Random Picts from the Road
This morning I had some down time and wanted to play with some of the new gear that arrived at my doorstep in the week I was gone. This included a small strobe-based softbox and an Orbis Ringflash adapter.
As I’m pretty down with the Strobist mindset (and yes I have big lights too), I wanted to get some additional light modification gear for my Canon 580 EX II speedlight. I built a few items in the last month (Snoot, Grid, Beauty dish) but I decided to “outsource” on the ringflash and softbox for obvious reasons.
The ringflash is something that has always intrigued me, and its pretty hip right now in the light modifier market. Buts you gotta pay to play, and I’d not gotten around to getting one of the new units that uses your speedlight for power. I chose the Orbis because it lets you use ETTL mode when you are in a non-studio environment (via a off-camera hotshoe cord). For run and gun, this makes sense. Here is the unit (from their website):
So I setup the seamless,
grabbed my goofy kids and had a short studio session.
Then my youngest came
running in with the goofy teeth. The goofy teeth were
a gift from their cousin in Utah, and we’ve had many
hilarious sessions with said redneck accoutrements.
And finally, a slightly more serious portrait of my
son.
Using the Orbis was prety
straightforward. I set it up on a lightstand using my
flash mount, pulled down my white seamless and setup
the meter for 1/4 power at 2 feet from the ring. I’ve
got the off-camera hotshoe on order, so I used my
radio control triggers and went manual. I’ll try the
ETTL mode when it arrives. The light was exactly as I
expected - a nice soft halo that is characteristic of
the ringflash setup. And the best part is I don’t
have to sink all that extra cash in a dedicated ring
light. For most work I do, this should work
perfectly. Recommended.
That is it for today.
I’ll try to break out the softbox this week and give
it a whirl as well.
Have a great Sunday.
Julia
Heading Home
Lightroom Tuesday
Even more important, Tuesday night we shipped a big new update to SmugMug that gives pro smuggers the option of using Bay Photo as their lab. This is a huuuuuuge upgrade for our working professionals. Hooray for us. Hooray for our pros who now have a full service, highly respected photo lab to back them up. Check them out.
Bay Photo, a professional lab
located in Santa Cruz, California, has been catering
to top pros since 1976. At SmugMug, Bay Photo is
available exclusively for Professional subscribers
for prints and canvas.
- A true pro lab, Bay Photo offers pricing that includes hand color correction of each print. Their experts will fuss over each order, ensuring superb color and consistency from print to print.
- All prints are carefully flat-packed — damage during shipment is almost unheard of.
- Bay Photo carries more sizes and papers, including panoramic sizes and Giclée watercolor prints. SmugMug will continue to add products geared specifically towards Professional photographers.
- For photographers who prefer to do their own color adjustments, we also offer the option to disable color correction.
Speaking of our nest, here is the panorama that greeted us each morning as we rubbed the sleep from our eyes.
Beautiful. No wonder I
have a soft spot in my heart for the Sierras...
Well, I have to head back out onto the road. Have a
great Thursday!
Tahoe Sledding
Without further adieu,
lets get into the Lightroom Haz-penings for the past
week.
- The big news is that Adobe released Lightroom 2.2 - just open up Lightroom and it will tell you all about it. I’m happy to see that they’ve taken the lessons of the 1.x development cycle seriously and focused on bug fixes and camera support for 2.x. This leaves more dev time for Lightroom 3. Not that I regret what we did in the 1.x time frame as it helped solidify the application quickly in the marketplace by adding the needed things quickly. The lightroom team rocks.
- Funny enough, Adobe also released Lightroom 2.3
RC (release candidate) on Adobe labs. Looks
like a quick bug fix for some new cameras
updated in 2.2. I’d wait unless you’re seeing
the issues listed in the notes. Oh, and for
those of you who hold time in contempt, ACR was
also updated.
- For those of you in the dark ages, Amazon had Lightroom 2 on sale for $199 - read this Strobist thread for the details and any updates...
- Personally I don’t do much with slideshows in Lightroom. I use Showit or Smugmug for my slideshows. But here is a good article from Layers Magazine on customizing the slideshow module if that sort of thing gets you excited.
- I can haz dramatic skys? Sure
- Ye olde fashioned phaw-taraphs? You betcha pardner.
- Keywords in Lightroom can be a real boon to organization. Learn more here.
- David Ziser has a great tutorial on the lighting tools in Lightroom and their ability to help fix lighting problems post-shot. Of course, we should all get it right in camera, but sometimes...
- White Balance issues got you, uhm, blue? Or Orange? Learn more about fixing it in Lightroom.
- Lightroom rocks. And you can do much of what you want there. But sometimes you gotta release the hounds. So learn how to optimize Photoshop for those periodic trips to the dog house.
- H to hide stuff? Learn. You’re welcome.
- Martin Evening (he did the box shot for Lightroom 2) has a great article on the Library module. Speaking of this. I’m going to be doing a live Lightroom tutorial tonight for some of the Smugsters here in Tahoe. I’m also going to be doing one at Smug HQ in March. If you’re in the area, ping me and I’ll make a place for you. Sometime in the March 3-7th.
- Still wondering about Raw. School-thyself.
- Lightroom-blogs had a nice rundown of some interesting stuff - check out these speedlinks.
Inspiration Monday
EBT Book Arrived!
A few weeks back I stumbled on the works of a New York-based photographer named Lucas Foglia. His “Re-Wilding” series spoke a certain something to this erstwhile back-to-the-lander. I loved this series - his gentle use of color and the informal natural-light portraiture . Here is his introduction to the series:
I grew up with my extended family on a farm in suburban Long Island. Influenced by the back-to-the-land movement of the 1960's, my parents maintained an agricultural lifestyle as malls and supermarkets developed around us. We heated with wood, grew and canned our food and bartered plants for everything from shoes to dentistry.
Through a family friend, I was introduced to a network of people in Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky and Georgia who have responded to environmental concerns and predictions of societal collapse by moving to the wilderness. Most of my subjects live off-the-grid, build their homes from local materials, obtain their water from nearby streams and hunt, gather or grow their own food. I am intrigued by their desire for self-sufficiency and by the complexity of their relationship with the natural world.
Rewilding: the process of creating a lifestyle that is independent of the domestication of civilization.
The series is here:
Lovely. Enjoy, and have a
great Monday.
Home!
Anyhow, it looks great.
I ordered the premium paper upgrade and its pretty
nice. Best though, was that the cover wasn’t dented
or dinged the spine text was aligned, the wrap was
well done and the printing was acceptably good.
Overall, I’m quite happy. I’ve sold quite a few of
these already, so here’s hoping the QA remains
consistent.
Also, I’m going to be
traveling for the next week. I’m off to Tahoe with a
couple of kids for a work off-site. Work/ski/work,
you know. So I’ll be a bit more spotty on posts.
Have a great weekend.
Lightroom Tuesday!
These little strobes
(recommended by David Ziser a few weeks ago on
his blog) are a nice little addition to the camera
bag and should come in handy when I want to add a
bit of light to some corner of my composition...
Scatter Strobes Like Candy
First off, the Santa Barbara airport is my new favorite. It was small, quaint and just the opposite of the industrial travel monstrosities that we’re so used to. Hooray for small airports!
We were invited to David Jay’s place overlooking the Santa Barbara coastline to talk with a bunch of passionate photographers about the state of the industry, their needs and what we at SmugMug can do for them. It was a spectacular session, and I got to meet (in person at least) several photographers who’ve I’ve followed via their blog for the past year or so (hey Jasmine - told you you’d sell out that new workshop by day’s end!)
They were an energetic, passionate and exciting group to talk to. We learned a few new things and confirmed quite a few we already know.
It was a great way to spend the day. Here are a few quick snaps from the day...
Every hour or two, we’d
take a short break and everyone would pop open their
MacBooks (it was a Macbook/iPhone convention) and
check email/Facebook/Twitter or their blog. The level
of connection these photographers have with their
clients and each other is amazing. And it works.
Thanks guys.
It was foggy in Seattle
when we landed. When I fly, I generally sit in the
aisle if I can, but here is one from the window
seat...
Inspiration Monday
I was jostled awake at 4 am and I’m on my way to catch a plane to Santa Barbara for the day. A few SmugMuggers are heading south for a to spend the day at David Jay’s place chatting up a group of photographers about the challenges of their job. I love these opportunities to sit down with working professionals to discuss their craft. Fun Fun.
The only negative is that I don’t get home until 1 am. That is one loooong day...
Anyhow, here is a run
down of the things going on in the
Lightroom-O-sphere:
- Wondering where to find Lightroom Presets? Wonder no more...
- Still using Bridge on occasion? Egads. The Lightroom Journal details a way to make sure that Labels stay synced between Bridge and Lightroom.
- Pixelicious has another episode focused on Lightroom and Photoshop CS4 workflow.
- Confused with the “Previews” options in the Lightroom Import dialog? Be confused no more...
- Backwards navigation in Lightroom? You bet...
- Matt K has an interview with Tom Hogarty (Lightroom Product Manager) where he talks about the future direction of Lightroom. Might be of some interest to know where the application is going.
- Ever wonder why Lightroom renders a file when you import it? Wonder no more...
Also, Happy Inauguration Day to my readers in the US.
And to those outside of it who’ve been “a bit put”
off by the hole we’ve dug ourselves into.
Its been an ugly 8 years, and many of us are all too
happy to see the current crop of criminals exit stage
right. Hopefully this next bunch won’t be as
bad...
2008 Nutcracker Book Available
In his honor, and as part of Inspiration Monday, here is a link to a photo essay entitled “In his own words” with photographs by Flip Schulke...
Furthermore, Chase Jarvis posted a YouTube
video of the famous “I have a dream” speech today
on his blog, which should be required viewing for
all who love justice, freedom and equality.
Something we still need
to aspire to, I’m afraid.
Young Dancers
In the end, I decided to
sell it thru Blurb, despite my recent setbacks with
them, because they are the only ones out there to
handle the printing *and* selling of a book. It
wasn’t an easy choice, but since I tend to sell quite
a few of these books, having to fulfill orders myself
just wasn’t feasible.
Furthermore, I have to admit that Blurb has been
pretty good lately with addressing my concerns. The
last batch of books were not good, but since I know
people inside the company, I was able to get a refund
and a promise to take this to the top.
Hopefully we’re just seeing some growing pains from
Blurb and they’ll clean up the spotty quality I’ve
seen lately. I sure hope so, as this print on demand
stuff is very cool and Blurb really offers a great
front end for selling books without the hassle.
That said, I’ll still be using books from
MyCanvas.com for my portrait clients. Their quality
has been outstanding, their templates are awesome,
and their customer service has been likewise.
Please consider purchasing this Nutcracker book as a
way to support such a wonderful dance studio.
Hundreds of happy dancers will thank you tenfold!
Shooting Backstage
I was glad I did.
Two images really stood out for me, mostly because they capture the “dance” experience for a new student. The world is big, they are small, and it is these new things that often make them a bit more reserved than they may be elsewhere.
And sometimes the camera catches them in this uneasy state...
Of course, they grow out
of it. Or at least most do. And a few truly learn to
dominate the stage with their smile, their movement
and their personality.
But for these young dancers, this transformation is
still to come.
Would You Like a Nose With That?
Anyhow, I’m quite adept at it, and its always exciting to be back amongst the performers and the accoutrement of the stage. Here is a photo I ran across today that kinda sums up the experience for me.
Motion, light, darkness,
hustle, busy, hectic, grace and beauty. That about
sums it up.
Besides the stage work, I love shooting pictures of
the dancers in the wings. Her are a few portraits in
this no-light nightmare over the course of a few
day’s this past Nutcracker...
This is the land of f 1.2
and sometimes a bit of softness because I’m shooting
at 1/15 or worse. Which sometimes is not a problem
when the image is spectacular.
More of EBT’s 2008 Nutcracker
images here...
Inspiration Monday
Welcome to Lightroom
Tuesday! Things continue apace in the Lightroom
World, and here are the major happenings that might
interest you.
- Eric Scouten, Lightroom engineer and photographer, has posted a nice piece on how to put your favorite photos on your iPhone. Eric is currently soliciting votes for his next LR article - so vote in the sidebar when you give him a visit.
- For those of you in Kentucky (or close by) note that Matt Kloskowski is holding his LIghtroom 2 Live Tour. More info here.
- For those with accounts on a photosharing site like SmugMug or Flickr, you can easily upload your photos to these services right from Lightroom with the excellent plugins from Jeffery Friedl (Flickr here, SmugMug here. Here is a tutorial on how to do this.
- Love using Lightroom Presets, but are unsure as to how one makes them? Wonder no more...
- Download the new LRG Complete 3 - a nice web-gallery for Lightroom.
- Ever wanted to make a rounded photo corner in Lightroom. Well now you can.
- Scott Kelby on his blog today plugs “The Lightroom Conference” as part of the Photoshop World Conference and Expo in Boston this March. There are lots of Lightroom classes taught by a variety of in-the-know personalities.
- Want a good Lightroom book? There are lots, but this is one that is worth purchasing. The other good books I’ve personally read are from Martin Evening, Scott Kelby, and one from my good friend Seth Resnick.
- Having trouble with jagged Identity plates? I haven’t seen this in the wild, but Matt K covers this in his blog if you have.
- Here are ten great video tutorials for Lightroom, courtesy of PresetsHeaven.
- Wonder what 2009 will bring for Lightroom? Me too. I used to be intimately connected with Lightroom’s development, but since leaving Adobe, I’m a bit out of the loop (although I know who to ask if I want to). Here is an interesting list on the Inside Lightroom blog. Personally, I agree with a few of these (10, 3, 2 and 1) but my list would include other things like a) having mutliple catalogs open at once, b) mutli-user catalogs (or a Lightroom server) and c) overall performance improvements. Oh, and a sync service for keeping photosharing sites in line with a collection.
- Watermarking prints in Lightroom is easy. I do this for all my prints. LR/Mogrify developer Timothy Armes covers this on his blog.
- The Refine Photos workflow has never really intersted me, given my pick workflow, but here is a nice article on it from the Inside Lightroom blog for you to consider.
- Well, that is quite a long list for this week, so I hope you found a thing or two of interest.
- Cheers!
- PS. The Lightroom team in MN is sitting under a
bunch of snow and -35 degree weather. It seemed
that ever year I was there in Mid January or
February. Not missing it this year
Funny!
On a whim, each Monday I’ve decided to present something interesting. Inspiring. Lovely. Fun. Beautiful. It will probably focus mainly on photography, but I reserve the right (ahem, I am the boss here) to broaden the scope on occasion.
Today we have the work of a young Portuguese photographer Maria J Miranda (Tudo legal, Maria?) I ran into her work while browsing today (I visit a lot of design blogs) and enjoyed some of her self-portrait work. I’ve done several selfies lately, so this was a nice foray into said genre.
Photo copyright Maria J. Miranda
If you’ve got something
in your craw that inspired you, shoot me a link via
email or comment below.
Cheers!
Lets Talk About Vendor Fail
Photoshopping has become a verb that refers to the process of making something look better than it was in reality. I’m not talking about making sure the exposure was right. Or that the shadow areas were brought out a bit. I’m talking about nip and tuck style hacking and slashing that dominates our visual world. No place is this more obvious than the celebrity-studded pages of today’s glossy magazines and billboards. A flawless Jennifer Anniston was on the cover of GQ this month and when asked about it, she replied to the interviewer that what they saw wasn’t her - it was photoshopped. The interviewer actually seemed surprised at the admission.
Every photographer has to make this decision, and I’m not against removing obvious things like pimples and food (yes, I have to remove food from kids faces all the time), but when it involves some pretty nasty surgery, I think you’ve gone to far.
So today, while browsing my RSS feeds, I came across this great piece of street art on Wooster Collective...
Now that is funny. You
gots your -40 Fat Layer. Your nose -20% layer. Very
clever.
As an aside, oftentimes these efforts go awry. With
hilarious results. Check out photoshopdisasters for a daily
look at such FAIL.
Beauty Dish
The great thing about being a photographer today is that the market is awash in great products to expand one’s photographic offerings. A few decades back, printing a low-run book, calendar or such was impossible without very deep pockets. Nowadays there are hundreds of affordable products for the discerning photographer.
Most of them just don’t interest me as a serious working professional photographer. I seriously have to have a show at ICP before I make a shirt, if you get my drift.
But my customers are pretty excited by a few of these new offerings, including books and calendars. An me? I like that I can get someone to matte, frame and delivery a print for me. I’ll be honest, I hate framing prints - I live in a 100 year old house and it takes a lot of tries to get a clean print insertion. Yuk.
But the joys of outsourcing are not without their problems as I’ve discovered in the past few weeks.
- Books - I’ve already detailed my book fiascos previously on this blog. I’ve had 4 separate orders go bad, and from multiple vendors. I’ve had bar code stickers that won’t come off. I’ve had dented covers. I’ve had poor edges finishing. I’ve had poor printing. The latest from Blurb was literally the last straw. Spine text placement fail - just embarrassingly bad. They must have NO QA there anymore. I would expect that Blurb is in trouble financially with this amount of fail.
- Calendars - I’ve used a prepress vendor for the past few years to make inexpensive calendars. Apple and other vendors make really nice calendars, but at $20 a pop plus shipping you can’t sell those and make any money. So I found a prepress vendor that would do exactly what I want. Last year’s calendars were acceptable (remember we’re talking prepress here), but this years came with the contrast so jacked I had to throw them out. The reprints came this week and they mucked up on the paper choices, had font failures (in a PDF too?) and even had blood on several of them? WTH? The vendor is being super supportive, but is still a pain in the rear and I didn’t get to sell the calendars at the Nutcracker like I did last year - leaving fundraising $$ on the table.
- Framed Prints - This was my first job using a third party frame outfit. The first one arrived but the print was bent while inserting it. The second was bent as well. The third one arrived yesterday and it has a bunch of fuzz inside between the matte and the glass. Its all sealed up nice with paper, so I’m going to have to open it and remove it myself.
Argh. Very frustrating. I really *want* to offer these products. And yes, there are more expensive options out there, but some of my clients just can’t afford a $1000 leather bound album from the big fellas. I’m afraid to say that these products might not be ready for prime time.
You can bet that we’re talking closely with several of these vendors because some of them are partners with us at SmugMug. I won’t allow anyone to present less than their best foot forward to our shared customers. At least I get to chew on a CEO’s ear because of this. Hopefully they’ll get the message.
But what a pain in the arse...
Speedlight Grid
Here are a few pictures
of the light itself. Its mounted on my Canon 580 EX
II speedlight on a lightstand with an AB Cybersync
wireless trigger. Simple to setup, nice light and
cost me about $15 bucks. Love that.
Busy day. Gotta run.
Lightroom Tuesday!
Tutorials here:
- Grid
- Snoot
- Beauty Dish (had to modify this a bit to fit my 580EX II)
The Grid sat to dry over night (glued things together) so I just gave it a whirl when my son walked in from school.
This is almost 100% from
camera (5d, 24-105 L, 580 EX II, Cybersyncs). Just a
touch to the brightness and saturation in LR and that
was it. Pretty cool.
Update: One more...
The snoot was easiest to make, but I like the look of
the grid much more.
The beauty dish looks really cool, so once I get it
dry, I’ll put it thru its paces.
A Few Pictures
I had a great week and luckily spent a fair amount of it in Lightroom working on a variety of projects and after some debate, I’ve decided to start splitting up my Lightroom Catalogs.
Previously, I was using a catalog per year, but about November my 2008 catalog became a bit unwieldy - slowing down and giving me the beach ball o’ hell.
It was at about 60,000 Raw images at that time. So I decided to start doing quarterly catalogs. This has good and bad sides. Its good because Lightroom runs a bit more snappy on a smaller catalog. But its bad because one has to remember where things are to get at them. What was once a year-based organizational structure became a quarterly one - now I have to remember where things are and switch back and forth a bit.
Unlike event photographers who spend a bunch of hours on a job and walk away, I tend to go back months at a time for images. Stock, fine art, family, past jobs all come up and so going with a quarterly catalog I end up with stuff split up. This mostly affects collections.
If I were still working on Lightroom, I’d start seriously considering how to solve this problem for the user. Be it a stand alone catalog server, a search tool that knew how to look across catalogs or even something new, it has to be done. As people mature with these catalog-based tools, they’ll need support in tasks that span weeks, months, quarters, years.
That said, onto the
Lightroom happenings for the past week:
- Epic Edits is looking back over 2008 - one article they highlighted is one that talks about user issues with the product.
- Matt K just updated his Auto Enhance presets - use when importing to get a head start on your processing. These now have two sets, one for Canon, one for Nikon, which makes some sense, n’est-ce pas?
- Not sure how to install presets? Video here. I had this question from my sister in the past week or so.
- The Lights Out feature rocks. I use it daily. Here is a nice short article on why you should.
- The Lightroom 2 Live tour (with Matt K among others) is underway. Need some hands on training? This might be your chance.
- Lightroom galleries for your iPhone? Sure. LRG has you covered.
- Over 600+ Presets of unknown quality available here. YMMV.
- Stuart Forsyth covers his DNG Archival Strategy in an interesting article on his blog. Lightroom can convert to DNG on import, which means you should do it. Takes a bit of time, but its worth it.
- Finally, Timothy Armes covers Raw vs SRaw. Timothy is the author of LR/Mogrify, which you should know and own. Fascinating.
That is it. Have a great day!
