Because I blog about my travels, I carry a lot of equipment with me when I am on the road. Most of this equipment stays in my backpack, where I can keep a close eye on it, and with a laptop, camera, lenses, cell phone, iPod, AirCard, cords, etc., the pack can get pretty heavy.

I have often thought about traveling without my laptop and blogging on computers in Internet Cafes, but the problem has always been what to do about my photos. I shoot high quality, large format photos because they are sometimes used in printed publications, so I need a photo processing software to reduce the size of the photos for use on the blog. Since I prefer taking shots with saturated colors and high contrast, when I shrink them down to blog size, my photos often ‘block up’ – the blacks become too dense and the colors too intense – so I also need to do some post processing to tinker with the levels in the photos before I use them on the blog. When I carry my laptop, that’s not a problem, as I simply use Photoshop.

Without a laptop, I’d have to find a way to do post processing on the Internet, but I’d never found any online software that offers the tools I need. Until yesterday, that is. Yesterday I discovered Picnik.com, an online photo editing program that works in your browser. I tried it and Read the rest of this entry »

Since this may be the very last time I ever come to the Outer Banks, I have taken a little time off from my business obligations to visit some of the more well-known tourist sites over the past two weeks. My original intention was to provide a photo tour of the Outer Banks on this post, and I started searching through all my old shots from the years I lived here, hoping to add to the recent photos I have taken. I came coming across this photo of the Bodie (pronounced ‘body’) Island Lighthouse that I shot on a gray and foggy winter afternoon some years ago. Although it is a pleasant enough study in mostly black and white tones, I started fiddling with the various filters in Photoshop to see if I could make it more interesting. The effects Read the rest of this entry »