The web is packed with some of the greatest educational material on entrepreneurship and enterprise, material that didn’t exist a decade ago and is now within the mouse-click reach of vast swaths of humanity. Are we taking advantage of it?
Doug French and I set out to collect the top 15 videos on entrepreneurship — a totally subjective list, of course, but these are the ones we have found most compelling. Watching all of these provides a great overview of the contribution that enterprise makes to the quality of life.
Cotton candy machines can be expensive, but this DIY version from the folks at Make will set you back about $50, is completely reusable, and uses parts you can easily get from the hardware store. if you don’t have them lying around.
The video above takes you through the process from start to finish, including all of the components you’ll need to make your own: the mixing bowls, the fan motor, the propane torch, and of course, the sugar. It’s not a DIY project for everyone, but if you have some room to work in your garage and love cotton candy, this project goes from working prototype to functioning candy maker in no time at all.
Photography in general is easy – right? You pick up your camera, point it in the direction of what interests you, and depress the shutter button. However, there are many levels of photography, and I’m sure many of you are aware of the basics.
Today I’m going to focus on something a bit more advanced, photographing the star filled sky, also known as astrophotography.
For astrophotography you will be delving a bit deeper into the use of some of the manual controls of your camera like shutter speed, aperture, and ISO control. I also highly recommend shooting in RAW for night photography, as it will allow more control when editing the final image. If you’re not sure what RAW is and why it is important I wrote a bit about RAW photography here.
Let’s Start With What You’ll Need
Tripod – We’re going to be dealing with exposures in the tens of seconds and I don’t care who you are, you’re going to need something to stabilize your camera.
A Camera With Manual Controls – Manual control of your ISO and shutter speed are going to be essential for photographing the stars.
A Wide Aperture Lens – You’ll need a lot of light and f/2.8 seems to be the butter zone for astrophotography. Combine this with an ultra-wide lens and depth of field won’t be a problem.
With these three pieces of gear you’ll be off to a great start, but of course, there’s a lot more out there that you could potentially add down the line, which I’m sure you can discuss in the comments below.
Location, Location, Location
Now, it’s not enough to just get all the gear, you need to find the right places to photograph the night sky as well. Light pollution is a serious problem for astrophotography and if you’re anywhere near a large city you’re going to have to travel at least an hour to get away from the lights.
I live just outside of Boston MA and am pretty much locked into one of the most light polluted areas of the United States – southern New England.
However, as seen in this image below, even a town of only about 30,000 people and over ten miles away can still result in some obstructive light pollution.
On top of finding the right location on Earth, you’ll want to have some idea of the location of various stars and constellations for your photography. I use an app called Starwalk for my iPhone to track these down as well as locating the core of the Milky Way, which can be amazing when photographed.
The Basic Set-up
When photographing these tiny pinholes of light you will need as much light to hit your sensor as possible. Therefore it’s important to use combination of high ISO, wide apertures, and long shutter speeds.
For the Kayaks Under the Stars photo above I used an ISO of 1250 an aperture of f/2.8 and an exposure of 30 seconds. As you’ll notice in the bottom right of the photograph there’s a bit of light pollution from a city about 30 minutes away.
One thing to do to try and minimize the light pollution is to find out where it is in a timely manner. To do this I typically will fire off successive shots all around the horizon using an absurdly high ISO (typically the highest my camera will go) simply to limit the time it takes for each shot to expose. These shots won’t be used in the final process, but they are valuable in letting me know which parts of the horizon are off-limits.
As far as exposure time goes, it’s better to keep it as short as possible, otherwise you’ll end up with movement in your stars as the Earth rotates. As an example, my kayak photograph was shot at 30 seconds, which was actually a bit long and if you look closely you can see some movement in the stars.
Now, don’t get me wrong, this can be an extremely cool style of photography in and of itself, referred to most often as creating star-trails like this shot below.
There’s a great post here on dPS about shooting star-trails, which you should check out for more information if you’re interesting in creating this kinds of photographs.
Processing the Photo
Processing these night sky photographs can be a bit intimidating, as at first they won’t look like much. As I mentioned above, I’d highly recommend shooting in the RAW format if your camera offers it, as it will allow you to do a lot more when it comes to this step.
For the shot featured at the top of this post I broke up the photograph into two zones to process, the sky and the foreground. I used LR4′s adjustment tool to selectively tweak each region until I was satisfied with the end result.
For more on how I edited this photograph watch this quick video walkthrough I made of the process.
John Davenport is an enthusiastic amateur photographer and blogger who shares daily photos on his site Phogropathy. You can also find him on Facebook and Twitter.
With over one million observations since it launch on April 24, 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope has been a endless source for insane wonders, unprecedented scenes and humbling experiences. However, many of its most amazing images have never been seen before by anyone—until now. In fact, some images actually show objects that nobody knew existed before. More »
In his freshman year at Ohio State University, Jay Clouse joined an intramural softball team. Now a junior majoring in finance, he’s busy launching a business.
MarketOSU – the initials actually stand for “only students use” – debuted in beta mode Monday as Ohio State students were moving into dorms and prepping for classes. The online marketplace matches students looking to buy or sell football tickets and used textbooks, including a watch list that emails members when desired items are…
All entrepreneurs need advice. What better way to get helped through your next crisis than by picking the minds of some of today and yesterday’s greatest entrepreneurs. The following 50 books should keep you busy for awhile and teach you more than any college education.
A “startup” is the modern term for a business that hasn’t quite found it’s business model yet. If this is you, you can learn a lot from these books that detail both the mistakes and success of various startup companies.
Without a good strategy to make your business known, you’re destined for failure. The following marketing books will help you to think outside the box.
You might wonder what biographies are doing on a list of books for entrepreneurs. Yes, I know you have very little time, but reading about what other entrepreneurs have done in their businesses can give you great ideas about how to improve your own business.
The next time you’re at cocktail party and someone says “Computing power doubles every 18 months,” jump in with this before they can qualify the statement:
“Actually, the 1965 Moore’s Law seems to be a special case of Wright’s Law, spelled out by Theodore P. Wright in a 1936 paper, ‘Factors affecting the costs of airplanes.’ In fact, Wright’s Law seems to describe technological evolution a bit better than Moore’s—not just in electronics, but in dozens of industries.”
Your interlocutors will gaze at you with admiration and wonder. Or, more probably, edge away and leave you in peace.
A new Santa Fe Institute (SFI) working paper (Statistical Basis for Predicting Technological Progress, by Bela Nagy, J. Doyne Farmer, Quan M. Bui, and Jessika E. Trancik) compares the performance of six technology-forecasting models with constant-dollar historical cost data for 62 different technologies—what the authors call the largest database of such information ever compiled. The dataset includes stats on hardware like transistors and DRAMs, of course, but extends to products in energy, chemicals, and a catch-all “other” category (beer, electric ranges) during the periods when they were undergoing technological evolution. The datasets cover spans of from 10 to 39 years; the earliest dates to 1930, the most recent to 2009.
It’s that time of the year again when SXSW does its annual “panelpicker” effort. I’m on one of the proposed panels, put together by Engine Advocacy, discussing the new era of tech advocacy by looking at the political landscape after the 2012 elections and how startups, entrepreneurs, open innovation advocates and the tech community can better engage in the political process to avoid disasters being pushed by legacy incumbents. The panel will include myself, Mike McGeary from Engine, Elizabeth Stark from both Stanford and StartX and Mark Colwell from Senator Jerry Moran’s office. If you’re reading this, you know who I am, and those other three were all important players in helping to stop SOPA earlier this year. Feel free to vote and hopefully our panel will get picked.
There are, as always, plenty of other great panels to check out as well. I haven’t had a chance to go through them all, but here are a few others that would be great, if you’re looking for ones to vote for:
A discussion between two of the key Congressional staffers who (from opposite ends of the political spectrum) helped team up to defeat SOPA: Jayme White from Senator Wyden’s office and Laurent Crenshaw from Rep. Issa’s office, talking about Congress and the internet, and how to prevent future SOPAs from happening.
A discussion asking if the internet has become America’s “third party” starring some more of the key folks who led the fight against SOPA (including both Colwell and Crenshaw already mentioned, but also Maura Corbett and Marvin Ammori).
In Defense of Mashups looks interesting in that, among others, it would have Eric from Padmapper on the panel, and he’s currently being sued by Craigslist for “mashing up” Craigslist with maps to make Craigslist more useful.
I learned a while back that when the Bomb Squad/Public Enemy’s Hank Shocklee speaks, you should listen, so vote for his panel (also with Julie Samuels at EFF, Michael Petricone at CEA and Paul Geller from Grooveshark) on making free content work for fans and for artists.
Similarly, former rockstar, now brilliant business strategist Dave Allen is always worth following, especially when he’ll be on a panel with Brian Zisk talking about music tech startups.
Ah, floppy drives! No need to stack them in landfills when you can hack them to make sweet, sweet music, like the Imperial March and Daft Punk’s “Derezzed”. The latest, another hot track from MrSolidSnake745, is taking me straight back to 1984. Check out his drives belt out the Ghostbusters theme song.
Sadly, we talk way too often about police arresting people for doing nothing other than taking a picture or filming them. The police officers being filmed and photographed make these arrests using various excuses, but frequently the charges get dropped for lack of merit. The reason charges rarely stick when an officer is filmed is because filming police, or anyone in a public space, is not illegal. Some people may not like it, but it is a fact.
The New York Times is waking up to this fact that photography is not a crime. In an interview with Mickey H. Osterreicher, general counselor for the National Press Photographers Association, they get down to the nitty gritty of the legalities surrounding this age old tradition. They also talk a bit about just why such arrests are happening more frequently.
Since 9/11, there’s been an incredible number of incidents where photographers are being interfered with and arrested for doing nothing other than taking pictures or recording video in public places.
It’s not just news photographers who should be concerned with this. I think every citizen should be concerned. Tourists taking pictures are being told by police, security guards and sometimes other citizens, “Sorry, you can’t take a picture here.” When asked why, they say, “Well, don’t you remember 9/11?”
I haven’t really thought of criminalizing photography as something to do with 9/11 before. I know that a lot of our rights have been eroded since that day, but the photography aspect never really clicked until now. Just as Mickey can’t make heads nor tails of this argument, I am struggling to find a connection here. I don’t recall cameras being a part of the plots to destroy the Twin Towers, Pentagon or White House.
Of course there could be more reasons for this increase in arresting photographers. Mickey suspects that part of the reason is the proliferation of the camera. Pretty much everyone with a smart phone has a camera capable of taking some very high quality pictures. Prior to this boom, the police had some modicum of control over the press. They knew the press wasn’t going to be everywhere and were used to not being under constant recordable surveillance by the public. Now that anyone could be filming them or taking their picture, they are more on edge and more prone to lashing out.
When this happens, it is important for those accused to know their rights. However, it is also important for the police to know the public’s rights as well. While you, as a photographer, may know that you have the right to take pictures or film in a public space, some officers may not know or may have forgotten that fact. That is why the Mickey and others have been working with police to keep officers reminded of that right.
Q. After photographers were stopped from photographing the police clearing Occupy Wall Street protestors from Zuccotti Park, you and representatives of a media coalition including The Times, met with the police commissioner Ray Kelly. What happened at that meeting?
A. It was on Nov. 23. I asked the commissioner if he would reissue the “finest message” from 1999 that dealt with the police cooperating with the press. He did that. It was read at 10 consecutive roll calls in every single station house and precinct.
The finest message is a policy statement on police interactions with the press. It states that officers are not to interfere with videotaping and photographing in public places. It also reminds officers that they have an obligation to assist the press whenever possible. This is very similar to the recent news when the DC police chief laid down the law on filming of officers.
Hopefully, continually repeating this message will help slow down this barrage of arrests for photographing the police. As more officers are reminded of the rights of the cameras-wielding public, we will hopefully start to see fewer future incidents. It would be great if other police departments across the nation follow the lead of NY and DC police in proactively spreading the word about the rights of the public to record and photograph the police.
In his freshman year at Ohio State University, Jay Clouse joined an intramural softball team. Now a junior majoring in finance, he’s busy launching a business.
meone says “Computing power doubles every 18 months,” jump in with this before they can qualify the statement:
