Today we launch the brand new Jalbum.net! We have been working on it for a few months now and we are really anxious to get it out to you.
 
In 2007 we noticed that a lot of you who are using the Jalbum software wanted to share your wonderful album creations with the rest of the world. The forum thread “User album showcase” quickly grew to become the most active place in the Jalbum forum. This laid the foundation for our new site. We wanted to build a place for creative people to display their work and get inspired buy the work of others.
 
The new site has a completely new layout and new features. It is centered around what Jalbum is all about: creating and sharing of photo albums. The software page, skin section and the forum have a brand new look. We are also introducing a whole new section of the site called “My Pages”.

My Pages is a set of pages for you to display your albums, collect favorite albums from other users and connect with likeminded. Here is a quick introduction to a few new features:

• News: this section gives updates to you as soon as any updates are done by your contacts or on your favorite albums.
• Home: by clicking on a user name or picture, you’ll reach that person’s “Home”. On the board you can add comments to albums and give/receive feedback on albums. The board is like a mini forum where people can connect through albums.
• Albums: add albums straight from the Jalbum software to your albums page. You may also add them by entering the URL to your published album.
• Favorites: add albums to your favorites to keep track of updates and show others what you like.
• Profile: write a brief presentation to introduce yourself.

A new explore section allows you to browse through tons of user submitted albums to get inspired by. It’s also possible to comment on the albums or add them to favorites as you are looking at them.  Last week we showed the site to 1700 randomly picked users and the feedback we got was great. Thank you all for bug findings and interesting suggestions on how to improve the site. There is still a lot more work to be done, which is the reason why we launch the site as a Beta release. Please help us by sending an e-mail with bug reports and your suggestions. We’ve included a feedback link in the site footer for you to use.

A big thank you goes out to Laza who has designed our new site!

Welcome to the new site!

/David and the Jalbum team
 

Sun flare is a phenomenon where direct sunlight comes into contact with the many pieces of glass in your lens, and then creates mostly unwanted flares and reflections in your photographs. The way to avoid sun flare is to use your lens's hood, or simply place your hand in front and to the side of the lens, thus blocking the direct rays of the sun from coming into contact with your lens surface.

There are a few times when allowing sun flare can be good for a photograph. One memorable example is the cover photograph of Sophia Coppola's film "The Virgin Suicides". Take a look at the DVD jacket the next time you are in a video rental store. In the case of this attached image of the clouds, I waited until the sun was just coming out from behind the cloud and took the shot. I knew that because of the great intensity of the sun, the camera would automatically reduce the exposure, making the background very dark and dramatic.

This type of shot can be very dangerous to your eyes, so I would advise the following: Wear sunglasses, and have your camera on auto exposure. The only time you should be looking through the lens is to quickly get the right composition, then close your eyes and take the shot. Allow your camera to choose the exposure for you, and you might be surprised at the bold images that are a result. If you try the same image a number of times you will find that the sun flare always changes, because your composition will change slightly. Feel free to "bracket" your photos, which is taking many different shots at different exposures. You can lighten or darken your images even when the camera is set on auto exposure. The setting is called Exposure Compensation, and it usually identified with a symbol like this: +/-

Finally, this is the type of shot where older or cheaper lenses may be better, as they do not have as much anti-flare coating on the lens glass (compared to pro lenses). Again, avoid looking at the sun directly when composing the shot . . . you can do a lot of damage to your eyes.

Thanks to professional photographer Mark Hemmings (www.markhemmings.com) for writing this photo tip.