The main benefit of DNG is that it’s an open format in the sense that the specification is publicly available. So even if Adobe were to fail, it’d still be possible for other software developers to read the format. With so many RAW file formats out there (every camera has a slightly different file format), the possibility that the RAW files won’t be accessible sometime in the future is very possible. Still, such a problem is a ways off. So what are the immediate benefits?

The big immediate benefit is that the thumbnail and metadata is built into the format. No more sidecar files that are easy to lose or not copy over when moving your photos around. This benefit alone was enough to convert me to DNG. While I don’t care about the thumbnail files, I’ve definitely had to redo my RAW settings due to not copying over an .xmp file. Stupid mistake, sure, but something that should be avoidable in the first place by a well thought out file format.

The DNG files are also smaller by about 25-33%. So that makes them easier to backup and transport around. The reason for this, as explained by Tom, is that when you’re shooting the camera is just concerned about getting the images on your card. So the compression is fast, but not as robust as it could be. When you’re creating the DNG file on your regular computer, time isn’t such an issue so a better but slightly slower compression algorithm can be used. All the data is the same.

So I’m a fan and I recommend you take a look at it. It really does seem to solve some very real problems.

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Why do I think that?

I was talking to a friend who had recently been to a wedding. Apparently the total cost of the thing was about $80,000 including about $10K for the photography. At first I thought, ‘well, ok, they must be pretty well off’, but not so. Apparently they took a home equity loan out to finance part of the thing. Never underestimate the need for social validation that comes about by spending money. Sometimes people WANT to spend money.

This is also borne out by stories I hear from my sister who runs a florist in Los Angeles that, among other things, does high-end weddings. (shameless plug: her company is LA Botanicals) There doesn’t seem to be a dearth of people willing to spend $10-15,ooo on flowers. Granted, that’s LA, but it does seem like folks are willing to spend money on weddings, recession or no. And that includes photography. So I think a lot of the fears that any family member with a Canon Rebel is going to displace real photographers is a bit overblown. I think most people understand that if they want memories of this expensive event to last a lifetime, a pro photographer is important.

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However, if you are like me and get excited when you see a Humpback whale 10 feet away from the boat, you might let your camera slip out of your hand. At which point you will watch your Canon T2i and Ikelite housing start slowly sinking. It’s like watching a big bag of money go down to Davey Jones locker. Not good. For a split second I considered the fact that we were in a whale sanctuary and I might be fined if I dove in after the camera and underwater housing. After the .25 of a second was up, I dove in and grabbed the camera. Luckily, I don’t think anyone other than Mr. Humpback Whale (and 18 other passengers) saw anything and their were no repercussions. I immediately got back on the boat anyways, so it’s not like I was hanging out having a photo session with the whale.

The moral of the story: Sometimes a $10 lanyard can save you a lot of camera equipment!  (Feel free to post your own stupid photographer tricks in the comment section)

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I’ve written about this before… when Digital Railroad failed a couple years ago and gave photographers 24 hours to download their photos, it should have been a big wake up call for photographers that these services can’t be trusted as archives (at least, not without offline backups as well). Now, maybe they can’t even be trusted as temporary storage. With tech companies it’s all good… until it’s not. Then the CEO announces everyone is laid off and the servers are shut down. I’ve been part of startups where this has happened. As Jason Perlow points out in an excellent blog post ‘Flickr: Too big to fail?’, Flickr is not too big to fail.

AND even if it doesn’t fail, that doesn’t mean your account won’t be accidentally deleted and since Flickr doesn’t have backups of your data, there goes all your photos. Which means all the links on your blog or web site that point to Flickr (or Vimeo or…) get broken requiring a lot of time and aggravation fixing your site. Assuming you have all those photos backup in a single place and you don’t have to go rooting around for the particular photos/videos you uploaded… which would involve even more time.

I’ll point out that I think these sites are great usually. I use them, particularly vimeo. However, it’s important to know what will happen if things go wrong and to know what you’re in for.

Anyways, give Jason’s blog a read… it brings up some good questions and concerns.

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The DVD has a lot of amazing photos of the Humpbacks, but very little actual video. This is due to the fact that the 5D doesn’t work well for wildlife videography. Now, some of you might have expected that, knowing about rolling shutter, aliasing, and some of the other issues that DSLRs have. However, when I started the project, I was blissfully unaware of most of those issues. Even though we shot with the 5D on a Stedicam Merlin most of the footage was unusable. Between the motion of the boat, the rolling shutter, and fast moving wildlife the 5D proved not to be the camera we hoped it was. (it was everything we expected for the tripod shots, so that came out well. But when we were actually on the boat… not so much.) There are some Final Cut Pro plugins to help out with these problems, but when dealing with a boat and wildlife it was just too much for the camera.

So the DVD was made with a little video footage of the whales and a lot of great photos. It came out fine, but looking to the future we want to shoot videos of the whales. What to do?

Buy an inexpensive HD Camcorder! In my case, I choose the Panasonic TM700 (Canon also has some great ones, but they’re more expensive and nothing I read indicated they were worth the extra money). $750 and it shoots 1080/60p in high quality AVCHD format. The other nice thing, at least for wildlife, is the touchscreen focusing. You can tap the screen on the object you want the camera to focus on. This is incredibly useful because one of the main problems with shooting wildlife is keeping it in focus. And when you’re on a moving boat trying to focus on a fast moving whale you really don’t have the time to manually focus.  It’s extremely difficult and unless you’re a real pro at it, you’re usually going to miss the shot while you’re futzing around with the focus ring.

The image stabilization seems to have a noticable effect on the TM700 (perhaps because it’s designed for video). On the 5D (24-105 lens), the image stabilization doesn’t seem to make a difference. Of course, the real solution is not to shoot handheld and use something like the Steadicam Merlin. But nothing I shot handheld with the 5D was usuable (and very little of the 5D on a steadicam was either), whereas the TM700 produced relatively nice footage. It’s going to be fun to put it on the Merlin.

Here’s the first test with the TM700. This was basically just taking it out of the box and shooting. There are a number of things that I need to set up, which I think will improve the video even further. But right out of the box it trumps the 5D hands down for for this situation. For interviews and other situations where you have more control over what you’re shooting and how it’s being shot, the 5D is an amazing video camera. For scenics it’s beautiful and for wildlife where you can sit in the bushes with a tripod it works well. But if you’re moving and your subject is moving it starts to present a lot of challenges.

http://vimeo.com/18688733

Vimeo, in this case, darkened the footage, so the original footage is nicer than what you see on vimeo. I’m still working out the best way to get the .mts files through FCP and into Vimeo. But still, good footage from a $750 camera!

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Some if his most captivating work comes from a project titled, “Times Square New Year’s Eve at Midnight.” For the past decade, Jook Leung has been capturing the ‘famous’ moment in 360VR. View his most recent 2010 image here.

© Jook Leung - http://jookleung.com/

Jook on his work, “I’m quite passionate about crafting the kind of panoramic images that reveal a unique perspective while conveying a strong sense of intimacy with the subject. Here the viewer becomes fully immersed in the same moment in time the photogapher is trying to capture. This is what masterful photography is all about. New technologies like Apple Computer’s QuickTime VR and Helmut Dersch’s Panorama Tools have made it possible to construct, publish and view full 360° x 180° spherical images. For me, this is the ultimate panorama and is what I specialize in doing well.”

© Jook Leung - http://jookleung.com/

© Jook Leung - http://jookleung.com/

all images on this post: © Jook Leung – http://jookleung.com/

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Same with Reuters, a news outlet known for running its photographs unedited. No use of Photoshop is allowed to alter the image or change its intended meaning.

A story today in Media Decoder questions a Reuters photograph used by The Economist in its June 19 issue. The photo shows President Obama standing alone in front of the Gulf of Mexico, head down as if in contemplation. It’s a striking image on that mid-June cover, and one that inspired me to flip more closely the magazine a few weeks ago.

The issue being ballyhooed is that the original Reuters photo shows two people alongside Obama. They were edited out by The Economist and replaced with an extended blue ocean. In her defense, the deputy editor stated, “We don’t edit photos in order to mislead. I asked for Ms. Randolph to be removed because I wanted readers to focus on Mr. Obama, not because I wanted to make him look isolated. That wasn’t the point of the story.”

Personally, I don’t have a problem with this kind of photo-editing. (Hey, that’s why Content Aware Fill was developed in Photoshop CS5.) Obama was standing in front of the Gulf of Mexico, talking about the BP oil spill, which is the subject of this Economist article. If Obama had been in front of a different ocean for a different occasion, then photo’s message would have been distorted. In this case, editing the photo only heightens its impact and intensifies the message.

What is your thought?

regards -debbie

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One that I found interesting is #9.“DO make sure to separate the arms from the waist. Arms flat against the side of your subject create the illusion of a very wide waist.” Or you can always adjust for that in Photoshop ;)

There was some uproar last September about Self Magazine’s cover model, Kelly Clarkson who appeared to be much slimmer then she is in reality. What do you think of the controversy? Read about it here.

And one more tip; Jim Tierney wrote a great article about skin retouching in Photoshop, which is also important for creating great portraits after the photoshoot.

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We had two terrific models participating in the shoot, which took place at Jim’s apartment. Towards the end of the day, his fluffy cat got curious and investigated the scene. I don’t think that cats need skin retouching but maybe we will come out with a fur smoothing product.

Molotov Cupcake got a little indignant when we booted her from the ‘set’. The model got a little mock indignant when Jim proclaimed that the cutest shot all day was of the cat!

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While a shaky camera can be used, on rare occasion, to good effect… it’s usually something to be avoided. More often than not, it just means your watching a B horror flick and the owner of said shaky camera is about to be bitten in half. Hopefully we can get you shooting stable video so as to insure you are not similarly attacked by creatures that are aggravated by shaky video.

So… how do you avoid such a fate?

How you solve the problem of the shakes is, in part, determined by how much money you want to throw at the problem. I highly recommend you check out The DV Rebel’s Guide by Stu Maschwitz. Stu is a veteran visual effects supervisor who’s worked on Star Wars, Sin City, and many others. The DV Rebel’s Guide is a great resource for shooting professional looking video on the cheap. For example, using a skateboard and sandbags as a dolly. Brilliant! Lots of great info, cool tips, and if you’re just experimenting and playing around the book is very handy.

If you’re considering shooting professionally however, you probably owe it to yourself to get some real equipment. For example, the Steadicam Merlin (pictured above) is a great way to keep a DSLR stablized. It takes awhile to master it, but once you do you can get some beautifully stable shots. Do a search on YouTube for ‘steadicam merlin’ and check out some of the videos. It uses weights to counter balance the camera and keep everything steady. At $799, it’s a little pricey though.

Now, you can create something similar to the merlin with a pipe and weights and it’ll cost you $14. The problem with this (and with the Merlin itself) is that between the weights and the camera, it’s freakin’ heavy! You can only use the thing for 10-15 minutes or so at a go because your arm just gets worn out. One advantage the Merlin has is that you can buy a vest for it (also pictured above), which distributes the weight more evenly over your body and you can work much longer. It’s a great system, but it’ll set you back a cool $2400. But if you’re shooting professionally, it’ll be worth it. It should be pointed out that there are other professional tools, like the Glidecam, that compete with the Merlin. But I’ve used the Merlin, it works, so I can speak from experience with it… but there are plenty of folks that love the Glidecam. There’s also other inexpensive things like the Fig Rig, which allows you to move the camera around more fluidly, but is less helpful for dealing with bumps when walking.

Let’s talk about a few other things…

The tripod head you use for still images won’t cut it for video. You want to be able to smoothly pan the camera from left to right and most photo tripod heads aren’t set up for that. So you need a fluid based video tripod head, such as the one pictured in the top image. These also have a handle that makes smooth panning easier. You’re current tripod will probably work, so you don’t need to replace that, but the tripod head needs to be for video. The prices range anywhere from about $150 – $600. If it’s more than $600 you’re probably buying a head meant for a large film/video camera and it’s probably unnecessary for a 5-10 lb DSLR. Of course, if you’re mounting a 15lb, $7000 400mm prime on the camera, then maybe you should spend the extra $200 and get a tripod head that won’t collapse under the weight. I’m just sayin’…

That covers the basics for stabalizing the thing. From $14 stick and a dumbell and a skateboard with sandbags to a $2400 steadicam rig. Again, the DV Rebel’s Guide has a much more complete discussion of all the options, including stuff I’m not getting into here. This is just a blog and I ain’t spending the next 3 months writing a book.

What if it’s already shaky?

Well, first off, I would look out the window for zombies. They’re usually around when the video gets shaky.

If not, then bolt the door, get the shotgun ready, and we’ll try and stabalize the footage.

This is where things get dicey. If you thought Post Production for photos was bad (for example, if Photoshop makes you sweat worse than a bunch of zombies), you’ll LOVE Post Production for video! Actually, no you probably won’t love it…

So yes, post production. There are many options for video… from iMovie on the low end, to Adobe After Effects and Apple’s Final Cut Pro on the high end. iMovie has stabilization built in. It works ‘ok’. It’s not really a professional tool and it shows. But if you’re just experimenting it’s definitely adequate. Adobe’s After Effects has excellent stabilization, but it takes awhile to learn it. It’s sort of like Photoshop for video, so it’s a very deep program. There’s also a program called Mocha from Imagineer Systems that works as a plugin for After Effects and Final Cut Pro and provides excellent stabilization for both programs.

Professional video stabilization is somewhat difficult. Once you understand how it works, it’s not too tough, but getting there can be a long process for someone without a video background. However, if you’re serious about video, then learning After Effects,  Adobe’s Premiere Pro or Apple’s Final Cut Pro is probably essential. You’ll need at least one of them.

Of course, you can always hire someone to stabilize the footage for you. Assuming the footage isn’t _too_ shaky, it shouldn’t cost too much. If you don’t expect to have lots and lots of shaky video, then hiring someone to deal with the occasional shot is probably the way to go. However, if you choose to do it yourself, there are many training videos out there that deal with stabilization and can help you get up to speed.

I hope this has provided some useful info to all you crazy folks doing crazy things with DSLRs.

Oh and btw… CHECK THIS OUT: The DSLR shootout, where the folks at Zacuto do a spectacular job comparing a number of DSLRs with a $100K Feature Film camera. The results are pretty amazing!

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Well… apparently not all paper backgrounds are made equal!

I don’t remember who made the paper background we initially tested. But it was awful. Very reflective and prone to hot spots. We figured all paper would have the same problems. After listening to a talk by another company that does greenscreen software, I decided to revisit this and give Savage Paper’s ‘tech green #46′ a try.

So how’d it fare vs. the foam materail we’ve been recommending since day 1?

Excellent! I was very impressed with how evenly it lit. The paper has a very flat finish on it, meaning very little reflection and easy lighting. Of course, we lit everything with two big softboxes, so that helped I’m sure.

I’m going back on my opinion that paper won’t work for greenscreen backgrounds, and give a solid recommendation to the Savage #46 paper. I DO NOT think that all paper will work as well. As in our initial test, some papers are glossy and not suitable for chromakey. Also, Savage just released vinyl backgrounds that come in green and I’m highly skeptical that it’ll work for greenscreen. It’s got a pretty glossy finish, which is usually a disaster for chromakey.

We still recommend the foam material as well. But I think the Savage paper is on par with it, except in terms of reusability. I think the foam material generally works well, it’s easy to transport, and you can easily clean and reuse it.

For full length in a studio, I would give the nod to the paper. I think you’re likely to get a little less spill around the feet, but I don’t think the difference is that significant. You can take a look at the results with the two materials:

There are other materials out there… paint, canvas, etc. The important part with any material is a very flat finish on the surface. If you have that, it should work fine as a greenscreen.

If there are any other manufacturers of greenscreen backgrounds reading this that would like our recommendation on their product, please feel free to contact us to send us a sample. However, right now, the only materials we’re recommending is the Savage #46 paper and foam-backed material made by velcro.

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However the Financial Times reports a new wrinkle. DSLR sales have slowed significantly less than point-and-shoot sales, meaning the DSLRs are making up a larger share of the digital camera market. Over 8 million DSLRs will be sold in 2009.

What does this mean? How does it affect photographers?

Well, for sure, part of it is just a wrinkle in the numbers. You would expect pros to have a little less discretion about whether to buy a new camera or not than your mom and dad. So the fact that the sale of DSLRs is slowing less rapidly may not be that surprising.

However, part of it is that more and more folks are discovering the joys of photography, the instant gratification that digital brings, and the limitations of point-and-shoots. So I think you’re seeing some of these people opt to buy a DSLR instead of another point-and-shoot when they feel it’s time to replace the camera they bought a year or three ago.

This is something that was discussed at the InfoTrends conference I attended awhile back. It’s definitely a trend that’s occurring and the ability to shoot HD video with the 5D Mark II and especially the 7D, are just accelerating this trend. Also, some limitations of P&Ss, like long lag times when taking a picture, are frustrating some people enough to move up.

Ultimately, I don’t think it affects pro photographers all that much. Some folks doing microstock will be affected by images uploaded to free stock sites like the Stock Exchange (www.sxc.hu). And on the very low end, some overly budget conscious folks may have Uncle Joe shoot their wedding rather than a pro.

It does open up some new opportunities for those of us that make software or training for photographers. Web sites that cater to new photographers, like SmugMug, will also benefit. If you’re a photographer that does seminars and workshops, this is a big new group of folks that are going to be looking for info on how to take advantage of these big, new-fangled cameras. It’s definitely a trend that’s worth paying attention to. The digital camera market is huge, and if camera makers are shipping 8-9 million DSLRs, there are probably some opportunities there.

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HDR Gone Bad

It’s a novelty look and I’m over it. It was cool for a very short time, then everyone decided they wanted to have surreal images. It’s not that hard of a look to achieve, so it’s not that impressive. Get over it.  :-) I much prefer to use HDR for what it was meant for… which is giving a slightly wider dynamic range to create a shot that has similar contrast and color range to what your eye actually sees. No one has seen colors like the photo above has. Alright, well, yeah I’ve taken mushrooms too, so maybe then… but not normally.

The better use for HDR…

Given the normal photo below:

We can use multiple exposures to create the wider dynamic range we’d like to see in a single photo, but can rarely achieve due to the limitations of sensors, file formats, etc. Even when used properly, HDR isn’t without its problems. However, you can frequently get beautifully life like photos that would be difficult to achieve normal. The example below gets the point across (although I’m not holding it up as a shining example of photography, it is good enough to get my point across though):

What you get is more detail in the shadows and highlights than what you’d normally see. You can tease some of this detail out when working with RAW files, but not to the extent you can when you have multiple photos. Of course, multiple photos means you can have ghosting and other artifacts to deal with, so that’s always a consideration.

HDR is a cool technique and can produce some amazing photography work. The surreal look does, I’m sure, have a time and place, but realize that’s not what HDR was designed for.

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Click here for the full story

A tech side note… I saw this photo in a newspaper and started searching around online for it. Google Images completely failed. Microsoft’s Bing found it on the second try. At least for image searching, it would appear Google has some competition.

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In part 1 I discussed some of the habits that may or may not develop. Now I’m going to talk technology. While at the Digital Imaging conference a few technology things kept coming up… Cameraphones, the cloud, and social networks. Not exactly unexpected.

The interesting thing about cameraphones is 1) how they will evolve and affect point and shoot cameras and 2) how are users storing and managing their photos.

This little piece of work from Samsung not only has a 5mp camera, but shoots decent HD video as well.

As for the first point, it’s expected that camera phones will more or less replace point and shoot cameras over the next five years or so. The only standalone cameras that will be left will be the more professional DSLRs. This makes some sense. We’re already seeing a merging of functionality into smartphones. The PDA is pretty much history, despite being an important device to many people just 4 or 5 years ago (see any PDAs on palm.com?). The MP3 player may go the same way. The smaller mp3 players merge with smartphones, and the larger ones merge with gaming machines. People are leaning towards less devices, not more. Who the hell needs the headache of carrying around all those devices, power cords, batteries, etc.

As Moore’s law continues with cameras, we’ll get better optics and sensors on cameraphones until the quality is so good that, unless you need to change lenses or want RAW files, there’s no point in a separate camera. The general consensus was the point and shoot will be mostly gone in 5 years.

The other reason to suggest that this will happen is given by what people are doing with the photos they take. As mentioned in Part I of this blog post, folks are printing less, but emailing and posting photos to networking sites by the millions. The cameraphone obviously allows people to do this more seamlessly than a regular camera. There’s no need to download to yet another device to post the pictures. You can instantly send the photos to facebook, flickr, friend, family, etc. This is a huge advantage given that most photos have a short shelf-life. The value of the photo drops off rapidly, so immediacy is important. Yes, you could add a connection to the cameras (and I’m sure we’ll see that in some cameras), but I think it more likely the cameras will just get incorporated into the devices that already have a connection.

So lots of people are uploading photos to facebook and flickr. Hardly news. But do consumers really understand what they’re doing? Do they understand the ‘cloud’?

Some of the social networking sites, notably facebook, don’t keep high resolution files. They lower the resolution, so it’s not the original file that was uploaded. Some folks don’t fully understand this, nor do they understand all the implications of having their photos (hires or not) sitting around in a cloud somewhere.

So there was also a lot of discussion about getting consumers to understand their copyright/privacy rights when posting pictures to the cloud, what they should do about archiving their images, and how to manage them all wherever they are.

Many of the users posting pictures may not fully appreciate what it means to have a photo posted that may, potentially, never go away (if they even know that deleting something online doesn’t necessarily mean it’s deleted). Interestingly, the other side of the problem, archiving, is to deal with when images permanently (usually unexpectedly) go away.

There’s definitely some opportunities to provide services that deal with what users actually do vs. what they should do. A guy from SmugMug spoke at the DI conference, and they seem to know what they’re doing. Yes, users should manage their photos and know beforehand which photos are valuable, deleting ones that aren’t. In the real world, users upload everything, don’t manage them, and then two years later want to find that ‘one’ picture of granpa Joe. Further proof that human behavior is, well… wacky. But we all do it.

There’s also some opportunities that should arise from educating users about photo archiving. CD/DVDs don’t last forever (although a company called TuskerBlu claims that theirs do), cloud companies go out of business taking all their data with them (i.e. Digital Railroad), media cards die, and hard drives crash. So how to you educate folks on the need to backup their photos? It’s an important part of the digital imaging experience. Do non-techy families understand that a hard drive crash can wipe out years of photos? What can you do to make sure your customers don’t have a loss like that? It makes a good case for prints and photobooks, which last a lot longer than any of the other media mentioned.

And, of course, lastly… how do you manage all these photos with them spread all over the place? Eventually someone is going to come up with a good tagging system that will recognize everything in a photo and tag it. But that’s a ways off. In the meantime, better tools that make tagging easier are needed (along with, again, educating users why they want to tag).

So, lots of food for thought. But for other people. Because I KNOW you archive, tag, and properly manage your photos. Right?

cheers,

Jim

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One of the interesting observations at the conference was the way our picture taking habits are changing. We (as a society) are taking a LOT more pictures. However, these pictures tend to have a lower value on average, with a shorter shelf life so to speak. In the past, pictures were somewhat difficult to take and get printed so there was some value to them, even the crappy ones. Now we snap pictures everywhere, immediately send them around to our network of friends. We can immediately see our friends pictures who are doing the same thing. But a lot of these photos are ‘of the moment’. Pictures from very recent events that are not great photos, but are interesting because of their immediacy. Most are not pictures you’ll be looking at five years from now. There are a few things that can change the value of a picture immediately, for example, if someone passes away any pictures you have of them become more valuable.

Another interesting point was that the value of some pictures have a ‘V’ shaped curve over time. They are very valuable when first taken, but that value diminishes over time. However at some point along the timeline, because of the age of the photo, a death, or something else, the value of the photo starts to increase.

Ok, but why does this matter?

As a photographer, it matters because you may be asking yourself, “with all these cameras around, will there still be a need for me?”. So it’s important to understand why people are taking pictures and what they’re doing with them. Not only from the perspective of will you have a job, but are there products or services that you can sell to them that will incorporate their photos as well as the images you take of them.

The other reason it matters, is the industry as a whole (especially companies that make printers) is asking whether consumers will still want prints. Now that you can email photos around and view them on beautiful high resolution screens, why would you ever want to print?

My takeaways from the conference:

I don’t think prints are going anywhere. People still live in boxes (houses, cubicles, etc) and they want to hang stuff on the walls of those boxes. Electronic photoframes are nifty, but what parents house would be complete without a Wall of Shame featuring their progeny? I find it unlikely that you’ll see tons of photoframes up on the wall displaying slideshows, if only because you would have to have 50 power outlets.

Consumers ARE printing less, taken as a percentage of the number of pictures they take. However, because they’re taking so many more pictures, the absolute number of prints being made is staying about the same. This makes sense. You no longer have to print out an entire roll of pictures to get the one or two you really want. Many of the cameras out there, especially camera phones, don’t take great pictures. They’re fine for posting on Facebook to let folks know what you did last Friday, but they aren’t exactly keepsake quality.

And speaking about Keepsakes… what about professional photographers? Again, I don’t think there’s anything to worry about. Photography is a skill and getting consistently good shots will continue to be valued. But the value of the experience of going to a pro photographer will go up. If someone is going to go to the trouble of getting a professional portrait, they’re going to expect it to be an experience worth remembering in and of itself. Many photographers already understand this, so its hardly news. But I’m guessing it’ll become even more important. This may involve stuff like shooting video from the moment they walk in and giving them a DVD of the photo shoot process, a sort of  ‘behind the scenes’ documentary. This becomes another selling point or thing to be sold. Creating a photo book of all the behind the scenes images, for example.

And in terms of what consumers want, photo books are way up there. It’s one of those things that can be difficult for them to create themselves, especially when you’re talking about high quality photo books. It’s really what people are looking for and there are tons of options out there. So as a photographer, you’re not just selling a print, you’re selling a multimedia experience that culminates in a great 16×20 photo, photo books, and even a DVD.

We’ll talk about cameras and other technology in part II.

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It’s a pretty cool idea and was great fun. Adobe rockstar Julieanne Kost joined us along with a few other Adobe folks. The walk itself was fairly short in length and mostly went a few blocks around the Adobe campus in San Jose. You’d be surprised at how long it takes for 50 photographers to go a few blocks. In any event, this led to many photos of the Adobe building (there also seemed to be a good deal of photographers taking pictures of photographers).

When you go on walks like this, it’s interesting what your choice of lens does to your photos.

In my case I brought the 70-200mm Canon 2.8 lens. An excellent lens, but not completely ideal for where we ended up walking. There’s a river that winds its way by the Adobe building and that’s where we were for most of the walk. Nice area, but somewhat closed in which didn’t give my telephoto lens a lot of room to work with.

I suppose if you don’t know where you’re going it helps to bring multiple lenses, but since this was a somewhat low key affair I thought I’d take my chances. When you only have one lens you do tend to make the best of it. Your decision making process adjusts to filter out the things you know just won’t work and you start looking (in my case) for interesting things far off.

I did get a few interesting shots…For example, this… thing. This is on top of a column out front of the Adobe West Tower. Perhaps a monument to a long forgotten turtle king? John Warnock’s Second Life avatar? A memorial to GoLive? Such are the mysteries of San Jose.

Little known to most people, Adobe has a factory that makes miniature models of factories… And the Adobe building, apparently. Deep within the bowels of Adobe is a secret chamber with a scale model of the Adobe building. We are not sure of the purpose of this, but here’s a photograph of it.

Interestingly, there are two albino figures walking amongst the faux Adobe towers. Who are they? Whither go they? Why are they walking in a planter?

cheers, Jim

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When I returned to my Inbox this morning, my favorite roving panographer (if, in fact, there is such a term) had emailed to me his own stunning, low pixel image from a recent nature walk. Here is what Stanton Perry said about his photo, which was also taken with an iPhone, and its subsequent cartoon that uses our ToonIt! Photo plugin.

“What I love most about Toonit! is its uncanny ability to turn a “less than satisfactory” photograph into a work of art! A few weeks ago on Father’s Day, we were treated to a visit (on the 7th hole of my favorite course) from the native deer family. All I had with my was my iPhone, and even though the “natives” are friendly and not easily spooked, it was still challenging getting a shot. To be honest I wasn’t very impressed with my initial results, but after an hour with Toonit, I had a shot that I was proud to add to my portfolio!”

Thanks Perry! Here’s my ‘iToon’ nature shot.

All the best -Debbie

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Very cool to see what the actual shots were and what the printed ad ended up being with all the compositing, color correction, and other assorted image processing. Oh, yeah, and the lions. Ya gotta have lions.

Of course, my all time favorite ‘breakdown’ is the Dove ‘Real Beauty’ ad,  Evolution Of Beauty on YouTube.

And, of course, the quite awesome parody of said Dove ad, which is also on YouTube as the  Dove Evolution Parody.

regards, Jim

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Luckily there’s a nifty tool in Photoshop to help you out with this. It’s called File Info. (under the File menu) The cool thing about this is that you can save your info as a template, which makes it easy to reapply the data to a large number of photos.

The way I use it is to enter in all my basic info and save that as a template. This can be applied to all my photos. If I want to add more detailed info, like a description and keywords, I can do so. However, usually I’m only going to do that if I’m selling the image as stock or making the photos easily searchable for a client. If I’m just posting them to Flickr, then it’s probably unnecessary to do that for every image.

In addition to putting your info in the Description area, it’s important to enter it into the IPTC area as well. IPTC is a consortium of major publishers that are trying to come up with standards for tracking copyrighted content (among other things).

Ultimately, it’s always possible for someone to intentionally remove metadata. There will always be thieves and unscrupulous individuals. These protections are aimed at preventing accidental removal of identifying info, which is the more usual scenario and extremely important.

cheers,

Jim

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