more self centered stuff eh, that’s all because I’m just totally psyched about it! If you remember I posted a little while ago that I had been nominated for Photograph of the Month over at the Photography Corner website and I’m stunned that I won the voting and my “Summer Memories” photograph became the photograph of the month of December over there, meaning it has now won two awards!! The prize was a one year pro account to SmugMug where I will be setting up a site where you’ll be able to buy my photos from! Cool eh

Wacom Cintiq 12WX

Wacom has announced a brand new tablet in their Cintiq lineup, it is a smaller 12″ tablet (active screen size) that works just like a regular drawing tablet, only it has a screen built right in. It looks super cool and the resolution is 1280×800. You can read more about it here!

Adobe News!

• Adobe has released Camera Raw 4.3.1 that addresses some bugs in the 4.3 release. You can download it for free here!

• Adobe has also redesigned their entire company website over at Adobe.com to match the new creative suite! To me I think the design is well organized and it looks very stylish, so go and explore and enjoy the interactivity as well! By just taking a quick look at the source it appears that they have used a couple of their own suite programs (apart from the design side) such as Dreamweaver (I see presence of DW Templates) which is pretty cool in and of itself!

» Late Friday Stuff

So I’ve been terribly busy since Tuesday…Three tests and some larger homeworks but finally it is weekend and time for relaxing has come! So here are some quickies in late Friday stuff!

• If you need some icons for your designs and stuff, Nick La at N-Design Studio has reminded us once again of his awesome free Christmas Icon set that you can download from the link just below this text chunk. They come in full .eps (and .jpg) so they are full vectors, meaning scalability!! Check them out right here!

• More Christmas stuff. Here is a cool link to a collection of brushes and card templates for your holiday stuff made for Photoshop! Enjoy the link.

• If you like to share photography with others in a forum, commenting environment. Take a look at Photography Corner, an amazing site with a lot of cool contests going on (with a big one coming up, more on that one later on) every month!

Those were some quick tips on the late Friday stuff! Have a nice weekend where you’ll be seeing some posts on here!

» The Friday News

Alright so here we have the current Friday news with some cool goodies and some things to check out during the weekend as well! Also, tomorrow I’ll be posting a new little list of blogs I visit often so check that out tomorrow

Scott Kelby and Terry White’s giftguides are released!

Past week we saw the release of Terry White’s holiday gift guide only to this week see the release of the guru, Scott Kelby’s annual holiday gift guide which is the feature of the Layers Magazine and luckily of course, there is an online version, so go and check out Scott Kelby’s Holiday Gonzo Gadget Gift Guide over at the Layers Magazine site! My own gift guide will be coming in the next week when I have had a little more time putting all together!

Upcoming contest tip!

Without saying too much I’m just gonna give you a heads up of a big contest arriving very soon on the awesome site Photography Corner! So make sure you register at their forums and get ready for the big contest! (I promise you that it is worth the while and that it will be as large as I’m saying it is ;))

Discount coupon for y’all!

I have a little discount coupon that will give you a great 20% off a web design from XLD Studios! When ordering the design or requesting a quote, make sure to input in the message field also the coupon code, which is: “EB30pc” and 20% will be drawn off from the quote/order total!

» Saturday News Update

This was really supposed to be a Friday news update but I had some things to do and this got delayed a bit but here you have some news update and some cool stuff!

First off, today I’m sending you to check the cool photographer Daniel Groszek! He’s a great photographer shooting a little this and that but don’t let that fool you, because he’s great at all of those “this and that’s”! Check out his site here!

Sweet contest at Peachpit Press!

Are you feeling up to win $1,000 worth of photo gear, if you aren’t then just skip down to the next update but if you are read on Peachpit Press has launched a contest called “The $1,000 Question” and  now it’s really cool, because it is also really simple! They’ve asked a couple of well known photographers some questions about what gear they’d recommend in photography. Now just go to their page, read what the experts have to say and watch their clips and after that, you can enter the contest by voting on the package you would want, and the winner will get $1,000 to spend on that package! Pretty cool huh! Check it out right here!

 Leaving you with some stuff to do this weekend!

Alright so this is getting quite short and sweet in terms of news, but since it is weekend I’m gonna leave you with a couple of sites and stuff to check out (you can do it in the week as well if you want ;))! These are sites I regularly visit or have in my RSS reader because they are just so very useful and cool!

.: Photography Corner - If you are into photography, you cannot afford to miss out this very cool and sweet site! They have the most amazing forum, where you can get comments and critique on your photos and if that wasn’t enough! They have these cool monthly contests (yes plural!). The Contest Corner Challenge and the Photograph of the Month booth with awesome prices. Check out Photography Corner!

.: Photoshop Insider - This blog by none other than Scott Kelby is the first place I go to every day to check out the latest happenings and news! It’s an awesome blog with a little bit of everything by Scott! Check it out!

Now I guess this will take up much of your time, so I’m gonna continue with more sites some other time Have a great weekend everyone!