Microsoft's Photography Site
Photography is something of a hobby of mine. I'm not nearly as competent as even many of my colleagues (for example, Mike Swanson takes some fantastic macro photography), but I gain great satisfaction from taking portrait photographs and candid, informal street scenes.
I stumbled on our own prosumer digital photography site today and found some really interesting stuff that you wouldn't necessarily expect to find on a Microsoft property. We've spent a lot of time hiring creative professionals over the last year or so, and it's starting to pay some great rewards. The site is buried four levels deep (Windows XP -> Using Windows XP -> Photography -> Pro Photography) - it's almost as if we didn't want people to find out about it - but there are some really useful articles and software downloads that will appeal to anyone who has a digital SLR in particular.
Here are a few of my favorite links:
- Article: Cleaning digital camera sensors
- Article: Ten Little Known Photoshop CS RAW Tricks (Photoshop? Has our site been hijacked by Adobe?!)
- Utility: New Color Control Panel Applet for Windows XP
- Utility: RAW Image Viewer and Thumbnailer (recently updated)
- Utility: SyncToy Folder Synchronization
- Photographers' Galleries:
Matthew Felton (landscape) Matthew Jordan Smith (portraits) George Lepp (wildlife) Art Wolfe (environmental)
If you're into photography, check the site out. I'll write more "expressively" about Microsoft creative tools next week (get the hint?!)...