It’s the Strobist blog’s first birthday! Congratulations to the awesome David Hobby, and my thanks for completely changing my understanding of flash photography and lighting.
Congrats to Strobist!
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Tag Archives: photography
Good books is now a “page”
I’ve migrated my list of good books to a “page” in WordPress…
Outsourced Photo Retouching
I guess you can outsource just about everything. My buddy Kris Krug posted a request for comments on a retouched version of one of his pictures. The interesting thing is that the retouching was done by a gentleman in India who tracked Kris down using Flickr. The world just got a little flatter. For the record, I like the original better. Kris’ work has a particular look, and I think that the retouching fundamentally changed that.
The folks that did the retouching are at PixArt.
Update: Now the locals are into the game
Canon 1D MKIII
The PMA show is coming soon, and the camera companies are starting to make their product announcements in anticipation of the show. I’ve been hoping, like many others, that there would be some nice relevant camera introductions, by which I mean a replacement for the Canon 30D / response to the excellent Nikon D200, and/or a second generation Canon 5D. There’s nothing wrong with my Rebel XT, and it’s been a fine compliment to hear photographers that I respect exclaim when they find out I am shooting with the lowly Rebel. There’s lots more room for me to grow with what I have, but there are a number of limitations that I’ve run up against. If a new body came out that addressed them all, then I might be interested.
Instead of a “relevant” camera, Canon announced the EOS 1D-MK III, which takes the spot in the Canon lineup typically reserved for sports, photojournalists and so forth. These are the “real” professional cameras, and they cost major money. So much money, in fact, that I’ve never really bothered to learn much about them. This time, I thought it was worth taking a look, because it’s likely that some of the features of the MK III will make their way into a camera that would be relevant to me. Canon has published a big white (marketing) paper about the camera. I think that I probably shouldn’t have looked at that, because there are lots of refinements and features that look really appealing. Imaging Resource has a preview of the new Canon 1D-MK III, including pictures shot at ISO 6400. Since I do a lot of low-light shooting, I was pretty interested in this. The picture quality at 6400 looks much better than my XT at 1600. I can only hope that some lower end camera will also do ISO 6400.
I wish someone had told me how much photography was going to cost before I started….
Update: Of course, that’s the EOS 1D MK III, not the 1Ds. I told you I never paid much attention to the pro cameras.
Missed the Flickr Birthday Party…
Argh! I am disappointed that I missed Flickr’s 3rd birthday celebration. From the tagged photos it looked like great fun…
A Strobist Wiredfool baby!
Congratulations to Eric and Rose Soroos on the birth of their new baby boy.
Eric has been doing a wonderful series of Strobist inspired pregnancy photos (not safe for work). So if you are into Strobist stuff, you’ll probably want to check them out. I’m sad that the series has come to an end, but I am sure we’ll be seeing a new series soon.
HD Photo will be awesome… In 2010?
John Nack’s post on HD Photo reminded me that I wanted to write something about this. HD Photo is part of Vista and used to be called Windows Meda Photo. It’s a new file format for representing images, which looks to be superior to JPEG in every way except one. Apparently, Microsoft holds some patents on HD Photo which don’t expire until (at least) 2010. That means that it won’t be possible to build open source implementations of HD Photo. There is a lot of code out in the world that relies on an open source JPEG decompressor, and that code isn’t going to be able to do HD Photo for quite some time.
Technically HD Photo sounds great, and as a photographer I can easily appreciate the benefits of the new format. But this reminds me of the whole proprietary RAW format issue. People are recording their life in their photos, and it’s important for them to know that they will be able to bring those photographs forward with them no matter what file format they chose. I think that Microsoft could set themselves apart as a leader here by changing the licensing of HD Photo. They’ve already done it once.
Adobe opened up PDF this week. It would be awesome for photographers and the users of digital pictures if Microsoft would do the same for HD Photo.
SFlickr 20070111
My trip to OSAF last week was “bingo” kind of week. Not only did the week overlap with Macworld, but it also overlapped with the San Francisco Flickr (SFlickr) meeting. Of all the Web 2.0/social networking sites, Flickr seems to have done the best job of actually extending the network into the real world. There are a bunch of these local gatherings all around the country. We have one in Seattle, which I’ve gotten to once and almost gotten to a bunch of times.
This was the second time that I’ve made it to the SFlickr meetup, and I got to see/participate in the community a bit more this time. During the scheduled meeting there was the usual mad meta photographing, as well as discussion of people’s work, and equipment. Many of the people that I met last May were not around, but I did add a bunch of new people to my contacts list, and I found it just as easy to meet people as I did last time.
I was particularly interested in the ST-E2’s that Maximum Mitch and John Curley were using. I’ve been considering getting one of these to trigger my 580EX remotely. I’ve got my Strobist SB-24 and sync cord, but something is broken with that setup at the moment, and I need to sort that all out. But the corded setup is unwieldy for some of the situtations that I’d like to be in. After watching Mitch goofing around with it during the meeting, I am pretty sure that I am going to get one of these.
After the meeting ended, a group of us went to Skylark to hang out and keep on talking. Oh, and to shoot. The patrons at Skylark must have thought that they were the subject of some kind of magazine shoot. Flashes were going off all over, and a number of us were asked what magazine all of this was going to be in. There was also a scary kind of moment when an unhappy patron warned us not to take his picture, but the owner of the bar and the bouncers seemed to be totally into our presence, so we didn’t end up in any trouble. Mitch let me borrow his ST-E2 so that I could see for myself how it worked — which is to say very well. I didn’t have any flash failures except for the times when I covered the sensor on the 580 with my hand, and I forgot that the ST-E2 acts as an autofocus assist even if you don’t have a flash. John was using his mostly for this purpose and got some beautiful low light shots.
To top it all off, after we left Skylark and were heading back to the car, we encountered a band that was walking the street, on their way somewhere. We convinced them to stop and do some posing for us. Beware the SF Flickrazzi! Special thanks thanks to ms_trouble, tshane, maidelba (for the ST-E2 time), picsfromj (for the ride to Skylark) and jay_que (John Curley) (for making sure I got home)
My set from the night is here.
Photoshop and Switching
For the most part, I’ve been very happy with Apple’s Aperture photo post production app. Of course, it’s also the only such program that I’ve ever used. When I got started in photography, I was convinced that I was not going to modify my pictures in a computer, and therefore I wasn’t that concerned with the image modification capabilities of Aperture.
However, as I’ve learned more about the art and craft of photography, I’ve also learned that many many modern photographs were altered in the darkroom, or with filters, or by some other means. One particularly important moment for me was a scene in the movie War Photographer, where James Nachtwey is working with someone in a darkroom on how to print a photo. The scene shows the actual dodging and burning being done to a wall sized print. So as I’ve learned more, I’ve accepted that someday I was going to come to the point where I would want a program like Photoshop, which could perform edits and modifications to portions of a photograph, instead of all of a photograph.
Funny thing is, that I already have a copy of Photoshop, or should I say, had. Back when we lived in Silicon Valley, I won a copy of Photoshop at a trade show. I took it home and installed it on my WIndows box, but I didn’t really have the interest or pressing need to learn how to use Photoshop. Of course, that’s all different now. And now I am back on the Mac, not on WIndows. So that copy of Windows Photoshop wasn’t really doing me any good.
I figured that I would be stuck buying a brand new copy of Photoshop once the Intel Mac version came out. On some of the photography forums that I read, some people were saying that they had convinced Adobe to allow them to upgrade a Windows Photoshop to the Mac version. I took heart from this, but didn’t do anything about it. When the Beta of Photoshop CS3 came out, I learned that Adobe was going to restrict the set of versions that would be allowed to upgrade to CS3, and version 5.5, the version that I had, was going to be dropped from the list.
I figured that two upgrades of Photoshop were still cheaper than buying a brand new copy, and finally picked up the phone and hoped that Adobe would let me upgrade. It turns out to be ridiculously easy. I called the Adobe sales phone line listed at http://www.adobe.com/buy/. The person that I talked to was very helpful and there was a clearly defined procedure for doing what I wanted. In addition to my order information, I had to fax back a form where I promised to get rid of my copy of the Windows version – no problem there. After that I was all set. Yesterday my copy of Photoshop CS2 arrived, and I installed a copy of CS3 as well. I haven’t had any time to play with them yet, but I figured that there might be a few people out there that might benefit from my experience.
Props to Adobe for making this possible – in fact, you can do this for any Adobe product that has a Mac and Windows version, and you can do it the reverse direction as well. I wish Microsoft would let me do the same from an old Office for Windows version.
2006 – A photographic review
Following in Ryan’s footsteps (although not his skill), here are some important moments/photos from 2006.
January
Bainbridge Island had it’s first Chinese New Year’s celebration, and I spent a rainy afternoon with the festivities. I’ll be doing this again this year.
This photo of (part of) the Mac Geek contingent at Microsoft’s Search Champs event is my most view photo on Flickr.
February
Flower portrait season started early
This shot happened accidentally on the way back from lunch during Northern Voice 2006. It was a reach out and grab you photo moment for me.
March
The flower portraits come easily to me, and I enjoy them. For the first time in my life, I actually appreciate flowers.
April
A portrait of chives in our front yard, a great memory of a warm spring afternoon with the family.
Pike Place Market is a beautiful place – we were there for a tourist visit with my brother who came to visit from the East Coast. There was some very good eating that night.
May
2006 was also the year of Strobist. The little that I know about flash photography, I’ve learned from David’s great blog. I still have a lot more to learn, and a bunch more practicing to get consistent, but I’ve definitely made the transition from “natural light only, I hate flash” to “I know that this could look great if I can light it right”.
June
We spent the beginning of June at Gnomedex 6.0, where Chris and Ponzi asked me to do some shots for them. It was a great learning experience for me.
Also in June, Abigail had her annual dance recital. That isn’t her above, it’s one of the older students. I still remember this shot. There was a lighted window frame being projected onto the floor, and dancers were cycling through that patch of light. I remember scrambling to try to get one good shot…
July
July is OSCON month, and the camera went with me, as usual. The picture above won the OSCON photo contest — a great honor for me. This shot was also one of the few shots where I actually asked someone if I could take their picture before I did it.
Also in July, one of my Strobist Boot Camp Assignment shots caught David Hobby’s eye. My friend Paul and I had a great time doing a bunch of these shots in his painting studio.
August
In August, we discovered the band Late Tuesday at the Bainbridge Island waterfront park concert series. Sadly for us, this is their last year playing together.
September
Abigail caught a snail, and we subjected it to the photographic treatment.
October
In October I went to Austin for ApacheCon. Austin was a great location for ApacheCon, with plenty of evening activities. I spent more time shooting evening activities than I did actual conference sessions.
November
Yep, snow in November. On Bainbridge Island, no less. I hope our weather is better in 2007…
December
The biggest event in an action packed December was Chris and Ponzi’s wedding. Julie and the girls were in the wedding, and I was shooting all over. It was all the benefits of shooting a wedding, and none of the scary responsibility. It was Chris and Ponzi’s day for sure, but being at a wedding always makes me think back to mine, so it shouldn’t be any surprise that this is my favorite.
Ok, that’s all the year in review or year to come type stuff you’ll be getting from me. I promise to resume technology blogging in short order.