Photographers Matt Kloskowski and Scott Kelby have a new website which will air a weekly show about Nikon gear and Nikon related photography tips. This is a little strange, if only because it seems like one big advertisement for Nikon… and basically, that’s what it is – because the site is in fact sponsored by Nikon. Still, all information is good information, and these guys are giving it away. So what if they make me want to buy that D700 in the process? » MORE

It’s a sad day here at Fotohacker. We’ve come to really love and appreciate the JPG Magazine website (and their beautiful publication) so much that we regularly reminded readers to submit and vote for photographs before their monthly deadline. Seems like the business model just wasn’t happening though, and JPG has made the somber decision to close their doors effective Monday, January 5th, 2009.

Initially I really enjoyed sitting at my computer clicking through photographs and judging them with a harsh YEA! or NAY! vote… and the inspiration of the JPG photo contest themes was like a school project, taunting you to get involved with the community. For many people it was a reason to get out there and take pictures, in the hopes that it would be chosen for print.

Unfortunately, a few issues dogged JPG from the beginning, not least of which was their website which made it difficult to browse photos and built a community of like-minded photographers. Having said all that, it was still hugely fun.

You will be missed, JPG. The official word is posted for prosperity after the jump.

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I’ve been a little preoccupied lately and have had trouble getting anything done on Fotohacker, but I couldn’t miss the opportunity to talk about the second coming of Photosynth, the spacial photography browser being developed by some folks over at Microsoft.

Photosynth is a product being worked on by Microsoft Live Labs, and about two years ago they unveiled a tech demo upon the world which got everyone excited. In a nutshell, the application gathers photos from a source and using an advanced set of algorithms it creates paths between these photos allowing you to browse around geographically local environments, almost like a 3D virtual world. It was really cool, but now they’ve gone and outdone themselves. » MORE

Flickr arguably contains the largest collection of photographs on the internet. It grew up, virtually out of nowhere, and was scooped up by Yahoo several years ago. Since then, it’s growth has been tremendous. While many pro shooters I talk to seem to prefer other, less known services which cater to professional photography needs, Flickr is undoubtedly the joint for the hard core enthusiasts and hobbyist shooters. It’s fun to explore the site and to watch what people are taking pictures of. Now you can watch in a brand new way. » MORE

If you’ve ever wanted to print a wall poster from your photograph, the only option (unless you have a very large format printer) is to take it to a lab to have them print it out.

Now you can do it on a standard 8×10 printer using an online service called Blockposters. » MORE

One of the most revolutionary aspects to digital photography is not the way in which we shoot or edit pictures, it’s the way we share them.

Though you can still print out everything you shoot just like we used to in the days of film, generally speaking those days of making 4×6 prints of every shot you take and gluing them into a photo album are gone. Get with the times. This is the digital era, man. » MORE

View Exif data like camera model, shutter speed, aperture, ISO, and metering mode in your Firefox browser with the FxIF Firefox extension. Once you’ve got it installed, you just need to right click on any image and get the Properties of the image. In addition to your regular width, height, and alt text information, you’ll get the Exif data also. Of course, the Exif needs to be intact, so it won’t work on every image, but it should work on most full sized Flickr, Photobucket, or Pbase pictures for example. Anything that hasn’t been heavily edited should still have Exif.

Click here to download.

You may have noticed the term “Creative Commons” applied to online photographs a lot lately. What is it? And why does it matter?

Protecting your copyright online is a tough thing to do. It’s easy to take a picture off the internet, no matter what you do to try and protect it. Disabling right clicks, setting as a background image, displaying it in Flash, it’s all been tried. Anyone who wants it bad enough however, can get it. Fighting it only makes it worse, so here’s what you do.

If you’re going to share your pictures online, you run the risk of people taking them. End of story. If you size them appropriately however, thiefs will only be able to do so much with those pictures. As a rule of thumb, I like to keep online photos below 800×600. These will print at 4×6 at a stretch – but even at that print size they’ll be pixelated.

Now that you’ve resigned yourself to sharing them, you can advise people as to how exactly you want them shared through a Creative Commons license. Don’t be fooled into thinking that CC is a way of protecting yourself. It’s not. Not really. But it does explain in very clear terms how you permit your work to be used. It’s an extension of regular copyright, and falls into the “open source” method of thinking.

If you license your work under Creative Commons, you tell people that it can be taken and used, but only under certain conditions (sometimes very specific). The best idea is to ensure that it is licensed non-commercially to avoid being taken advantage of by businesses or corporations looking to use your image free of charge. All licenses require attribution (they need to credit you) and you can also specify if you allow modification, or require the image to be shared-alike.

If you don’t want any reproduction of your work whatsoever without your express permission, indicate that it is All Rights Reserved instead of using a Creative Commons license. Creative Commons is for sharing, not blanket protection.

You can find out more about how to license your own work and what the licenses mean at the Creative Commons website.