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He has visited 136 different countries, and all 7 of the 7 continents. Had breakfast at Tiffany’s in New York. Hiked the Inca Trail to Machu Pichu (twice!). Bare-back riding on elephants – just him and the elephant. Been in a Space Shuttle trainer, touched a Saturn 5 rocket. Slept on a deserted desert islands. Been arrested and interrogated by Russian police (falsely !). Short of breath deep in the tunnels of the Potosi silver mines. Panned for gold in the Brazilian jungle, and found some. Climbed to 16,300 feet in Nepal, 17,500 feet in India. This is just a brief list of what Tim Makins has been able to do as a freelance travel photographer. Tim is always traveling, and I really mean always; every single day. Recently, I had the privilege of asking Tim some questions about travel photography. So keep reading my interview with travel photographer Tim Makins.

Apple’s iPhoto is the default photo management program that comes standard on every Mac computer. Everyone who gets a Mac uses iPhoto, at least at the beginning. Many people however, realize that once you start using iPhoto, you can’t make any changes to the folder structure where your photos are saved. Once you realize this and decide to use another software that would give you the freedom you need, there are a few steps you have to perform in order to “free” your pictures. Keep reading and see these simple steps you can take in order to move away from iPhoto.

Image metadata has been around for a long time. Standards for image metadata however have been trying to keep pace with consumers’ appetite for digital content. As a consequence, image metadata standards have been in flux for a while. It has been very difficult for software makers to adapt both to new standards and customer demands as the two are almost always out of sync.

Picasa has many practical features but one feature is ahead of its time: face detection. Google has a very practical purpose for using face detection in Picasa, but people are very divided over using this feature. It seems cool and futuristic, and it can work well on a reasonable amount of pictures, but for some people it is cumbersome to use and can slow down your computer. If you still use Picasa, read on to see how and when to use face detection efficiently.

E-mailing your favorite pictures is still a difficult task even today with so many programs that claim to organize your pictures. The reason it is difficult is pretty simple: in order to be able to send pictures by email you have to reduce their size and add them as attachments to the email. This task is somewhat simple if you only want to send one picture. However, if you want to send multiple pictures it gets very tedious and most people just don’t do it. Others send multiple emails containing their huge image files. In Picasa, however, it is very easy to send emails with your favorite pictures if you learn how to set it up.

Over the years I read and studied pretty much every system available for organizing my digital media collection. However, because the systems I found were mainly targeted to professional photographers I realized they are too complex and I ended up creating my own system. I also answered criticism and sometimes I had to adjust my own system in response to good comments. During this quest for a simple and efficient system for organizing my digital photos, I kept asking myself one question: How do I know if my system is a good system? Read on to find out a few simple ways you can use to test your own system and see if it measures up to what it is supposed to be.

In my last article about Picasa I have discussed the most efficient way to transfer your pictures from your camera to your computer using Picasa. If Picasa is setup correctly, transferring your pictures with Picasa can really save you a lot of time.

Picasa is a great digital asset management software. If you have been reading my blog, you know that I have struggled with Picasa over the years. I have installed it many times only to uninstall it days later. This has all changed recently when they have released version 3.8, when Picasa started supporting the XMP standard regarding image metadata. XMP coupled with the correct integration of IPTC image tags in addition to beautiful support for EXIF geotagging, determined me to start using Picasa again. And this time I have not uninstalled it. Now that I am a dedicated Picasa user, I will start sharing a few tips for making Picasa do what you want. In this article I will be sharing a few simple tips for making Picasa run faster.

Last week I published the first part of the interview I conducted with Hans Fremuth from Metability Software about image metadata. In this section Hans talked about the current state of the image metadata standard development and in particular about the XMP standard developed by Adobe. In addition, Hans provides insight into how he organizes his own pictures on his computer. This article is the second part of the interview.

I had the privilege to chat over e-mail with Hans Fremuth from Metability Software about image metadata. He was very gracious not only to answer my questions but also to provide a great history of the image metadata standards available today (EXIF, IPTC, XMP). His long history with file metadata in general and image metadata in particular makes him a great resource for a serious photographer. Hans’ great understanding of the history of modern image metadata standards provides great clarity to his vision about the field of managing unstructured data in general and image metadata in particular. This article is the first part of the interview.

Some time ago I had the privilege to ask professor and photographer Stephen Cysewski some questions. He was very gracious to include lots of details in his answers. Stephen Cysewski is Professor of Computer Applications, Emeritus at University of Alaska Fairbanks and has been living in Alaska since 1967.