Peter Brown

One of the side benefits of working just west of downtown Toronto is the proximity of several good photo galleries on Queen Street West. Last month, I had the pleasure of ogling the photography of Peter Brown at the Stephen Bulger Gallery. This show really struck a chord with me because I just love farm countryside and Brown does just a wonderful job of capturing the mood of the plains. There is a sense of desolation and grandeur that is more powerful to me than the highest mountains or the loneliest lakes.

Sunset on the White House - (c) Huw Morgan

I've been busy over the last few years taking photos in a series I call "The Road North" depicting the rolling farmland between city (Toronto) and the Canadian shield to the north where people go each week-end to cottage. Most people drive through the country as fast as they can wanting to get to their destination in the least possible time. To my wife's chagrin, I prefer to wander up and down the side roads, frequently stopping to take photos of interesting farms and road-side attractions.

Seeing Peter Brown's work was very affirming. It seems there's an audience for subtle images of the countryside, a subject that isn't as spectacular as the great scenic vistas that captivated Ansel Adams and his followers.

The good news is that Peter Brown has published a book called West of Last Chance. The Online Photographer features a review and you can buy it here. It would make a great Christmas present to yourself and you deserve it!

Virtual Housecleaning

I spent the week-end housecleaning. No, not the usual kind of housecleaning with dusters and mops, I mean the virtual kind. For over a year now, ever since I got a second computer and moved my older machine into my basement studio along with my printer, I've been meaning to get my networking act together. Believe it or not, despite my day job as a CTO, I've been running separate file systems on both computers, two Lightroom catalogs and using sneakernet (copying files onto a CF card and then taking them downstairs) to transport files between the computers. I like to edit on the faster machine in the family room where I can keep an eye on the TV and chat with the family and then do my printing downstairs. But, this practice played havoc with my filing system. I had no idea where the latest copy of each master file was because I often took what I thought was a finished image and then tweaked it after seeing printer proofs. I did try to network the two computers together using a wireless network, but the speed wasn't up to par and it wasn't practical to mount network drives and copy files that way.

So, this week-end, I bit the bullet and ran good old cat-5 cable from my upstairs computer to a switch in the basement and then from there on to my downstairs computer. Then, it was time to adopt a single Lightroom catalog to track all my files. Here's how I did that in case you are wondering about networking and Lightroom.

• First, I made sure that there were no drive letters in common between the two computers (to ensure that Lightroom could see the same drive letter from each computer). I went into the Vista system administration part of control panel and re-labelled disks on my old computer.
• Then, I mapped network drives between the two computers so that each computer can see the photo folders on the other. To do this, I had to a) right click on each of the main photo folders and share them, b) go into the security tab of each folder and make sure that the special user "everyone" could have full read/write access to them and finally, c) go into my firewall software on each machine to ensure that both computers were letting the other one through. Needless to say, I don't envy the non-technical person trying to sort this out.
• To consolidate my Lightroom catalog, I decided to use the upstairs computer as the main one and then exported all the catalog elements from the studio computer and imported them into the upstairs catalog. I backed the catalog up at this point to make sure I had all these changes saved.
• After reading lots of articles about networking Lightroom (Lightroom is built around a lightweight SQL database that doesn't support the locking operations that you need for multi-user operation and the programmers specifically put code into the product that stops you from using a catalog on a network drive), I decided not to try one of several work-arounds. Instead, I copied the catalog to a USB hard drive and will use that to store my main catalog. Typically, I'm either in photo editing mode (upstairs) or photo printing mode (downstairs studio), so it will be practical for me to unmount the USB drive from one computer and mount it on the other. That way, I'll be able to use the same catalog on both machines and any changes I make to tweak images for printing will be reflected in the master image in the catalog. As long as I take care to right click on the USB drive and choose the "safely remove" option before unplugging it, my Lightroom catalog should retain its integrity.
  

After consolidating my catalog, I had an hour or so to do a little data mining. As a follow-up to my last post on smart collections, here's the fun part of the project. Once your smart collections have been set up to capture tagged images, it is a blast to go over all your images to tag them with keywords. Through the magic of smart collections, as soon as you tag an image with a keyword, it shows up in the appropriate collection.

And there you have it, a week-end's spring cleaning for my computer network and I now have that nice feeling of having my shit together. My images are in one place and I can actually find stuff. Thanks to smart collections, my projects are all together and I can now do some portfolio printing without scrambling around looking for images.

Lightroom Smart Collections

Toronto Outdoor Art in Context - Here Comes the Sun

Every now and then, a light goes on. A few days ago, I had a chance to view a very good tutorial on smart collections in Adobe Lightroom 2. I'm not going to describe what these are in any detail, so if you don't know, please view the tutorial here. The beauty of smart collections is that they are dynamic and change as the images in the Lightroom database change. For example, if you have created a smart collection of all the images ranked with four stars and then you change one of the images to three stars, the image immediately drops from the smart collection. If you have another collection of photos with the keyword "Ireland" and you tag an image in your library with the keyword "Ireland", then it will immediately show up in the smart collection.

I've been mulling this capability around in my mind and here's how I plan to use smart collections in my workflow:

• First, I'm going to implement a new scoring system as follows:
  
  • One star for rejects (blurry, shots of my foot etc.)
  • Two stars for ordinary photos (nothing technically wrong, but no inspiration)
  • Three stars for photos with promise, but with a technical flaw (e.g. in need of cropping)
  • Four stars for photos that work
  • Five stars for photos that are portfolio-worthy.
• Next, I'm going to use flagged/unflagged to indicate if the photo has been developed and is ready for posting/printing
• I'm going to set up smart collections as follows:


• For each of my current and past photo projects, I'm going to set up a new collection set. For example, I'm working on a project called Toronto Outdoor Art in Context and will create a new set for that.
• I'll go through my library and assign a keyword to every image in the project. In this case, the keyword will be Toronto Found Art.
  
• Inside each set, I'll set up a bunch of smart collections. Each one will pull images from the database with the keyword I've selected for the project.
• One smart collection will look for images with less than one star. These will correspond to new images that I haven't ranked yet.
• One smart collection will look for images four stars or greater that are unflagged. These will be the images that are queued up for developing.
• Another smart collection will look for flagged images with five stars. These are the portfolio-worthy images that are ready for printing and posting to my web site.

By arranging my collections this way, I'll solve a problem that has hounded me since I started serious photography back in 2004: finding all the photos in a particular project and sorting them into the keepers and the throw-aways.

Assigning keywords to every image in your library sounds painful, but in practice it goes fairly quickly. Usually photos in a project appear sequentially in your folders, so you can just highlight a block of photos at a time, mouse over the keyword that you want to assign, right click and choose "apply keyword to all selected photos". My goal is only to assign project-oriented keywords, not every tag under the sun.

If you haven't tried out Lightroom smart collections yet, give it a shot. It's a huge improvement over regular collections that are built by dragging and dropping images into the collection.

Yes Virginia

There is a Santa Claus. Can a major camera producer create a new sensor that has nearly double the pixel count (and reduce pixel pitch from 8 microns to 6.4 microns) AND actually improve low-noise ISO performance? The answer is now out and it is a resounding YES.

Here's a test of the Canon 5d and the Canon 5d Mark II from DxO Labs that shows the improvements in basic sensor science over a three year period:

• Colour depth improves from 22.9 to 23.7 (3.5%)
• Dynamic range improves from 11.1 to 11.9 (7.2%)
• Low-light ISO performance improves from 1368 to 1815 (32.7%)
• No. of pixels goes from 12.8 meg to 21.1 meg (64.8%)
• Pixel size goes from 8 microns to 6.4 micros (-20%)

So, there you have it...new technology that nets a huge gain in sensor resolution AND improves all facets of sensor performance.

Isn't science grand?

Quick Update for R1800/R1900 Users

Printing on thicker papers poses challenges to R1800/R1900 users. These printers produce wonderful results, but seem to have issues when top-loading thicker papers (like the Hahnemuhle photo rag baryta mentioned below). Here's a thread from a review of the R1800 that might be useful:

Email From Dave Brown:

Hi Folks,
Just a note tonight to help solve a problem a lot of people seem to be
having with the Epson R1800 Printer when trying to print on heavier
stock Fine Art Papers, such as Hahnemuhle, etc.. Anyway, just bring up a
photo to print. When Print Preferences Box opens, go to Maintenance Tab
and select the bottom button, called Printer and Option Information.
Click on it and the Printer and Option Information Box opens, and low
and behold, there at the bottom on the left is an unchecked box with
"Thick Paper" beside it. Check this box, and your problems with printing
heavier Fine Art Papers are over. And also, I have been feeding them
into the top of the printer just like regular paper, and not at the
back. Give it a try for yourself......Leave it to Epson to NOT mention
this in the User's Guide that comes with this excellent
printer!!.......Maybe you might like to help spread the good word?
Happppy Printing!! Dave

Fredrik: I tried Dave's tip, and yes it does work. To be sure, I emailed Epson to find out if this would harm the printer.

Email from Epson: In answer to your enquiry, the Thicker media setting you have selected is mainly for use when printing on envelopes. For the heavier weight paper such as the Fine art paper. This should only be loaded through the rear manual feed as this reduces the strain on the paper feed mechanism as it does not need to bend the paper as much.

New Papers

Until recently, most of the camera stores in my city (Toronto) sold a variety of brands of ink jet paper ranging from Hahnemuhle at the expensive end down to Premier Imaging at the lower end of the price scale. But, as the song goes, there's a new kid in town.

I buy most of my paper and ink at CCBC, a small outfit that focuses on computer-related consumables (paper, ink, DVD's) and often has the best prices around. They have a small retail outlet in Toronto and also sell lots of stuff on the web. I was in the store the other day and they were featuring paper from Inkpress Paper. Since then, I've seen the same paper in Vistek and Henry's Camera, so the word is getting out. I was really impressed with the sheer variety of the Inkpress product offerings. They have a professional line with three papers (warm baryta, pro gloss and pro silky) and a regular line of 24 (!) types of paper, ranging from matte paper to self-adhesive vinyl. Want canvas? Got it. Want natural cotton rag? Got that too. The range is awesome.



You can buy a sampler pack for each product line (see product list here) and I did just that. So far, I've done test prints (using the image above that has a good range of shadows, highlights and colours) on the warm baryta paper and the Pro Silky paper. The images were quite stunning, although the profiles produced distinctly varied results. The baryta profile was quite true to the image, but the silky paper image looked to have too much yellow in it. I'll have to tinker and see if I can find an Epson profile that does better. I've often had success in using the Epson profiles as a substitute for wonky profiles from other vendors. However, I was very pleased with the look of the pictures on both of these papers. The baryta paper is very warm in tone and the surface is lovely. There is a real depth to this paper and the photo looks quite three dimensional. There appears to be a very good range of tonality. The silky paper is much whiter and looks to be a very high quality semi-gloss. I'll keep printing and let you know what I find out.

The paper that I've been lusting after is Hahnemuele Photo Rag Baryta. This paper sounds like a dream come true - offering the deep blacks and three dimensional appearance of a baryta coating with the long-lasting properties of a cotton rag backing. Neil Snape says that the paper is "just right", not too glossy but still capable of rendering prints with that transparent look where the paper disappears and lets you wander around in the photograph. Here's his full review.

The good news is that this paper seems to be in stock at retailers. Here's a link to Vistek's listings. I think I might buy some :-)

Celebrity Photographs

Is it wrong to use your position as wife or girlfriend of a celebrity to sell candid books and photographs? Is it OK to capitalize on fame in one field (e.g. music) by taking photos of your rich and famous friends? Do you get to call yourself a serious photographic artist if you use your position to gain access to famous subjects?

Several recent developments have got me to thinking about these issues. First, we have an exhibit going on in Toronto and New York of the photographs of Pattie Boyd. Now sixty-something, Pattie was a famous fashion model in the swinging sixties who got a bit part in a Beatles movie and met George Harrison. She married George, divorced him and then married Eric Clapton. After a tumultuous marriage with Eric, she divorced him as well. Her life and times has now been captured in a tell-all potboiler called Wonderful Tonight, Eric Clapton, George Harrison and me.

While all this was going on, Pattie was taking photographs. From what I can see from her work, she started out taking snapshots and got more and more serious about it and is now making her living as a professional photographer. Her exhibit in Toronto is called Through the Eye of a Muse and runs through to the end of the year in the Great Hall gallery on Queen Street. The title refers to her role as muse to Harrison and Clapton, inspiring great songs like Layla, Wonderfull Tonight and Something. You can see some of her photos here at the Beatlemania Shop.

Have a look at the galleries and see if you think she's a rip-off artist selling private family snaps for $2,000 plus or whether you think there is a talented artist at work here. My opinion is mixed. There are some photos that scream "snapshot" and really don't add much to my understanding of the subjects. But, just when you begin to write Pattie off as an exploitation artist, you run across a picture of Eric Clapton on stage that captures the feeling of a musician on stage to a tee. It conveys the loneliness of a man on-stage with his music.

To me, this is consistent with someone who may have started with home snapshots, but evolved over time, as her skills grew, to a very good portrait artist indeed.

Coincidentally with Boyd's exhibition, there were a couple of other announcements in the same vein. May Pang has just published a book of snapshots of John Lennon called Instamatic Karma. Pang had an 18 month affair with John Lennon while he was separated from Yoko Ono. Here we have someone who has no pretensions to artistry who has accumulated a set of snapshots that cover an interesting time in the life of a public figure. I have no issue with this at all - as far as I'm aware, she isn't selling limited edition prints of Lennon for over $2,000 a pop and the book is there for its entertainment value.

At the same time, we have rockstar/photographer Bryan Adams opening up an exhibition at Britain's National Portrait Gallery called Modern Muses. This falls into another category indeed. Adams is a serious fashion and portrait photographer and an exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery is quite a feather in his cap. His photos are beautifully crafted and the subject matter consists of some of the most interesting women in the world.

Coming back to Boyd, we see someone caught in the middle between May Pang and Bryan Adams. On one hand, you have Pattie Boyd, the single woman who needs to make a living, exploiting her older photos for financial gain and passing them off as fine art. On the other hand, you have Pattie Boyd the working photographer who has learned her craft and has created some very nice work. She continues to produce interesting photographs, like a recent picture of Jeff Beck with his hot rod cars. I found it fascinating that the asking prices for her recent photos (e.g. a picture of some monks) were half that of her snaps of famous people. That implies a 100% premium mark-up for celebrity.

Is Pattie Boyd a serious artist or an exploiter of old relationships? The only answer is "yes". She is both. I'm not sure I'd shell out a couple of grand for an old Beatle snapshot, but certainly her recent work is well-crafted and worth the price tag.