Luminous Landscape Video Journal 19

I'm a big fan of Luminous Landscape video journals. These started out as a quarterly CD subscription series and have morphed into a periodic downloadable video product. The journals are a collaboration between photographer/entrepreneur Michael Reichmann and videographer Chris Sanderson and feature video clips that appeal to a wide range of photographers. The usual winning formula is to combine a video journal of a photo workshop in an appealing location (e.g. Antarctica, Namibia) along with interviews with photographers and a feature on new technology.

The current journal (number 19) is particularly appealing. There is a two part series on Namibia with guest photographer Andy Biggs. This follows Michael and Andy on a workshop in several places in Namibia and shows some lovely scenery as well as some nice shots from the air.

There is also a good interview with Seth Resnick, stock photographer deluxe. This interview makes several good points, especially that good meta data can make or break a stock photographer's career. In one segment, Seth explains that he was the first to use the keyword "ecological tourism" on his photos and sold a ton of work as a result. Seth is a very animated subject and peppers his responses with the f-bomb (quacked out in post-production). Highly recommended.

The highlight of the journal for me was the interview with Andrew Collett, a Canadian photographer who works in the Muskoka area north of Toronto. Andrew makes his living selling landscape photographs. He also prints mostly on canvas. Michael's interview was terrific because it explored canvas as a medium without looking down on it. It also showed Andrew's full production process including how to stretch canvas onto a frame and spray it prior to displaying it. The best part of the interview was Andrew's candid explanation on how he makes money as a professional landscape photographer. He sells art retail through his gallery in Port Carling. He sells art at wholesale to decorators and hotel chains via interior decorating shows. He also sells art at various shows around Toronto, including the "One of a Kind" art show. Andrew also supplements his art income with workshops.

The two interviews with working photographers showed just how hard you have to work to make any kind of a living at photography. Unless photography is your life's passion, there's really no point in taking it up as a career. Seth and Michael discussed the market for photographers and it is pretty depressing. There are over 20,000 people graduating each year from college photography programs in North America and there are only 500 new jobs each year for the graduates. That's pretty slim odds! Only those that are willing to persevere and work all the hours that god sends need apply.

The interview with Norman Koren, the founder of Imatest, was much less entertaining than the others. For some reason, Michael kept asking wordy questions and wouldn't let Norman get a word in edgeways to tell his story. I'm not sure what Michael's agenda was, but the interview goes on far too long.

If you haven't seen a video journal, I should set your expectations straight. These are HD videos (720P), but they are not high budget production numbers. Chris Sanderson is a good videographer and the quality of the images is just fine. However, Michael is not a professional interviewer and there is no supporting cast of thousands - you won't mistake this for Art Wolfe's TV show. Non-photographers will find the material excruciatingly boring. But, if you are a photography fan, you'll find Michael's questions very insightful - he is equipped with curiosity and wants to know the same sort of stuff that you want to know.

My only suggestion for Michael is to make the material more relevant to the amateur photography audience. For example, I've seen a couple of segments now that feature some heavy duty equipment that is out of the reach of most non-pros. One example was Andrew Collett's canvas stretching machine. It would have been better to show Andrew using a canvas stretching pliers the way most people would start off. The second example was a segment several journals back where Bill Atkinson demonstrated his computerized matte maker. It would have been better for me personally if someone could have shown how to do good quality mattes using commercially available manual matte cutters.

These are just quibbles and shouldn't take away from my full endorsement for the video journal. Here's the link to download http://store.luminous-landscape.com/zencart/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=20.

If a tree falls...

Today I've been musing about whether an artist needs an audience to be happy. As a photographer, I've been rather unsuccessful at marketing my work. I've had my images displayed in galleries and I've been part of a gallery catalog (see http://www.elainefleckgallery.com/catalogue.pdf page 39) and I've sold some works at silent auctions for good causes, but that's about the extent of it. No one is beating down my doors to buy my work.

Fortunately, I don't make my living as a fine art photographer and that suits me fine. It means that I can suit myself as to what I photograph. I don't have a demanding public who want more shots of specific subjects. I don't have to grind out hundreds of prints for gallery shows and customers.

It means I can do all the stuff I enjoy - taking images, developing images digitally and making lovely prints. All without worrying about whether people like my work or not. The truth of the matter is that I like my work and that is quite enough for me. I like looking at my images on the computer screen and I like looking at my prints as they hang on the wall.

I used to put my images up on flickr and pbase to gain an online audience and was moderately successful. But, I got a bit tired of the "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" culture where you had to spend lots of time commenting on other people's work so they would come to your gallery and comment on yours. I wanted to spend time taking pictures and making prints, not cruising around online photo sites.

I hope this doesn't sound like sour grapes. I'm really quite genuinely happy that my work is not more popular and hasn't attracted an audience yet. Occasionally I feel guilty for spending money on paper and ink where the prints I make are only for my own enjoyment, but then I think of my musician friends who do home recordings. They are in exactly the same boat as me. They like the process of creating music and laying down track after track and don't really seem to care much if no one else listens to them. I'm sure they feel guilty at times for spending money on guitars, recording equipment and software, but they shouldn't. These are wonderful pastimes that are rewarding in and of themselves.

No audience necessary...

Lightroom 3.0 Beta

I can now claim to be a Lightroom futurist :-)

Back in March, I wrote a blog that predicted that the Lightroom 3.0 beta would be introduced in October of 2009 (see http://huwmorganimages.blogspot.com/2009/03/speculation-on-lightroom-30.html) and here we are with the beta released on October 22nd. What a genius I am!

Unfortunately, I also made some predictions on possible new features and wasn't quite so bright on these. Let's take a peek:

• Improved performance: got that one right. One of the design targets of the new release is superior performance and they've re-built the engine in order to obtain it. I also predicted that LR would take advantage of graphics cards, but there is no evidence of that so far (although Adobe might be holding something back for the release). It's strange that Photoshop uses graphics acceleration and LR still doesn't.
• Print soft proofing: Zilch, nada.
• Networkable version: also zilch. This feature would require a lot of rework, so it may not come out soon or ever. This product deficiency makes it tough for photo teams (e.g. photographers with assistants or production folks) to work together.
• Improved masking: nothing on offer.
• Built-in lens correction (like PTLens): nope
• Expanded API (to be more like Aperture): nada. This is a huge weakness of the Adobe architecture. With no API that allows developers access to the image being worked on in real time, photographers are doomed to always having a discontinuity in their workflow where the concept of editing non-destructively is compromised by having to create an intermediate version for Photoshop or some other editor to work on.
• Real-time integration with Photoshop (i.e. sharing an image dynamically): nothing
• Improved smart collections: you can view them from the develop module now, but no extra capabilities (e.g. copy and modify).

What did the Lightroom team do instead?

• A complete re-write of the raw conversion software to make it competitive with CaptureOne etc. This was sorely needed.
• A new import module. I'm not sure there was anything wrong with the old one.
• More print features. Always nice to have.
• Better interface to photo sites. This was already well-served by the plug-in community.
• Watermarking. This was needed too.
• HD Video slide shows. Video is not my thing, but I guess this is a good feature for some.
• Pro level sharpening and noise reduction. This will be a good thing when we see it finished. It will reduce one reason to do the round trip to Photoshop or other packages.

Let's ask the obvious question: is this new release going to be something worth buying? We know that Adobe is going to ask for money. Here's my concern. The main guts of this release are the speed improvements and the re-write of the raw conversion software. In my opinion, this is something that Adobe should send out for free - these are fixes to deficiencies that have dogged Lightroom from the start. We shouldn't have to pay for Adobe to bring the package up to the competition.

The new import dialog, watermarking, better interface to photo sites and new print features sound like something that could easily have been included in point releases. These don't justify paying for an upgrade.

Pro grade sharpening and noise reduction are substantial features and are probably worth paying for. I'm not sure they are enough to justify a complete new release since they were features that already existed in 2.5.

In short, I'm disappointed that Adobe didn't include more goodies in this release. It seems like the developers decided to bite the bullet and correct some basic flaws in the LR engine and then threw the marketers a few bones to try to justify charging money for the upgrade. I'll probably buy it, but I reserve the right to be grumpy about it!

What I Did on My Summer Holidays

This summer, we didn't take an exotic trip to Italy or France or Orstralia. Our youngest daughter is getting married in September, so our money is committed to paying for a very lovely wedding plus a party in Scotland the following week-end (the groom is a Scot). It should be lots of fun, but there's nothing in the cookie jar for jaunts to Europe and the like.

Green Rock and Rapids - Minden Ontario

Instead, we decided to vacation in our own backyard, lovely Haliburton Ontario. We spent an enjoyable week at the cottage and my wife and I booked courses at the local arts college, Haliburton School of the Arts, part of Sir Sanford Fleming College. Naturally, I booked a photography workshop and Trish booked a class in stained glass making.

Shangri-la, Minden Ontario

After looking around at a lot of photography workshops and experiencing a rather expensive one with Alain Briot last year, I'm very happy to say that this summer's workshop was the bargain of the century. It only cost $250 CDN and it ran for a full five days. Not only that, but it was in some of the loveliest countryside you can imagine and the instructor, Rob Stimpson, was first-rate. The workshop was a little on the large side, with 18 participants, but my fellow classmates were a pretty talented bunch and I learned a lot from seeing the world through their eyes.

Waitress, Haliburton Ontario

We spent a couple of hours in the classroom each day getting sound advice from Rob, a very seasoned and talented travel photographer. The rest of the time was spent taking photographs in Haliburton and vicinity. For those that may not know where Haliburton is, it's a small town just to the south east of Algonquin Park and is a couple of hours north of Toronto. It is a very photogenic area and has lovely lakes, great rivers with rapids and the town itself is very nice with several older buildings worthy of a photograph.

My Palace, Haliburton Ontario

Rob Stimpson offers several other workshops throughout the year and, based on my experience in Haliburton, I'd recommend his workshops to anyone. He's a very congenial companion and a very knowledgeable photographer with a talent for communicating what he knows.

Nothin' to do but Fish, Haliburton Ontario

There are two workshops in particular that I'm keen to sign up for. The first one runs in June and features moose photography in Algonquin park. Rob says that he sighted 16 moose in this year's workshop and I saw some of his stunning photographs of moose munching away with lovely backdrops of wetland scenes. At this time of year, the male moose are quite docile, but they still have the good beginnings of a rack. They don't seem to mind canoes getting up close and personal, so you can take great shots without having to tote around 800mm lenses.

Bucking the Wave, Minden Ontario

The second course that I intend to take in the next couple of years is Rob's Gales of Adventure workshop. Anyone who grew up listening to Gord Lightfoot's classic Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald (click on link to see a wonderful video of the launch and demise of the ship set to Lightfoot's music complete with underwater photography of the wreck) will instantly see why I want to take this course. Here's a brief description from Rob's site:

"November is traditionally storm season on Lake Superior. Stormy seas, fall skies and Superior's mighty shores are some of the most dramatic and powerful landscapes a photographer could dream of. Capturing them on film or digitally is a passion of artist Rob Stimpson. This workshop, timed to take perfect advantage of Superior's surely moods and spectacular scenery, will appeal to the person who knows the workings of their camera and wants to create, not just take, photographs."

Plus, you get to stay in the relative comfort of the Naturally Superior Adventures Lodge. All this for $795 CDN (based on single occupancy). What a deal!

All in all, it was a wonderful way to spend a week and I enjoyed it immensely. I also got some nice photos for my portfolio and will enjoy printing them out in the cold winter months.

Canon Lowers Resolution - A First!

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a first! Canon has released its G11 compact camera and has returned the sensor back to 10 MP (down from nearly 15 in the G10). Could it be that the megapixel wars are over and camera manufacturers are listening to consumers who want image quality above all else? As Mike Johnston speculates in The Online Photographer, maybe Canon's move is motivated by the success of the Panasonic DMC-LX3, a 10 megapixel compact that is flying off the shelves.

I don't care what the reason is - I think this is wonderful news. I'd also welcome an updated Canon full-frame camera at around 13-15 megapixels. I've heard that the 5d mark II with 21 megapixels is difficult to use hand-held. Apparently, some camera movement blur shows up with the higher-resolution sensor - blur that would be masked by a lower-resolution sensor. My 13 megapixel 5d has plenty of resolution and works well without a tripod for most shots. I'd just like a higher resolution display and the sensor dust removal feature with a lower price point than the mark II.

Canon, are you listening?

Improving Blown-out Skies with Lightroom

I read a recent article by Mark Segal on Luminous Landscape entitled You'd Be Surprised What Those Files May Contain. In the article, he makes the good point that raw files with blown-out skies may actually contain much more information than you might think. He offers up a rather complex method involving editing two versions of the image in Photoshop. In the original image, he adjusts the tone curve to favor the sky and manages to recapture quite a bit of interest in the sky. He then adjusts the tone curve in a virtual copy of the image to favor the rest of the image. He edits both versions of the image in Photoshop and copies the good sky from one image into the other that was optimized for the rest of the photo.

While there is no doubt that this technique works, there is a tool in Lightroom that often works very well without having to do the round trip into Photoshop. It's called the gradient tool and it is very easy to use. For a good tutorial, click here.

Here is a quick example of how you can restore lost parts of the sky. The first image is exactly the way it came out of the camera, sensor dust and all:

In the second image, I've created a gradient from the top left of the image down to the roofline of the building and I've decreased the brightness of the sky. The result is a sky with lots more contrast:

There is a lot of tweaking that ought to be done - the saturation could be increased and the exposure of the sky could also be adjusted.

However, this is a quick and dirty example of a very powerful tool that often makes the round trip to Photoshop unecessary.

3D - It's coming

The big news of 2009 so far has been the advent of video as part of the DSLR offering. We've seen offerings from Nikon, Canon and now Panasonic that have videophiles all atwitter. Michael Reichmann, in particular, has been quite taken with this new development and he's quite an influential guy, not to be taken lightly.

However, I'm not a video guy and the whole video thing leaves me cold. I've never been an aspiring movie director and still photography consumes all my spare energy.

3D still photography, on the other hand, does turn my crank! I have great memories of playing with a viewmaster as a child and the awe of seeing a three dimensional image of somewhere interesting like the Grand Canyon or the canals of Venice. I think this is where I caught the travel bug.

Fuji just announced some significant 3D developments. It isn't the first 3D camera on the market by any means (just look here), but Fuji has announced a complete system that promises to transform the 3D market. Instead of requiring a binocular viewer that makes the viewing of 3D images a bit of a hassle, it looks like Fuji has developed a 3D viewer screen that doesn't require special eyewear as well as a print-making process that creates 3D prints that also don't require special eyewear.

The 3D viewer consists of an 8-inch LCD screen (600x400 resolution) with two channels. Each channel is aimed at one of your eyeballs to simulate parallax and fool your brain into thinking that it's looking at a 3D image. It has a modern GUI (very iphone-like) with a touch screen.

The camera is pretty cool. It has dual sensors and can record 3D stills and movies. It can also work as a 2D camera where you can take two conventional photos at the same time.

There isn't much available on the print making process yet - other than to say that you'll have to send your images to Fuji to have your prints made.

There is also no word on pricing yet, so stay tuned. If the price is right, I'm going to put one of these cameras and the viewer on my Christmas list and play around with this new/old medium.

POSTSCRIPT

As I was tooling around the 'net looking for 3D stuff, I came upon 3-D Review, a great blog site that seems comparable to Mike Johnston's The Online Photographer in the 2-D world.