O'Reilly Digital Media

To start with, I took a straight studio shot of a rare double hellebore blossom (immediately below). The flower is one of the first blossoms from the second year blooms of these special hellebore plants, hybridized by Barry Glick of Sunshine Farm and Garden, the self-styled “Hellebore King.” I photographed the blossom using a backlighting setup on partially reflective lucite with a black background.

The capture information: 200mm f/4 macro lens (300mm in 35mm terms), 1 second at f/36 and ISO 100, tripod mounted using a Kirk Mighty Low Boy.

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When I saw the photo on my monitor, I like the way it came out. But I definitely needed to play with the image in Photoshop (below and far below).

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I often get asked about the techniques I use to get effects like these. I’ve no desire to be mysterious about it. But the precise steps I use are different every time. It’s a process, when it’s working right, that feels like the image is calling out to me, and revealing the steps as I go along necessary to reveal the inner image. You could say that I am the image’s therapist, taking the external image and revealing its inner self.

Also the case: if you tell me that you prefer my straight starting place, I won’t be offended.

There is some commonality in the techniques I usually use. I start by photographing (or scanning) for high depth-of-field and transparency. I then work on the image in Photoshop using a variety of blending modes with duplicated inversions of LAB channels.

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As an argument for keeping photos on file, and being prepared to revisit their treatment in the digital darkroom, this image is a good case in point. The original was a wild flower along the lines of a dandelion in a field near Sea Ranch. I photographed it this summer in the early morning, covered with drops from a heavy ocean mist.

Retrieving the photo from my files a few days ago, I gave it an alternate (and I believe more compelling) treatment.

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Another issue this image raises is the extent to which digital photography is a new medium. I’ve made very clear my view that the post-processing part of digital photogray is integral. Ignore what you can do in Photoshop at your peril.

With freedom comes responsibility: the capture is the starting place, and my image can go almost anywhere from that starting place. That’s nice, but then I am completely responsible for the image, and I can’t excuse it by saying, “But the scene was like that!”

As most of you probably know by now, a few days ago Adobe released ACR 4.3.1. In the release notes it mentioned that there was an update for the new Nikon D300 and Nikon D3 cameras (among other things). I was kind of surprised at this because I thought that the Nikon D300 and Nikon D3 had already been included in the 4.3 update. (You have to excuse my present slightly disoriented state, I seem to have caught some kind of flu a few days ago, that is making it difficult for me to think clearly).

Anyway the appearance of a new ACR gives me an opportunity to run some more comparison tests, this time between Lightroom 1.3 (with the old 4.3 ACR) and Adobe Photoshop CS3 with the new and improved ACR 4.3.1.

I realize that to get the most out of an image in either application, I actually need to push some buttons, slide some sliders and use my brain, but the only way to make a head to head comparison is to let the programs work on auto-pilot and accept their default output.

In Lightroom I just chose Export straight out of the Library, reduced the image and saved to the maximum JPEG quality. In Photoshop CS3 I opened the image in Bridge (which applied the ACR 4.3.1 RAW conversion) with the default setting, reduced the size, applied the USM filter, and saved to JPEG at maximum quality.

Not surprisingly the results are actually quite similar, the only difference I see using Apple Preview (on my Mac) is a very slightly lighter image from Lightroom 1.3 (the preview of this blog actually shows me the opposite in a Mozzila browser), as usual the results will vary on different computers, monitors and browsers.

Update: I checked the results in Safari browser after publishing the Blog posting and the colors are more saturated and the best result (in my opinion) are from Lightroom 1.3 but the Photoshop CS3 images could easily be adjusted to be the same.

The images are of a temple very near my house and were taken on my morning bicycle ride a few days ago. The camera is the Nikon D300 and the lens used for these images is the 60mm f/2.8 AF Micro Nikkor.

Lightroom 1.3 - New temple construction.

PS CS3 & ACR 4.3.1 - New temple construction.

Lightroom 1.3 - Detail of a shrine residing on the side of a tree.

PS CS3 & ACR 4.3.1 - Detail of a shrine residing on the side of a tree.

I often do presentations and I find that one of the most effective and entertaining way for you and your audience to digest a large number of images in a short time is to put your images to music.

Generallly, I like to have total control of the presentation and for years I have been creating audio slideshows using a software program called Live Slide Show. Then, after my slideshow is exported as a QuickTime movie, I drag and drop the QuickTime onto its own slide in Keynote. What’s really nice in Keynote, is when you advance to a slide with a QuickTime Movie the movie automatically launches, making for a slick and seamless presentation.

Aperture does have a slideshow function, but you can’t save said slideshow as a QuickTime movie. I’m hoping in the next version you can, but there are a lot of great things you can do when creating slideshows in Aperture.

More and more, I’m choosing to show my work directly from Aperture, and when I do a demo or teaching, it’s nice to be able to move directly into a slideshow with music, and Aperture accommodates nicely.

What’s nice in Aperture Slideshow, is the ability to create as many albums of images you want as separate shows, each with it’s own unique soundtrack. So during the course of a presentation, you can set the tone and the mood for a body of work with the right audio track selected from iTunes as a pre-set.

I first make an album with the images I want to be in the show and I put them in order. Then, when I click on Slideshow, a dialog box and pulldown menu appears. I choose Edit in the pulldown menu which brings me to a bunch of options for the show.

Scroll down to edit and reveal the host of options below.

This is where you can determine the look of the show, the music to play, and save these directions as pre-sets. I have chosen to keep a consistant look using the traditional dissolve from one slide to the next and my first soundtrack pick is Coldplay’s “In My Place”.

First quick on the + sign at the bottom of the preset window and then call it whatever you want. I label presets by song title which makes sense for me, particularly if I want to use the same music for different presentations.

After I choose a bunch of different songs from my iTunes playlists and make them presets, I make sure the “play music during slideshow” checkbox is checked. Then, when I go to an album of photos and click slideshow, I simply scroll through the dropdown menu to the song I want to play with the images and in seconds, the slideshow begins.

Just make sure that Aperture has rendered the previews for those images beforehand, so when you click on the slideshow and preset, the show starts almost immediately. Otherwise, you and your audience have to wait for Aperture to render the previews, leaving you to tap dance during the awkward silence while the progress bar slowly makes it’s way from start to finish.

Once these presets are created and the previews are rendered, it’s quick and easy to show different bodies of work from within Aperture, each with it’s own unique piece of music. If either no image or a single image is selected in a project or album, the slideshow displays all images in the current album or project.

Another nice feature is having Aperture fit the slides to the music, for nicely coreagraphed shows. But choose a track keeping in mind the number of images in your show. Choosing a three minute song over a six minute one means your images will be up on screen for half the time, and you want the pacing to be fast enough to keep the audience interested, but slow enough to appreciate the work.

I find that a 3 or 4 second per slide pace works well. So if you were showing 50 slides and wanted to “fit slides to music” then 50 times 4 seconds equals 200 seconds or a three minute and change tune.

This is the last photo I took during my all-night vigil in the desert. The photo looks generally southwest, up towards the crest of the Sandstone Ridge near the Wave in the Vermillion Cliffs Wilderness of Utah.

My last battery gave out after the thirty minute exposure had finished, but before the camera had finished processing it. My speculation is that the odd purple fringing at the corners was caused by this interuption.

[This photo: 18mm in 35mm terms, about thirty minutes at f/4 and ISO 100, tripod mounted.]

This is now part three in a series of Lightroom 1.3 vs. Capture NX 1.3 comparisons, some of you are probably getting tired of these posts, but if you either have or are thinking about buying one of the new Nikon D300 digital SLRs, you might find this interesting.

If you remember with the Nikon D80 NEF file comparisons, the default images out of the two applications was actually fairly similar but the default Nikon Capture output was a bit brighter and some of the colors were more realistic and vibrant.

The main advantage that Nikon Capture NX 1.3 has when it comes to editing the image, is the U-Point technology, which allows you to edit individual areas of the image (like for instance the sky) and punch it up (or even de-saturate it entirely to gray scale) without disturbing the rest of the image.

The main advantage that Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 1.3 has is a much better user interface and workflow, especially when dealing with larger numbers of images, but also when trying to squeeze the most out of a single image.

Both applications allow you to export to Photoshop CS 3, so more advanced editing is not an issue, but for basic color and vibrance control a lot of Nikon photographers feel that (especially when they are confronted with a particularly difficult image), they can squeeze more image quality out of Nikon Capture than any other application.

Warning: I have not tested the Nikon D300, or the NEF files it produces, in depth yet, so this is a very early analysis and my findings and results may change dramatically as I start getting used to the camera and the image files that it produces.

Nikon D300 - Capture NX 1.3 - default image, resized, and saved to JPEG

My initial impression from processing the Nikon D300 NEF files in Capture NX 1.3 was that the files were somewhat soft and pastel like. Not really unpleasant but also not what I was expecting.

Nikon D300 - Lightroom 1.3 - default image, resized, and exported to JPEG

Imagine my surprise, to see more sharpness, vibrance and contrast in the Lightroom 1.3 default image file. It is actually kind of hard to see in these small images but in the application widows and at larger size, there is a noticeable difference. For the Mac users with the latest version of Safari, the difference will be pretty dramatic, even in these small images.

Conclusion: Well I don’t really have a conclusion yet, but am reminded why I continue to use a number of different editing applications to get the results that I am after.

In teaching various workshops, one of the key points I try to get across to students is to move around when determining the compostion. Everytime I remind them, I also remind myself.

It’s natural to shoot from a “comfort zone”, ie certain lens to subject distances, often from standing eye-level, same fast shutter speed, in our favorite sweater, etc. As a starting point this is fine, but I find that some of my best work has come from wandering far from this first exposure and looking at things through my camera in new ways.

The Composition Dance

I always remind myself, just a slight adjustment or small gesture can vault a picture from ordinary to extraordinary. Bend the knees and change the perspective, changing the juxtoposition of foreground subjects with the horizon.

Take chances-feel your way, shoot on impulse and I don’t edit in the field too much by looking at the digital preview (just some quick checks of the histogram)—it takes me out of the moment and disrupts my concentration. This is crucial when there is a lot going on and things are out of your control. By concentrating and shooting lots I hope to have to have some tough choices when editing back home in Aperture, as with this series in a Lesotho Church.

When there is a lot going on, I move around and shoot a lot, on impulse.

I want to have a lot to choose from to make some tough choices when determining my final frame in Aperture.

I don’t try and capture everything, but instead, identify visually rich opportunities with potential and concentrate on them. An inch wide, a mile deep. In the said workshops, I find many students are overwhelmed with the world around them. For example, at a parade with so much going on, if you try and shoot everything you might end up dissapointed. By focusing on the people and the floats that might make the best pictures, and shoot more of those subjects—the results will be better.

Other Tips

Keep camera perpendicular when possible to minimize distortion particularly with wide angle lenses. For those relatively new to photography, I recommend keeping zoom lenses at the extremes, the widest or longest setting, and move around with your eye to the viewfinder while composing the photo. Don’t underestimate the little things and pay attention to the entire frame.

Lastly, listen to your intuition. If you have a feeling you haven’t nailed the picture, you probably haven’t. So stay a little longer, work it a little harder—you will be rewarded.

This has been a week full of Nikon anxiety for me and little less. The big question for the last week has been, will I get one of the first batch of the new Nikon D300? And the answer is, yes it has been picked up from the dealer and is on it’s way to me.

Strangely enough I have bought one in Orlando, Florida and a friend (who just happens to be traveling in this direction) is bringing it to Thailand for me. Those of you who are Nikon users, are of course wondering why I am having a Nikon brought from the US to Thailand, where it was manufactured in the first place. Why didn’t I just buy it in Thailand?

There are two very good reasons that I am carrying the proverbial coals to Newcastle, one being that the camera costs quite a bit less in the USA than it does in Thailand, and two is that I want to have a Nikon USA warranty on the camera, it makes it much easier to get the camera serviced in the USA (if necessary).

I promised to make some corrections to the images I used in lasts weeks blog, but in addition to the new camera release Nikon also threw us all a curve ball by coming out with a new version of Capture NX. Somehow it also seems more fair though, now that we are comparing version 1.3 of Lightroom with version 1.3 of Capture NX.

So on with the show. Basically all I want to do for this exercise is improve the sky a little bit.

The original default Lightroom 1.3 image.

The enhanced Lightroom 1.3 image. I tried to match the saturation enhancement I was able to make with Capture NX in the sky, but was held back because the blues in the rest of the image became over saturated.

The original default Capture NX 1.3 image.

The enhanced Capture NX 1.3 image. I used four color control points to boost the blue saturation of the sky and three control points to boost the contrast of the clouds. I have to say that Capture NX is really great for manipulating the sky, without affecting the rest of the image.

Conclusion:

Capture NX allows me to easily and quickly add (color, contrast, exposure) enhancements to specific areas in an image. I know I can do the same thing from Lightroom by round-tripping to Photoshop CS, but Capture NX allows me to do it without exporting or converting the RAW (NEF) image, right in the application. And if I may repeat myself in Capture NX it is very easy to do this.

I know the following may be impossible for both political and practical reasons, but I have to state it anyway, in the hopes that maybe someone can implement at least part of what I would like to see happen.

I would like to see a Capture NX module made available for Lightroom so that Nikon photographers can both get the image quality and enhancement advantages of Capture NX and at the same time have access to the more practical and easier to live with Lightroom workflow. If it is at all possible I would like to hear some comments on the topic. If you think it is not possible or practical I would like to hear your comments on why you think it is impossible too.

As dusk darkened to night, my exposures got longer and longer until the swirl trails of the stars echoed the swirls in the rock of the Wave.

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To take this photo, I needed to wait until darkness out in the desert with the ordeal that was to come. But, I say, since all’s well that ends well, well worth it!

I have to admit, one of the apps I’m having most fun with in Leopard is iChat. With all the new features Leopard brings to applications like Safari and Mail, iChat’s 24 new features outnumbers all others. With the new video effects for example, you can annoy your friends pretending to be in Paris, or on a roller coaster or in space or just look weird and beautiful, with the many crazy and abstract, distorting video effects.

But all fun aside, it’s got some really huge features that photographers are going to find very useful.

I just discovered how you can host an iChat Theatre Presentation. Unfortunately at this time, we can’t share an Aperture slide show in iChat. But you can share QuickTime Movies and Keynote Presentations, as well as photos or anything Quick Look (space bar in Leopard) can preview. You don’t even need to have a camera built into your computer to take advantage of this useful feature.

iChat is a great way to share your work with friends, editors, students anywhere in the world in real time. Even when you’re in France.

For instance, you can select a bunch of photos and then show them to your Buddies, one at a time as a slideshow. They will not only see the slides, but see you (if you have a web cam, standard on all new iMacs, MacBooks and MacBook Pros) and hear any narration you’re wanting to give. You control the show from a toolbar outside the video window. Same is true for Quicktime movies and Keynote presentations.

I have used a program called LiveSlideShow to make Quicktime movies of my slide presentations with words and music– and have inserted these Quicktimes into Keynote. When Keynote gets to a slide with a Quicktime Movie in it, it launches that Quicktime automatically. I’m hoping the next version of Aperture allows us to save slideshows as Quicktime Movies.

Using iChat, you can share elaborate presentations with Buddies all over the world, in real time. “What will you be presenting at the conference next week?” Let me show you on iChat…and talk about it as we move through the work. Or maybe you want to get editing opinions from a trusted friend a thousand miles away. There are so many possibilities.

I suspect iChat will work with the next upgrade of Aperture, but for now it lets you pick photo albums in iPhoto 08 to share. What is nice about showing work form these apps is, you use the iPhoto 08 or Keynote controls to make your way through the slideshows. Plus, you can record these iChat conversations and shows; iChat asks the other party if it’s okay and a small red light glows to let you and them know, the iChat is being recorded.

Also with Leopard, iChat utilizes something called H.264, which Apple says will give you higher resolution and sharper images with improved color accuracy using advanced video compression techniques.

I’m hoping to put iChat’s video conferencing savy to the test. I’ve been teaching a course at ICP in New York, but I may be heading to Rwanda in a couple of weeks and have to miss the last class when students make presentations. If I can secure a broad-band connection, I should be able to “be there” for that class, see the presentations and comment in real time. Of course the other great thing that iChat provides that real life doesn’t? You can turn someone off, at anytime. The students will love it.

Since we now have two brand new versions of the RAW image processor from Nikon and Adobe, I thought that today would be a good day to do a quick comparison test of a Nikon NEF file from a Nikon D80, arguably the most popular consumer level Nikon Digital SLR on the market at this time.

Basically I took one image and quickly ran it through Nikon Capture NX 1.2 without making any changes and did the same with Adobe Lightroom 1.3.

These images were not edited at all in either program, only resized and saved to jpeg at a value of 80. From what I can see on my computer screen they are fairly similar but the Nikon Capture NX 1.2 image is a little blown out in the highlights and the Adobe Lightroom 1.3 image is a bit dark in some of the shadows and some of the colors are a little dull. I will make some corrections and enhancements in both applications and try to post those images tomorrow. Comments would be appreciated, especially if you have made similar tests.

Image processed with Adobe Lightroom 1.3

Image processed with Nikon Capture 1.2

A few days ago John Nack posted an interesting story on his Adobe Blog. The title of which being, “Photoshop, as seen through Johnny Cash”. The article compares the development of Photoshop over the last twenty years as being very similar to the story in the Johnny Cash song, One Piece at a Time. In the song Johnny Cash presents himself as a Cadillac assembly line worker who stole individual parts of a Cadillac over a period of twenty years and when he finally assembled it not all the parts fit together seamlessly and the car looked kind of funny but it ran well, like a Cadillac should.

The point of the story being that although Adobe Photoshop is a top class application and arguably performs better than any other competing graphics arts application, it is not very pretty and many think it is badly in need of a graphic user interface overhaul, as well as a judicious pruning of some fairly obviously obsolete functions. A possibility that he also hinted at is that Adobe may opt to produce various versions of Photoshop for different industries and professions, or that the application can be configured more easily and completely to suit the individual user.

What he goes to great pains to explain to his readers though, is that Adobe is not intending to revolutionize the Photoshop experience, but rather to continue down the well trodden evolutionary path of Adobe Photoshop user interface and feature development and not throw out anything that could be of possible use to anyone. Kind of like getting married to a new wife every couple of years to keep up the appearance of vitality, but keeping all the old wives in the house because they are needed to take care of the children. In the process some of the rooms and joint family activities will inevitably end up getting pretty messy.

Oddly enough Photoshop Lightroom is not mentioned even once in this article. I say oddly because not long ago Adobe went to great pains, to make us aware of the fact that Lightroom is indeed a member of the Photoshop Family of applications. What that tells me is that Adobe is planning to go into two (or maybe even three) separate directions with the Photoshop Family.

The old Photoshop (or as I like to call it, Photoshop Classic) will remain pretty much the same as it is now and continue to evolve for many years to come, until the user numbers fall too low to support further development.

The new Photoshop (Lightroom being the first of this group) will be cloned into separate but equal applications for a new generation of graphic arts professionals who are either new to Photoshop or willing to adopt a new way of doing things. My guess (actually my wish) would be a Photoshop Webroom (or maybe Webstudio) will be the next one in this series. I can also imagine a version of Photoshop Lightroom that is designed for photo retouching only with a simple browser interface instead of the current Library system and no Web or Slideshow modules.

I don’t want to go to far into conjecture concerning specific versions here, but I think by now you might understand what I am aiming at. Everything that the “Classic” Photoshop now does can be offered in a number of separate software packages using the Lightroom Graphic User Interface. As long as the “Classic” Photoshop version is still available this should not really upset anyone, and if I am right it would explain why there is so much overlap between the current Photoshop CS and Photoshop Lightroom applications.

The sun in the photo below apparently frames the northern tower of the Golden Gate Bridge in a perfect circle. In fact, there are apparently three “suns” in the photo. One sun is real, two of them are optical artifacts. The fake suns, including the perfect one framing the Golden Gate tower are caused by an optical phenomenon called double refraction. Double refraction is also called birefringence.

My Three Suns, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

In double refraction, each ray of light separates into two rays (the “ordinary” ray and the “extraordinary” ray) when the light heads through the lens. The extra suns are in my photo caused by the extraordinary rays. The birefringence effect is dependent on how the light is polarized.

Normally, you’d want to avoid something like double refraction in your photos (although, avoid as much as can, you’ll likely see some if you shoot directly into the sun with a long lens as I did in this photo).

But a few nights ago I was feeling bored, and I knew I had more than enough photos in my files for my Golden Gate book, so I amplified the effect by adding a polarizing filter in front of my lens, and rotating the outer ring of the filter to change the direction of polarization until the subsidiary “sun” was in position.

This is the only photo in the set where I got it exactly right, so try and try again is the motto if you want to go for this effect yourself. Adding a polarizer with its infinite variety of possible settings increases by an order of magnitude the complexity of finding the right photo settings under deadline (in this case, the drop-dead event was the sun sinking beneath the horizon).

[375mm in 35mm terms, circular polarizer, 1/750 of a second at f/9 and ISO 100, tripod mounted.]

This post is a continuation of last weeks post on Exporting and Saving JPEG images for website use. I’m not a software engineer so I can’t explain what really goes on with this application aside from that it makes the process of preparing JPEG images for use on public and personal internet websites a lot easier.

There are three ways to use PictureSync with Lightroom (illustrated below), Export (with the full dialog), Export - with PictureSync Preset, and using the PictureSync application as the alternate external image editor and selecting Edit with - PictureSync.

This image was exported from Lightroom using PictureSync.

The full Export dialog using the PictureSync Preset and manual settings.

The Export with PictureSync Preset menu command.

Using PictureSync as the alternate external Lightroom image editor.

PictureSync can of course be used both for individual and batch processing of JPEG image files intended for internet website use. PictureSync is usually only $15 for use on picture sharing sites such as Flickr but for use with Aperture, Expression Media and Lightroom the “Pro” fee is $30. If you do as much web work as I do it is well worth it though.

Further to the Time/Machine backup issue, Inside Aperture viewer Bill Cheeseman is on top of this issue for us, commenting on my last post about new information that Apple has posted.

You no doubt saw the warning that “Running Time Machine backup or restore operations while Aperture is running may lead to inconsistencies in the Aperture database.”

The fix was quite simple and just before writing this, I dedicated an empty hard drive as my Time Machine Backup Drive and excluded my Aperture Libraries. Apple suggests you keep this disc only for Time Machine backups and nothing else.

It was very easy following Apple’s directions for excluding Aperture Libraries from automatic back ups. I simply followed Apple’s updated instructions.

“If you use Time Machine with Leopard, be sure to set Time Machine to exclude the Aperture Library from automatic backups. To do so:
1. Open Time Machine.
2. Click the Options button.
3. Click the “+” button in the Do not back up window.
4. Use the resulting file browser to navigate to the location of your Aperture Library. The default location is ~/Pictures/Aperture Library (where “~” represents your home folder).
5. Click the Exclude button.
6. Click the Done button.

Note that this means that your Aperture Library will not be backed up by Time Machine. Be sure to manually back up your Aperture Library.”

If you have any external Hard Drives plugged in, they should automatically be listed in the “Do Not Back Up” window. However, I have two drives inside my G5 Tower, one with my system on it that I want backed up, and a larger drive with Aperture libraries that i don’t.

Your external hard drives that are plugged in and the Time Machine disc itself should also show up along with the Aperture Library you have chosen not to backup.

So I hit the + button again, and navigated to my second internal drive and excluded that drive as well from Time Machine backups.

Once you’ve set up your disc for Time Machine, when you click on the icon in your dock, (if it’s not there, check your Applications Folder) your screen takes you on a very cool journey into a deep space desktop, where you can go back in time to restore lost information easily. It’s a very cool interface. Just press escape to get back to where you started.

I’m still using managed Aperture libraries on external hard drives with vaults, a simple backup solution that works well.

But I like the idea of having my entire library of referenced images with high quality previews with me on the road and I’m thinking of going the referenced route. But with referenced libraries, I will have to have my own backup workflow instead of letting Vaults do all the work.

I hear good things about certain backup software like Chrono Sync, but I would love to renew the discussion on how you backup your Aperture Libraries in light of this Leopard/Time Machine issue. Post your comments here.

Further to Ben’s post, apparently updating to 1.5.4 won’t be enough to prevent problems with Aperture. I’m loving Leopard already, but I have noticed that Aperture seems to be a bit less stable in some instances.

Update to the rescue! (I hope). Aperture 1.5.6, is a free update recommended for all licensed Aperture customers, “addressing issues related to performance, and improves overall stability, and supports compatibility with Mac OS X Leopard v10.5.”

The update release is timed to prevent any problems like the ones Ben referred to. I suspect there won’t be problems with the update installed, but lets use this blog to report on bugs or discoveries we find when using Aperture in a Leopard environment.

“Important Note: Aperture updates, such as the Aperture 1.5.6 Update, cannot be used to update previously downloaded versions of the Aperture Trial. The most current version of the Trial delivers Aperture 1.5.6, so no update is necessary.”

In the mean time I find it inspiring looking at the Planet Earth as my desktop on both my laptop and tower, though I imagine it could be depressing to some.

I’ve already annoyed several of my ichat buddies using the video effects pretending to be in Paris, or on roller coaster or in space. Lots of fun (for me anyways).

From my rocky perch jutting out into the ocean near Sculptured Beach, I played with photographing the waves as the sun set. This tripod-mounted 1/4 of a second exposure caught the abstract expression of a wave crashing, while retaining some literal relationship to the play of warm light on the wave against the cool blue of the surrounding ocean.

Wave, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

[300mm in 35mm terms, 1/4 of a second and f/22 at ISO 100, tripod mounted.]

Some related images: Wave (after Hokusai), Breaking Wave, Wave Tangent.

At the recent PhotoPlus Expo show in New York City, one of the many seminars was something a little different. Entitled: Iron Chef Raw Processing—the format was similar to the popular cooking show.

Moderated by Photoshop/Lightroom guy Andrew Rodney, it was a competition that gave the audience a chance to see four RAW processors in action: Aperture, Capture One, Bibble and Lightroom, all in real time.

Dennis Reggie and Vincent Laforet supplied the RAW files and “a representative of each RAW converter manufacturer will have 15 minutes to process the images, with feedback from the photographers.”

As it turned out, 15 minutes was more than enough time for each of the programs to do their magic, and though I had my biases, I kept an open mind and was really looking forward to seeing the others process RAW files.

Aperture went first, together Vince Laforet and Apple’s Martin Gisborne took the audience through the process of finessing Vincent’s aerial shot of the New York Chrysler Building photographed from a helicopter at sunset.

Martin showed off the Exposure Slider first but ended up using the Highlight-Shadow Sliders to do most of the work, making more subtle changes with the Advanced Tab activated and the Radius Slider lightening and darkening the mid-tones.

Then, dealing with color, the blues were massaged using all four Blue Color Sliders, partly to demonstrate their effect to the audience, which was made up of serious shooters paying more than 100 bucks to see the differences in the programs and make up their own minds.

Finally, a little Edge Sharpening for this very angular image and a new version of the master image was made and the before and after were then displayed in full screen glory.

As an Aperture loyalist, I took pride in the fact that however you sliced it, all the things that attracted me to Aperture were reinforced in the demo. Aperture would set the bar at a height that would be tough to come close to particularly in ease of use and elegance of interface.

When Dennis Reggie who was not an Aperture user brought his images up to the table, he was genuinlly surprised in how fast and how good the challenging wedding image he had chosen (mixed lighting, white dress and overall high contrast) looked, after it was imported into Aperture and came up on screen –even before a few minor adjustments were made.

When I chose Aperture, I stopped looking at the other guys, so I was looking forward to seeing other processors in a real workflow situation. I had heard a lot of good things about Capture One, with regards to image quality, though in this competition it was not as impressive. Its interface was dated, though the new interface of version 4.0 which is available as a free beta download looks strikingly familiar to regular viewers of this blog.

Bibble turned out to be the big surprise in the competion. I have heard of it of course but I never really looked further. Turns out it has some very innovative features that impressed the photographers on stage and the audience as well. The interface is not so pretty, but it has Noise Ninja built right in as it’s noise reduction tool, a very cool black and white conversion tool that simulates 20 film and paper combos of old, a feature named Gina, that is directed purely toward fixing skin tones and a kind of auto levels control called Perfectly Clear, which seemed to do miracles on a file with one click of the mouse.

The wow factor was obvious as both Vincent and Dennis seemed to be looking at this software for the first time as were many. It was nice to see a relatively small company step up to the table with such impressive features.

Lightroom went last with sliders like Clarity and Vibrance and Fill Light (which is similar to Shadow/Highlight in Aperture) and a great black and white conversion tool, all of which is also available in Photoshop and Camera Raw 4.

As an Aperture user I felt really good leaving the room. It reaffirmed my decision to choose Aperture and get on with my photographic life. The final prints were kicked out of an Epson Printer from Photoshop and they all looked good, but again, Aperture was at or near the top in my unscientific sampling of popular opinion.

In the end, it was stated that there is no perfect raw converter for every person or every file and like lenses in your bag, for professionals whose living is made with their images, they might want to have different Raw Converters to process different images.

When you have a special image sold for advertising and thousands of dollars are on the line, playing around with different converters is worth the investment in time and money.

On a balmy afternoon in late October I studied the topographic map of the USGS San Francisco North Quadrant. This map shows (among other areas) the hills above Fort Baker outside Sausalito, and the northern side of the Golden Gate Bridge.

It seemed to me that there was a ridge that could be climbed going up from above Fort Baker. You can tell on a topo map if something is steep when the contour lines on either side of the white space representing the ridge top are spaced close together. If the contour lines aren’t drawn too closely across the top itself, there’s a good chance you can get up.

My hope was to find a location across from the northern end of the Golden Gate Bridge so that I could shoot through both towers.

Golden Gate Alignment, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

I picked up my friend Mark and we parked on Wolf Back Ridge Road, high above Sausalito. Technically, this is a private, no-trespassing area carved into the Marin Headlands section of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

We donned our hiking boots and backpacks, and scrambled down a steep hill to find the Coastal Trail. Heading south, we passed a high tension tower, and then trudged up the hill over the Waldo tunnel. From there, I could see a straight shot down the ridge I had observed on the topo quadrant map.

The ridge line ended on a rock platform. Yes, the towers of the bridge aligned perfectly from north to south. The setting sun lit the bridge from the west, and the waxing moon provided fill lighting from the other side.

I positioned my camera on the tripod, braced it with my camera backpack to keep it from vibrating in the wind, and exposed for thirty seconds. The time exposure turned the car headlights and tail lights into lines of light beneath the bridge in alignment.

[230mm in 35mm terms, 30 seconds at f/20 and ISO 100, tripod mounted.]

When I sat down with Albert Watson in New York, I knew what I wanted to talk about. I wanted to hear how the industry has changed over the course of his 250 Vogue covers. I wanted to know how he prepared for the only wedding he’s ever shot: Prince Andrew’s royal marriage. And I wanted to understand the difference between shooting a high profile model and an acting superstar.

In this interview with Albert Watson, he openly addresses all of these questions. I recorded it in stereo to capture the spacial ambience of our interaction.

PDN has cited Watson as one of the 20 Most Influential Photographers. He is fascinating, and I hope you have a moment to listen to what he has to say.

Just back from my first experience of PhotoPlus, and so glad I have been procrastinating on submitting my 2008 travel/conference budget. Now I know that this one goes to the top of the priority list. It seems everyone brings their A game to the Javitz Center for this show, and the result is an ambiance of enthusiasm, professionalism, collegiality, and focus on serious photography.

I’d given myself an assignment (more on that later) that motivated me to walk the entire floor, and I found the professional enthusiasm that one would expect at the “big guns” (Canon, Epson, Nikon, HP…) and familiar high-profile friends (Adobe and Apple) extended to other booths as well. I had terrific talks with knowledgeable staff at LowePro and Think Tank (camera cases), Photodex (PC friendly slideshow software), xTrain (online training), and Leica (who were really friendly and engaged despite the fact I was there inquiring about a case for my Panasonic and not their lovely cameras and lenses).

And then there was the setting. The Javitz center has a naturally lit open galleria, an easily understood floorplan, and a Starbucks with an entertainingly enthusiastic staff. The lighting and sound experience on the expo floor created some of the best convention atmosphere I’ve experienced. And of course, there’s the big picture setting, New York itself, a place where grime, noise (electronic in this case), and being stuck in traffic can give a (lucky) novice photographer one of her favorite shots, taken from the PhotoPlus shuttle bus window on the way back to her hotel after a great photography-filled day.

I thought it would be interesting to see my image of Church Towers from the Yosemite Valley floor in winter as it might have looked as a palladium or platinum toned print. Here it is:

Beyond the Forest: Toned, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

First I converted the image to black and white in Photoshop, using the so-called Ansel Adams effect (results below). I converted the black and white image to grayscale, then converted the image to Tritone, picking colors and adjusting the curves to get the effect I liked. As a last step, I converted back to RGB added a red-tinged adjustment layer in Color blending mode to pick up a hint of red for my “toned” digital image.

View this image larger.

Instead of telling people what you are doing, show them!

While photographing the giant heads of the Bayon temple of Angkor Thom a few days ago, I remembered that I had recently found and put a few of my old special effects filters from the 1970s into my camera bag. I know that we are now all used to doing all our special effects work with Photoshop, but the Spectralstar defraction grating filter was very popular in it’s day. I hope you enjoy this Retro effects blast from the past.

Although Angkor Wat (a Hindu temple built in the early 12th Century) is the most popular and most visited temple in Siem Reap, Cambodia, the most visually (and photographically) striking temple in the Angkor Archaeological Park is the Bayon temple with it’s giant faces and many stone carvings on the walls depicting battle scenes from wars and many facets of every day life.

Bayon is the main temple in the walled and moated city of Angkor Thom which was the last capital of the Angkor Empire and was built during the later part of the 12th Century and the earlier part of the 13th Century by the Buddhist King Jayavarman VII and his successor Jayavarman VIII.

All images are processed in Lightroom with very slight adjustments to Color Temperature, Fill Light, Recovery, Clarity, and Vibrance.