About Cloud Photographic

Cloud Photographic is an online gallery of photographs by Ben Haller. These photographs are currently not for sale; they are on-line just for people to look at, particularly friends and relatives (but everybody is welcome). If you want to obtain the original, full-resolution file for one of these photographs, you can ask (but please accept that you may not get what you want). All of the images on this site (even the thumbnail-sized ones) are copyrighted by Ben Haller and may be used or reproduced only with permission.

Credits

Thanks to Andie for introducing me to photography back in 1994. Thanks to Saul for inspiring me to learn to fly, and for loving photography with me. Thanks to Jan Pieterzak, Craig Fucile, Barbara Brundege and the whole photography department at UCSC for their wonderful classes that have taught me so much. Most of all, thanks to my wife Keewi for her support, companionship and love. I couldn't do it without you.

This site was produced on Mac OS X using Apple's iPhoto and Drooling Cat's BetterHTMLExport, using a custom template I whipped up to generate the web pages. The photos that are from film were scanned using Hamrick's VueScan. The photos that are from a digital camera were reviewed, weeded and sorted using Stick Software's PhotoReviewer (written by yours truly). Photos were then batch processed using Lemkesoft's GraphicConverter and Adobe's Photoshop Elements. Web pages were previewed using Apple's Safari and OmniGroup's OmniWeb. No Microsoft products were used.

My film cameras were (I no longer have them) a Pentax 645N medium-format camera and a Pentax K1000 35mm camera. In medium format I mostly shot Velvia, but experimented with many other kinds of film. I used the 35mm camera almost exclusively for taking infrared black and white photos using both Kodak and Konica film.

Then I got a Minolta DiMAGE A1 digital camera, which I recommend; its combination of a very flexible zoom lens and anti-shake technology gives you amazing versatility without the use of a tripod. Sadly, that camera broke after several years of dedicated service. I now have a Panasonic DMC-FZ50. I have to look up that model number every time; is it really necessary to string together so many meaningless letters and numbers just to represent a camera? Fifty years from now, will I have to remember that I drive a QRX-AC2340, while my sneakers are PMAG45-17WMDs? Anyhow, it's a pretty decent camera, although far from perfect; see Glaciers & Volcanoes, 2007 for a bit of a review of it.

I bought my wife a Canon PowerShot SD200 after very careful comparison shopping, and I'd recommend it almost wholeheartedly — it's very light and tiny, has a wonderful LCD screen, has a great lens with a really wide zoom range for a camera so small, and generally takes excellent, well-balanced photos with its automatic metering. Great for quick snapshots, family photos, or for a lightweight travel camera. Its only drawback is that photos using flash are generally very poorly exposed; but you really can't expect better from a camera in this class.

Contact Information

Feel free to send e-mail with comments, suggestions, ideas, etc. Please note Cloud Photographic is not hiring. Thanks!

Links

Mac software — Our sister site, Stick Software, with lots of goodies for OS X. In particular, here's a game from Stick Software that's a bit like Tetris, but with a triangular twist!

Buy Books Online — An Amazon affiliate with great reviews and recommendations, including a section by yours truly!

Hypertouch — The host of cloudphotographic.com and sticksoftware.com, as well as an anti-spam and anti-junk-fax crusader, and a haptic peripheral designer.

Design and photography — kyounglee.com does great design work for UI, web or print, as well as portrait, studio and art photography.

Natural Light Photography — A San Francisco Bay Area local photographer I know who does excellent work.

Icon design — widgetwidget is a great icon designer that I've worked with a bunch.

Strong Bad — Incredibly funny, and incredibly prolific. Trogdor!!!

Iron-on clothing labels — Pronto Labels makes iron-on labels for clothing that don't come off in the wash. If you have kids, this is a godsend.

Viagra — Real people's experiences taking Viagra.