Posts filed under 'Photography'
Running errands today, and I couldn’t resist going down the road to Harbour Grace to take a photograph through all the rain and mist of the S. S. Kyle, an ancient Newfoundland coastal steamer that was stranded upon a sand bar during a storm nearly four decades ago, and there remains. The coal-burning vessel, launched in 1913 and once the glory of the island’s most perilous ferry runs, is one of the first things a person sees upon entering this tiny community on the bay. Despite corroding into a rusting hulk in the harsh salt air of so many years, she has become somewhat of a tourist attraction in the area, and back in 1997 was even given a fresh coat of paint.
When I was a child, our family’s summer home was nearby, and I still remember quite vividly how I stood upon the shoreline a couple hundred feet away with my father, staring out at the strange old ghost ship, thinking I heard voices and wondering what it would be like to visit her.
December 28th, 2005
Well, all those tales of photographers being sued for images containing the barely-recognisable faces of sue-happy individuals have instilled within me an unhealthy sense of paranoia. Seeing that I’ve been delving far more into photography lately, I decided to round up a few D*I*Y Planner templates to serve as photographic releases.
In this kit (a part of the forthcoming Creativity package), you’ll find:
- Photographic Release (pocket form), in Hipster PDA 1-up, 4-up, and graphical versions
- Photographic Release: Adult, in PDF 5.5×8.5 format
- Photographic Release: Minor, in PDF 5.5×8.5 format
- The adult and minor releases in an OpenOffice.org Draw source file (1.1.4 and up)
The pocket releases are for both adults and minors, and suitable for printing onto index cards, à la my Hipster PDA Edition. The adult and minor versions are also provided in a source file so you can modify them to suit your needs; this will allow you to insert your name, change the size (say, to A5), jigger the margins, or change the wording per the advice of your lawyer. If you want to use the OpenOffice.org file, please download and install the free Blue Highway font first, which is used for the title. (There is no public source file for the Hipster PDA variants, but you should be able to use the included OOo file to create your own with a bit of elbow grease.)
These templates differ somewhat from the usual D*I*Y Planner gear, but mainly for the sake of readability — remember, you want your model to be able to read and sign the form without any legibility issues. Aesthetics is a secondary concern.
These forms are based upon releases provided to Popular Photography (see original text here) by the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP). These templates are provided here simply as a courtesy, and all applicable rights belong to the original creators and owners: any objection to their distribution in this form by said owners will result in the withdrawal of this offering. As always, check with your lawyer before using any legal forms: they may not be valid in your area or for your purposes. There is no guarantee, implied or otherwise, that accompanies these forms, either on my part, or the part of Popular Photography and Imaging Magazine, or the ASMP.
Whew. In other words, use at your peril, and please check with your legal representative first. Remember, I am not a lawyer, nor do I claim any legal knowledge.
Download: D*I*Y Planner Photographic Release Kit 1
Feedback, especially from those with real legal opinions and knowledge, are quite welcome.
July 16th, 2005
I’ve gotten into the habit of taking a walk around the local lake each day to think, relax and otherwise meditate. It’s about an hour’s stroll, and most of the path meanders through some beautiful wild areas teeming with flowers, temperate forest, bogs and soothing streams (not unlike the rest of Newfoundland).
Today I decided to bring my camera along to catch a few images of the irises, which tend to bloom and fade quickly. Photographs like this almost always melt away my stress and take me into another place, one filled with the scent of wild blossoms and coniferous trees, an abundance of oxygen, and a sense of sweeping peace and tranquility. While I do occasionally miss the hectic pace of city life, living so close to nature does indeed have its advantages.
(If you click on the photo above, you’ll get a 1024×768 picture suitable for a background wallpaper. ©2005 Douglas Johnston, etc.)
July 5th, 2005
Continuing my current fascination with bare tree limbs and sky….
February 27th, 2005
Going through the photographs of yesterday’s snowstorm, I came to the painful realisation that I need a light meter again: it’s a pretty essential piece of gear, even for digital photography. (By the way, the following info is for photography newbies only… more advanced folks will probably laugh their way through my feeble attempts at explanation.)
A lot of the better digital cameras nowadays can take manual exposure settings, so when the situation necessitates it, you can jump into the controls and set the f/stop (the aperture, or the size of the opening that lets light into the camera), the shutter speed (how long light is allowed onto the sensor), and the ISO (the film speed, or at least the digital equivalent). Now, most cameras have an automatic setting, and they do a pretty good job of figuring out the exposure by selecting the fastest shutter for the existing light situation. Some will let you vary the shutter speed, the f/stop or the ISO, and everything else adjusts for you.
But there’s a problem with this. Most cameras set the exposure by reflective metering — that is, by the amount of light reflected back onto the sensor from the subject. There’s a bit of mathematics happening behind the scenes to find the shadows, mid-tones and highlights, and spread the tones appropriately. (This is a simplification, I know, but bear with me.) But what happens when the tones don’t cover the whole gamut from black to white, or if there’s far more of one than the other? The sensor gets confused, and the algorithms don’t work. For example, almost all of my snowstorm pictures were overwhelmingly mid-tone (50%) grey where they should have been white. Consequently, all of the photographs needed to be brought into Photoshop so I could adjust the levels and curves and make them look somewhat acceptable.
Now, a good light meter not only offers reflective metering, but also incident reading. This is the amount of light actually falling upon your subject. Thus, it’s far more reliable for scenes with snow, glare, sand and other situations that would confound a reflective meter. You simply go into the same light as your subject, hold up the meter so that the little dome or cone is facing your camera, and you can get an accurate reading. Adjust to your desired shutter speed, ISO or f/stop, and the meter will recompute the exposure and show the settings that you can manually enter in your camera.
There’s a wide variety of meters, but you needn’t pick up a new, expensive digital one –about $250-500 USD or more– unless you’re shooting professionally (in which case, you already know all this). It’s often possible to purchase used analogue meters from pawn shops and pre-owned camera stores. Just make sure that it has incident reading (some only have reflective), and you can figure out how to use it — some of them can be a little complicated. I wish I had picked up a decent little one I saw in Nova Scotia for $25 CDN when I had a chance: the one I used back in high school went missing somewhere along the line.
I find it a little odd that several of the recent photography books I own don’t even mention the light meter (or, if they do, it’s a tiny paragraph in a sidebar); surely, digital photographers ought to know how to set a proper exposure without crossing one’s fingers and hoping that the camera gets it right. Constantly reviewing the output and histograms and reshooting is certainly no substitute for a decent incident reading in the first place. As I mentioned earlier, most cameras do a decent job with figuring out exposure settings. But grab yourself a light meter, and you’ll probably find a noticable improvement in your photographs, especially in winter conditions, on the beach, or near shining glass or water.
Anyone out there recommend a good but inexpensive meter, preferably digital?
February 14th, 2005
I took these pictures today near Twillingate, Newfoundland, en route to a training session. The only thing more beautiful than the place is the people.
December 1st, 2004
I was taught an important lesson over ten years ago. While teaching in France, I gave English lessons to a Master Chef (whose humility did not permit him to speak of his hundreds of awards and distinctions) in return for getting cooking lessons. Aside from raking me over the coals many times for not having adequately memorised hundreds of herbs by smell and taste, or knowing exactly which of the hundred hanging pots would be most suitable for a certain sauce, he once became very upset with me when I suggested he give up his day job —which had nothing to do with cooking— and go to Paris to work full-time as a chef. I knew his job in the public service was mundane and quite boring, but I also knew he had received offers from some very high-class and trendy restaurants in the capital, so this didn’t seem like much of a stretch. Why was he upset? Partly because he didn’t want to sully his art, but mainly because —by turning a passion to commercial use— his love of cooking would become only a job. The flame that burned within him would be extinguished, and he could not live with himself.
I’ve always been the type to have a hundred hobbies. They’ve been ways of testing the waters of a new subject area, of dipping one toe into the stream and seeing how inviting it is. From there you can decide whether to jump in —wherein it becomes more than a hobby: it’s a career— or you can dangle the feet off the end of the pier, slosh around a little, have a stress-free day, and move on. My myriad hobbies have ranged from mineralogy to gourmet cooking, from medieval longbow archery to Victorian speculative technologies, from woodworking to herbalism. All of these things, I’ve simpled dabbled in, and attained the rank of advanced amateur, taking them no further, even though my interest in them bordered on the obsessive for periods of time. Somehow, there was always something even more exciting just around the corner, and the endless twists and turns of the journey kept me venturing forward, burning with the desire to try new things.
Not long after graduating university, the real world intervened. Having taught for a one-year contract in Newfoundland, I was a victim of a job market whose glut of teachers and dwindling student population had barred most young teachers without tenure or very specialised subjects (such as Special Education) from finding work. One of my chief hobbies during high school and university was programming and multimedia work, and this skill-set provided me the only opportunities I could find. Soon, I found plenty of work developing and managing kiosk, CD-ROM and website projects. The hobby had become a job, and the endless hours of keeping up with technology had drained any degree of enthusiasm I once had for it. The flame was extinguished.
But one of the other hobbies I had in high school was photography. It was a perfect amalgram of creativity and technical know-how. My piece-meal camera kit, along with my homegrown darkroom, allowed me endless hours of pleasure in taking and developing photographs. In university, my empty pockets meant giving up the somewhat-costly hobby, and it broke my heart. Eventually the camera broke, the darkroom was disassembled, and the world moved on.
Right now, I have almost no spare time, except for the 15 minutes or so in the morning while I eat breakfast and write in this blog. Not too long ago, my endless concentration on matters for my two jobs caused me to fear for my sanity… I was even unable to sleep, thinking unceasingly about my work and upcoming projects. I had no mental playground where I could tinker with non-work-related ideas, or subjects that I could read about to relax me before shuffling off to bed.
Then, by a fortuitous turn of events, I gained a new camera —a Canon Digital Rebel— which was by far the best camera I’ve ever owned, and a very capable manual one, at that. Suddenly, I have a hobby again, a mental break that allows me to focus on an activity that has absolutely nothing to do with my work.
I’ve finally rediscovered what my life was missing: the immersion of oneself into something non-imperative. No one will get upset with me if I take a lacklustre photograph. No one will hold each picture as a symbol of my livelihood. No one will pass me quotas, or force me to spend endless hours keeping up with all the latest advances. For once, I don’t even have to use a computer, if I don’t want to. The chains are slackened, the cage is opened.
What an amazing feeling, this newfound freedom….
November 17th, 2004
A few months ago, just after our first-born had arrived, our old Kodak DC-280 was starting to falter and occasionally shutting off or losing power for no apparent reason. The Kodak –now literally held together with duct tape– had served us well, producing some 18,000 pictures over the 4+ years that we had had it, but now we needed something new, something reliable, to document our son’s childhood. I spent a few weeks sussing out the alternatives, and was thinking about getting an Olympus C-5xxx model, but I really wanted something I could upgrade with better lenses and standard photographic equipment. Alas, there was nothing around like that in my price range. At the last moment, however, I managed to swing an excellent deal on a Canon Digital Rebel (EOS 300D) thanks to a personal favour someone owed me. For less than the cost of the Olympus, I now had a great camera with full manual controls and the ability to use my EOS lenses, filters, and other gear. The 6.3 megapixel resolution was nothing to sneeze at, either. But recently, we’ve been running into some frustrating problems. And they all have to do with organisation.
The camera is still perfect, and suits my needs to a tee, but finding a way to store the many large images we’ve been taking is becoming somewhat problematic. Since our main computer is a 733MHz G4 PowerMac with OS X 10.3, it seemed natural to use iPhoto. At first it was great… it allowed us to store images, burn them, share them between accounts, categorise them, etc., and even my wife could use it without any problems. But after the first thousand images of our newborn, it really began to slow down. Scrolling was almost painful with our favourite thumbnail sizes, the beachball would be forever spinning, iTunes would stutter, the occasional file would be corrupted, and our CPU usage went through the roof. Plus, the anal-retentive techie that I am, I was sorely conflicted between iPhoto’s ease of use (especially for my wife) and my need to organise photos into hierarchical directories.
Graphic Converter leaped out to me as a possible alternative. After all, it’s packed with hundreds of features, has a handy little “toolbox” for basic image manipulation, reads most different formats with ease, and it allows browsing through directories, thumbnails and other views. Somehow, though, it still seems like an image viewing application instead of a photo manager. For example, while I can edit the IPTC metadata in GC, I can’t see any obvious way of searching it. Also, the lack of “virtual folders” for collecting and sorting material (think the “albums” in iPhoto) is a definite drawback.
Meanwhile, the Canon ImageBrowser software that came with the camera has an OS 9 feel, the interface is rather clunky, and the capabilities are quite primitive. Photoshop Elements 2.0, which also came with it, is mainly a pared-down version of Photoshop and doesn’t allow much past the “browse” photos functionality. Photoshop 7.0 CS may be the ne plus ultra of photo editing, but the built-in file browser is slow, bloated, and doesn’t offer things like virtual folders. Plus, who wants to run the full Photoshop behemoth just to browse and categorise photographs?
A friend of mine that used to own a small graphic design company, and who has since sold several of his machines, mentioned to me that he had a spare license for Extensis Portfolio that I could use. Now, after a bit of asking around, it turns out that most of my designer friends are using Portfolio, so I figured that I had nothing to lose by giving it a try. I installed the software and started corralling the few hundred loose graphics I had kicking around my hard drive. I started exploring the interface, skimmed through the manuals, and viewed the good introductory tutorials at the Extensis website.
By way of comparison, iPhoto is to Portfolio what iMovie is to Final Cut Pro. The i-apps are certainly easy to use, have some great features for home use, and work well with other i-apps. But if you push them too far, either you’ll be ripping your hair out in frustration or things will begin to fall apart. In short, they are for typical consumer –and not professional– use. I wouldn’t want my wife to use Portfolio. It’s not that I doubt she has the intelligence to make effective use of it (after all, she is smarter than I), but she doesn’t have the patience or time –especially right now– to master any sort of technical application. And Portfolio has a definite learning curve, compared to iPhoto.
In the few days I’ve been using it, Portfolio does seem to have a few flaws: it occasionally quits for no reason; sometimes it doesn’t know how to create thumbnails from some of my JPEGs; there is no quick (or obvious?) way of doing small edits like cropping, flipping, or adjusting levels or colour; it relies on other programs to download images from my camera; and the “syncing” of folders to library can be a bit cumbersome.
These minor quibbles aside, Portfolio is probably the most powerful photo management software I’ve ever used. So far, with about a thousand images, it’s quite speedy, and I love the rather large pop-up previews of files. The metadata is easy to enter and to search. The program acts almost transparently with the OS, so I can drag’n'drop items directly onto dock icons to edit them. It not only synchronises with the file system, but it also has virtual folders (even based on search results), so it has the best of both worlds. It allows disk-based catalogue archiving, which is a necessity for managing hundreds of gigabytes of files. The print options are quite flexible and handy. The views (i.e., how the images and metadata are displayed) are highly customisable, and you can created your own named views. There also seems to be some decent server and webpage functionality built-in, but I haven’t bothered venturing into this territory yet.
Mind you, it doesn’t have some of the more user-friendly aspects of iPhoto. For example, you can’t do simple retouches or send images to your desktop background, but I never actually used these anyway (I retouch only in Photoshop or the GIMP), so I’m not missing much.
I’m going to continue using Portfolio for the next few weeks to see if this will be the ideal photo management system for me. Heaven knows, the price of $300 Cdn is not worth throwing away on anything less than a perfect application.
My wife, meanwhile, will continue using iPhoto, albeit with much fewer images. Time has proven that it’s certainly worth its price tag, as long as its limitations don’t become too overwhelming.
Any recommendations for other Mac-based photo management software? Drop a comment below or feel free to email me.
October 12th, 2004
