Mats Lindh » Photography

The Power of Creative Commons

Mats — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 23:03:00 +0000

Creative Commons provides a set of tools that allow author, publishers, etc. to explicitly license their content for a broader set of fair use than regular Copyright law allows. This increases the usefulnes of the creation and allows other to build further on your own creation. Sounds scary for some people, sounds like a dream for other.

Ever since I started uploading my photos to flickr (I’m doing quite a bit of photography in my spare time), I’ve tried to make most of them available under the most free Creative Commons license. The few exceptions are photos featuring people, where I usually don’t have explicit permission from the persons to license the photo freely. I’ve also made the same exception for cars with visible license plates, as that will identify the person owning the car. Otherwise, I’ve tried to publish my photos under a Creative Commons Attribution Only license.

While I probably had the same reservations as most people had when I first looked into relicensing my photos, my experiences so far has only been positive. I’m still amazed to find new ways people are using my images every now and then, and possibly the most surprising usage of any of my images were found today:

In the norwegian local historic wiki, one of my images of two goats at Nordens Ark in Sweden is used as an example of how a Geitbåt (A goat boat) resembles the stretched neck of a goat. Amazing. If you ever go to read about the danish city of Elsinore (Helsingør) on Wikipedia (or Kronborg Castle), the image of the main land mark of the city was taken by yours truly. My images has been on cnbc.com, featured in online travel guides, in articles about how to save money on used games, in self improvement guides, in a farmer’s guide in connecticut about cows, in an english textbook and surely loads of other places. The alternative would have been that all the photos had been sitting on flickr, alone by themselves and possibly seen by .. 2 people. If that many. And one of them would have been me.

My tip: License all your stuff as freely as possible and watch the world use it in ways you never had imagined.

I like this world. And I’ll try to license my photos under the newest CC license as long as I’m finding the fun in taking pictures. Awesome.

Update: A friend of mine, Vegard, discovered that his photo of one of NSB’s BM93s is featured on the front page of Wikipedia today (21st of January, 2009). Wonder how many people have seen that image now…

The Side Effect of Using Return Type To Handle Errors

Mats — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 10:09:23 +0000

I came across a curious little side effect of the issue I just posted earlier:

public function action()
{
$id = filter_input(INPUT_POST, 'id', FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);
if(is_bool($id))
{
die('invalid id');
}
if(isset($_POST['accept']))
{
$this->acceptId($id);
}
else if(isset($_POST['reject']))
{
$this->rejectId($id);
}
}

This is obviously going to do something when a POST has occured, but the method was invoked each and every time. The reason why it works? If there is no variable named ‘id’ POSTed, filter_input returns null. And null is not boolean, so the test passes. But as it’s not a POST request, neither of the two other if-tests are true, so the code silently passes through (id can contain characters here, so the filter isn’t used to just get integers).

If you’re not going to throw an error when the parameter is missing, the test is actually completely useless. This bug had hidden itself within the usage of the type to test for fault instead of actually checking the value, and did not creep out before I rewrote the if-test.

Auto Slalom Training with PCN and The Subaru Impreza Club

Mats — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 22:27:39 +0000

Marius and I went auto slaloming last sunday as we’ve been doing several weekends this year, and as usual I shot a collection of photos for my flickr page. And as what has now become a tradition, I’ll post to the blog with my selection of the best shots and the videos we shot. You can see the complete photoshoot over at flickr.

The next image was shot with the camera attached to the back of the car, running at auto shoot with a fresh memory card inside. The camera was locked to the “GO GO GO!” mode with an external switch, and I triggered the first image as I got into the car. The effect was quite good, looking forward to doing a few more shots this way with more interesting exposure times.

The final shot shows the camera setup for the outboard video, which can be seen in the first video clip below. The position is quite shaky as the camera is attached to the very front of the car, but it’s a dramatic angle. I’ll see if we can do something about those vibrations for later.

The best run of the day:

A few mishaps which we caught on tape:

This is probably the last run of the season, so I guess I’ll be back with more auto slalom and racing related posts as soon as the ice and snow disappears in april. Looking forward to it already!

Vincent Laforet Shows The First Shots from the Canon EOS 5D Mark II

Mats — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 20:40:53 +0000

Vincent Laforet has a very, very interesting post up about the Canon EOS 5D Mark II. It features the first shots from the camera, and while they are stunning in their own right (Vincent shoots some of the best photos on the planet, so no surprise there), the most amazing thing is that they’re shot while in video mode. That’s right. They’re straight from the RAW .mov file that the camera produces when recording 1080p video. Simply astounding. I’m getting one. Hands down.

For more information about the EOS 5D Mark II and the video mode, NRKBeta has a long article analyzing the video output from the beast itself. I can’t wait. Too bad the price here in Norway is above USD 4000, so it’s actually cheaper to fly to the US, buy it and fly back to Norway. NRKBeta gives you even more images of the EOS 5D Mark II, an incredible piece of engineering. Time to start drooling!

Trackday at Rudskogen with Autostrada Sport

Mats — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 20:35:22 +0000

I spent four hours at Rudskogen Motor Raceway tonight, at an event hosted by Autostrada Sport. A nice collection of Ferraris, Maseratis, BMWs and Porsches turned up (even a Lamborghini and an Aston Martin). As usual I spent some time photographing, before Marius took me for loads of laps in the black GT2.

The photo set is (yet again, as usual) availabable at Flickr.

Here are some of my favorites:

(as you can see, I’ve become very fond of this style after the last auto slalom. Some of those pictures turned out really great, so I spent some time playing around with it today)

We also had an inboard camera:

Rattmestern 2008

Mats — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 09:27:13 +0000

Marius and I went to Rattmestern 2008 this weekend, a yearly auto slalom competition. The Norwegian Porsche Club were in charge of timing and setting up the track, so there were a large number of Porsches competing. Marius finished in 4th, and the results can be found at Rattmestern 2008 resultater. I spent the day at the side of the track with a 40D and a 350D, trying out the 40D to see if I’m going to get the 50D when it’s released. Depending on wether Canon can get their 5D replacement out in time, I might have to get a 50D to fit in between.

Anyway, I’ve uploaded the complete archive of photos from rattmestern 2008, and as usual I’ve included some of my favourite shots from the day:

For more photos, go to the complete photo archive.

World Class Sports Photography

Mats — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 18:47:16 +0000

If you’ve ever considered shooting a sporting event or have been wondering what it takes to be a world class sports photographer, the amazing Newsweek 2008 Olympics Picture Blog is the place to be. Three photographers from Newsweek has been shooting for two weeks now, and they’ve been sharing all their experiences and best photos with the world. I’ve learnt loads of stuff about how the real guys do their gigs, and I’m still getting surprised by their persistence to get the good shots. As most photographers they never admit that they got the perfect shot, but the blog is filling up with some of the best photos from the olympics.

I had no idea they did such an amount of remote triggered shots, and while I’m not going to start doing photography for a living any time, at least I know a few tricks if I ever find myself at a track and field event. Awesome. Worth a read, and hopefully they’ll keep it up for all time to come for people to learn more about photography and watch a great collection of stunning pictures.

Trackday with Norsk Sportsvogn Klubb at Rudskogen

Mats — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 20:48:06 +0000

Marius and I attended yet another trackday by Norsk Sportsvogn Klubb (NSK) at Rudskogen today, and here are the best shots from the day (I spent most of the day in the passenger seat of the GT2, so not many shots today).

Teodor and Iselin

Udo Starting the Long Corner

GT3 in Queue

Classic Ford Mustang

Bonus: I got one of my n95 pictures in the local newspaper: Trailer tips over at local road. You can even see the GT2 as a black line in the left corner of the image. Didn’t have time to do anything proper, as we were just speeding past on our way to Rudskogen.

Auto Slalom with Gudbrandsdalen Gatebilklubb

Mats — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 20:36:40 +0000

After a very, very, very, very hot day in the sun out at the old airfield at Gardermoen Raceway, we’ve returned back home. I’ve even got the daily batch of images uploaded to flickr, so make sure to check out my GGK – Bilslalom – 2008-07-27 set for all the images. Here are a few of my own favourites:

See the rest of the images from the auto slalom!

Trackday with NSK at Rudskogen (26th of July 2008)

Mats — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 21:32:36 +0000

While I was working today, Marius and Eirik spent some time at Norsk Sportsvogn Klubb’s trackday at Rudskogen. I joined them after finishing up the usual saturday routine, and got the opportunity to snap a few shots before calling it the day. We even managed to get a small spin captured on the cam after a car spun the previous round and left some fluids in a corner. Video included!

A few pictures:

(by Eirik while Marius and I were waiting to get out on the track)

And the vid of the day:

Tomorrow we’re heading out for auto slalom again, so I’ll try to get a few shots online tomorrow night too.