There are a few scratches on top of the box, but that’s completely cosmetic. yes, the power cord (not pictured) is also included.

Click on the pics below for larger sizes, if interested.

The Martin Bailey Photography Podcast (link opens iTunes) is unique on the list of podcasts I listen to.  It’s the only one that blends its audio presentation with still frames.  (There is a plain MP3 version without the slideshow accompaniment, but that sounds tedious to me.)  Bailey is a semi-professional photographer, I suppose.  He has a day job, but spends the rest of his time specializing in nature photography.  Here’s the twist:  He’s a Briton living in Japan.  His podcast is often half-travelogue, half photography primer.  He tells the stories behind the pictures, the technical aspects of the pictures, and more.

His presentation is very calm and methodical, lasting about a half hour or so per weekly episode.  You’ll learn about photography, Japan, nature, and a whole lot more along the way.  It’s a great show.

Check out his portfolio at MartinBaileyPhotography.com.  Beautiful stuff, and he’s a Canon shooter, too. Those are turning into a rare breed these days. ::sigh::

Previous Photography Podcast Posts:

• Photo Podcasts, Part One (17 June 2009)
• Photography Podcasts, Part 2 of 2 (14 November 2007)
• More Photography Podcast Suggestions (18 June 2009)
• More Photography Podcasts Worth Listening To (11 January 2008)

The show has improved a bunch this year, speeding its way through the boring boilerplate stuff and eliminating the running gags turned time wasters.  On the other hand, the production notes are referenced way too often, taking all the magic away from them.  Seriously, knowing everything that’s going to happen on the show ahead of time is a good thing to do.  Telling the world as you go along that you’re paying close attention to it kinda defeats half the purpose.

Also, every other sentence in the show is followed with, “And we’ll have a link to that in the show notes.” That’s a general pet peeve of mine with most podcasts, but it gets really annoying on TWIP.  I can assume the show notes will have everything in them, thanks.  It’s obvious.

Scott Bourne left the show earlier this year to start his own podcast and blog, Photo Focus.  The podcast is 40 minutes long or so, and released three times a month.  (On the 5th, 15th, and 25th of the money.  His iPhone show had a similar schedule, once upon a time.)

In Bourne’s show, he and co-host Rick Sammon (pro shooter and photography educator/book writer) take rapid fire questions from the audience and answer away. There’s usually one short guest spot from a known name in photog circles to answer a couple of qurestions, too.

Bourne hosts the show with the iron fist he could never used on TWIP to keep everything on topic and moving forward. He occasionally lapses into his old school radio talk show host voice, which is a little jarring from a guy I’m used to hearing more conversationally on Mac Break Weekly.  And Sammon has two or three pet phrases that will make you want to scream after you’ve heard them for the 100th time, no matter where he is.  (The camera looks both ways, you know. ARGH!  I GET IT! STOP!)

It’s a good show to learn a little about a lot.  You’ll see some recurring answers as you listen, but that’ll help you learn, too. The show is all of six episodes old right now, so feel free to start from the beginning.

I read tons of photography magazines and listened to wall-to-wall photography podcasts.  We’ll talk about my frustrations with the magazines another time.  This week, I want to mention some of the podcasts I’ve listened to, and continue to listen to.

I don’t remember which one was the first anymore, but one of the early ones had to be Digital Photo Life.  Back then, it was The Digital Photography Show, but it recently switched networks and started from scratch again.  The show is hosted by two photo enthusiasts, Scott Sherman and Michael Stein, who once took a photo workshop together and decided to start a podcast.

Each week’s show features giveaways, interviews, news, and reviews.  Scott’s a Canon shooter; Michael’s a Nikon shooter.  So it’s all balanced out.

Recent shows have either been “too beginner” for me or an interview with a spokesman from a company hawking their wares.  I’ve grown tired of such interviews now, but when I was just learning about these things, I ate it all up.  So it might still be good for you.

My biggest gripe with the show today is that the boilerplate stuff goes on forever, with more websites and gmail addresses than you could shake a stick at.  One show literally didn’t start for 18 minutes.  That wasn’t good.

Still, it’s an entertaining show with personality and enthusiastic hosts with a great camaraderie.  Give it a shot if you’re looking into this kind of thing.

The only catch is that the show is on a bit of a hiatus at the moment, due to some family issues. Still, there are a lot of shows in the archives you can listen to for all the tips you need.

More podcasts to come. . .

• I tell you what — I’ll just assume you’re going to put that URL into the shownotes. Stop telling me you’re doing that everytime you bring up a website. It’s a waste of time and you sound ridiculous.

• It’s a podcast. Take as long as you need. It’s not like the next show on my iPod is going to start playing if you don’t wrap yours up in x number of minutes. Quit cutting off discussion for time’s sake. If the show runs too long, cut it up into two shows. But don’t drag it out just because there are no time limitations.

• I don’t listen to a single podcast that’s as short as the one I produce. That leads me to believe there’s still a market in shorter podcasting material out there to compete with the big 30 minutes, 60 minutes, or 80 minute podcasts.

Josh has a computer purchasing question:

I have been flirting with buying a Mac as a second computer to tinker around with. What is your recommendation for a first time Mac buyer (other than the Mac Mini)?

The MacBook. Especially if your primary computer today is a laptop, I think you’ll be impressed with the speed and power of the MacBook for the price. (About $1200.) If you’re more of a power user, then you could go with the current Mac Pro set-ups, but they tend to start at $2000. They’re very powerful and expandable (four drive bays!), but I imagine you won’t want to start your Mac life on such a large investment. (I did, but I was nuts in those days. Thankfully, it paid off handsomely and I’m still using that computer daily, 3 years later.)

On the other hand, you’re stuck using a non-Mac monitor at that Mac Pro point, so an iMac would be a worthy investment if you prefer a desktop. It’s obviously not as expandable as a Mac Pro nor as portable as the MacBook, but it’s a pretty standard Mac computer that has a stunning monitor that won’t cost you an extra grand. Really, those screens are HUGE on the current generation iMacs. (Sadly, you’ll be paying for the screen AGAIN the next time you buy an iMac.)

Is that too mushy? What kind of computer set-up do you have today? What do you use your computer for? Is lots of storage a key point for you? Are you just using your computer for e-mail and web surfing? Do you just want a multimedia system that’s easy to use? These are all things that could swing my vote one way or the other.

Hope that helps.

Paul C. wants podcasting answers:

Did the idea of doing the Pipeline Podcast come up out of the blue or had you tinkered with the idea a couple of times before getting around to it? Are you surprised it caught on and that you have lasted this long in doing it in, more or less consecutive weeks? Have you ever thought about adding in any new features to it like a top 10 worst sounding books of the week or reader’s mail/questions?

I had toyed with the idea of doing Pipeline Radio a year or more before the podcast began. The idea was to record a minute long thing once a week that we could post on Fridays with some short review/thought/something or other. It didn’t go very far because I didn’t have the time to pursue it past writing up a couple of scripts, one of which I turned into an early Pipeline Podcast. That was more along the lines of an Andy Rooney style editorial piece. I was also worried about bandwidth consumption at the time. Broadband wasn’t so pervasive, and even a minute of audio would be a slow download in those dial-up days.

When I read about podcasting in December of 2004, I knew I had to jump in. I did college radio. I did local radio up until about a year and a half ago, as a matter of fact. I wanted to use that training to do a podcast, and so I started the Various and Sundry DVD podcast and The Pipeline Podcast at the same time – Christmas Break, 2004. I had the time that week to set up a system to produce two weekly podcast shows. Once I started, I was hooked.

Eventually, the DVD podcast faded away. That was due to a lack of time and, honestly, a decrease in DVD and movie viewing habits. While I still enjoy the weekly discussions here on the blog for new DVD days, I didn’t feel comfortable TALKING about a bunch of movies I wasn’t familiar with for ten minutes a week in a podcast.

I’m not surprised the comics podcast has lasted this long. I’ve never been able to give up on comic things. Pipeline is coming up on its eleventh anniversary now and I have never ever once missed a week. Never taken a week off. I’ve been late a couple of times, I’ve pre-written things a few times, but I’ve never missed a week. I don’t think there’s another comics columnist on-line who can claim that.  I doubt there’s a print columnist who could say that, either.  This next Pipeline is the 563rd or 564th edition. I ain’t giving up on it. The podcast comes secondarily to that, and I’ve never hesitated to just skip a week when I had to. I missed a couple of weeks due to illness and one or two weeks due to scheduling and technical troubles.

The main problem with the podcast is that it’s a timing thing. The new comics release list comes out late on Monday after my chance to record a podcast. I have to record it on Wednesday, or else it’s dated by the time Wednesday night comes around. If I miss that window, I’m sure lots of people just skip over it.

I would like to do more with the podcast. Honestly, I would. I even get requests about that all the time. Oddly enough, most of those requests thank me for doing a show that’s so relatively short to the rest of the comics podcast world, but then ask me to add more stuff into it.

The simple fact of the matter is that I don’t have the time to do more than I am doing right now with the podcast. I do it because it’s not a huge hassle to spend a half hour on Tuesday nights recording and publishing the thing. Sometimes, I can even pare that down to less than 20 minutes. Even the monthly PREVIEWS podcast can be tricky to schedule out with Jamie (as it is turning out to be this month – sorry, Jamie) and finding a solid hour to an hour and a half of our lives to record.

Finally, Ezekiel asks:

What do you think of the new Hulk trailer?

Haven’t seen it. If it doesn’t show up on the Apple TV in HD, I’m not watching it. I imagine it’ll show up in there eventually, though. I hope. I do want to see what this thing looks like.

That’s it for this week.  Post more questions below, please!  I’d love to answer them in upcoming Q&As.

Which of the summer comic book related movie are you looking forward to the most?

It’s between Batman and Iron Man. Probably Batman, by a nose. As big a Marvel guy as I am, there’s something about that last Batman movie that makes me anticipate the next one.

Are plans for summer holidays this year or any places you would like to visit?

No plans made yet. Doesn’t look like I’ll be going to San Diego again. Places I’d like to visit? Too numerous, but I’d start with Belgium and Paris — the latter just so I can blow all my money at a comic shop and bring home a suitcase filled with BD albums I’d have to learn French to read.

I also want to bring my camera to the Grand Canyon.

Do you ever wake up one morning and decide you can’t be bothered to do a V&S post, or is it drummed into your head by now after going at it for so long?

Mostly the latter. Plus, I have a certain schedule going now: DVDs on Tuesday, Twitters on Monday, Questions and Answers on Friday, American Idol Wednesday and Thursday. . . I blow those dates sometimes, but I usually have something in mind for most days of the week. Given how many blogs I flip through each week, it’s easy enough to come up with a link dump or another topic of interest worth writing a sole post about.

Not that there aren’t times I’d rather step away from the computer and play Guitar Hero or read a comic or watch a DVD or something. I just tend to feel more productive this way. I’m building something here, you know?

Would also you rank the season 5 finale of The Shield as one of the best, most unexpected/shocking/brilliant scenes ever on TV?

Yes. I know I should expand on that answer, but I’m not sure how I could. Although for pure shock, nothing beats that ALIAS season finale where the car gets hit out of nowhere. I jumped in my chair at that one.

And for the obligatory nonsense question: You are stuck on a desert island, what kind of cereal do you take with you?

I’m not much of a cereal person. Being diabetic, I’m limited on the ones I can eat, anyway. About all I’ll do is eat puffed rice (think sugar free Rice Crispies) with some raisins. But if I were on that island, I’m going with Chex Mix. Does that count?

And Soon asks:

Do you think your podcast voice has changed over the life of the Pipeline Podcast thus far?

I go back and listen to bits of the older Pipeline Podcasts every now and again to hear if I’ve changed at all. So I kinda know the answer to this one already. My voice has changed, but not as much as I would have thought. Part of that has to do with the fact that, before podcasting, I had done college radio and local radio for a number of years. My voice was already pretty well honed at that point. Podcasting allows me to be freer and sloppier, is all. There have been two changes I hear from the beginning:

1. I talk faster. I worried too much about enunciating in the early days, and it slowed me down. I got some e-mail complaints about that, so I sped things up and that got to be very comfortable very quickly.

2. I’ve added better equipment, like a condensor mic and a compressor. Both of those help even out my voice, eliminate some of the hollow sounds that a “regular” mic produces. I’m still not happy with the final sound. I play with it every single week, but the change is never great enough. I’m constantly annoyed by something happening on the bassline. I can’t quite figure it out and I’m probably the only person who hears it, but I can’t get rid of it. I’ll keep trying.

Nowadays, I’m working on speaking at a lower volume into the mic.  I found myself shouting into the mic a little too much, so I’m trying to be more conversational and less over-the-top, as it were.

Thanks for the questions, Soon and Paul!

Please, post your questions in the comments thread below and I’ll try to get to them on Friday this week, which is the normally scheduled time for this “feature.”

And GO GIANTS!

Today, let’s look at a couple more I’ve enjoyed since then, plus one that I’ve come around to.

Radiant Vista’s The Daily Critique is a video podcast worth its weight in gold. Hosting by Craig Tanner, each show (not really daily these days, but frequently updated, nonetheless) takes a picture submitted by a listener and is analyzed by the host. He works through the image, first looking at the metadata to see how it was shot and with what gear. He analyzes the layout, the composition, the color, the thematic elements, and more about each picture.

If you learn by seeing, this is the show to watch. Along the way, he talks about “perfect world improvements,” and uses his own Photoshop-fu to show you how to spruce up an image, whether it’s by cloning parts of it, highlighting certain colors, cropping an image, or something else. It is NOT a Photoshop course by any stretch, but it gives you an idea of what can be done in there.

The shows are relatively short, averaging about eight or ten minutes, but sometimes stretching out to 15. He talks fast with a slightly southern accent, so you’re never lost. He puts you very much at ease.

Craig Tanner’s audio podcast, Radiant Vista, is a more general photography podcast. This one tends to take one topic on at a time, whether it’s something technical like depth of field or something more general like the importance of “play” in your photographic sessions. Each show is about a half hour. I’ve only listened to a few selected ones, but I’ve learned a lot, even on those shows not devoted to technical things. Or maybe I’m just an outside observer who enjoys hearing stories of photographic workshops I’ll never attend.

The podcast hasn’t updated since September, but the archives are not very timely. It’s a good general photography podcast, even if it does occasionally veer off a tad into “creativity” exercises and theories. Just follow the show titles and you’ll be able to figure out which episodes are best suited to you.

The Candid Frame, hosted by Ibarionex Parillo, is a (mostly) weekly half hour interview show with a new photographer every outing. The goal on this podcast is not to talk gear and tips and tricks, but rather to get to the heart of what the photographer is doing or trying to do with his or her artwork. Obviously, this is one in which your mileage will vary wildly from week to week, depending on the person being interviewed. I’ve heard interviews with gothic landscape painters, a fellow podcaster, portrait photographers, documentarians, and more. It runs the whole gamut. Honestly, most of it bores me. The most interesting show so far was a recent one in which Parillo talks about his personal career move to more straight-up photography. He’s trying to move away from the teaching and writing thing, and move back into making his career more as a straight-up photographer.

Parillo also appears on The Focus Ring podcast, which I discussed previously, and which updated with its 11th and also show for 2007.

I’ve also become addicted to Lightsource recently. I mentioned it in my last Photography Podcast writeup as one that wasn’t really in my ballpark. The two hosts focus mostly on lights and lighting strategies, which is beyond me at this point. It’s not as bad as that, though. The more shows I listen to, the more I learn about photography, in general. A recent interview (episode 52) with Roy Cox was particularly interesting, as the Baltimore-based portrait/editorial photographer told the story of how he clawed and scratched his way up in the world, renting a small room in a warehouse without lights to taking most of the warehouse over and shooting for everyone from Hollywood to models. Check out episode 49 for an interview with Jock McDonald, a portrait photography with some funny stories. Other episodes were dedicated to architecture photographers, food photographers, and fashion photographers. It’s interesting to learn all the different angles and the high end technical stuff just breezes right by me without annoying me.

They do, however, sound EXACTLY like those NPR-like hosts on Saturday Night Live in the Alec Baldwin Christmas sketch. It’s scary. But it’s still ten times better than the obnoxiously wacky zany morning show host of Photo Talk Radio.

Related Various and Sundry Posts:

• The Benefits of a Tripod (25 Nov 2007)
• Christmas Tree Angel (24 Nov 2007)
• Waterfall (11 Nov 2007)
• Choosing the Right Camera (for me) (25 Oct 2007)

If you’re wondering why all the webcomic artists are suddenly pushing you to buy their print collections, I have a guess; The New Cintiq Tablets. They now have a $1000 model. it’s a small screen, but if I were an up-and-coming cartoonist, I’d be all over this. I imagine it has the power to transform some workflows of comic creators, too. I expect a lot of comic colorists might jump on this, too. Mark my words.

And now for the geekery:

• Regexes are the coolest things in the known universe, but difficult to grok for many. I’m not sure this page makes it any easier, but different strokes for different folks, and all that.
• I love the fact that if you search on my name in Google Books, there’s an actual result! Oddly enough, there’s two — the second one is in Japanese. It’s for Podcasting Hacks, an early podcasting book from O’Reilly that I was interviewed for. I’m still tickled that I made an O’Reilly book!
• In 1897, the Indiana State Legislature attempted to simplify the lives of millions of math students overnight by setting pi equal to 3. It failed. All together now: 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971. . . .
• Here’s some help memorizing the digits of pi.

Fast forward to the 42:32 mark, where host Leo Laporte attempts to do an Audible commercial. Problem is, Audible heavily DRMs all the books you download from them. And TWiT panelist Cory Doctorow is a die-hard anti-DRM kind of guy, and not ashamed to talk about it. As an author, his dealings with Audible have been disappointing.

So every time Leo tries to defend Audible, Cory smacks him down.

By the time everything is said and done, Leo’s bailed on the commercial and you’re listened to five minutes of wonderfully awkward podcasting.