Over the last week or so, I’ve been working on putting some of my favourite Zambia photos into a book. Growing up in this digital age, I don’t feel a need to have my photos in physical form. However, there is something surprisingly rewarding about holding the photos in your hands.

I picked 120 of my favourite photos, added some copy, and molded them into an 80-page photo book that I hope will give you a glimpse into Africa through my eyes.

The book is titled “Heart of an Orphan”, and is available for purchase in both hardcover or softcover worldwide via the wonderful book making service, Blurb. You can check out a 15-page preview as well, that should give you a taste of what the book contains.

On another note, my thanks goes out to Russell Heistuman who designed the front cover of the book as part of the design contest. Nicholas Heer came as a close runner-up. Thanks to everyone who contributed in the contest.

Chase Jarvis tests the new Nikon D90 -

We had a blast, gaffer taping up the logos, running in stealth mode with all these black beauties so that they wouldn’t be noticed around other crew, cast, and the general public. Secret agent fun. We worked the cameras hard during my piggy-backed commercial shoot for more than a week. We shot them constantly, me–along with the D3–and the crew just with the fleet of D90’s. And funny how this happens, but go figure…our work with the D90 on location soon bled into shooting over dinner, then drinks, and then into the night, then into the next week, and so on. And the more we beat on ‘em, the more the crew liked ‘em.

Even if you’re not a camera guru, it’s always encouraging to see a company do so many things right with a product launch. The Nikon D90 was no secret—the rumor mills were talking about it months in advance, and Circuit City leaked the feature list hours before launch.

Yet there has been a significant amount of hype around this product. Canon users are drooling, and Nikon users are rejoicing—happily laying down their money for this “revolutionary” camera. The only other company that has pulled off an announcement to this level of hype is Apple.

And as much as I love Apple, there is something that Nikon did right with the D90. They gave a handful of cameras to pro photographer Chase Jarvis and his staff to test extensively on commercial shoots. Commercial shoots that are usually shot on $5000 Nikon D3s.

The D90 delivered. From superb high-ISO performance to 720p HD video in a DSLR for the first time, the D90 is a breakthrough camera. At $999 for the body only, this is the perfect camera for aspiring amateurs. This is the future—having a HD video camera and a DSLR in one. All of a sudden the D90 becomes the best photo journalism device. It’s small, light, preforms amazingly in low-light, and does video to boot. Flickr video is starting to make a bit more sense, eh?

Compare this to the incremental Canon 50d announcement yesterday that was greeted with little fanfare, obviously Nikon is doing something right. Even Canon lovers are jumping on board. Smaller companies like Nikon and RED are innovating like crazy by bringing pro-level features to the mainstream audience, and changing the game in the camera industry.

Until today, I was eyeing the D300 as an upgrade to my current D40x. But the D90 packs most of the punch of the D300 in a smaller, lighter, cheaper form factor. And it shoots HD video. Nikon really has a winner on their hands, and now I’m looking to sell my beloved D40x with a Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 lens in preparation a D90 purchase. Contact me if you’re interested.

Apparently, good writing doesn’t matter online:

If you’ve ever fretted about not being a good enough writer, I hope I can convince you to allay your fears. Good writing, clever writing, beautiful writing — all of these things are unnecessary in the creation of great web content. In this medium, writing is just a vehicle for entertaining ideas, useful ideas, novel ideas and practical ideas.

There’s been an increasing trend among web users to try and consume the most amount of information in the least amount of time. And a whole web culture has been created around catering to these people. There are blogs teaching you how to make your blog posts shorter, more skimable, and more succinct. Regurgitate content and SEO the life out of it. Lather, rinse, and repeat.

We’ve spent so much time reading blogs telling us how to blog, that the novelty of writing something beautiful and appealing is gone. We’ve been tricked into believing that blogging is more than just writing good content. That people don’t have the time to actually read every word of a blog post because it isn’t convenient and doesn’t fit into their schedule—and they’ll tell you so. I disagree. In the words of Rands: “If I’m interested, I’ll make time.”

In seems that The Net has lowered our standards of writing. Forget about writing something engaging and captivating. Don’t go into detail, don’t be comprehensive, and for goodness sake, don’t have an opinion, personality, or voice. Cause people don’t care about how well you write. They just want facts.

That’s not how I feel about blogs. The blogs I read are written by brilliant people, and I long to read more of their words. Yes, I love reading their novel ideas, but I want to read their words more than anything else. I love words. I love writing them and reading them, and most of all, aspiring one day to write wonderfully crafted words that other people long to read.

When I reach the bottom of a post, I stop and think. I re-read the footer and the copyright statement. Sometimes, I even Google the author’s name to find out if there is something—anything—else that they have written online. And that’s not because of their great ideas or the length of the post or how easy is was for me to skim through the subheadings.

No, that’s because of great writing.

A great idea without great communication is worthless. And great communication without a great idea is senseless. There needs to be both. In this day and age, ideas are a dime a dozen. But being able to communicate a brilliant idea with excellent writing—now that’s priceless.

Today, I buy all my music through iTunes. If it doesn’t exist as a DRM-free, 256kbps AAC, I don’t buy it. Sure, I used to buy CDs. But I’ve been spoiled by the iTunes way of life. Thirty second previews and a simple 1-click to download.

Click. Click. Click.

I have all my media in iTunes. If you’re not there, I’m not going to go out of my way to give you my money. If you make it easy for me to buy you in the format I want, take my $0.99.

And now that iTunes is providing movie rentals in Canada, I have a feeling that Blockbuster will face the same fate as the CD and record stores. I haven’t left my house to rent a movie since June when movie rentals first debuted on iTunes. If your movie isn’t on iTunes, I’ll rent something else.

One of the biggest problems with the iTunes Store —and every other online music store for that matter—is that they don’t easily allow you to discover new music. Sure, they have a “Just for you” section, and links to related albums, but a 30 second preview isn’t going to convince me to lay down $10 for a new album from an artist I’ve never heard of.

Then along comes the rumor of iTunes Unlimited:

For just $129.99 (or $179.99 bundled with MobileMe, or $99 for current MobileMe subscriptions), you would buy unlimited music access for one year. This would offer you 256 Kbps music, or as Steve would boom it, “The highest quality digital music subscription service ever.” You could download and play directly on your computer or iPhone/iPod and the option to “buy and keep” would replace the subscription version of a song with a downloaded version.

Of course, the argument against a subscription-based, ‘all you can eat’ music store is that you don’t actually own your music.

But with a music store the size of iTunes, I’d be more than willing to pay $10 a month to try out new artists and albums. I could experiment freely, with nothing holding me back from downloading an album. Or two. Or three.

This is an incredible opportunity for up-and-coming and indie artists. All of a sudden, you could have your music up on iTunes in front of the world, with no barrier to entry. Imagine that. Anyone with iTunes Unlimited can download your music for free. They don’t have to pay anything. They don’t have to leave their comfy sofa. Click. Click. Click. If you’re good, you’ll quickly move to the top.

One Entertainment Hub

The subscription model becomes even more exciting when you imagine the potential. iTunes has an incredible amount of media—what if for one set monthly fee, I could download all the music, TV shows, and movie rentals I want (with one rental at a time)? All this in combination with audio and video podcasts that are already free.

All of a sudden, iTunes becomes your one-stop place for any type of content. iTunes becomes your media center. Goodbye Rogers cable TV. Goodbye Blockbuster. Hello iTunes.

With an iTunes Unlimited subscription, you can download any media you want, when you want it: on your computer, your iPod, your iPhone, and your AppleTV. You may not own all this content and get to keep it forever, but you have the option to purchase the occasional CD or movie you want to add to your collection.

Apple can begin to sell iPods, iPhones, and AppleTVs with a free 3 month subscription to iTunes Unlimited, allowing customers to go home, fill their devices up with media, and discover the phenomenon of content over the Internet (not to mention locking them into iTunes Unlimited).

A Leap Ahead

With increasing competition from Amazon MP3 and other online music stores, iTunes has to re-spark it’s innovation in order to maintain it’s market dominance. iTunes Unlimited may just do that—turning iTunes from a simple online media store, to a global content delivery network.

I don’t imagine that Apple can launch iTunes Unlimited in September with TV shows and movie rentals on board. But it’s definitely a possibility for the future: one iTunes pass to rule them all giving you unrestricted access to all content on the iTunes Store.

I’d definitely cancel the cable for that.

I haven’t had the chance to write down much of what I experienced and accomplished while in Zambia. One of my passions has always been to travel to impoverished nations and be able to bring back just a glimpse of what I saw through my photography.

Africa was by far one of the most challenging photography environments I’ve ever faced—harsh lighting from the sun, intense weather conditions, and a lack of electricity (making preserving battery life imperative). Africa is the opposite of an ideal studio setup, and quite often you have to choose between ‘getting the perfect shot’, and the safety of yourself and your camera. Most of the time, I chose the latter.

The amazing thing about Africa is that you don’t have to go searching for photos (I could take a picture of the bug on the ceiling above my bed and it would be a fascinating picture). The pictures are right in front on you: it’s just a matter of which ones you are fast enough to capture.

And while it’s easy to say that if I had better/faster/more expensive camera that could take 8 photos a second at ISO 3200 with little noise, my pictures would have been better, the truth of the matter is that cameras and lenses are just tools. Sure it would help me shoot faster, but not necessarily smarter. The most essential part of a camera, is the 3 – 4 inches behind the viewfinder—your brain.

The key to taking stunning photos in Africa is getting out of auto mode.

Before I continue, I must recommend that you read the highly popular “Introduction to Photography” written by yours truly. Even if you aren’t a wannabe photographer, it will introduce you to a couple concepts and terms that will help you understand how cameras work.

How Automatic Works

To understand why not to shoot in auto-mode, it’s important to understand just how automatic works. Your camera is basically just a box with a hole in it—in order to get a properly exposed photo (ie. – theoretically perfect exposure), your camera will adjust the Shutter Speed, Aperture, and ISO allowing the right amount of light to hit the camera sensor.

Most of the time, perfectly exposed photos are what you want. But not everything we see with our eyes is perfectly exposed. Shadows, sunsets, and ambient lighting are all effects that produce stunning photos, but auto mode will often try to make the lighting “perfect” by brightening or darkening it, and thus losing the effect you pulled out your camera to shoot.

The solution is Manual mode. You’ll find this mode on all DSLRs, and higher-end consumer Point-and-Shoots.

Manual mode gives you full control over all the features of your camera—which is very powerful—but which can also be very clumsy and slow to navigate at first. Countless times have I been taking pictures in manual mode, and have had people yell at me to hurry up and take the picture.

Yes, it’s going to be slow—at first. Your cousin’s wedding is not the time to experiment with Manual mode. Experimentation often leads to worse pictures than if you had simply left it on auto mode in the first place.

As much as I wish there was a magic solution, the key to mastering manual exposure is practice. Learn how Shutter Speed, Aperture, and ISO affect your pictures, and go out and shoot. Take a picture in auto mode, and copy over the settings to manual mode. Then you can tweak the settings to get the result you’re looking for.

Want more shadows? Speed up the shutter a bit. Need more in focus? Close up the aperture. Want a decent sunset picture? Turn the exposure compensation way down.

Once you get used to maneuvering your way around your camera, these features will become second nature to you. No longer is it about the technicals, the terms, or the specs of your camera. Now it’s up to you using everything you know to tell the story in the best way possible.

Remember, the rules of photography are only there to be broken. Some of the most inspirational photos I’ve seen, have been the ones that coloured outside of the lines; the ones that broke the rules, and came up with something truly unique.

Now that is true storytelling.