Birthday!
I'm getting old. Slowly, but it is happening. I don't feel a day older than the day I graduated from university 13 years ago. Certainly a bit wiser, but still...
Every year, I celebrate by slacking off and running up a mountain. Mostly I climb Tiger Mountain, which sits right next to me and is 5 min away. Its the most climbed mountain near Seattle - mostly due to proximity, but you get some nice views. This year I went late - early afternoon and ran up and back in a decent 1:30 min. Nothing shattering, but fast enough. Took a few pictures, but have not pulled them out of the Leica yet.
Today I also submitted almost 100 pictures to a RM stock photo site. I've had a blast going back thru my archive and seeing what I have there. I'm also putting in two images into the APE pool. Its the last day for that. Selection hasn't been that hard, really.
Speaking of which, here is an image I pulled out from a few months back.
This is my son, again, sporting his mohawk. No, its
not a faux-hawk or a jockhawk its the real thing and
he gets away with it because I had one in my early
twenties.
Punk Rock, baby, Punk Rock.
EBT Shoot
The last image was
literally the first image shot - just something to
see if the camera was picking up that it was tethered
(it never did, ack). Funny how sometimes something
unexpected turns out beautiful every once in a while.
Viktoria was quite pleased and they've been sent off
to the design firm doing the poster in both black and
white and color.
Client Shoot
The shoot was to create some images for the advertising of an upcoming performance, a new choreographic work entitled Tales from the Mediterranean that will debut in June of this year. The dancers are hard at work on it already and I've been attending rehearsals as my travel schedule permits.
I finally got around to hanging a 12' seamless in the studio - mounted on the walls using the Bogen Expan system - I really liked how easy this was to put up and will make my life so much easier when doing things like this, especially when I'm doing pictures of dancers on point with their arms/legs extended. In the past that has required a certain amount of post-production work on Photoshop to make them fit (seam carving, if you please). Saves all that time putting up/taking down the seamless backdrop supports.
Nice.
I'll be posting those shortly.
Stock
The former is pretty new
- and it fits my style of shooting quite nicely. I
submitted a whole boatload of pictures and ended up
getting all of them accepted and earned 70% editors
choice - which was pretty cool.
Here is a rotating slideshow of the editor's choices
- mine are in there somewhere.
Archive
It is always interesting to take old work and look at it in light of today's workflow, tools and tastes. I'm quite happy with the outcome of this small series.
Have a great Thursday...
Photoshop Express Goes Live
Photoshop Express is an online Rich Internet
Application that is, and I'm paraphrasing here,
"targeted at a younger, less sophisticated audience,
allowing them quick and easy ways to manipulate
images bound for a blog, Facebook or Myspace". I
swear, that is what the marketing says.
While certainly not targeted at serious
photographers, it is an interesting move into the RIA
space for low-end photo tweaking and begs some
playing with. If you don't have the $$ to drop on a
photo editing application, then this will provide
some basic tweaking functionality. Furthermore, it
does have some interesting features - 2 GB of free
online storage and some nice flash galleries for
sharing photos with others.
I know I periodically get a big email with a bunch of
4 MB images attached from someone a bit clueless
about that new digital camera they just purchased at
Costco - this will be great for them.
Here is a video from Scott Kelby and Matt Kloskowski
from Photoshop Insider talking about it (Via Photoshop Insider):
Terry White, also of Adobe, has a great over view
here.
There is an online learning resource for Photoshop
Express here.
On other fronts, those searching for a competent
point and shot digital camera should celebrate. In
the past, it has been hard to find a decent
pocketable camera with the functionality (read: Raw,
manual control, decent 400-800 ISO performance) that
a professional wanted. Up until now, there has been
few choices: the Panasonic/Leica hybrid LX2/DLux3
(which I have), the new Canon G9 and the Ricoh GRD
series. Each had some of the stuff we needed, but
they all suffered in the performance and ISO
department. Well, Sigma finally got around to
shipping the DP1 in the last few weeks, and the
reviews are starting to trickle in.
PopPhoto just published a
review of this new portable wonder and they were
impressed, with a few caveats (performance, lack
of IS).
I had a chance to manhandle one at WPPI and Sigma
just might have a winner on its hands - and it even
has 16:9,which was a big factor in my buying the
LX2/DLux3. The Sigma's lens is slow (f4) and the
buffer is small, leading to poor Raw performance
(flash ram is cheap, so I'm not sure why this is
still an issue) but its a lovely camera and it might
end up in my bag before too long. Its nice to have a
backup that is pocketable.
Go Sigma.
Password Protect a Web Gallery
Pete Marshall covers this in his Blog (AKA Visual Journal):
Self-Portraits
Some very fun images
here. I'm not much for self-portraits myself - I
prefer to be behind the sensor - but here is my
humble submission that wasn't submitted.
On the Lightroom front:
- Lightroom Considerations BEFORE You Shoot - a nice article with tips on what to do before you bring those images into Lightroom (Registration Required)
- Mikhail Baryshnikov is shooting dance photography these days - a nice write-up in the New York Times. Personally I'm not that hot on them, being a dance photographer, but to each his own. Can't argue the man knows a thing or two about dance.
More from Red Rock Canyon
I'm heading to Canyonlands National Park in a few weeks for a backpack trip with my oldest son, and I'm getting pretty excited to spend 6 days crawling around the colorado plateau with my camera. Its one of my favorite places in the whole world.
Red Rock Canyon
Yesterday a colleague and I rented a car and headed to Red Rock Canyon National Conservation area for an early morning hike - I for one can't spend days on end in a casino breathing smoke and pumped in oxygen.
Given the opportunity, I will spend all my extra time in the desert. I go to southern Utah several times a year to mountain bike or backpack and there is nothing that thrills me more than what some call the wastelands. I am a true desert rat - in the tradition of Edward Abbey.
I believe you have to spend time in it - get down on your hands and knees and drag yourself thru it - to really get what the desert can offer. Nothing is more beautiful to me. Here is my humble take on a small slice of the Great Basin Desert.
Looking forward to being home. Have a great Wednesday.
Hangin' with Da Kost
We'd met before, but I've never spent much time with her until today. The booth was booming - lots of questions about Lightroom and one thing that people asked was where they could get a bit more information on how to warm up to Lightroom's way of working. I've always recommended the NAPP tutorials and the stuff that George Jardine (our pro photog evangelist) does on his podcast. Well, I should have probably put 2 and 2 together knowing what Julianne does, but she has a plethora of great resources on her website as well.
She has some great
tutorials for "quick starting" with lightroom,
quick editing and a host of
individual tutorials on specific features. If you
are looking for more great Lightroom resources,
please browse to her site and get some popcorn.
There are also some short PDFs that cover even
more.
I'd also recomend checking out her portfolio of images.
Thanks Julieanne.
So far WPPI is going great. We have a nice booth and
I was non-stop Mr. Answer for almost 5 hours. I
really enjoy booth duty, and while its exhausting,
its a lot of fun to chat up working photographers who
live and die on your software.
So thanks to you guys too. Lightroom is a great
product because you help us build it. Go team!
@ WPPI
A few things from around
the web:
- Your Camera Matters - Michael Reichmann's take on the old adage "Its the photographer, not the camera".
- Photoshop Disasters - Image editing faux-pas or "how not to use Photoshop"
- LRG's Complete - LRG's gallery of galleries web template (how many times can I put Gallery in this sentence)
Lightroom 1.4 Now Available
An minor update for Lightroom (1.4) is now available. this is mostly a camera support release, with a Leopard printing bug fix.
Download it here:
http://www.adobe.com/downloads/
- Notes from the readme:
- Previous camera profiles identified in the Calibrate panel of the Develop module may have displayed poor results at extreme ends of the temperature and tint ranges. A new camera profile identified as Camera Raw 4.4 is now available and will be applied by default to all images without existing Camera Raw or Lightroom settings. The creation of new default profiles will also include the updated Camera Raw 4.4 profile. Images edited in Camera Raw or Lightroom with earlier profiles will retain the earlier profile value and visual appearance.
- In previous grayscale conversions the Color Noise setting was disabled and this could result in an image with excessive noise when grayscale channel mixing is applied. Both the tool and effect have been enabled in Lightroom 1.4 and Camera Raw 4.4 providing the ability to reduce noise in grayscale conversions. In order to return to the prior visual appearance, Color Noise reduction can be set to zero.
- Compatibility with legacy printer drivers on OS X 10.5 (Leopard) has been updated.
New Emerald Ballet Theatre Galleries
Creative Choreography
Here are a few images of the two older girls...
On an unrelated note, its my 20 year High School
reunion this summer. 20 years. Wow.
As result, it seems that people have started crawling
out of the woodwork lately. I've never been a big
Facebook person, and remain mostly uninterested in
it, but my range of new-old friends has expanded on
said site. La Tee Da.
Soccer Season is Coming!
I've been wanting to shoot a specific picture based on something I saw a few months back, but its either been raining or I've ben out of town. So today it cleared up enough, so we quickly headed down to the soccer fields by our place for a quick shoot. Of course, I forgot my ladder, so the picture I had envisioned was not possible, so I jettisoned that idea and focused on something else. At least it didn't rain.
Go EFC!
In the Lightroom Front, here is a series on using
Lightroom in remote locations.
http://blogs.oreilly.com/lightroom/2008/03/quicksand-turva-and-working-wi.html
I'm Home!
This past week was work-a-thon. We worked all day and thru the weekend trying to get some important things done. I'm glad to be back home as I'll have some time again to focus on a few new projects.
Here is a round up of things heard/seen lately on the web:
- New Inkjet Paper Options Abound - there are a lot of great paper choices out there now. Hallelujah! Lots of great fiber-based solutions that finally got me out of the darkroom. Here is a look at the latest. I'm really happy with the new Ilford Gold paper...
- The Image-Space is offering a free "Lightroom Tips eBook" (free) from their website.
- Lightroom Keyboard Shortcut Tutorial - keyboard shortcuts make you *much* faster in Lightroom. Learn these KBSC and be happier (and here's hoping that guy gets a website redesign soon - I'm having a 90's flashback...)
- Lightroom & Time Machine - an update by JDD on compatibility between this Leopard feature and Lightroom.
- LR/Enfuse - Source-Blending (whatever that is) in Lightroom just got easier. Kinda like HDR I hear. I'll be looking into this.
- Slideshow Pro for Lightroom Updated
- Sharpening in Lightroom - a tutorial on sharpening
- Andy Rouse - Photog and LR user. Interview here.
I have some images coming today.
Wandering San Jose
Woke up this morning and went for a walk before work.
I've spent a lot of time in the studio this past year
and have not done as much architectural and street
work as I used to. Today was gorgeous - sun up and
perfect temperatures for being outside.
Work is hectic right now - lots of things going on
with Lightroom 2 and I'm neck deep in a very exciting
feature.
The walk helped to clear my mind before I went back
at it.
Here are a few pictures...
Shooting Tethered
A
few weeks ago, I ran across a blog by Joe McNally
that showed his setup for shooting tethered...
http://www.joemcnally.com/blog/2008/01/28/the-mcnally-tripod-rig/
I've been doing some tethered shooting recently, and
this setup makes it so much easier to see what is
going on. I'm pretty excited about this and hope to
employ it at the studio soon. The small LCD on the
back of the camera isn't big enough for the client
(especially picky ones, like dancers) to see the end
result.
Sweet.
I had to reshave Liam's mohawk Sunday. Here are some
pictures from a few weeks back...
BTW, I'm in San Jose this week (again). More work for the next version of Lightroom.
March!
Welcome
March. Already.
Yesterday we attended a Russian festival - our
daughter was performing a dance as a showcase for EBT
- the artistic director is from Russia and danced for
the Bolshoi - so her roots are deep in the Russian
community here in Seattle. This was a short
performance, to a Chopin piece, mostly to inspire the
crowd to send their Russian girls/boys to learn to
dance at EBT.
She did a great job. Here is a picture from that
piece...
Here is another EBT dancer doing a more modern
piece...
