Photo plugin'

Sorry about the pun, but it is nearly Christmas.

One of the MANY things I am quite partial to is Photography and I have been following a French chap called Serge Ramelli for a while now. I have learned a fair bit from him and he has asked that I spread the word. So...

Check out Serge Ramelli's Youtube channel! He has over 400 tutorials on photography, he is the number channel on Lightroom worldwide. If you want great tricks and tips photography check him, out! https://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=cmoeu

Guns, the EU and the US presidential campaign

The title does sound rather salacious doesn't it, and while I am sure some idiot will combine all of the points and turn this into some form of manifesto, but there is nothing to the list, other than a short version of "things that are really getting on my tits at the moment." To be fair it by no means exhaustive either, I don't think any of us have that kind of time, but, let's meander for a bit.

Been a while, time for an update, oh, and a change

It seems like a couple of years since I posted anything. Oh, it has been a couple of years. Oops.

So there has been a lot of change in the last couple of years: the passing of a couple of good friends and family, one hell of a work project and more recently redundancy. I finish my current job in a few weeks time and I'm moving to Swaziland later in the year. For those of you currently reaching for google maps, Swaziland is a small country bordering Mozambique and South Africa.

3D Printing - Step One - The Printer

This post have been moved to my main physical creative stuff website.

Please click here to see the article and the rest of the series.

Spring has sprung... but...

Health and Safety is a funny thing in the UK. We don't define an upper limit for the office temperature. Instead we crowd source and use Thermal Comfort as an indicator. This basically means that as long as under 20% of the population are moaning, nobody gives a crap. However, paraphrasing from the HSE website:

• People working in uncomfortably hot and cold environments are more likely to behave unsafely;
• The workers' ability to concentrate on a given task may start to drop off and increases the risk of errors occurring;
• The problems [with adapting to the thermal environment] arise when this choice (to remove jacket, or move away from heat source) is removed, and people are no longer able to adapt.

3D Multiplicity

It seems I have taken a bit of a break from photography, but getting back into it now. This is from a shoot back last summer with the awesome @SammiJo86.

Multiplicity shots - been done, 3D - getting old... 3D multiplicity... now there is some work :)

Loads more work to do, and some stuff to turn it into a lenticular piece... see you next new year.

Too hot to photo today...

Instead I thought I'd put together a video of my 3D rig in action and some of the outputs. There is even an app that controls all the rig function but also calculates all of the 3D geometry for you as well, warning you to possible issues like motion blur and speed limits on the buggy.

Overall, I'm particularly proud of my contraption, now I just need a way to make some money from it, 3D family portrait anyone? :)

Anyhow, enough jibber jabber, here is the video. You will need red/blue 3d glasses to see the anaglyphs later in the video.

How much wood...

I have been waiting for someone to ask me this for a while.

"How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?"

Well obviously the answer is "A woodchuck would chuck all the wood he could chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood."

Or in fact, since the woodchuck is the same animal as the groundhog, could we not instead ask: how much ground would a groundhog hog if a groundhog would hog ground.

Puppies

Haven't done a blog post in a while, but we have puppies!!!!!!

They are 3 weeks old and will be going up for sale in a couple of weeks... man we're gonna be sad to see them go already.

Just like her mom, this little girls loves sleeping on her back.

Here are a couple of other shots for you...

Mommy has to have her photo op as well!!!

Daddy doesn't like the camera so much. but here he is trying to eat our daughter.

And I've saved the cutest to last.

Accepting credit cards as easily as using them?

About 2 years ago I was rather taken by a company called Square who allowed you to take credit card payments using your mobile phone. It used a little dongle you plugged into the headphone jack on your phone and an app available for free on various app stores for various devices. The major downside - not available outside the U.S of A.

Last month a new company from Europe launched in the UK. Enter iZettle. They basically offer the same service and rates as Square do and they have a much better card reader for iPhone :)

So, what's the big idea?

Well, if you want to get one of them card reader do-hickies from the bank they are very expensive. You generally have to pay for the device over a certain period of time and this is a service fee. You also pay a percentage of your transaction, and you have to submit to various banking audits and regulations... Mostly this means that taking credit cards are outside the realms of most of the general public.

A huge proportion of the community have a smart phone. So a service that would take care of all the regulatory stuff, and not pass on the cost is quite a good idea. It means for people that just want to take an occasional credit card or deal with the pizza man when he arrives by sorting out the split but no one has cash, then this is a neat idea.

And the costs?

So a 3G card reader from the bank will cost you about £350 - £500 per year just to rent the device. You will then pay between 3% and 5% per transaction depending on the card and the deal you got. If you don't make enough sales in a period you may also have to pay an "inactivity fee" which can vary from £10 - £30 per month. You also have to go through an audit process every year and sign paperwork a fair bit.

iZettle and Square just charge you a flat fee of 2.75% per transaction. Square are also a little more mature in the industry and offer a monthly fixed fee if you're making a lot of sales.

And the downside?

Well, the cynic in me might suggest that because Visa are backing Square the process for accepting Visa by iZettle is overly complex and relies on the customer having a smart phone with a data connection.

iZettle also take a while to credit your bank account - 7 banking days for most simple purchases.

iZettle is not Chip and Pin either, this may put off some of the security aware people. That said, the technology is secure and the fraud rate for Chip and Signature is a lot lower than Chip n Pin.

So what's the catch?

Well, apart from the down side, none really. iZettle make money from the fee they charge and keeping your money in their bank account a few extra days.

This isn't a mature business solution yet, but it is good enough for a photographer or model to collect a days fees.