Breakdance and Popping Contest at Siam Center, Bangkok

Breakdance and popping competition in front of the Siam Center, Bangkok, on 30 May 2009 (2 on 2 B-Boy battles).

glossyart.net Joins Forces with Amazon

As a special service in our tutorial section we've now included links to products sold by amazon.com so that you can start creating breathtaking images even faster in case you don't have a necessary accessory yet. For example, if you've read our infrared tutorial but you don't have an IR filter yet you can just click on the link and buy one at amazon.com, wait one or two days and you're ready to go :)

Tutorials Revamped

Our tutorials section has been revamped. Now when you click on "Tutorials" in the top menu bar you're taken to the tutorials home page, where you can choose to either walk through the photo enhancement wizard or click on an item on the index list to go directly to the tutorial section you're interested in.

Tsunami on 22 July 2009 and we're all going to die!

Well, from the exaggerating title you have probably deduced already that I find this whole paranoid forwarding of e-mails stating that a tsunami will hit Southeast Asia simply ridiculous.

In these e-mails or forums you can read that a tsunami will be spawned in the Pacific east of Japan on 22 July 2009, hitting Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Maldives, hey wait--aren't the Maldives in the Indian ocean and can't be hit by a tsunami from the Pacific? Whatever, we shouldn't question this, everyone's going to die!!

Oh wait, there's Internet rule number one: We should--no, we MUST question everything we read on the Internet. Do some research before you freak out and spam a forum or your friends' email accounts.

First of all, even with the latest technology it's not possible to predict an earthquake a couple of months in advance. It's hard enough to predict an earthquake a couple of days in advance!

Second, even if there's an underwater earthquake in the Pacific that doesn't automatically mean it will cause a tsunami. And not all tsunamis are lethal.

Third, most of these emails say that the earthquake will be caused by a long solar eclipse. Duh, earthquakes happen because of tectonics, not because of some miraculous stellar or lunar constellations. By the way, the fact that some people freak out when the moon covers the sun might explain why lunar and lunatic are almost the same words...

So in general don't freak out when you get an email like this one. Don't believe things easily, and look things up on reliable websites when you're in doubt before you decide to forward emails. Anyone can create a hoax like this one. And don't you think that the authorities would warn the public with an official press release in the news rather than starting a mass email that easily gets out of control?

Anyway, even if there's the biggest tsunami of all time and you happen to be around, check out our tutorials about how to take better photos. These tips might come in handy when you want to sell your images to the media ;) And good luck!

You can also check out this topic at snopes.com.

Feel free to question this article ;)

Photos from the Maldives

View all photos from our honeymoon on the Maldives at adiabraun.com.

Meng To about Shadowness 8

Meng aka 7shadows, the Shadowness guy, gave me the chance to check out the design of the all-new Shadowness 8. In return he forced me to interview him and post the interview uncensored. Let's take a look behind the scenes and discover the concept, the technology, what's new and how Meng's brain is wired.


In a nutshell

"The idea of followers is very essential to the new version. You follow because you subscribe, and you build your fan base which is the most important thing for an artist."

"The new concept is an open and promotional-driven portfolio community. Everything will be by the power of the users."

"We offer micro blogging for artists; collections will serve as a platform to gather resources and post as a blog or microblogs. RSS-driven. Users will be able to submit updates across websites: multiple Twitter accounts, Facebook, RSS."

"I just want to offer the best and easiest to use tools and anticipate ways to promote as much as possible. The biggest deployment is to open it to Twitter and have a language/format that bloggers, Facebook and Twitter understand, making it easier for artists to share their posts."

"The beauty of the new Shadowness is that you don't have to post images. You can post links, and credit to other people's work, create a collection for yourself. You don't have to be talented to be interesting."

The site will go live "hopefully in a month."


Click here to read the full interview.

New Domain and More!

Dear visitors,

Due to inaccessibility of our old server at glossyart.com we've just moved to glossyart.net, so make sure to update your bookmarks ;)

We've changed some things around the site, with the most prominent change being the revamped tutorial section. Now you get tons of helpful tips during your workflow.

There are also a couple of new wallpapers in the wallpaper section, and we've updated our gallery as well. Got a couple of killer shots from a photo shoot with friends at an abandoned building in Bangkok!

On the home page you can now follow our twitter microblog for the latest quick updates.

Finally, our contact e-mail has changed. You can now reach us at mike@glossyart.net or adia@glossyart.net. We'd love to hear from you :)


Thanks for sticking with us!

Mike and Adia
glossyart.net