In honor of St. Patty’s Day I thought I would talk about what’s going on with some photos I took yesterday. I definitely had a white balance issue with the green photo on the left. Digital cameras are great, however sometimes you’ll get some photos that come out very green, blue, and orange . This happens because digital camera’s  don’t always measure the light’s color temperature correctly. If you want to learn more about light temperature and digital photography check out Cambridge in Colour it’s a great website that can explain the physics behind it all.

Anyway, when you’re out taking progress photos pay attention to the display output. You’ll know immediately from the display image if you have a white balance issue. For many progress photos you can rely on the AWB “Auto White Balance” mode but if you’re taking a photos where you have a mixture of daylight and fluorescent lights you may need to force the white balance to daylight or fluorescent depending on the condition. This can be controlled through the camera’s “Menu”. You’ll want to select the “White Balance” option and then select the type of light that you think best matches your condition. It may take a couple tries but you’ll know when you’ve found the correct setting. Check your manual or go online if you’re having trouble finding the white balance setting, every camera is different. Hope this helps explain why sometimes your photos may be green, blue or orange.

Note:  If you have to take the camera off Auto White Balance (AWB) I suggest changing it back to “Auto” when you’re done. Otherwise someone else may grab the camera who’s not familiar with white balancing and take a bunch of blue photos then wonder what happened, trust me…

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One of the biggest mistakes I typically see is when people say they’re going to take progress photos of their job site and they don’t condition themselves to take photos from the same location on a regular basis. Every now and again they’ll go out and take a bunch of random photos from all over the place. Progress photos are taken to document the progress of a construction project. To do this correctly progress photos should to be taken from the same location each week. (more…)

When you’re selecting where to establish your stationary points it’s a great idea to select points in the Electrical and Mechanical rooms. I’ve noticed that photographing these rooms can be difficult because they are often locked for security and safety reasons. Let me suggest having the subcontractor photograph these rooms each week from the same location and upload it to the site. This will save you the hassle of rounding up the electrician or plumber to open the door and it will also provide valuable updates on critical scopes of work. Sharing these photos with the subcontractors office will also provide them with helpful update information on job sites their management may not visit every week.

The Mechanical and Electrical trades are extremely important to a projects success and I believe that sharing progress photos with these groups will improve project communication and delivery. So don’t forget to photograph these critical areas and if you’re having trouble getting into the rooms see if the subcontractor controlling access will take one picture each week for you. I’m sure their office would like to get updates as well.

One of the nice features that Windows Vista offers is a Gadget Plug-in Store. The Vista Gadget Plug-in Store is kind of like the iPod apps store sort of… Here you can download free plug-ins to your desk top.  One of the gadgets I’ve downloaded to help capture images from my computer screen is called “Screen Snaper“. This is like Print Screen but allows you to save the image in (7) different file types including .jpg. I like to use this gadget when converting plans with different file extensions into .jpg files.  When I open the image all I have to do is zoom into the area I want to caputre and then click the Screen Snaper. If you have Vista take a few minutes download it and try-it out. I think it works well.