So someone on the Internet today discovered that you can buy an iPhone to Canon/Nikon mount adaptor. If the trend of digital filters wasn't devaluing photography enough, this is a real kick in the teeth.

I have a hard time seeing a logical argument for this. In nearly all cases if you own a lens you probably own a camera, so you can't use that excuse. You can't argue that this is any more convenient since it's the same size as a DSLR in two dimensions. Strapping a high quality lens to a low quality camera is only going to result in low quality pictures.

The device itself would make taking pictures extremely frustrating at best. It appears that you need to hold the lens in one hand and the camera in the other, leaving you with no good way to adjust the focus on the lens or change any settings on the phone.

There is also some odd irony where we are forgetting the amazing advances we have made in photography. While soft focus and poor colour rendition is very popular right now, what people don't realize is that they have been the bane of photographers for years. Years ago people would have killed for the features standard on most DSLRs.

I can't wait for the day when someone is shooting with their DSLR and says "Hey, wait a minute! I should be shooting with my iPhone!" as they detach the lens from their camera and whip out their phone.

If you want a lens to play with on your phone, just duct tape a lensbaby to your phone. They're effective and a lot cheaper than a L series lens.

Every now and then my thoughts wander on to the topic of monetizing my hobbies. The though that runs through my mind is typically "Why can't I be paid to pursue my hobbies and what I enjoy?".

Naturally monetizing hobbies is a long and difficult process, but I found a good framework a couple of years ago to work under. So here is a discussion of my hobbies and the potential of monetizing them based on this framework of "Happiness in Business".

Let's get started.

Photography

What I want to do

I really enjoy photography for a wide number of reasons. The two areas I enjoy the most are typically landscapes and night photography.

What I do well

While some pictures I take are excellent, I have other days in which I produce nothing special. My pictures also don't necessarily have the same 'look and feel' about them. In short, I tend to lack consistency in my pictures.

What I can be paid to do

The issue with photography is there is lots of competition in the field. The barriers to entry are low since professional grade equipment has been steadily dropping in price and landing in the hands of consumers. Despite this a strong market does exist for photography and people are still willing to pay for it.

Overall status: Learn to do this better

Given a higher quality product and some degree of advertising it could be possible to monetize this hobby to some extent.

Electronics

What I want to do

I enjoy creating devices such as my Weather Clock since it combines the challenge and problem solving associated with coding and development with the tactile work of creating a tangible object.

What I do well

I have received many compliments on the build quality of my Weather Clock. While making a similar model that could be used by someone without technical experience may be a challenge, it is certainly within the realm of possibility.

What I can be paid to do

While I can produce a quality product that people may be inclined to buy, the most difficult challenge lying ahead would be determining a price point which would stimulate business. Some projects take a fair amount of my time and have a large labour cost which may discourage customers. Finding a suitable market for my work may also be problematic.

Overall status: Learn to monetize

I should be able to monetize this assuming I find a suitable market for my work and determine how best to price my work to appeal to customers.

I was thinking recently on how mundane photography can become if you aren't careful. If I am left to my own devices, most of the pictures I take are rather similar. They follow similar patterns, use similar techniques and give similar results. All this similarity is really quite draining.

One way I can think of to improve my photography is through the use of constraints. Examples of constraints I can think of are:

• Using only a particular focal length of lens
• Limiting yourself to a certain aspect ratio of camera
• Keeping specific camera settings (ISO, aperture, shutter speed) consistent
• Only shooting from the hip or other position

Using these constraints would force me to examine taking pictures in new and different ways as a response to the arbitrary constraints, hopefully resulting in varied pictures.

Once the weather improves a bit, I hope to get outside taking pictures again and I will try to make use of some constraints to help challenge me.

I cannot mention 'Famine Pornography' without mentioning Kevin Carter. Kevin Carter was a South African photo journalist who took a Pulitzer Prize winning picture of a girl dying of starvation in Sudan. While the picture had received world-wide attention he was fraught by doubts as to why he took pictures of the girl instead of helping her. Not long afterwards he committed suicide.

His story is one of turmoil, trying to help get news of disaster out to the world so others would help, while feeling that he did little himself. h2g2 on the BBC website has an excellent entry on Kevin Carter and I recommend you read it. When I first read it, I was nearly in tears by the end.

I have reposted the entry below to preserve it.

It seems to me like there are lots of 'Hey look, wedding pictures' posts online but this is probably the last.  The photographer has recently put the vast majority of the pictures he took online.

All the pictures can be found online at pictage.  Since you are my friends and family I need to warn you that the site requires you to sign up to view the pictures is infamous for sending a fair amount of spam.  The pictures can be found here, and if you aren't fond of spam you can log in using the email address spam@seancarney.ca and the password lantern.

Our photographer put the preview of our wedding album online, you can visit it here.  More pictures will be going online soon and I will update this post when they do.

Last week I was hit with a small wave of inspiration. I was contemplating the issues surrounding how photography only captured a moment in time and was a lousy way to show the progression of time. Most people use long exposures to try to capture the passage of time but this isn't the same as the progression of time. At this point the aforementioned wave suddenly hit me. What if you took a series of several pictures over several hours and then blended them together horizontally to show the progression of time?

Today I was finally able to test my idea.

Looks spiffy doesn't it?

I looked up the concept on the internet and was disappointed to find that I wasn't the first person to have this idea, but it is fairly obscure. Martin Krzywinski has been working on what he calls high dynamic time range photography for a couple years based on pictures he takes from Vancouver webcams. His technique is geekier than mine but it seems overly complex. He accomplishes the HDTR effect by combining a small amount of many pictures together, whereas I lean more towards combining a larger amount of fewer pictures. The difference is subtle, but I like my technique since it allows me to go home and eat dinner (mmm... steak...) between pictures and not get eaten by bugs.

As the more attentive of readers may know, Emily won the contest regarding how many pictures I would take this summer, with a guess of 18,081. She was closest to the real number of 16,904 so a prize was due.

I had a bit of a problem coming up with ideas until late, but things fell together quickly. I choose not to award her with 16,904 of something, because I really do not want to count up that high. Instead two other good prizes were selected. Emily was is town for thanksgiving, so I presented the prizes to her yesterday.

The main prize is the golden camera award for guessing arbitrary numbers with a reasonable degree of accuracy. This coveted prize is a real, working golden camera pre-loaded with colour film I could found lying around my room.

The second, specific prize is a molecular modeling kit. Emily had expressed some slight frustration over a lack of academic pursuits on the Outtatown program, so I thought that this would help prevent any grey matter from going into atrophy.

For everyone who guessed and lost, this contest will probably be repeated next summer. You will have another chance to win the golden camera award.

Now that I am home from camp I have done a final tally of how many pictures I took this summer. The number I arrived at should be reasonably close, as it is a bit of a challenge to count pictures in a camp context.

Between May 1st and September 1st I have taken: 16,904 pictures.

Emily will be recieving her prize as soon as I determine what it shall be.