Podcasts

A neat feature of the Internet is podcasting. The variety of personalities to be found is vast. In photography there are a handful I keep track of.

One of those is by George Jardine. For the past couple of years he has produced a series of podcasts. Mixing in short tutorials of Lightroom with interviews of various Professional Photographers. I enjoy the interviews because it feels like I’m part of a group sitting around the kitchen table with my favorite beverage and some pupu’s. Some of the podcasts are just audio. Others are a combination of audio with a slideshow.

The latest release is a video podcast with Martin Evening. Martin walks through (actually he’s sitting) the results of a photo shoot for his upcoming Lightroom book. ( I shudder to think how many LR 2 books will be coming out this fall.) This kind of podcast gives me an understanding of how the photographer thinks through his/her work. I like these more than a straight instructional/how to video. I suppose this is what it’s like to go to a workshop. Something I’ve yet to do.

After you click this look for “20080310 Video Podcast – Martin Evening Fashion Shoot”

O Voggy Day

One thing we don’t lack in Hawaii is bright light. But there are exceptions. Like when the wind is coming from the south. It’s called Kona winds. Natural air pollution from the Kilauea Volcano brings a condition called Vog to the other Islands in the chain. Such has been the problem several times during April.

Kilauea’s fumes over Hawaii a concern

Here’s how it looked Yesterday on Kamehame Ridge overlooking Waimanalo.

I think the Vog got to my 7D. It’s giving me strange Apertures and Shutter speeds( 500/10,500/18,640/10). I hope it isn’t allergic?!

By the way this is how it usually looks.

Shooting in RAW

Listening to a recent podcast of the Pro Photography Roundtable. One of the guys software pick was called PhotoME. If you like to shoot in the RAW (and who doesn’t?) instead of dressed in JPEG you might want to consider this free program.

PhotoME is a powerful tool to show and edit the meta data of image files. Thanks to the well organised layout and intuitive handling, it’s possible to analyse and modify Exif and IPTC-NAA data as well as analyse ICC profiles – and it’s completely FREE!

After I got my Maxxum 7D I found that ACR read the MRW files just fine but for some reason it wouldn’t show what lens I used. Fortunately I found ExifTool by Phil Harvey. A command line utility that does a whole lot of good stuff for those of us who want to extract info from image files. For me it meant I could create XMP sidecar files with the lens info. I’ve been a happy camper ever since.

While ExifTool is a command line utility. PhotoMe present the information in a nice tabbed GUI layout. After I found ExifTool I didn’t bother to see if there was another Da Kine. It’s nice to see other good programmers are out there creating tools for the rest of us! If you know about other similar tools out there leave a comment.

Adobe TV

I have a bunch of websites I check out that post video tips about Photography or Lightroom.
If you haven’t been to George Jardine’s website, for instance, George Jardine on Lightroom and Digital Photography .He has interviews with Photographers of note.

I bring this up because I happened to run across a reference to Adobe TV. I knew they had training videos of there various programs. I didn’t realize there was one central location. It maybe a fairly new creation but then you learn something new everyday about what’s available on the web. Some of the content is from Adobe some is exerpted from training videos of other companies. You might find a nugget or two of useful things you didn’t already know. Julieanne Kost had a nice tip about using the Slideshow to do a quick crop of some photos for a client presentation if you don’t have the time to do it in the Develop Module.

http://tv.adobe.com

It’s a wet job

Water skills a necessity.

If you’d like to see more of his work, the website is
Hawaiian Water Shots

Camera Envy

I listened to the recent podcast from TWIP, TWIP #282. They had Joe McNally as a guest. During the conversation (about 37 minutes in) Joe is talking about a four week shoot for FEDEX in multiple countries. Joe mentions the D3’s he is using. To drive the point home one of the host (Scott Bourne) emphasizes Joe has three D3’s in his camera bag. Scott is salivating at the idea of just having one. Who can blame him. By the way Joe, I wouldn’t mind if you FEDEX me a D3 with lens please! Mahalo

The understandable camera envy of Scott reminded me of a recent post from Michael Reichmann of Luminous Landscape Cameras Matter. He responded to a post arguing that the camera doesn’t matter. If you read Michael’s post he has a link to it.

I agree with Michael and judging by Scott Bourne’s reaction I suspect he would agree also. I have a Maxxum 7D and as much as I like the camera. I have pictures that would be better qualitatively and be better asthetically with a better camera and lens. But you do learn to do the best you can with what you got. It can force you to think more creatively to maximize the abilities of your tools and yourself.

While I look forward to the day when a full frame sensor camera is within my price range. I’ll keep working on my technique and camera eye. But hey Joe got any hand-me-downs?

Lightroom in Tasmania

I’m a user of Adobe Lightroom. On April 2nd Adobe released LR2 Beta. Mikkel Aaland, with

“a group of internationally renowned photographers will travel to the end of the world, literally, to the remote island of Tasmania. Their mission is to road test specialized digital photography software designed by Adobe while capturing images from one of the world’s most mysterious and varied geographic locations.”

Once LR2 is released he’ll publish a book on LR 2 using pictures from the group to show how to use the program. They’ve actually been there since April 4th. If you want to see Tasmania from many different views I invite you to take a look.
Lightroom Adventure 2008
Leo Laporte is providing some video of the adventure. Leoville in Tasmania

It looks like alot of fun. I’m terribly envious of Leo.

Aloha! Komo mai

Welcome to my place on the web for random thoughts, interesting pics, and links to useful and/or interesting sites on Photography on the web.  Please scroll down to see my recent postings.

Mahalo
Tim

Body Surfer at Sandy Beach enjoys a goodride