.

Kia ora tatou:
Lightroom 2.0. I love it!
The list of cool things goes on, and while it is slower than 1.4.1, the new features justify the slight slowdown. I have converted to using .dng, ie importing and converting my .cr2 files to dng. After a conversation with Adobe Ambassador John Doogan (look for some joint workshops in the future), all my doubts have been allayed. And the main reason? The new dng 1.2 standard, which allows you to import the picture styles in your camera-specific software and use them inside LR2.0 and finally have a reason for using the calibration tab in the Develop module. Not only that, you can create custom camera profiles. It is so damn good, it was worth the upgrade price just to get this. I am not going to explain it; others have done it sooner and better. Have a look here and here and here. Then go and download it. Awesome!

If you are wondering what the future of photography of photography looks like, then there are 2 words you need to get to know; RED and Scarlet. The movie industry already know about them. We will need to do so as well. Read about it here and here

Kia ora tatou:

The deathly silence (whatever sound a deathly silence doesn’t make) for the last week or so is because I have been in Tauranga at the the NZIPP (New Zealand Institute of Professional Photographers) conference, where I was invited to be a judge, to join four others and assess the work. It was an incredibly hard three days. The judging is open ( i.e. members of the public can watch it), and it is nerve-wracking to pass comment when you know the author may be in the room! FYI, the New Zealand Photographer of the Year for 2008 is Jackie Rankin, from Queenstown, who scored two of her awards with some amazing images shot on Acros 100 (anybody remember that?)

There were some fine speakers, including Jack Reznicki from New York (www.photoworkshop.com) and the usual tradeshow with some very cool toys tools (say after me: Tony, you do not want a Sinar Hy6). But it was about the company, the opportunity to be among and to be judged by your peers. It was a real joy to see Stewart Nimmo from Greymouth ( they were going to call it Jubilee City, but they changed their minds and got the name right) gain his Masters, and his daughter Lydia get a bronze award. A big shout out, guys.

And yes I did enter. And yes, I did do reasonably well.

Mark Racle sent me this link about the perils of street photography in Britain. Blimey! It’s not that bad here, but getting that way…feel free to share your own stories… it is worth mentioning that you are allowed to photograph in a public place, you are not breaking any laws and that you are within your rights to use the images for exhibition or publication. Commercial use is another matter. And for those of you who are horrified, look at this! ( thanks, Meg Back!)

Those of you with an eye to the ‘Net will know that Canon have announced the EOS 50D. Specs include 14-bit imaging, a 15Mp sensor, ISO to 12800, 3″ 920 000px LCD, and a few other goodies. Read more about it here…

I anticipate being around a lot more in the coming weeks, so I intend to keep the post up to date.

Ka kite ano

PS: for the three of you who shoot Nikon: Nikon today announced the D90. A 12.21 million image pixel CMOS sensor, 4.5 fps still photo shooting rate, LiveView and 720p video capture. Oooh, that’s cool! Are you reading this, OSG?

Check it out here…

Kia ora tatou:

An unashamed plug for a workshop..

MY friend Mark Racle sent me this email, advertising a framing workshop in Rangiora, New Zealand. I have included the guff he sent me and suggest if you are interested, you contact him.

Tony

Hope all is well with you

I wonder if you know any that would be interested in the following (more…)

There ius a cost to upgrade

Kia ora tatou:

Sometime, while we were away in the Maniototo teaching the Wedderburn workshops, the blog turned 200..thousand hits that is. A big BIG thank you to all of you who pass by and have a look, and occasionally comment. An especial thanks to those who offer what they know as well.
The Wedderburn workshops are now over for the year, but we are working on new ones. More information as they become available. It was a real joy to work with such talented people. As soon as I work out how to do it, I will upload samples of the work from the workshops for the rest of you to see. Apparently it was the wettest winter in 40 years, but nothing compared to the carnage the rest of the country experienced. I am told that that the new architectural style in Greymouth is the bunker look.
Well it is finally out. Lightroom 2 is now available. I have downloaded it and begun using it. Unlike Beta 2, most of the bugs have been ironed out ( I say Most), and there are some very cool features in it. Things I like include:

• • support for dual monitors
  • referencing folders by hard drive number
  • the adjustment brush
  • smart collections
  • better sharpening and noise reduction
  • camera profiling

and more…. It may be me, but both my laptop ( T7200 dual-core, 2 Gb RAM, 2 x 250 Gb Sata drives) and my desktop ( Q6600 quad-core, 4Gb RAM, 8x 500GB SATA drives) find it resource-hungry. Can’t wait for the first update!

There is a cost to go from V1 to V2. An upgrade is around $NZ180, depending on where you shop. A full education version is around the same price . Shop around. I suggest Kiwis look here.

Apparently Britons find digital cameras the most difficult device to master in a survey conducted by Revoo.com. Curiously, washing machines come in a t #4, and microwaves at #10. Read more here.

I am currently sifting through the more than 3500 1DS Mk III files I shot during the two weeks. Stories and images to follow.

Ka kite ano

Kia ora tatou:
As a number of you have commented, when the posts drop off, it is because I am busy…very busy…
My apologies.
If they seem a little thin, I am working on it…

1. I have just upgraded the essays page to make it a little less visually constipating. There is a new essay from French photographer Robert Demachy, who wrote many essays in the early 20th century. On the Straight Print contains issues still current 100 years later. A bonus is the wonderfully formal prose…
2. From the Department of VERY Big Boys’ Toys….Last week Hasselblad announced their new 50Mp digital back. Not t be outdone, Phase One came straight back with their 60.5 Mp P65+ back. My spies tell me that it was there anyway, and they were just holding off until PhotoKina in September. But Hasselblad flushed them out of the woodwork…go on, Andrew, you know you want need one…or does the iPhone come first???
3. If, like me, you use Firefox in preference to Safari or Internet Explorer, the upgrade to 3.0 is well worth it. Not only is it faster and less resource-hungry, there are cool plugins available for it. My favourites are Foxmarks ( sync bookmarks across computers), All-in-One Sidebar, Pdf Download, and Sxipper ( keep track of your form details and login/passwords..
4. Lastly a tip from the Department of Pocket Protectors. I have been trying to find a way to send and receive email from my laptop while on the move without having to use slow and clunky webmail. Receive is easy enough. Send is something trickier. Well, there is a way, if you have a gmail account. In the account settings, specify your default smtp server as Gmail and it works anywhere. More details here or google : free smtp.
5. Update: Focusing Fallibilities. Those of you interested in focusing and focus issues might want to read Dave Etchell’s article. At first I thought it was a sound argument for avoiding autofocus. Now I realise it is an even sounder argument for avoiding manual focus. Or is it?
   

Ka kite ano

Kia ora tatou:

The story goes like this..

A close friend has wireless broadband at home and runs Mac and PC on an Apple Airport. Over the last 3 months his capped 6Gb plan kept tipping over into dialup mode. He couldn’t understand why. He put it down to his 10-year old daughter’s Limewire habit and gave her a hard time over her usage. because she loves Madonna and Britney (shudder!), he figured it was file sharing, and changed the Limewire settings so the traffic would all be inbound.

It made no difference.

Then the other night, he had a look at the Mac and discovered he had a stray shared folder with X’s Shared Folder ( X being the 18-year old boy across the fence). It contained music with explicit content including bestiality and other vile stuff. Understandably he was irate that his daughter had been exposed to this rubbish.

To cut a long story short, he and X have had a discussion on the matter…

Which leads to the whole point of this story.

If you have wireless broadband at home (or anywhere for that matter) and it is unsecured, you may be helping others with their Internet adventures. It is not difficult to secure it against most threats…

In Auckland recently, I stayed with some folks whose WB was secured. Their 3 neighbours were not and I could have a good time at their expense.

Something to think about….

Kia ora tatou:

A friend gave me this poem the other day. Prophetic, somehow.

It seemed appropriate to accompany it with this image…

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you (more…)

Sometimes, when we least expect it, life can come full circle.

I am in the trees again, back amongst the beloved exotics of my boyhood.

We have come down to the forest to make work, to explore our image-making. We leave the cars behind us and as we step under the dripline rim of the forest, its blue-green reality swallows us up and assimilates us. We are in another time and place where clocks are irrelevant, where the moment holds past, present and future in one hand.

The forest has been here for many years holding earth and sky apart. (more…)

Kia ora tatou:

From the Department of spy vs spy…

I frequent an amazing site for photogs, designers and the like ( should that be ilk) called Creativepro ( curiously enough) and get their newsletter most days.

In today’s issue, something that may give us all food for thought and pain in our wallet…if we are early adopters… see below!

On the subject of unburdening your wallets, there is a review by Ben Long on the Canon 450D. According to him

This $799 SLR camera is a very smart upgrade to the Rebel line. So smart, in fact, that it’s treading on the heels of the mid-range Canon EOS 40D… You can read more here (more…)

As many of you who have attended my workshops know, especially those who have asked me which raw converter I use, I use a variety. I suppose it is a hangover from my darkroom days, when I used to use a range of different film developers. Each one had its own strengths (and weaknesses) and the ability to impart a different ‘look’ to the finished negative. I just had to know the look I wanted before I developed the film. So, depending on the film stock, the scene contrast and the printing paper I would be using, I might select Rodinal or D-76 or Tetenal Ultrafin or even HC-110. By experimenting and exploring, I came to be able to predict the finished result and hence give myself choices.

I suppose I stood at one end of a spectrum. From time to time I would meet photographers from the other end, people who would tell me that they only used Ilford film, processed in Ilford chemistry and printed on Ilford paper, dev’d in Ilford developers. Why use anything else? they would say, and accuse me of wasting unnecessary time, of ‘playing around’. It always seemed to me that this approach was akin to supporting only one TV channel, of saying’ I only watch Channel X news. Being an inveterate channel surfer (you know, one of those irritating people who sit there, remote in hand, watching four channels at the same time) I couldn’t help myself. I needed to know what I could expect when I combined film A with developer B. I remain unapologetic. It meant I became multilingual in the darkroom and my armoury held a variety of weapons.

Enter digital photography. (more…)

Kia ora tatou:

Shahidul Alam argues in this essay that may challenge your preconceptions, that the aid agencies do at least as much harm as good, and that photographers sent in to document it are falling prey to prejudices. He argues:

Invariably films about the plight of people in developing countries show how desperate and helpless the people are, the people who realize their plight and come forward to their support are usually white foreigners. In some cases even local people are seen to be helping, but invariably it is a foreigner who has enlightened them about the way out, and it is always a foreign presenter who speaks out for them. The foreigner is so strong and forthright and so caring. She could almost hand over the microphone to them, if only they could speak for themselves, if only they understood. (more…)

I love books.

I especially love photography books. From time to time I have wondered whether or not the photography books we buy/have bought define us as photographers, the path we have travelled and our place on the photographic helix.

Over the years I have bought many of them. Some of them have become true friends that continue to encourage and inspire me, others have been fair-weather friends, who came into my life for a time, promising much, and delivering little. Still others have arrived, stayed for a short while and left. But they have all offered something at a time when I needed it. (more…)

I am not sure when I really decided I liked Christchurch.

It was probably around 1999. We had been treating each other with disdain since 1963, when my family moved into town from the Ashley Downs. My father had won a promotion so our carefree country days as forestry brats came an end.

My mother was a city girl from Invercargill (could anyone from Invercargill ever call themselves that), who had made the adjustment to country life in the Maniototo. She now had to convert back to life in the suburbs. She didn’t go easily. And her distress (and therefore mine) wasn’t helped by our first winter in Christchurch, one of those dour soggy winters where everything is cold, grey, dreary and interminable. A certain bleakness seemed to settle over our family for the next few years. (more…)

Kia ora tatou:

1. For those of you interested in the E-dialogue, Beth has posted a reply to my earlier letter. You can check out her response in Letter to Beth. I will be mulling on this for some time to come before I post a reply.
2. I have just worked with a trial of a new PhotoShop plugin called Viveza, which uses layer techniques to improve contrast, saturation and brightness in PS images. It is fast and efficient. It is also expensive ($US250) and at that price, I won’t be rushing in to buy it. Mind you, Nikon users with Capture NX get it included..
3. A salutory reminder. An acquaintance rang me up today, seeking advice on software. Like so many people, his (digital) memories are stored on his hard drive at home. Last week his partner pushed the wrong buttons and his 3500-image collection shrank to zero. Now he is very interested in looking after his photographs! He has been using Picasa, since he is NOT techno-literate, and wants an app(lication) that will enable him to download the files from his Canon Ixus, sort, file and backup, with some minor editing functiuonality at this stage ( more than Picasa). I suggested the ZoomBrowser that came with the camera as a start point. You may have ideas for apps he could try that are more than P. and less than Lightroom. Any comments gratefully accepted.
4. I had a rush of enthusiasm to the wallet and succumbed to the temptation to get a Wacom Tablet. Now I am wondering why I didn’t do it years ago!! For PhotoShop users, especially those of you using masks, it is truly intuitive and making selections is waaaayy more accurate than a mouse (did you know the mouse was invented by Apple?). If you live in New Zealand, you might want to check out prices on one of my favourite Kiwi sites, PriceSpy.
5. And from the Department of Addictive Branches of Photography. As part of a project I am working on, I spent last Friday night at AMI Stadium in Christchurch, photographing the Super 14 Rugby clash between the Canterbury Crusaders and the Jaf Auckland Blues (the Blues rightfully came second). I now have even more respect for sports photojournalists! It is not easy and all about defining the moment! At the beginning of the game the STG ( Special Weapons and Tactics Group) literally dropped in (from a hush-kitted Iroquois) to deliver the ball. Thank Goodness they are obviously Crusaders supporters! Now.. does anyone have a good second-hand 300/2.8 in Canon EOS for sale?

The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence
is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize.
::: Robert Hughes - Art Critic :::

There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming.’

- Søren Kierkegaard

From time to time, when I am blessed, other photographers come to see me, to chat about photographic direction, or more specifically, their photographic direction. I always find these sessions stressful and nerve-wracking. I really feel like the aerialist inching along the tightrope suspended above Niagara Falls. One slip of the lip and untold damage will be done. I am acutely conscious of the responsibility and psychologically I sweat blood. (more…)