My daughter is off to San Diego this AM for her second Youth America Grand Prix.

As far as competitions go, this is the big one. This is the yearly event that even those not into competitions (read: us) will attend as a way to add some fire to training/growth.

Chloe performed admirably last year and scored in the top 10 for her age group, and we were pretty excited about that as it was her first ever competition.

This year she’s worked much harder. This year, despite only starting pointe six months ago, her routine is all on pointe and it has pushed her quite dramatically. She’s really developed, and is nailing some very difficult moves.

Here she is Monday at a dress rehearsal at the EBT studio.

Good luck Chloe! You’ve worked hard. Now show it.

P.S. the poor thing came down with the stomach flu Wednesday. She feels much better, but we’re hoping for the best.

Its Lightroom Tuesday! Huzzah! Sorry for the lateness, but I’ve been flat on my back sick all day, and am just getting over what was a nasty 24 hour bug.

Anyhow, each week I gather the best of the Lightroom-o-sphere into one place for your edification, perusal and gain, so lets have at it...

• A neat new HDR plugin for Lightroom.
• Off-center Vignetting? There is an app for that. Er, I mean, technique.
• A review of the Totally Rad Lightroom Effects preset set.
• Aperture 3 - Time to Switch? Uh, no.
• Matt K has some more reasons why Lightroom remains a better product.
• Organizing your photos in Lightroom. Adobe TV’s Julianne Kost.
• Lightroom or Photoshop? Or both? Personally, Lightroom for 90% and Photoshop for the rest. Lightroom is much more efficient.
• X-Equals takes a stab at fixing Chromatic Abberation.
• Rob Sylvan has some Grid View Tips.
• A new preset from Lightroom Killer Tips...
• LIghtroom vs. Bridge. You need to ask? Having worked on both, I never use Bridge anymore. Lightroom is just much better.
• An interesting look at new camera support between Lightroom and Aperture.
• More from Lightroom Killer tips: Quick panel tip, A look at the Recovery slider (Matt is on a roll this week)
• Preset Heaven offers some new presets (its been awhile)...

Well, that is about it. I’m ready to get back in bed...

Tags:Lightroom

Once upon a time, I was a hard-core street photographer. Plying my trade documenting the live and trappings of public life.

I don’t do this as much as I used to, mostly because my interests have moved on. But every once in a while, I get the urge. Here are a few from my last few days in Mexico.

Well, its been raining off and on here in Mexico for the last two days. Not terribly problematic, but being from Seattle and all, we were looking forward to more sun than rain this week.

But you get what you get. Here are a few random shots from the last few days...

Tags:Family

Its Lightroom Tuesday! Huzzah! Direct from Mexico to you wherever you are.

Each week I gather the best of the Lightroom-o-sphere into one place for your edification, perusal and gain.

• Sean McCormack walks you thru how to fix a weak catchlight
• One photographers walk-thru of how he uses the Adjustment Brushes in Lightroom 2. Sometimes its informative to see how someone else does something, even if you already think you get something.
• One photographer looks at the color differences in Lightroom vs. Aperture 3
• A reminder to back up. Everything.
• Laura Shoe looks at LRB Exhibition - a new “all-in-one” website creator for your photography.
• Matt K tells us when its time to start from scratch...
• Lightroom Secrets has a spotlight on Adobe’s Anita Dennis
• Timothy Armes has updated his Elegance web engine...
• The gloves are off - a look at Aperture and Lightroom...
• LightroomKillerTips tells you why you might wanna stick with Lightroom.
• Zack Arias looks at his worlkflow...
• How to export several versions of a file at once...
• X-Equals + LIDF - Creative Production Presets, and they also have a nice look at keeping all those presets organized

That is it. Greetings from the sunny beach from where I sit typing this out.

Tags:Lightroom

Greetings from Sayulita, Mexico.

The whole SmugGang headed south for our yearly retreat. And by gang I mean fifty some odd people, families and spouses included,installed in a variety of fun beach houses for a week of fun and work.

Today we’re sitting by the pool, listening to the surf pound the beach and just having a ball.

Here are a few pictures from this morning...

Tags:Family

Well, Apple finally released Aperture 3!

Surprise!

I love how secretive Apple is with their stuff. Mums the word. When things look good and dead, and most people have moved on, they suddenly pull this “Ta-da” routine and expect us to get excited.

But hey, I’m no marketing genius. Maybe it will work. I much prefer the openness from Adobe, to be honest. Open betas, open discussions and true community involvement.

But that is neither here nor there. The release is now out and it has some interesting things. And competition is a good thing, to be sure, so this will certainly serve as a nice exclamation point to the Lightroom team meetings. I’ve sat thru these meetings twice before (on this very subject) and it is a good thing for photographers.

Here are some quick impressions, with more to come later..

• Brushes - Welcome to the party (PS. Adobe skip the full page Welcome ad in the WSJ). I remember some of us sitting around making fun of their half-arsed effort in Aperture 2. This one is finally non-destructive, and I quickly noted that they appropriated quite a bit from our designs in Lightroom 2. Like a lot. They do have Quick brushes, which was something I really pushed for in 2 (I wanted brushes for specific tasks like "Dodge, Burn, Skin Soften, etc.) but it didn’t happen.
• Presets - Its been how many years?
• Faces/Places - I’m not sure how the market will receive these, but they are obviously building on what they have in iPhoto. That is great for a segment of the population that shoots a few pictures at family functions or on trips, but I'm just not sure how useful these will be to working pros.  Personally I spend too much time working on the photos to even properly keyword them all the time, let alone tag them for faces or worry about GPS coordinates.  But when you shoot as much as I do, I might be a bell curve edger. I reserve the right to be wrong, and do applaud them for looking for areas to help make photo management easier.
• Import - Lightroom did a good job providing them a template here as well.
• Color Labels -   Whahoo! Amazing. Kidding. They do sync with the Finder though, which is nice if you want to forgo the *management* part of Aperture and dig in the OS.
• LIbrary Merge - Just a simplified drag/drop merging of libraries.  Slightly better than we did with catalog import export but not much.
• LCD Panel - A minor thing, but it caught my eye. A camera-like display of metadata in a nice small area. Why did it catch my eye? Because I designed and patented this display for Bridge 2 several years ago and they’ve largely copied it. FWIW, I tried to get it in Lightroom/ACR but didn’t succeed.
• Focus - A small thing, but cool. One can see the focus points right on your image like you do on the back of your camera - kinda useful to see where you screwed up and focused on the wrong thing. Frankly, I wish Lightroom did this.
• Video Support - Very interesting.  Broadens aperture's asset management approach to include what photogs in the past year or two have dealt with. This will be controversial move, but might just work for them.  When looking at this years ago, I initially wanted LR to stay focused on photogs, trying to avoid another product (guess which one) that expanded rapidly to encompass a bunch of user groups and left photographers wondering what happened to “Photo” in the shop. Honestly, I’m not sure where I'd come down on this argument today, but I at least appreciate LR3 not ignoring the .move files.  Apple allows for management, playback, and basic trimming with external editors for anything else
• Advanced Slideshows - Lots of control here. Very nice. I prefer solutions like SmugMug because these can get big. And I can sell from SmugMug.
• Books - This is huge. Pros can get high quality albums, including the big brands - Queensbury, Couture, Leather Craftsman.  Wedding photogs will eat this up.
• Printing - Looks largely like what we did in 2.0 and is being finished in the forthcoming Lightroom 3
• Speed - 64 bit.  Like Lightroom 2 from a few years ago. Wonder if it will make a difference.

I have yet to really look at the release or put it thru its paces. Time will tell if some of the new views/modes for browsing images will be useful.

Tags:Lightroom

My wife blames me for the crazy behavior of this child, in response I have oft hinted that she was on something during the pregnancy.

This is what I walked into yesterday afternoon in our front room. I have no idea what he was doing, but he was doing some kung-fu stuff with his shirt in the Cornholio position and had decorated his torso with kid-toos.

Shrug. Welcome to my world.

Psst. She’s right.

Tags:Family

Its Lightroom Tuesday! Huzzah!

Each week I gather the best of the Lightroom-o-sphere into one place for your edification, perusal and gain.

• InsideLightroom looks at the state of Lightroom plugins.
• Digital Photo Experience looks at searching with the Library Filters.
• A speed tip from Foto-Biz. This one is new to me.
• Terry White has a tip for using Smart Collections to remove crap from your Lightroom Library.
• A spot removal tip from Outdoor Photo Gear.
• Sherri Meyer has posted her top 10 LR tweets of the week. Saves me some typing...
• An interesting look at the difference between Photoshop Actions and Lightroom Presets.
• Eric Cheng looks at the difference between Raw and sRaw conversions.
• Foto-Biz takes a look at LR previews.
• LightroomKillerTips has new preset for your perusal.
• Sean McCormack at Lightroomblog.com has some info about a new LR web gallery that he’s about to release into the wild. I’ve got a prerelease copy to have a look at after I was asked about this on my Lightroom Questions forum.
• Speaking of which, I answered several new questions at my Lightroom Q&A forum this week.
• Lightroomsecrets.com has a new contributor.
• I love collections. Use them daily. Laura Shoe looks at how to save time with them.
• Applying Presets - how to apply them to multiple photos at once.
• Color Calibration. Its hard. Here is a look at the difference between monitors and printers.
• Lightroom 2.6.1 available - has fixes mostly for Leica M9 shooters.
• X-Equals looks at the processing of editing one’s photos.
• A Holga preset from X-Equals. Don’t forget to sign up for the X-Equals digest, a weekly digest of cool Lightroom stuff.

That is it for today. Have a great Tuesday.

Tags:Lightroom

I tweeted a few days ago about what I’ve observed over the past year of owning a Kindle.

In a nutshell, I buy more books. Quite a few more, actually.

I’m a big reader, and my standard goal is to read 50 books a year, and I’ve found that I’m pretty good at meeting that milestone each year.

The big problem is that we’ve got limited book shelf space. And I don’t say that because we have one bookshelf. Over the past few years, I built several wall-length, floor to ceiling bookshelves for at least 15 horizontal feet of shelving. And they are all full. Which leads to stacks of books in my office, which really bugs my wife.

So when I got a Kindle, I was really excited to start putting some books there instead of our straining shelves. My thinking was that I’d put all the stuff I’d only read once on the device and continue to buy the important stuff in paper form. I’ve since noted that convenience, ease and price, has mostly pushed most book purchases to the Kindle. While I’ve bought several in both formats so I can have it in paper as well, it is only after I read it on the Kindle and decide its great. And I generally do it on Kindle.

Furthermore, I really like that the Kindle lets you download a sample of a book and get a few chapters in before you pull the rip cord. I’ve only once not purchased the book from that sample. I love this feature.

I also like having 60 books with me at any one time. Remember, I can get all the Kindle books on my iPhone as well so I tend to have my library with me always. I *love* this. I even take them backpacking with me; gone are the days when I had to ration myself.

I really like the $9.99 price point, and I buy more books because of it. I noticed this week that there was a dust up with Amazon and a major book publisher who wants to raise prices. Crazy talk. I realize that a hardback runs from $18 to $24, but ebooks don’t have the production and transportation issues that the paper books do, so I expect them to be cheaper. And $10 is a real sweet spot. Just like $1 songs on itunes, and that worked well. I have not bought a CD in ages.

I did see some arguments online for the market to take its course - let publishers decide the price and the market will eventually settle at a good price. This certainly makes sense, but I’ve also seen what corporations can do to marketplaces and frankly I don’t mind Amazon being the heavy here.

And in the mean time, I’m happily buying more books than I did before and there are less stacks of books in my office for my wife to trip over.

Book FTW!