This time around, I have a simpler, easier solution that won’t get your shutter fingers dirty using OpenShot Video Editor.

So what is OpenShot? Video producer Neil Chappell’s has this to say:

“Before OpenShot burst onto the scene, video editing in Linux was really missing an easy to use, full featured editor that could save and convert to nearly any format and had a decent set of transitions. Yes KDEnlive has been around for a good while and is up there with the best of them in the proprietary world, even if it is a little buggy, but it is simply too complex for a lot of people to use.”

Installing The Software

So let’s install the software we need! Open up Ubuntu Software Center, search and install the following programs:

• OpenShot Video Editor
• FFMPEG (If you haven’t already since the first timelapse tutorial)
• Thunar

Note: If you’re using an Ubuntu OLDER than Oneiric, follow these instructions first.

Note2: For those of you who want a quick command-line way of installing, type:
sudo apt-get install thunar ffmpeg openshot

Preparing Our Files

First, copy all of your files into a convenient work directory and keep the originals somewhere safe.

Next, we’re gonna run Thunar. Thunar is a file manager for the XFCE desktop, but it has a really nice Bulk Renamer.

Click Add (the big green plus-sign) and select all of the pictures we’re gonna use.

For the settings, just follow the settings on the example image on the left and click Rename Files.

Notes: FFMPEG (which OpenShot uses) requires that the sequence starts with 0, and also that the filenames contain a text string in the beginning; you can change “img” to whatever you want, but you can’t omit it.

Importing into OpenShot

Run OpenShot and click on File > Import Image Sequence.

A dialog box like the one on the left will pop up. The filename pattern should match your filenames. The %03d says that there are 3 digits in the filename pattern, so img%03d.jpg takes anything with a filename of “imgXXX.jpg”

Now you can change the Frames Per Image setting to your liking. If you want to create a smooth time-lapse like The Mountain, you’d want to set this to something low, like 1. In my case, I just wanted to create a video slide-show from pictures I took using the Continuous mode on my camera.

Click Import Image Sequence when you’re done.

Moving Our Clip Onto The Timeline

When the Import Image Sequence completes, you’ll see a single item in your Project Files tab. Drag this clip onto your timeline.

At this point, you can choose to add music, add other clips before, after, or over your time-lapse clip, or add effects. Otherwise, let’s move on the final step!

 Export Video

Click on File > Export Video to bring up the Export Video dialog box. On top you can change the file name and target folder of your video.

In the Simple tab, you can choose what kind of video format you want to export to. So far, I’ve used the Youtube-HD profile, but it’s pretty easy to tweak the settings in the Advanced tab. I use the Youtube-HD profile as a base and then change the Profile to HD 1080p.

Note: It will prompt you to install libmp3lame if you haven’t installed the Lame MP3 codec library yet, but it’s helpful enough to teach you how. Plus points for that!

So there you have it! I hope this guide is useful to you. For now, I leave you a time-lapse video of people splashing in the mud! Enjoy!:D

Knowing the shutter actuation count of your camera (or a 2nd-hand camera your buying) is important if you want to know the “age” of the camera based on how much it has been used. The higher the number, the more pictures it has taken in its lifetime.

Recently, I was interested to know the shutter actuation count on my Nikon D200. I found that is was relatively easy and straightforward to do in Linux. I use Ubuntu in my setup but it should be quite similar with other Linux distributions as well.

First, open up Terminal and install exiftool by typing/copy-pasting the following command:

sudo apt-get install libimage-exiftool-perl

You can also open up Ubuntu Software Center, search for exiftool, and installing the libimage-exiftool-perl package.

Next, take a picture and copy it to your computer and navigate to it in Terminal, like so:

cd Pictures/20111009

Lastly, use exiftool to bring up the EXIF info of your picture.

exiftool DSCN_4738.NEF

This will show you A LOT of information. Since we’re only interested in the shutter count, use this instead:

exiftool DSCN_4738.NEF | grep “Shutter Count”

And that’s it! I hope you enjoyed this post and may it find you when you need it!

Enjoy!

Back in the days of film, when I was still learning, I didn’t have my own darkroom. So whatever post-processing the lab was capable of, such as color adjustment and push-processing, was applied to the whole shot. No dodging, no burning, no enhancing features and cloning out flaws. When I do my RAW conversion, that’s basically what I do as well–curves for color adjustments, white balance, and exposure adjustments (kinda like push-processing).

Check out the rest of the photos in our Facebook Page!

More on the gun shoot after the jump.

But rather than think of post-processing as a “no fly zone”, I believe it just means there’s an avenue for artistic expression that hasn’t been fully explored yet, at least for me. Photographers like Parc Cruz for example, clearly know when to use it and when not to. This Pepsi Ad, however, does not. And again when a photographer decides that his Photoshop skills are more important than his photography skills, I just roll my eyes. Post-processing isn’t meant to hide your lack of skill, it’s supposed to enhance your creativity. If you’re still having trouble with your exposures and lights, then learning mad skillz in Photoshop should be the least of your worries. Post-processing is meant to be used as a tool to more effectively convey a message, but the message should already be clear in the first place.

So when a friend of mine asked me to do a shoot of him and the guns he was selling, I thought that this was the perfect opportunity to get out of my comfort zone.

Even before I got to the location, I knew that the style of lighting this would be a bit different than how I would normally light. As a photographer, or whatever kind of artist you are, I believe that you have to be quite clear about the result you want to achieve. And when you’re going for this rough, gritty look, standard portrait lighting just won’t cut it. Most of the stuff I shot was lit hard with two lights to get that high-contrast menacing feel to them.

Since I use GIMP and most of the tutorials use Photoshop, it took quite a bit to Google everything. A lot of times, things just don’t translate very well. But in the end, I found a technique that didn’t involve additional plugins and was extremely simple from a chap on Yahoo!Answers. Personally, I had to tone down the C2G’ed layer’s opacity and I only reduced my saturation by -40 in some photos (lots of bad examples of this technique here). Further expanding on the technique, I used mixed (de)saturation levels on some images to emphasize the subject, while in some photos I made use of black and white.

But where I had the most fun, and also took the most time on, was this photo on the left. I still created the desaturated layer and the black and white duplicate as an overlay, but I also added lots of smoke. I just used the built-in Filters>Render>Clouds>Fog, bumped up the turbulence a few, and added a layer mask so that I could control where I wanted smoke to be.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t set a beat-down car on fire at the location so again this had to be done in post. I simply added them into a separate layer and created a layer mask so they blended in nicely in the scene.

Well, what I’ve learned today was that post-processing, when needed, is actually fun, albeit more time-consuming than I would want it to be. I still prefer shooting it right on camera, but here’s something to add to my bag of tricks.

Check out the rest of the photos in our Facebook Page!

It reminded me of a shoot we did a couple of years ago in Sagami Ono, and made me think could this be on the same line of tracks we shot on or if it was in a completely different part of Japan? It looks quite similar, but then again there are miles and miles of tracks in Japan, and a lot of places where houses are just beside those tracks, with similar looking rocks!

Compare for yourself YowaYowa’s picture:

With this photo from the Project Victory shoot:

Makes you wonder…

The goal is noble, and the ideals are lofty. Indeed, that which they are fighting for is quite dear to my heart.

However, whether we are fighting enough or not is a question that I have to ask. The title to this blog post actually has two meanings: 1) We are far from the goal of 10 million signatures and 2) Having signatures just isn’t enough, 10 million or otherwise!

Last April 28, Ms. Lopez called on the President to present the campaign and educate him on the perils of mining, to which the President basically responded that he’d get his Cabinet to “look into it”, and to refine policies on mining.

Refine policies on mining?! Are you kidding me?! These mining companies aren’t wasting any time digging away. Why then are we? We can’t afford to sit patiently and wait. We have to keep the pressure up on the President and whoever is in the way of true environmental progress.

You can be sure I’ll be looking for ways to put more pressure on our politicians, so stay tuned. If you know of any politicians who can help, or who best to approach or send mass emails to, or if you have an idea on what other ways we can do to help, or if you simply are not afraid to get shot for being an activist, kindly post your info and ideas in the comments section below.

In the meantime, you can sign the petition at http://no2mininginpalawan.com/ We have less than 1.4 million signatures as of this writing. Post a link on your wall or tweet and retweet. WE NEED A HELL OF A LOT MORE.

I reposted Gina Lopez’s letter below. You can also view it at http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/insights/01/31/11/appeal-gina-lopez where it was originally published.

For the shot of Alucard in his box, you could prop the box upright, set up a seamless background and shoot it and just eliminate the shadows on the seamless in post. Or you could do what I did and get a big sheet of paper and lay it on the floor, and then place the box flat on it. That way, when you light it with a big diffused light source, there are less shadows to eliminate and the light is spread out more evenly. It helps if you have a tripod that has an invertible head (sorry, cheap tripods won’t cut it here).

Of course, if you have the cash to spare, then the way to make a dropout with small objects is to get a white acrylic and mold it like a seamless and light it all from below, and then set up your key light.

The shots of Dracula and Simon Belmont (above) are also fairly straightforward portraits. Used a large sheet of paper as my seamless and lit with one large shoot through umbrella camera left as my key. Since we’re using a fairly large umbrella for a small object, and we can also get the umbrella in close to our subject, the ratios really help to create really smooth, diffused light.

In the last shot, I opted to shoot with a bare flash to create more drama, contrast and shadows. The flash was positioned directly behind Simon Belmont and pointed towards him and Dracula so it would create lots of shadows. However, this left the unlit side of the figures too dark, and the point of this shoot was to provide details to potential buyers. So I used the built-in flash of my camera as an on-axis fill, dialed down to around -0.7 EV, which shows just the right amount of detail.

Total shoot time, around 15 minutes. Quick and easy.

Fireworks from the 2008 World Pyro Olympics, Manila Bay, Philippines

Normally, new year’s resolutions are declared when the year is new. To be honest, I did create a very short list, but I thought I’d wait till after the Chinese New Year.

You may ask why. And the simple reason is that I wanted to have more time to think and reflect what aspects of my life I wanted to change for 2011. Sure, anybody can say, “hey, I’m not gonna swear anymore in 2011.” But we all know how that goes. If I were to make a list of resolutions, I’d want it to be meaningful, life-changing, and sincere. And that’s also why I only have 4 for this year. ‘Coz if you can’t do 4, what makes you think you can do more, right?

So without further ado, my resolutions:

1. “Pay Myself First” (Manage my money better)

Becoming wealthy is less about your income than it is about financial literacy. Last year, I was able to grow my income to twice as much as when I was in an 8-to-5 job, but because I didn’t discipline myself, all of that was wasted and financially speaking I was in no better position than when I was an employee!

Here is the system I use which I learned from T. Harv Eker when I attended his Millionaire Mind Intensive seminar in Singapore back in 2009. Every time money comes in (salary, sale of a product, money gift, etc.) no matter where it came from, you put it in jars in the following order:

10% to Financial Freedom Account (FFA)

You use this money to make you even more money, so be sure not to touch it even for those emergency expenses (“Geez, I really NEED to buy an Android phone!”…Um, no!). Naturally, this will start small and won’t afford any new rental properties or business. Initially, you put this in an interest-bearing account as you continue growing this account.

10% to Long Term Savings for Spending

When you want to buy that new gadget, or a new car, or a new house, this is where you get it from. At first, you’ll probably get impatient when your LTSS starts out with just P2,000-3,000 but you’ll be surprised that after a few months, you can afford to buy whatever luxury you were wishing for. And the best part? Since it was “budgeted”, it’s a guilt-free purchase!

10% to Education

When I say education, I mean anything that will teach you more about personal development, finances, business, and anything you can use to improve your life, business, and finances (which will eventually help you make even more). Personally, I’ve been able to buy some books by John Maxwell, Napoleon Hill, and Robert Kiyosaki through this fund.

10% to Giving

I cannot stress this enough: When you give more, you receive more. When you give, it helps your mind think about abundance instead of scarcity or lack of money. This also helps me make sure that when I tithe, I really tithe 10% of my money. In the coming years as my income grows, I will probably increase this fund to accommodate other charities.

10% to Play

This is my favorite fund! Money in this fund has to be splurged within the month, or at most 2 or 3 months. It doesn’t matter how big or small your income may be; there is a story I know of a woman who lost her job. And had only $1. She enjoyed that 10 cents on candy, helped her forget about her situation, helped her be thankful for whatever she had until she got out of her rut.

50% to Expenses

If you want to survive, you live within your means. If you want to have abundance fast, you have to live on half of your means. And that’s the 50% for expenses. Now, what to do if your bills, grocery, and food money exceed 50% of your income? While I’m all for frugality and economy and wise spending, in this situation, I would be more motivated to earn more. Whether it’s on a part-time business or job or selling of some of your old stuff, being forced to live on 50% will really help to stretch your financial, mental, and creative powers.

The most difficult part of it is actually disciplining yourself to follow it. As T. Harv Eker said, your biggest obstacle can be summed up in 5 words: “I have a better idea”. And that’s why this New Year’s resolution is on the top of my list. Tempting as it may be to grab some money from my LTSS jar and use it, I’ve been sticking to it since early this year and I’m glad to see money growing in my room! To some of my friends I owe money to, I will be paid off completely this 2011!:D

2. “Never miss a thing” (Better work-life balancing act, primacy, and prioritization)

In order to have a good life, you have to live a good life. Yes, money is important, but what use is money if you never get to spend it on what’s important. In the hustle and bustle of everyday life, this becomes so easy to neglect. So I’m resolving to have lunches and dinners with family and friends, make time to hang out, and basically contribute positively to the lives of people who are important to me. At the same time, this also means that I need to get things done more quickly and efficiently, so that I can use the time saved for those things that matter most.

3. Drive instead of commute

Last Christmas, I found myself commuting in the MRT; my car was in the shops getting some scratches and dents cleaned up, plus the expenses of the holiday season (and without an emergency fund/LTSS/Play fund, things got quite drastic) and the ever-increasing gas prices made me think twice if I would spend the money on gas. I’ve ridden the MRT countless times before, but I’m not sure I ever want to again. Or at least I don’t want to ride the MRT, or the jeep, or the bus for that matter (especially with the recent bus bombings) because I have to. So, here’s to having a choice to drive instead of commuting.

4. Exercise weekly

To be the best I can be, I need to have a sound mind, and also a sound body.

Admittedly, this has been getting off to a slow start. But I have started. I plan to jog at least once a week. Twice a week if I can. When that becomes regular, we’ll see where it goes from there. Things I plan as additional exercises (aside from the once a week jog):

• Hiking – We’re already planning some beginner hike’s up La Mesa and Mt. Pulag
• Swimming – You’ll probably see me more often at my brother’s condo.
• WiiFit – Of course, where will I be without my Wii Fit and my virtual yoga instructor!:)
• Exercises for the Traveling Photographer – Musn’t forget my trusty tripod can also be used for weights!

So, there you have it. I’m publishing this for the world to see, and as a constant reminder for me. I hope my resolutions will also inspire some of you to make and keep your own.

What about your resolutions? Have you made some of your own? How have you been keeping them so far and how many have you broken? I’d love to hear from you, so post them at the comments. And if you ever use some of my resolutions, be sure to let me know how it goes. I would love to hear it.:)

Jason finds out how cold an ice shower is

When I was young, my brother and I used to draw on the corners of notebooks. Each page had a slightly different drawing, so that when you flipped the notebook the drawings appeared to be moving. It’s still fun. And you aren’t limited to drawings either; you can also do this with a series of sequential images!

So how do you take your collection of images and turn it into some sort of flip book? It’s easy and today I’ll show you how to do it in two ways!

Method 1: The GIMP
The first method is ideal for non-techies, since we won’t need to do any typing at all. We’ll be using the image editing program called The GIMP. It’s built-in to most versions of Ubuntu, but if you’re using Windows or Mac, no worries because it’s free and open source and you can download it from their website.

The end result is going to be an animated GIF

From The GIMP, click on File and then Open and open the first image in the sequence. Then click on File again and then Open as Layers and choose the 2nd through the last images. To do this, simply click the 2nd image and shift-click the last one.

Before proceeding further, you can click on Image then Resize Image to resize the images to your liking.

Now, click on File and then Save As. In the dialog box, change the file to somefile.gif

Another dialog box will appear. Choose Save as an Animated GIF

Method 2: Terminal
This second method will require you to get your hands dirty with the command terminal. The advantage is that it’s much quicker to do.

To convert to an animated GIF, we use ImageMagick

Click here to install imagemagick (Ubuntu only)

convert -dispose previous -delay 10 -loop 0 *.jpg animaion.gif

If you wanted to convert to a video, you can use FFMPEG

Click here to install ffmpeg (Ubuntu only)

ffmpeg -r 10 -i image%d.jpg video.avi

And there you go! Easy as pie! Now go set your camera to continous, hold that shutter button, and go make some of your own!

It's official! I'm a photographer!

Everyone has seen them. More and more people have them. You know, photos of people who buy a brand new DSLR, get introduced to the world of photography, and inexplicably can’t find a better subject to shoot than themselves in front of a mirror holding a camera up to their face?

So, in honor of that time-honored tradition, here’s my take on making a declaration that I, too, am a photographer as well. Call it what you want, a satire of photographers, if you will. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve also taken a photographer’s self-portrait back in the day, but thank goodness I had the sensibility not to post it for all to see. Trust me. It wasn’t a pretty picture.

So here’s a challenge: I would love to see all of you take the photographer’s self-portrait to a completely different level. Post a link to your pictures down in the comments section or post it on our Facebook wall and I’ll post the best ones I find here on my blog. And don’t forget to overlay the words “I’m a photographer! ‘Coz I have a picture holdin’ a camera!” on the photo (how you layout it is up to you).

Start shooting!:)

After our mini food-trip around Laoag, we were now back in Balay de Blas. Some of us chose to rest, while playing Monster Hunter, and some of us wanted to…uhm…relieve ourselves. I had gone first, and partly due to the poor ventilation of the CR, partly due to the intensity of my power, it took Rhoy, who was next in line, a few minutes before he could acquire an immunity to it. It was very unfortunate to Rommel, the third person in line though.

After our little rest, we went out to find a great place to cap off our whole trip. And we went to one of the best places there is in Laoag. We had sinanglao, some insrabasab, and a few more dishes that I can’t now remember. For dessert, our resident cheesecake aficionado, Leon, decided he wanted to treat us all for cakes. He bought three kinds for us to share. The carrot cake was delicious. Sadly, it was the blueberry cheesecake that fell to last place. It’s not that it wasn’t good, but it was just mediocre.

Early next morning, we had breakfast served in our room (you have to order it the day before). It was delicious, but not extraordinary. Most of us had the longganisa. After that, we went through our final packing. And I would arrange my backpack for the last time.

Since I had neglected to talk about what my “light pack” was, I will explain it now. I brought my Targus laptop backpack, and naturally my Kohjinsha SH6 tablet netbook fit in the over-spacious laptop compartment. I had maybe six shirts, a few shorts, jogging pants, and a few other articles of clothing rolled up to minimize the air inside the pack. A towel was wrapped and strapped outside and under my pack where a tent or sleeping bag was meant for. My brother’s Manfrotto tripod, lightstand, and umbrella all fit in my Slik tripod bag, which I tied onto the front of my backpack. And my Lowepro Toploader 45AW housed my camera, flash, filters, flash gels, umbrella adapter, blower, flashlight, and harddisk and had bottle of water strapped onto it via my DIY velcro speedlight straps. So we checked out of Balay de Blas and got a tricycle to the Florida Bus Terminal, where our scheduled bus was waiting for us.

The previous day, we had a little bit of confusion as we got our bus tickets. After paying P550 for the 8:00 air-conditioned bus with CR, we were about to leave the bus terminal. It was a good thing Leon said “see you tomorrow” to the teller, because it was only then we all realized that we had booked for the 8:00 IN THE EVENING BUS on THAT DAY, instead of the 8:00 IN THE MORNING of THIS DAY. Any, she corrected the date and time of our tickets.

So now we were at the Florida Bus Terminal, and the bus we were (re)scheduled to ride on had no CR, and the ticket office was still closed. That just meant that we had paid P50 more for a bus without CR.

On the bus, still early that morning, we were subjected to a very gory movie called Masters of Horror: Imprint, which was about a man who was searching a mystical place in Japan filled with supernatural phenomena for a prostitute he fell in love with. Nice. Can’t beat bloody fetuses for breakfast… Joie promptly asked the conductor to change the movie. After that, they showed Jackie Chan’s Forbidden Kingdom, followed by Rush Hour 3! Cool, I wondered what was next…it was Vic Sotto and Dolphy…ok, I wonder what was up after this one….Fernando Poe Jr….damn.

There were a few stopovers on that Laoag to Manila ride, first stop was at Marsha’s Delicacies where I bought some longganisa and cassava cake for my family. Some of us bought the vigan bibingka, which was received with mix criticisms. Our lunch stop was over at a small carinderia, and on the final stopover somewhere in Tarlac, we found the last halo-halo stand of our trip. A happy and sad moment.

On entering Metro Manila, we had a quick meeting on the bus to decide where we’d be getting off. Some would be getting off sooner, while the others had to get off much further away. We decided since we were all hungry that we’d all stop at McDonald’s at Quezon Avenue to recharge before going our separate ways. After struggling with our heavy bags, navigating the no-walk zones, the pedestrian lanes, and the foot bridges, we found us a nice long table where we could lay down our cargo and relax a bit with our civilized burgers, a far cry from the delicious meals we had in our travels, but it was nonetheless nice to be able to bite into a McDonald’s McChicken again.

The original plan in 2009, as overlayed on a map of Luzon

Trip Details:

• 7 Days – 1 day in Hundred Islands, 2 days in Vigan, 3 days in Pagudpud, and 1 day in Laoag.

• Feb. 21 (night) – Depart from Manila
• Feb. 22 – A day in Hundred Islands
• Feb. 23 – Travel day to Vigan, nighttime relaxation
• Feb. 24 – Vigan tour
• Feb. 25 – Trip to Pagudpud
• Feb. 26 – Pagudpud tour
• Feb. 27 – Go to Laoag, take in the sights
• Feb. 28 – Going home

• Total budget per person inclusive of travel and lodging and BBQs and halo-halo and empanadas – roughly P8,000

• Average number of halo-halo eaten: 6
• Things Jeff dropped (but recovered): sunglasses in Dagupan, wallet in Vigan
• Distance travelled: MNL-Alaminos (182km), Alaminos-Vigan (250km), Vigan-Pagudpud (208km), Pagudpud-Laoag-MNL (615km) = 1,255km total.