I’ve done a photo shoot and two live shows with Elementary (the band!).  I gotta say, live music photography is fun. The above was my favorite shot from the Velvet Lounge show. I’d like to revamp my blog to cater more to being a photo-blog. Don’t hold your breath though…since all I do all day is build web sites, I’m kind of slow to actually update my own. It will happen at some point, but it could be a couple years.

Since your hero last blogged I had some visitors, traveled to a destination wedding in Bermuda, moved to a different state, and I’m sure some other blog-worthy things…none of which will be discussed today! No, first I have something much more exciting… a short word on color profiles!

Super high level overview: Color profiles basically tell your computer how to output images for a certain device – be it your monitor, you printer, etc. Beyond that, they are also software dependent – most browsers only support the sRGB color profile.

Now you may be wondering why I’m talking about all this. I might even say this is embarassing considering the thousands of hours I’ve probably spent using Photoshop… I realized a couple months ago that I’ve been saving and uploading all of my photos to the web with the Adobe RGB color profile and I’ve been doing it for more than two years (approximately 700 photos). Why did I do this? Well Adobe RGB was set as the default color profile in the Photoshop “Camera Raw” plug-in that I used when processing my photos.

What happens when you view an Adobe RGB image with software that only does sRGB? Basically it sucks the life out of your image. Colors are dulled and people are turned into zombies. On some photos it’s not that noticable…on others it’s definitely noticable.

Here are two screen shots from a browser that only supports sRGB. The left photo is sRGB, the right is Adobe RGB. Can you see a difference? I think it looks like my skin is going to fall off in the right photo (both due to the jowling and the grayish hue).

After a few marathon sessions spanning a couple months, I’ve finally finished replacing all of my flickr photos with sRGB versions! Huzzah! Lesson learned. I imagine in a couple years that this won’t be a big deal – some browsers already support multiple profiles, and hopefully that trend spreads.

The 366 project is complete! I completed every theme that was suggested and can only think of a few days that I had to bend the rules a bit… Two days where I forgot to take a photo so I used a photo from the previous day taken less than an hour before midnight. One other mistake when the only photo I took was with my phone’s camera.

For my final photo of the project I wanted to go out with a bang. My plan was a sunset over the Philadelphia skyline and the Delaware River from the Ben Franklin Bridge. The bridge has a raised pedestrian walking path on either side so I assumed I could walk on the south side of the bridge and get an unobstructed view of the river and skyline… Turns out the south side was closed because they are painting it… and seeing as it’s now winter they have stopped work until it gets warm again. I even asked the police officer on duty if he could let me on the other side, which of course he could not. He also told me I wasn’t allowed to take photos of the bridge itself…

It was freezing (25 degree before the sun went down) and there was a wind advisory with up to 55mph gusts. Twice I actually crouched down because the wind was blowing so hard that my footing was a little unstable. Wind + cold + standing on a bridge = really cold. I did get a couple good shots out of it including my final 366 photo below.

In Killiam News: After taking it easy up until midnight I departed to meet with the man himself as he was in town for a new year’s eve celebration! I’m happy to report he does not wear a beret and he even somehow got me free drinks. I’ve decided he should use a fake french accent to try to pick up the ladies…though last night he didn’t need it because the bartender clearly wanted him!

Lastly, today I got to see the famed Mummers Parade! If you ever find yourself in Philadelphia one New Year’s Day, I suggest you check it out.

Happy new year and all that stuff.