July 2006 Archives
"As a professional photographer, author Martin Evening knows firsthand what photographers need for a more efficient workflow. He's been working with Lightroom from the beginning,"
The Adobe Lightroom Book By Martin Evening ISBN: 0321450035 Publisher: Adobe Press
"
Mind the Gap! Stand Clear of closing doors! The Bandwagon is fuelled up and rolling out!
I wonder how he's going to fill the first 200 hundred pages with a recycled manual - since there isn't one ?
Hey ho. Key Lightroom cheerleader Michael Reichmann today posts:
"...It is said that these will all come when when Beta 4 is released, at which point both the Windows and Mac versions will have parity. In any event, the few small missing items are not critical for anyone wanting to become familiar with the new software, which is likely to become one of the most popular raw image processing programs on the market." (my italics)
Interesting bit of spin buried in there: as first heard on Lightroom Podcast 8, v1.0 at least is being subvervisely spun away from being a DAM-based product to "just" a RAW developer. Call me a conspiracy theory nut, but I just don't believe it is an accident. More like a clever bit of expectation management engineered by Adobe marketing.
It also seems to be taking rather a long time to get to market - Beta 3 expires in Jan 07, and it seems a little unlikely that the expiry date would be set beyond a commercial release date - especially as their is a Beta 4 on the way. From what I know about software product management - which is quite a lot, actually - I'd say that they are suffering from considering far too many inputs and listening to far too many opinions. The product manager should not devolve the responsibility for a clear product vision to a forum of beta testers.
I'm sure I would get tarred as totally negative if I posted this anywhere with high visibilty, but still, if this product was from anybody but Adobe, I cannot believe that it would attract quite such unquestioning praise and devotion from the "old boy" network.
I wonder how they've diviied up the books ? Scott Kelby seems to have jumped the gun in a rather unsporting manner with his doubtless zany "Lightroom for Digital Photgraphers". (er, yeah ... so who else would it be for ? Fly fisherman ? Traffic Wardens ? Small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri ??) Anyway, bad news for whoever drew "DAM with Lightroom" out of the bag.
New photos added to galleries on Thursday, July 13, 2006 12:42:23 AM:
No vacancies added to Romania
Inside the Athaneum added to Romania
Strange grace added to Romania
Closed for business added to Romania
All from my first major session using Iridient RAW Developer: better results, and faster, than using CaptureOne.
I received a message yesterday about The Canary Project, a photo-based campaign trying to alert people to the realities of global warming. It seems a pretty admirable initiative to me. I strongly recommend you take a look. I'll let the message speak for itself:
The Canary Project is an effort by photographer Susannah Sayler and a team of researchers, writers and designers to gather images of global warming and display those images in ways that bring them to the attention of the widest possible audience. You can see examples of the work and learn more about them here:During the month of July, Canary Project images will be on the sides of buses in Denver as part of the Museum of Contemporary Art's "Creative Acts That Matter" exhibit. You can see more of the Project's work and some of the bus images here:
I hope the buses are using low emission power :-)
Anyway, please pass on the message. This is important stuff.
Like any place in a state of transition, Romania is a fascinating place. On the verge of EU membership, still recovering from the ravages of a megalomaniac dictator, with almost vanished memories of a brief prosperity, and with reminders in the most unlikely places of turn of the (19th) century elegance, this is a country which takes more than a while to get to grips with. Romania is an isolated Latin outpost, surrounded by Slavs and Balkans. Although claims of being the closest thing to a living relict of the Roman Empire are a bit far-fetched, it is certainly the case that the Romanian language is closer to Latin than is modern Italian. Culturally however Romania shows a closer proximity to France than to Italy. So all in all a very rich blend, with a very strong identity.
Part of the Cantacuzino Palace (George Enescu museum)
Photographically speaking Romania is a treasure trove. Recently I had the opportunity to spend a few hours wandering around the centre of Bucharest, a city of many layers and many contrasts. In the early 1900s, Bucharest emulated and rivaled Paris. Buildings of all sizes, from palaces to family homes, show a strong Art Nouveau influence, although most are in a poor state of repair. Following the Second World War, Romania fell under the Soviet influence, and was severely punished for supporting Hitler's Germany. A period of Stalinisation followed, and the periphery of Bucharest, as well as most parts of Romania, is dominated by Soviet-style tower blocks.
A typical unreconstructed tower block facade
Later, in the earlier period of Ceausecu's dominion, things were considerably more relaxed, and Romania was verging on non-aligned status. Unfortunately, towards the 1980s Ceausecu fell under Chinese influence and basically went mad. Vast swathes of Romanian countryside were collectivised, and large parts of historic Bucharest were demolished to make way for his megalomaniac plans to build a communist megapolis. Following the somewhat fabricated revolution in 1989, the country become a happy hunting ground for home-grown and foreign mafiosi (collectively known as the "Romanian government"), with the resulting creation of a small number of ultra-rich and a large number of very poor. In 2006, things seem to be improving, slowly, although it is extremely debatable how beneficial EU membership will be to the non-elite.
The inevitable face of progress
There are layers, upon layers, upon layers in Bucharest. The country style houses of Sector 1, the restored palatial villas in the diplomatic areas, Ceausescu's civic center, remnants of communist-era shopfronts, elegant arcades, leafy, friendly parks, all mingling in with decaying communist tower blocks, and ultra-modern glass and concrete edifices. Every corner hides a surprise, for example a busy market full of the sort of fruit and vegetables that seem too tasty, too good, and especially far too cheap, to exist in Europe in 2006.
Europe, from the market
Even the civic centre, with the unbelievable Casa Poporului (House of the People) as its focal point, starts to become acceptable, attractive even, with the numerous fountains restored to full working order, and the wide sidewalks line with leafy trees. The neoclassical Athenaeum is genuinely beautiful. Photographic opportunities are everywhere, and tourists are still thin on the ground. People are, by and large, extremely friendly and warm, although there are some aggressive beggars around. However, the number of hustlers and touts seems to have reduced a lot over the past few years.
New use for old Style
Bucharest is changing very fast. Time will tell what happens next, if it retains its quirky identity or becomes a Eurostandard metropolis, but either way this period of transition will not last. No visit to Romania should end with Bucharest - you could spend years exploring this wonderful country - but it is a good place to start.
Exchange. For better or for worse ?
For more photos from Romania, see my Romania and Danube Delta galleries.
Sometime in the mid 1970s, I believe, Henri Cartier Bresson visited Romania. I've only ever found two photographs of this period, this one, of a couple sleeping on a CFR train, which was published in "De qui s'agit'il ?" -
- and this one, of Bucovina, which I think is from "Les Europeens"
If anybody reading this knows of any others, I'd be very interested to hear of them.
It is interesting, first because there is very little foreign photography of Romania of this period, at least that I know of, and secondly, because it was very late in HCB's active photographic career.
Cristian Paul, writing from Bucharest, published a brief mention of the CFR photo on his kit.blog, but that's all I can find.
As I mentioned two posts back, I recently started tracking view of my photo galleries, or more specifically, of full page photos (not thumbnails, but views which can only be specifically requested by visitors). After about 1.5 weeks, I was gratified and somewhat surprised to have ranked up over 1500 views. Even more interesting is the fact that less than 10% of the 533 photos online have not been viewed over this period.
Inevitably, the most viewed are the easiest to reach, so those on the "latest updates" page, and I guess those delivered by the random photo feature on the galleries home page.
Ok, it isn't exactly earth shaking, but even so, I'm left feeling slightly smug :-)
For some time I've been meaning to write something here about using the Zuiko Digital 8mm Fisheye lens, specifically for landscape. This is the first true fisheye I've ever used. Many, many years ago, I used a fisheye adapter on Canon FD lenses, a combination which puts most Holga photos to shame.
The lens is very well built and the focusing ring rotates smoothly with just enough friction, making it a pleasure to use. The huge front element is very impressive, and a bit exposed. A fixed lens shade is included, and a large lens cover fits over the barrel.
Conventional wisdom claims that fisheye lenses cannot be used for landscape photography, but I think that images here demonstrate that this is not always true. Using a fisheye for landscape work requires a certain approach. First, you need to have a suitable subject, usually with a range of subjects from very near field to very far. Second, you need to make sure that any feature which you do not want to distort is centered vertically and horizontally. The “normal” rules of composition do not work with fisheye photos. Exposure is always critical, especially as it is likely that there will be a wide contrast range. Don't trust automatic exposure with this lens - check the histogram. It is best to under-expose slightly, to reduce the danger of localised flare. As with any fisheye chromatic aberration or localised flare (purple / blue fringing) in high contrast areas is going to be a problem, but with care and attention this can be avoided. You also need to decide if you're going to 'correct' the fisheye effect, using Olympus Studio v1.5 for example. Other options exist, but, for example, the lens correction filter in Photoshop CS2 is nowhere near as good as Studio. Personally, I tend to approach subjects with the idea that I am looking for a fisheye view. Although the correction tool is very impressive, inevitably the corners are very soft, and a lot of cropping takes place. However, this itself gives a certain feel which works well with some subjects.
The first shot is of the Strokkur geyser, at Geysír in Iceland. The first version is geometrically corrected and processed from RAW using Olympus Studio 1.5, and the second processed without correction. The shot directly into the sun shows how well flare is controlled by the 8mm fisheye if carefully managed. Exposure details f5.6, 1/3000th sec, -1.5EV, ISO 100, tripod mounted. In this particular case, I find that the uncorrected version works better.
geometrically corrected...
uncorrected.
The second shot is of Gullfoss, also in Iceland. Again, the first version is geometrically corrected and processed from RAW using Olympus Studio 1.5, and the second processed without correction. Exposure details f5.6, 1/90th sec, -0.5 EV, ISO 100, tripod mounted.
geometrically corrected....note very soft foreground edges.
uncorrected.
Fisheye photos are obviously on the borders of tastefulness in many cases, and in others are just illegible. But to capture really dramatic views, such as the geysir shots (I have about 100 variants of this...), they can really work. The Zuike Digital 8mm is a very expensive lens, considering that it will be used rarely, but sometimes specialist lenses give special results. Just don't try using them everywhere :-)
I've finally started to consider the statistics I get from my web hosting provider, just to see if anybody ever clicks on all this stuff. Well, it seems they do. Not so many, but whoever you are, thanks for stopping by. Statistics, as is well known, are used by web site publishers much lamposts are used by drunks - for leaning on, not for illumination. So, leaning on a few here, I find that over the period Dec 2004 (the oldest data my ISP stores) and Jun 2006, the number per month of succesful requests for pages has gone from 10,677 to 22,6111. Better than a kick in the teeth with a sharp trowel, if not exactly T.O.P territory. The other stats more or less follow the same trend. For some reason, I hit some sort of spike in March 2006. No idea why.
Of course, another statistic is error logs. Looking at error logs is a bit like looking at bank statements. You know you have to, but you get a sickening feeling in your stomach as you look at the numbers. Well, whoever the 113 people are who tried to access the broken link /pblog/archives/archives.html, sorry. I'll try to fix it. As for the 2071 web crawlers who tried to access robots.txt, tough.
I've also wondered if it is worth actually putting all these photos on line. Is anybody looking at them ? Well I've started counting. For the last two weeks, every time a full size photo is accessed from the database, I've been updating a counter, so I can see which photos people are looking at, and how often. The exciting results of this survey are coming soon. Stay tuned!!
