Had to run out and shoot some quick and dirty (not that kind of dirty) video for a client yesterday and stumbled across this.
A nice little reminder to go off the beaten path more often.
The Lady in the Culvert
in photography
photography
New Year's Eve 2009 and Adventures with Lightroom
in gear, photography, travel
January 2009 has really charged out of the gate. At least on the design front. I haven't shot too much this month. Partially because I've been getting my head wrapped around Lightroom and the Lumix GFI.
A few words about the later first: It's a fantastic little camera. It's easily my new everyday carry camera with the 20mm lens on it. This is the closest thing to an heir apparent to my M6 which has been gathering dust for the last year and half. Actually, writing about how long it's been since I've shot film could be another post entirely.
Where was I?
Right. Fantastic camera. My current workflow is Aperture. And that's where digital rangefinder nirvana begins to crumble. The GF1 isn't supported by Aperture. Apple seems to have let Aperture fall by the wayside in the grand scheme of RAW support. That's a bummer. Shoot JPEG you say? If you have a camera that shots RAW there's only a handful os situations that makes shoot JPEG. I shoot RAW almost exclusively. Enter the Lightroom 3 Beta. I thought I'd have a good jump on the learning curve with my experience in Adobe's Creative Suite.
Not so much.
I think some of it is that Aperture had really shaped my view of what to expect out of a photo management application. Apple consistently nails user interface. Aperture is no exception—it really is, at least in my opinion and experience, the better photo management application. This isn't a shortcoming on Adobe's part. It was a conscious decision by Adobe to publish a photo manipulation package for photographers. Comparing them becomes an exercise in apples and broccoli because of this fundamental difference.
But where Adobe appears to be pulling ahead is that they keep rolling out support for new cameras. I have a hard time imaging a technology that's moving faster than digital photography right now. Keeping up with it all is a big deal. If Apple wants to continue touting Aperture as a solution for professional photographers they need to pick up the pace. Personally, I don't need a lightroom. I want to get the shot as close to perfect in camera. Maybe bump the contrast. Maybe push the saturation a tick. That's usually it. But I need RAW support.
I'll eventually adapt to Lightroom's workflow. It obviously works for thousands of people. And for now, I'm not planning on shooting hired work with the GF1. Not yet. So in that regard there's some separation between church and state—rather personal and work. Maybe that's a good thing.
These shots are some of the first I've taken with the GF1 taken over New Year's Eve up in the North Carolina mountains.
Brentwood Luminarias
in life, photography, words
For forty years our neighborhood, Brentwood, has displayed luminarias on Christmas Eve. For the entire time we've lived here, the Brentwood Exchange Club has taken on the task of raising the money, securing donations and the logistics of that morning. Brentwood is not a small neighborhood so this is no trivial matter. This year though they announced that atrophying membership meant they'd be unable to pull it off this year. With word of that, the neighborhood association (led by Sean Kosofsky) pulled together to keep the tradition going. In what has to be a record amount of time (less then two months) everything came together this morning and all the bags, sand and candles are in place.
These are photos from this morning's assembly and distribution.
Room cleaned up. 2.
Rebuilding Together Wrap Up
in gear, photography, words
Room cleaned up.
So, back in September I spent the day covering a Rebuilding Together project. It was a solid day of shooting, but the project wasn't entirely finished.
It is now. And since I hate leaving things undone, we went back and shot a few portraits of the daughter settled into the renovated space.
This was also the first time in the field with the new Pocket Wizard set up.
I knew the room was going to be dark and while I favor natural light, this shot wouldn't have been possible without some help from my speedlites.
One on camera with a pop and another behind the subject to bring the background up a bit.
Goodbye St. John and iPhonetography
in photography, travel, words
We left St. John yesterday. Back to the grind of the real world. The good news is that I've got a 147 frames to edit through, so I can sort of relive things for a little while.
I snapped these two shots with the iPhone on the ferry and had posted them to my Flickr account, Twitter and Facebook before we set foot on St. Thomas. (There's still some issues with the Wordpress iPhone app that need to be worked out a bit.)
I've gotten some questions about how I've processed some of these. So here's the scoop:
A few weeks ago, I apparently drank some of the Chase Jarvis Kool-Aid. The flavor being the Best Camera concept. The Reader's Digest version of that concept is that the best camera is the one that you have with you. For Jarvis that came to be the iPhone's built-in camera.
If I don't have my Canon 5DMk2 with me, I have the G9. In fact, around town it's almost always in my bag. It's easily the best point and shoot I've had. Don't get me wrong, it still has some weak points. Chiefly the shutter lag. If it had a shutter response that was more akin to the 5D or any of my old film cameras I'd have no complaints with the camera.
Still, there's a few times, when the G9 is just out of reach or it's still in the bag in the office. But, I'm never without my iPhone. And the camera is decent if not spectacular. I think it has the same issues that most small sensor digital cameras have and that's chiefly contrast. But for a 2MB camera phone it works. (Especially if you remember that "shutter" doesn't release until you remove your finger from the "button.") Being part of my "always with me" iPhone certainly has it qualify as the Best Camera on more than one occasion.
This is where software enters the picture. Like I said, the iPhone camera has it's issues and can use a little help. I think software like Best Camera and Adobe's Photoshop.com is much like the Lomography folks shooting with Lomos, Dianas and Holgas. For the record: There's a taped up Holga gathering dusk in the equipment locker behind me.
Where was I? Right. The same way those analog equivalents embraced the inexpensively, plastic-lensed cameras and the random color shifts, light leaks and whatever else happened through processing, I see the tweaking of the soft, flat images off the iPhone as a related idea. And there's a certain irony to using all this technology to render images that remind me of family pictures taken with a 110mm camera.
The difference being that it's much quicker to get these images out—to share them. Before, with film, you had to make an effort. You had to really work to get an image out. Film or slides needed to be processed, then printed—or scanned. Then you could get to sharing them. The process itself encouraged editing. Required it.
With digital? It's on the photographer to really think about the editing process. Instead of simply uploading the contents of a card.
Welcome to St. John
in photography, travel, words
After a very long day we made it to St. John just as the sun set behind us.
Shot this with iPhone and tweaked it with Ps.com's mobile app. I've definitely started drinking the Chase Jarvis Kool-Aid. Of course, I took some with the G9 too but without a laptop this is the only way to post for this trip.
Expression Tunnel
in design, photography, words
I spend a lot of time thinking and working on graphic design. It's how I pay the bills. But I've tried to refrain from including it here—a site I've tried to keep focused on photograph. However, I've had a category for design on this site since launching. I'm thinking it needs to get used every once and while. Occasionally they collide. Like now. I'm working on a cover for boundary 2. These covers are great to work on from a design perspective: challenging.
For this next issue, American Poetry After 1975, I found myself looking for graffiti, largely for textures to build a cover from. In Raleigh, the most accessible (and reliable) graffiti is the Free Expression Tunnel on NCSU's campus.
Now, the chore of editing these and finding a way to make them work as duotones. On a cover.
(Oh. And I'll probably loosen up a bit on posting design related stuff here. At least until the Sky2x site is launched. Which, is actually in production. Shocking.)
Rebuilding Together
in photography, words
This past Saturday I covered a project for Rebuilding Together of the Triangle. The homeowner's daughter had allergies that the carpet upstairs was aggravating. The plan was to pull the carpet, replace with flooring and paint the entire upstairs. The day started at 7:30 and didn't end (for my part) until 3:30. It was a longish day, but rewarding to see so many people come out (especially from Choice Hotels) and make so much progress.
Bazan Featured in Lens
Really happy to see Ernesto Bazan featured in Lens. I was lucky enough to take a workshop with Ernesto a few years ago in Mexico. From the interview:
Mr. Bazan is a man who embraces what some might consider mystical. In the early 1990s, he went to Cuba and wound up spending 14 years there. He married a Cuban woman and became a father to twins. And ultimately, he published “Cuba,” a big, stunning book of photographs capturing that island’s moods, mysteries and contradictions as few ever have.
Photo © Ernesto Bazan.
2009 FashionSPARK Preview
in photography, words
Managed to catch part of the show for this year's fashionSPARK. One year I'll get there early enough for prime runway real estate, but this year I settled for sniping from the sidelines. A few shots from the set (that I still need to finish editing). Tomorrow I'm shooting a project for Rebuilding Together and scouting some locations for a cover. A busy weekend after a busy week.
