I saw this photo on the web tonight (click for a larger version), and it arrested my thoughts immediately. I have had a really shitty day, but when I looked at this image of the Sombrero Galaxy, 28 million light years away (1 light year is roughly 10 trillion kilometres and we are talking 28 million here), all my trivialities vanished for one tiny little moment. Then of course ego reasserted its authority and got its grubby little hold back on me . But for that split second… Wow.
For what it’s worth, I am an atheist. I don’t believe at all in any sort of God, particularly the organised religious type, with long robes and a wicked sense of vengeance. Yahweh, Allah, God, they all seem to me to be unoriginal caricatures of the worst kind. (at least the Hindus have a great sense of creativity with Ganesh and the pantheon of deity in India) But I do appreciate living in a society that allows me to have my opinion. I don’t seek to unduly influence others, only to hold my own views in peace and talk of them if I wish. I do however believe in the incredible awesomeness of the cosmos. Carl Sagan is one of my heroes.
I’m also a photographer, a writer, a husband, a father, a computer geek and a cricket fanatic and a political tragic. So what. Is that important? Are my views at all important? I think not. Certainly no more important than yours. Of course I like to have a platform to air them, but considering the anonymity of said platform, I think a little self importance is forgivable. I am safe in the knowledge that very few people will ever even read this.
But for those that do (and for myself), what is important? Is politics? Is cricket? Is it important whether people take photos with a Nikon or a Canon camera? Is my annoyance over the mess my daughter left on the bathroom floor important? When I look at this photo, the list of what’s important suddenly gets very, very small.
This DSLR wireless monitor takes the video or still photo feed from any DSLR camera or video camera and sends it wirelessly to a seven inch or 10″ portable, battery powered monitor. Pretty cool really. Read about it at www.robertbenson.com/blog
Star ratings are one of the two most powerful tools we have in our digital workflow (the other being keywords)!
Suck that sentence up for a few seconds. Do you know why?
Basically, it’s because with keywords and star ratings, a database (catalog software, Lightroom library module etc) can sort our photos in a matter of seconds in the most powerful manner possible. With a couple of clicks we could sort 20,000 photos and filter them down to our absolute ‘best of’ folio collection or find those priceless photos of our dog eating our shoes. Without keywords and ratings, we have 20,000 photos to look through…
So they are very powerful. But HOW they are applied is equally important, and it is this subject I want to expound upon, after seeing some very famous and influential photographers (Scott Kelby and more recently David DuChemin) totally stuff it up. The influence these guys have is expansive, and not something I can compete with obviously, but I have to do my bit to remedy the situation…. More after the jump.
If I give this photo the title "Marriage" is suggests a story
I’ve been interested in all forms of communication for as long as I remember. From songs, stories, poems, books, movies, photographs and other visual arts, I was always engaging in art and story. But not all forms of communication are the same. Anything but, in fact. Indeed, the differences are often greater than the similarities.
Take writing. Over a decade ago I undertook a communication degree at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), majoring in Writing & Contemporary Cultures. I absolutely love writing. It’s very specific. It’s full of details. It evokes imagination. It creates and peoples amazing worlds. During my degree I also took photography electives to rekindle my slightly lapsed but lifelong love of the static image as an art form. And I found it was very interesting to study writing and photography at the same time. The differences intrigued me. They were so utterly at odds with one another.
A few years later I was again drawn into going back to school, this time to take a Diploma of Photography. I wanted to dig deeper into that form of communication as I had done as a teenager, only this time in a more structured way. To make a long story short, I thrived with this form of communication, and now enjoy it as much or more as writing. And here we get to my subject for today’s rant. More after the break…
I have to admit, I am seriously impressed with the Digital Photography Workflow website dpbestflow.org. An initiative of the American Society of Media Photographers and funded by the American Library of Congress, it is a fantastic resource for all digital photographers worldwide. It is mainly the work of Richard Anderson and Digital Asset Management guru, Peter Krogh, but of course let’s not forget there is always a large team behind any endevour of this size and quality.
The site covers pretty much every aspect of digital photography workflow you could think of. The layout and structure of the site is simply awesome – well thought out, logical and very user friendly. There are a wealth of graphics and videos to complement the crisp, concise writing, and the quality of the information is about as good as it gets.
There is also a companion book called Digital photography best practices and workflow handbook, put out by Richard Anderson and Patricia Russotti. This takes a broad look at digital workflow issues, and is partly the basis for the dpbestflow website. Another stellar resource that no doubt informed much of what’s on the dpbestflow site is Peter Krogh’s book on Digital Asset Management, called The Dam Book. Make sure you get the second version, as in that book you will almost 500 pages packed to the brim with top level information, which complements the dpbestflow website, but is very different at the same time. This book is very specific to Digital Asset Management, and together with the Digital photography best practices and workflow handbook and the dpbestflow.org website, is all you need to educate yourself about digital photography workflow.
So back to the website. Check it out. Bookmark it. And visit regularly. There is enough information to keep you busy for several months, and in my experience, it’s exactly the sort of information photographers need but don’t know they need. Of course every photographer wants to focus on shooting, but the business aspects are considered by many to be even more important, and workflow is a business subject as it ensures efficiency and professionalism.
Let’s face it – digital photography is a whole new world when it comes to workflow. Analogue was a simple affair in some ways. Of course, the bar was also a lot higher in some areas. You actually had to get it right “in camera” a skill that many photographers today seem either not capable of, or perhaps maybe more accurately, they are simply beguiled by the instant nature of digital and the power of Photoshop and just don’t see the need to nail it in camera.
I understand the lure. Adobe spends millions of dollars on marketing to persuade us to upgrade every other year (either on one of its workflow methods – Photoshop / Bridge / Camera Raw or its Parametric Image Editing cousin, Lightroom). Their widespread adoption and success is subconsciously giving us the message that the image is no longer good enough without it. And it’s true in a way. Digital images do need some editing to look their best. Continue reading Workflow / Workslow?
I have been playing with my new iPhone all weekend, and digging around on the net for useful apps and the like. During my travels I came across this very useful little slide show app, not necessarily for the iPhone, but it’s getting to the point where automated galleries for web sites and blogs are the only way to go. I’m sure if I researched this area some more, I’d find a wealth of this sort of app out there. Sure beats building a gallery by yourself.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock lately, you’ve probably heard that Chase Jarvis has once again come up with a great idea (his last one was The Best Phone…)
CreativeLIVE is a new website that is going to offer FREE live presentations (I hate the word webinars) on all sorts of creative topics, like photography, DSLR video, painting, html etc.. They will be free if you sign up and follow them live, and you can buy them afterward to watch again, or in case you missed them. The presenters are very highly regard folk, like Vincent Laforet, Art Wolfe, David duChemin & Zack Arias just to name a few.
I’ll certainly be watching with great interest. Way to go Chase, You really are an inspiration.
I spend a fair bit… OK, OK, … a lot of time on the Internet. My interests are very wide ranging from sport to the arts to politics, but photography definitely takes the lions share of my attention. Recently, I’ve had a lot of people asking me about which sites were good or which books were worthwhile (even though I don’t read ‘em online, I buy ‘em online), so I thought a useful post might be to list some of the better photography resources I have found online over the years. Of course it’s all subjective, but luckily for you, I think I’m a pretty good judge of information (thank you to my university lecturers who taught me that not all information was of equal value) . There’s certainly a whole lot of rubbish out there as well, so you do have to be discerning.
OK, here’s a bit of a list coming, after the jump… This list will be edited and added to over time as well. Put your suggestions in the comments or send them to me if you have a resource that’s really good and I will add it (if I like it ).
Digital Asset Management is going mainstream. And most people don’t even realise it. With the development of Lightroom to version 3 (currently in beta) and the recent release of Aperture 3, sophisticated stand-alone DAM tools are reaching photographers everywhere. They may not be perfect at all aspects of DAM, or suitable for every scenario (multiple users in a studio setting or those that need multiple catalogues etc), but for the single user they are a very good one stop shop option.
They are both catalog applications and parametric image editors. In other words, they process the images and keep a catalog over the entire collection. And now that Aperture 3 allows you to export your image settings back into the DNG file, it’s a cross platform and OS solution (who really wants to be locked into both OS and application forever – come on, that’s just not cricket!)
Microsoft seems to have been left floundering in the dust with its poorly-developed catalog software Expression Media. Once upon a time the predecessor to Expression Media, iView Media Pro was the professional’s choice of DAM software, along with Bridge and Camera Raw. Now, many have replaced all three with Lightroom, and Mac users have the extra option of Aperture.
Users who wish to stay with the triumvirate of Bridge/Camera Raw and Photoshop still have an incredibly powerful and excellent set of tools for image management, parametric image editing and and powerful bitmap editing, but using just these three apps, the cataloging side is missing. There’s not too many good stand alone catalog apps aside from the powerful yet flawed Expression Media, and besides, with the maturation of software like Lightroom and Aperture, there is less and less need for the non-integrated approach. True, a stand-alone catalog application will be more powerful than any of its integrated cousins, but a combined approach will suit many photographers right down to the ground. In many situations, even Photoshop is going out the door. Increasingly it is becoming possible for certain types of photographers to manage their entire work flow, from file ingestion through processing to output like prints & web galleries just in Lightroom alone.
The other bonus is that it spreads Digital Asset management principles out there (despite Kelby’s less than stellar attempts at educating the public about DAM {see my earlier post}) and enriches the DAM side of a photographers work flow, even if many of them don’t realise that yet.
I’m still on the sidelines, preferring my Bridge / Camera Raw approach for the moment, as there is something difficult to define, that I don’t like about Lightroom. I’m still trying to figure out what it is though. It feels like it’s hiding things from me. Maybe I just don’t know it well enough yet… Is it really time to migrate to a single app solution? It’s sure looking like that time is coming. Microsoft paid a lot of money for the leading DAM app at the time, yet it seems like Adobe and Apple are leading the way with integrated solutions. Whether they are fully robust from a DAM perspective is not entirely clear to me as yet, but I can see we are getting very, very close.
@Claudia_Hunt oh go away. Don't you understand that doesn't matter at all now. #ausvotes20 hours ago
How long will Mr Rabbit last as leader when Labor win? A month? I bet the knives are being sharpened already. He is such a loser. #ausvotes20 hours ago
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