I was rather honoured this week to find that my top 11 images of 2011 were one of Younes Bounhar’s 20 top picks from the photographers on Google+ who submitted a link to their work.
The set linked to his post is basically the same as my “Best of 2011” set with the addition of 1 picture since I needed 11 shots for Google and had only picked 10 for my own post.

It’s great to find that people appreciate your work but even better when the person paying the compliment is a photographer whose work you already very much enjoy. Younes is an Ottawa-based travel and landscape photographer. You can find his portfolio here and his blog here. Both are definitely worth a look.

While I’m writing, I should apologise for the fact that this blog has been rather quiet lately. I’m still posting to my photoblog daily but time that I would otherwise spend working on a couple of tutorials I have planned for here has been diverted to organising two new workshops (one for beginners in late February and another HDR class in March) and setting things up for an exciting project that will be seeing the light of day some time at the end of this month. Once these are done, I promise I’ll give this site a bit more attention than it has had for the last few months!

Here’s another image that made its way into the wild. The Spanish-language version of S.J. Parris’ “Heresy”, titled “Los herejes de Oxford” has one of my photos on the cover. This image was shot in the cloister of Glasgow University back in 2009. Random House’s graphic designer has done a rather nice job with the image, I reckon.

For a change, I’ve posted my “Best of 2011″ post over on the photoblog. Head on over if you would like to take a look at the 10 pictures I consider to be my favourites this year.

How do you fancy the chance to win one of 6 20″x30″ prints from photographers Colby Brown, Elia Locardi, Jay Patel, Varina Patel, Ken Kaminesky and Alexander Safonov?

These fine people have teamed up with “The Giving Lens” to try to raise some money for kids in Nicaragua. For every $10 you donate to Empowerment International, you get a chance to win one of the prints. Why not head on over and spread the Christmas cheer while standing a chance to win a gorgeous print worth around $500?

Floodlit Capitol, originally uploaded by DaveWilsonPhotography.

Photowalks in Austin are a bit like buses. You wait around for one for ages then, all of a sudden, two arrive at the same time! Thankfully, although there are two photowalks happening next Saturday, they have been cunningly (or, more likely, luckily) arranged such that you can attend both if you have the stamina.

At 5pm, a group of us are gathering on the south steps of the Capitol building to shoot it at twilight and hopefully get a few better shots than this one. We’ll concentrate on the exterior and work our way north from there up Congress Avenue towards the Bob Bullock State History Museum and the Blanton Museum of Art. Not that I’m being selfish but there’s a particular dusk shot I want to get from the front of the Blanton Museum so, since I’m organising this one, that’s where we’ll end up.

This particular walk is intended to allow Colorado visitor Justin Balog (from the “Light as Magic” photoblog) to meet some of us Austin photobloggers so come along and say hello.

Later that evening, Trey Ratcliff and Lotus Carroll are organising another walk with a totally different focus. At 8pm, people will be meeting on 37th Street to shoot the famous Christmas decorations up there. I suspect that will be an altogether less intimate walk (100 people or so?) but a great deal of fun too. To sign up for that one, click here. I see the attendee list already includes local buddies like Alex Suarez, Mike Tuuk, Peter Tsai and Jack “photojack” Hollingsworth so we are definitely in for a spirited evening of conversation and photography.

My photos from the recent BEST Robotics Competition Texas/New Mexico regional are now online. You can find the full set here or, if you are interested mainly in pictures of the Dripping Springs Middle School team, you can find these images here.

If you are looking for one of my art prints, this would be the perfect time to place your order. Coupon code “CANDYCANE30″ will get 30% off any order placed from my ImageKind gallery between now and midnight on Monday 28th.

I’ve ordered quite a few prints from ImageKind myself over the years and their quality is fabulous. I use them for large paper prints mostly and have received gorgeous prints up to 50 inches in the past. One advantage they offer over other printing suppliers is that they also offer matting and framing service at a very reasonable cost so you can order your art from them and hang it immediately when it arrives.

Family_Portrait-2276.jpg, originally uploaded by wilsonloftin.

It seems to have become traditional that I shoot family pictures on Thanksgiving Day. Usually this means that I take the camera and various lighting bits-and-pieces to wherever the family is gathering for lunch and take pictures of various people there. This goes down well with the extended family but typically means that I don’t end up with a picture of my immediate family. This year, however, we changed the pattern.

On Thanksgiving morning, before heading off to sister-in-law Thanh’s for lunch, I set up a light in front of one of the oaks on our driveway and shot various pictures of the four of us. I had shot some other pics of a friend’s family earlier in the week and Nikki reckoned it would be nice to have a group shot for our Christmas card too. Here’s the one we chose – I’m pretty happy with it.

For the technically inclined, it was shot with the 24-70mm f/2.8 using a single CLS-triggered SB-600 flash in a mini-Apollo softbox off camera left. The camera was on a tripod and I used the self timer to allow me to get into the shot.

From our family to yours, I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving (assuming you are in the USA) or that you enjoyed the past week for whatever local reason you can find

Until 4 years ago, if you mentioned photographs on canvas to me, I immediately thought of cheesy, over-retouched family portraits in wildly ostentatious frames – photographs faked to look like old master paintings. I never took the medium seriously until our local photography group did a print comparison evening and someone brought a modern canvas print along. Unlike the horrid portraits of old, however, this one was beautifully saturated, vibrant and crisp. I was sold at that point and have been printing large pieces on canvas for exhibition use and for clients ever since. Aside from the superb colours and finish, the canvas also provides a wonderfully forgiving medium allowing larger-than-normal prints that still look fabulous. I’ve printed 6MP originals (albeit carefully upscaled) 5 feet wide on canvas and they look wonderfully sharp and not at all pixelated. Although I’ve printed the same images on paper at up to 50″, I’m generally not happy to take them above 36″ wide due to worries about obvious pixelation.

Another of my reasons for liking canvas so much stems from cost. People often complain about the cost of printing on canvas but if you factor in the cost of framing a 36″x24″ print, the canvas is easily $30 to $50 cheaper, even when using a simple black gallery frame. A gallery wrapped canvas can be hung as-is without any framing at all so the printing cost is the whole cost.

So why am I talking about canvas this weekend? Recently, I was contacted by a new company based in Austin called Easy Canvas Prints offering me a trial 16″x20″ canvas for review. I’m very happy with my current canvas supplier, Canvas Press but reckoned that this would give me a great opportunity to compare the two, especially since I had just created a new Pro account at Canvas Press and had a free 16″x20″ print to use from them too. For the sake of comparison, I ordered prints from each company’s web site using exactly the same 16″x20″ JPEG image with an embedded sRGB profile. So what did I find?

Before I start, you have probably noticed that I have a Canvas Press banner on this site already but, although I’ve been their customer for several years, I have tried very hard to be completely unbiased in my assessment of these two products. If you feel I’ve been unfair (or if you don’t but you just have more information to add), please leave comments with your own experiences for the benefit of others reading this post.

Web Sites

Both company’s sites offer a very easy user interface allowing you to upload pictures, select the print size you are interested in, pick various wrapping options, crop your image, pay for the print and send it for printing. In both cases, the interface is very easy to use, very clean and very nicely designed. Of the two, Easy Canvas Prints probably offers the most intuitive interface in that the controls required to start creating your canvas (selecting size and wrap option) are there right on the home page. Canvas Press, on the other hand, requires you to click an additional link to start the creation process. After this, however, both sites offer essentially the same functionality and do it very well. I really can’t fault either and have no real preference.

In terms of options offered, both sites offer similar wrap and retouching options. Both companies offer various print sizes, frame depths and three wrap choices, “Gallery Wrap” which wraps the existing image edges around the wooden frame, “Mirror Wrap” which mirrors the edge sections as the image wraps around the frame or “Color Wrap” which allows you to select a flat colour for the wrapped sides of the canvas. Easy Canvas Prints offers two frame depths, 0.75″ and 1.5″ and prints up to 40″x40″. Canvas Press offers a third frame depth, 2″, and supports any print size up to 96″x54″.

For me, the 40″ print size at Easy Canvas Prints is a serious limitation since most of the canvases I want to print are larger than this, typically panoramic images that may be 48″+ wide and 20″ or so deep. For most people, however, I suspect that the size limitation is unlikely to pose a problem and they certainly cover all the major sizes up to 36″x24″ and any custom size you may want within the overall 40″ limitation.

One other web site feature offered by Canvas Press but not by Easy Canvas Prints is a clincher for me. On Canvas Press, your uploaded images and canvas creation selections are saved allowing you to very easily reorder the same canvas or create another canvas based on an image you have previously ordered. On Easy Canvas Prints, however, I need to upload the image each time I want to order a print. Given that these images can be 25MB or so for large panoramas, the upload can take a significant amount of time so only having to do it on the first order is a real plus to me. Again, though, for people ordering an occasional print, this is unlikely to pose a problem since they are probably not going to be ordering multiple copies of the same image at different times.

Print Quality

I can forgive a terrible web interface (not that either of these are at all terrible, of course) if a company produces fantastic prints. To me, the quality of the final print is a lot more important than the usability of the upload and ordering system (as an aside, I use Nations Photo Lab for a lot of my paper printing because their prints are great but their user interface is truly horrible!). So how did the two companies fare?

The photo below shows the two canvases I compared. The top one is from Canvas Press and the bottom from Easy Canvas Prints. This was taken in mixed tungsten/daylight with a bounced flash so can’t really be used for colour comparison. I also suspect that it is slightly underexposed since, although the Easy Canvas Prints canvas looks closer to the original image (above) here, in better lighting, the Canvas Press one actually matched the image on my calibrated display significantly better.

Both images look great and I would have no problem hanging either one. The Easy Canvas Prints print is slightly cooler, brighter and less saturated than the original and is printed on a slightly lighter-weight canvas with a more distinct surface texture. The print looks more neutral compared to the slightly warm tones of the original image. Canvas Press’ print is closer to the original with better colour saturation and a more pleasing surface texture (to me at least). The colour temperature also more faithfully replicates the warmth of the original image. The print finish (coating?) is somewhat more glossy and results in a surface that I prefer. In case I was being overcritical, I asked my wife which she preferred and she also picked the Canvas Press print without knowing which was which. Seen in isolation, however, the Easy Canvas Prints print is still a lovely print but the Canvas Press one is definitely more impressive.

Mounting and Stretching

I have to admit that I broke my rule about ordering identical prints here slightly since I ordered the Canvas Press print with a 1.5″ mirror wrap compared to the 0.75″ gallery wrap I ordered from Easy Canvas Prints. Both prints arrived nicely stretched with no obvious bulges or bad corner folds. The images below show the backs of the two canvases.

The Canvas Press print definitely looks more “hand crafted” with the framing staples less regularly placed. The Easy Canvas Prints print is more regular and appears to have been printed on precut sheet canvas since the boundary markers, barcode and company name is visible on the rear canvas edges.

In both cases, the frames came fitted with a sawtooth hanger. Personally, I really dislike these and my first job on receiving a canvas is to install rings and picture wire to allow it to be hung using a picture hook rather than a nail. For larger canvases, I know that Canvas Press provide Beehive Hangars which I love since they make hanging large prints very easy indeed. Not having ordered a large print from Easy Canvas Prints, I don’t know what hanging solution they offer when the size gets into the 36″ wide range.

I have no complaints about the mounting of either canvas at all and both will look excellent hung. As an artist who typically resells canvas prints to clients, however, I would likely be unhappy to use Easy Canvas Prints due to the back-printing they have on the canvas. Canvas Press typically put a sticker on the back of their canvases advertising the company and this can be easily removed. In this case, I ordered the print via their Canvas Press Pro service and this automatically removes all Canvas Press markings from the back of the print. Easy Canvas Prints may offer the option to remove the back printing but I can see nothing on their site to indicate whether this option is available.

Customer Service

I have a lot more experience of Canvas Press customer service than I do with Easy Canvas Prints so any comparison I make is unlikely to be completely fair. That said, in the email dealings I’ve had with Easy Canvas Prints, I’ve been treated very well and all my questions have been answered promptly and accurately.

As for Canvas Press, I know they are fanatical about service. They have keen photographers on staff who can offer great advice and I know that they are determined to do what it takes to make their customers happy. On one occasion a couple of years ago, for example, they reprinted a 48″ canvas for me after it was stretched about 0.25″ off-centre. This is the only mistake I’ve ever seen in an order for them and they did the right thing to correct it.

In both cases, these orders were printed within a couple of days of the order being placed. I collected the Easy Canvas Prints image in person but had Canvas Press ship their canvas to me (for the first time – I usually collect my prints from them too).

Price

By this time, you have probably realised that I’m still more favourable towards the Canvas Press product than Easy Canvas Prints. The one area where Easy Canvas Prints currently beats Canvas Press hands down, however, is on cost. For comparison, I looked at the price of a 16″x20″ 1.5″ gallery wrap and a 24″x36″ 1.5″ gallery wrap on both sites. Here’s how they stacked up:

Easy Canvas Prints is currently offering an across-the-board 25% discount on all its canvases along with free shipping (which costs $15 from Canvas Press) and these amount to a very substantial discount compared to the Canvas Press price. It is worth noting, however, that there is no indication how long this offer will last and that Canvas Press frequently offer limited time discounts of a similar size. Comparing the prices without any discounts applied, we see that they are pretty much identical.

Conclusion

Overall, I would say that both companies do a good job. Easy Canvas Prints strikes me as aiming at the mass market – families ordering an occasional print to hang at home or give as a gift – whereas Canvas Press is geared more towards the professional photographer looking for large prints and making repeat orders. Since I fall into the second category, I will be sticking with Canvas Press but, given the current price difference, I would be quite happy to recommend Easy Canvas Prints to others who fall into the first category. Regardless of which company you use, you will end up with a lovely print and will receive excellent service.

Photos on Canvas

Over the last three of four years, there has been a lot of discussion about the pros and cons of Creative Commons (CC) licensing but it appears that there are still widespread misunderstandings of how this form of licensing works and exactly what a Creative Commons license actually means. One common perception is that the CC license is equivalent to making your content (photos, music, art, writing or whatever creative output you are licensing) completely free for everyone to use but this is not the case. Before delving into CC specifically, though, let’s consider the broader subject of content licensing.

When a copyright owner (the person who created the image, wrote the paper, painted the artwork, etc) is approached for permission to use that work in some other publication (book, magazine, newspaper, web site, etc), an agreement is drawn up between the copyright owner and the licensee defining exactly what the licensee is allowed to use the work for, how it may be displayed, the time period that it may be used for and the fee that is payable to allow such use. This is a license agreement – a formal contract between the owner of the work and the person wishing to use it – and it is intended to protect both parties in the agreement since a well-written license will make it completely clear what the licensee can and can not do with the work.

Most photography businesses, press organizations and stock libraries classify their images as “All Rights Reserved”, indicating that the images may not be used without a specific license agreement from the copyright holder. Writing up and negotiating license agreements is a vital part of the photography business but it can also be a time-consuming process. In some cases where copyright owners want to allow particular free usage rights to some subset of users, it is rather burdensome to require an individual license agreement between the copyright holder and every user of the work and this is where Creative Commons comes in.

The central objective of Creative Commons licensing is to facilitate no-cost sharing of creative works under particular circumstances without the need to negotiate a separate license for every individual use. The copyright owner decides upon a set of acceptable usage terms and an acceptable group of users, and publishes these terms alongside the work in the form of one of a number of standard Creative Commons licenses. In increasing order of restrictiveness, these standard licenses are:

CC0 CreativeCommons Zero