• Basic photography concepts – camera controls, exposure, focusing, white balance.
• Advanced exposure control – when to ignore the meter and using histograms to best effect.
• Rules of composition – using them and breaking them.
• Photo correction and post-processing techniques.
• Camera raw adjustments.
• Lightroom workflow.
• Night and low light photography.
• Photography book reviews.
• Software package reviews.

Let us know your thoughts and suggestions!

First of all I’d like to thank all our listeners and friends for all the support you’ve been sending our way. It has been a great ride and, hopefully, it will continue to get always better.

Although we haven’t received much criticism from listeners for this, it is a topic that recurrently comes up in our pre or post-show discussions: the amount of content we should have on the site. And at the moment we feel that is probably our weakest front and it would be beneficial for the community around PhotoNetCast if some more quality information was published on the site.

And so, we are going to look into the community for this – we need some guest writers, people that want an established platform with an audience to write a few articles for once in a while.

Writing about industry news, gear, tutorials, opinions or commentary… You know what we are talking about. And you don’t have to be some big name either. As long as you have something interesting to say and have knowledge of what you want to write about, you’re good.

Interested? Get in touch. Use the contact form or email directly at photonetcat (at) photonetcast.com and we’ll discuss it further in detail.

Lately, we have been getting a higher number of questions and comments on the show, mainly via email or contact form. We truly appreciate the time you guys take in letting us know what you think of the show, and welcome you to continue doing so. However, when you get in touch via email, the most that we can do is read those questions or comments on the show, and since PhotoNetCast is an audio show, why not let your voice be heard?

Voice comments are back online

A new system is in place for you to be able to do just that: ask us your photography-related questions, give general comments on the show, mention things that you’d like us to discuss, prank call us if you feel like it, praise us on what a great photography podcast we produce

Basically anything that you’d want to give some feedback on – The listener voicemail is back online.

How to use the voicemail line?

Easy. If you are US-based, click on the "Call Me" button on the sidebar and Google will connect you to our voicemail for free. If you’re not in the US (or if you are but prefer to call direct) dial +1 (415) 343 5030. Get this number on your contacts list…

We and all the audience are looking forward to listen to what you have to say.

When we started the show back in 2008, our aim was to bring to the photographic community relevant discussions and sharing some of our knowledge and opinions.

Our aim has definitely not changed, but our lives have to be given also some priority, and if you have been following us, you’ve probably noticed that it has been increasingly difficult to manage to get all the four of us in one recording session. And that is where the true value of PhotoNetCast stands – there are good "one-man-shows" out there – but the roundtable format was/is/will be always our approach for an engaging discussion.

What we need

We believe in maximizing diversity of opinions while giving enough room for people to share them, and for us (and hopefully for you too) this lies with having 3 or 4 co-hosts per show.

At the moment, if two of us are unable to join in on a scheduled recording, we fall behind our "sweet spot" and usually tend to re-schedule, which usually means delays in publishing the shows, and that is something we’d certainly like to avoid.

So, after a brief discussion, we plan to expand the PhotoNetCast team and find two additional co-hosts. This will hopefully allow us to keep to a periodic recording and publishing schedule, and everyone involved to be able to better define their own schedules without having to juggle too many time blocks around.

Want to join the PhotoNetCast team?

What we require

Not much. You don’t need to be a professional photographer (although you’re welcome if you are), but you need to have an active and opinionated interest in photography and willingness to share those opinions.

Besides that, other requirements are (some more negotiable than others):

– Headphones / microphone / headset (you don’t need a pro mike, but something that does not terribly distort your voice is appreciated)

- Good internet connection (since we use VoIP technology to record, a connection that allows you to be heard without many cut-offs – this can be tested)

- Willingness to spend around 2 hours every 2 weeks talking about photography (depending on the number of additional co-hosts, your presence in every recording might not be required although you’re always welcome to join)

- Compatible time zone (if you live in the US this would probably be evenings, or very early mornings if you’re based in Europe, afternoon in Australia, … , you get the point and it’s open for discussion)

- Did we mention willingness to talk about photography?

How to apply

Just send us an email to photonetcast (a) photonetcast.com (or use the contact form) stating your interest, why you’d like to join us and what you bring to the show, and what is your experience with photography. Address also the points above so that we know what we can count on. That’s it. No visit to an assessment center required.

We hope that you consider the offer to join the team and help us make PhotoNetCast always better.

And don’t worry, it was also intimidating for us in the beginning, but we are a friendly bunch and we’ll make you feel welcome in no time.

Probably due to the regularity that we have been releasing episodes in the past, many of you have noticed that PhotoNetCast has been MIA.

First of all I want to thank everyone who took the time to send us emails asking about the show, and even some showing concern about our personal well-being (not to mention the shower of twitter messages). Having someone like you guys listening to our rambles on photography and having included PhotoNetCast in your playlists on a regular basis is one of the main reasons why we produce the show, and keeps us going for more.

And the lack of shows can be almost all blamed on me. In the middle of August I had some unexpected travelling to do which ruined my plans to gather the group and record, then came the holidays, and in the beginning of September our schedules simply did not allow for us to get together. I guess we can call it life…

But no worries, PhotoNetCast #36 is recorded (since this morning) and planned for release in the beginning of next week.

Once again, thanks for your patience, and I guess we’ll meet on your side of the speakers.

After one year of PhotoNetCast, and probably too much neglect, we finally decided to open the drawer where we store all the makeup kit and work on a new visual for the show’s blog.

Although a podcast is more about the audio than the site itself, we feel it’s important to project a good front image for anyone looking for new photography podcasts on the web, and for all our listeners that visit us looking for the show notes or wanting to look at the photos we select for the photo critique segments.

So, if you’re reading this on a feed reader, please head on to Photonetcast.com and take a look at the new layout. As with everything on the show, we’d be grateful if you can take a few minutes and tell us what you think about the new layout.

Still regarding this, an idea that as been mentioned behind the scenes a few times is a change in the album cover art for the show, so if sometime in the future you see a new PhotoNetCast logo, don’t be surprised. Meanwhile, if you have some ideas on what makes a good cover art for a photography podcast, let us know.

It has happened to me several times that someone asks for a critique on a certain photo or portfolio, and I’m sure this has happened to everyone else here at PhotoNetCast. Getting other people’s opinions on your work is a great way to improve photographically: you get to know what others feel about your images without the emotional attachment that you have towards your own work. While I usually gladly share my thoughts, I feel that it would be good if more than one person could benefit from the photo critiques.

If you’ve listened to our episode 26 you know what I’m hinting at here. Basically, we are opening a new segment on PhotoNetCast in which we will critique a certain photo (or more, depending on time) submitted  by one of our listeners.

How will it work?

Basically, what we have planned is to release these segments as individual episodes intercalated with our regular episodes. Hopefully, these episodes will be shorter than usual, and if we have a good volume of contributions from the PhotoNetCast community, you’ll have something to listen from us every week (something that our listeners have been asking for some time).

We will provide honest critiques, looking at the good and the bad of your photos, and we’ll try to give suggestions on how they could be improved. Together with the release of the episodes, the photos in question will be published here on the blog so that all our listeners can follow the conversation. During these conversations, we’ll probably approach different topics regarding composition rules, exposure, depths of field, etc. so we believe this will provide value for everyone.

For now the theme is open, but it is possible that we will release certain topics for you to submit to in the future.

How to submit your photos?

If you have a photo (or more than one) that you’d like us to critique on the show, here is how you can send it to us:

Flickr – If you want your submissions to be seen by everyone (whether they end up in critique or not), the best way is just to add your work to our just-created PhotoNetCast group on Flickr.

Email – Alternatively you can send us an email at photonetcast _at_ photonetcast.com (or use our contact form) with a link to wherever your photo is located on the web. If the photo is not published anywhere on the web, feel free to attach it in the email.

And that’s it.

Please note: By submitting your photos you accept that, if your photo is chosen to be critiqued, you give us permission to post it here on the blog in a low resolution format. The photo will be linked to its page on Flickr or wherever you have it on the web.

Anything else?

Nope. This is it. Besides any value you might take from it, we hope you’ll enjoy this new segment of PhotoNetCast, your photography podcast.

As always, any comments and ideas are very much appreciated.

Since the first episodes of PhotoNetCast, once in a while, I get email from listeners asking me how do we produce the show and what equipment do we use (hopefully because the show sounds good). I always try to answer as best as I can, but I feel like I’m repeating myself. So, while I understand that this is not directly photography-related and might not interest all of you, it will be a point that I can direct listeners to whenever these questions come up. And after all, it’s no big secret… Also, it seems that there is not much information on how to setup the equipment that I’m now using for the purpose of podcasting. I hope this will help there as well.

Of course that our system may not be the best one (I’m sure it is not) but it has been a learning process since the beginning and so far it’s working well for us. So, here we go…

The conference call

As you are aware, we are four photographers located at four different geographical locations. While “one-man-shows” do not have to deal with this, we do. All our conversations are done with what is probably one of the most used applications for VoIP and conference calls: Skype.

To record the conversations from Skype, we use Pamela. This little piece of software is able to record incoming and outgoing sound on two different channels of a wav file which makes it ideal for editing. Up to episode #20, this was our only way to record the show. This has recently changed and we now have a different way to record the conversations (more bellow), but this system is still used as a backup recording, just in case…

The podcasting equipment

As I mentioned above, I’ve upgraded some of my equipment and I believe the difference was quite noticeable after episode #21. Until then, the four of us were using headsets with microphones and we never got any big complains about the quality. In fact, both Brian and Martin are still using them and they sound great (Brian is using the Cyber Acoustics AC-840 and Martin uses the Hama HS-400). It’s proof that a podcast can indeed be produced with an extremely low budget.

And this is what my setup looks like after the upgrade.

I know that Jim has also upgraded his gear in order to improve his sound both for PhotoNetCast and EXIF and Beyond and he is now using a Blue Bluebird microphone attached to an Icicle USB preamp.

As for my side, this is what you see in the image above (besides the laptop, the colorimeter, the hard drives, etc.):

• Behringer Xenyx 1002FX mixer
• Behringer B-2 Pro microphone
• Roland Edirol UA-1EX USB audio interface
• Audio-Technica ATH-M20 headphones

And what do I do with all this mess to record the show?

Recording PhotoNetCast

So many knobs, so many cables…

One of the big “fights” that podcasters have while using a mixer and Skype to record shows is that the incoming sound from Skype needs to go into the mixer and the outgoing sound from the microphone connected to the mixer needs to go into Skype. One problem with this is that usually creates a very ugly feedback loop with co-hosts listening to themselves (usually with some delay) and makes the recording impossible.

I’ve figured out a way to bypass this problem and at the same time allowing me to use a third-party application (such as Adobe Audition or Audacity) to record directly the output from the mixer to two separate channels and still keeping Pamela recording as backup.

The setup is hard to explain, but I’ll try.

Let’s start with the mixer. The left column is what controls my microphone. I won’t go into levels and gain (if you want a good explanation of how this works, listen to Podcasters Emporium 11) nor into equalization settings. Two things you should note is that the microphone is completely panned to the left and the aux knob (the red one) is not completely off but outputting just slightly.

The next column is the sound coming in from Skype (yellow line connects the headset output from the laptop into this mixer input). This one is completely panned to the right and aux knob is off.

On the top of the third column (and unrelated to it) is the aux-bus out, which is outputting the sound from my microphone (remember the red knob turned up just slightly on the microphone? This is where that sound goes). This is connected to the mic-in on the laptop (gold line) and allows my co-hosts to listen to me (and not themselves avoiding that feedback loop I mentioned before). It is not used for the main recording.

On top of the fourth column is the headphones output which allows me to listen to myself and the sound coming from Skype.

Over on the right is the main mixer output. My sound and the sound from Skype are separated into left and right channels (remember the panning to the left on my microphone and  to the right on the Skype sound?). These are connected to the USB interface (red and blue lines) which then connects to the laptop. The advantage of having such a USB interface is that the computer recognizes it almost as a separate sound card. This way I can have Skype using the laptop sound card (with incoming and outgoing sounds flowing through the normal mic and headset plugs) and the recording third-party software using the USB interface and recording what comes out of the mixer (both my voice and my co-hosts’), equalized and ready to go. I pan my sound to the left and Skype sound to the right so that I can record into the same track my voice in one channel and my co-hosts’ in the other which, again, is perfect for editing.

I told you it was hard to explain…

Editing and Publishing the Show

If everything went well, I now have two WAV files: one from the main recording and a second one from the backup recording. Hopefully I have to use only the first.

The editing consists of cutting out the things that you shouldn’t really be listening to(some are ending up as outtakes at the end of the show) like some middle show conversation, me loosing the train of thought, silent patches, Martin one of us dropping off the call, too many ahhh hmmm and the like, etc. The intro and outro clips and bumpers are also added at this stage, usually everything into different tracks.

The next step is mixing all the tracks and channels into a single mono track (second track on the image above). To give consistency to the sound levels, the track goes into a compression algorithm which amplifies the lowest volumes and decreases the loudest ones. A normalization step goes next to amplify as much as possible without clipping the sound. The final version of the WAV file is now ready.

Next, the WAV is converted to mp3 (64kbs mono), the file is tagged, uploaded to the server and the corresponding blog post is written. It all ends around 4+ hours later by hitting the Publish button.

And that is it. Listening to the show is your part of the job (and writing some iTunes reviews also).

I know that I went into probably too much detail on this one, but one of my aims was really to get out some more technical details to anyone wanting to use the same setup. And at least, now you know almost everything that is going on (at least on my side) to produce PhotoNetCast.

As always, if you have any questions or are curious about any further details, just ask. I’ll do my best to explain.

Following an idea that the podcast market on Digital Photography is currently too focused on content created by single individuals, and that there is a need for a space in which Photography is discussed between people in the industry, in a dynamic and relaxed way, PhotoNetCast was created.

Antonio Marques (Words: irrational), Martin Gommel (Kwerfeldein), Jim Goldstein (JMG-Galleries) and Brian Auer (Epic Edits) came together and share their knowledge and opinions on topics that concern beginners and advanced photographers alike.

We hope that our efforts are well accepted by the photography community (you), and that besides the entertainment factor, we can bring you topics that prove to be also educational.

Every two weeks we are here, and hope to find you on that side of the headphones.