Antarctica, encore

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Not for the first time, I’ve just published a gallery of my ancient Antarctic images. Maybe this will be the definitive set. Maybe not. Certainly it’s the smallest.

Apart from two photos which I had to rework from the archived scans, due a weird digital disease that seems to be afflicting some of my Photoshop files, these are derived from the “reference” versions I made around 5 years ago.

They’re mostly taken on Kodachrome 64, with one or two Kodachrome 25s and a single Ektachrome 64(?). I’d be fairly surprised if anybody could tell which is which.

I took the photos in 1987/88 while working for the British Antarctic Survey, and in 1991/92 when I participated in the Norwegian-led Aurora Programme, working on a European Space Agency funded project at University College London ... back in the early days of climate change research.

I had absolutely no idea what I was doing with a camera back then, which given that I was mainly using a fully manual Canon FTb, was not ideal. Arguably I haven’t moved on much, but at least I’ve now got a far better idea of what I don’t know.

Panoramic Iceland

Wednesday, January 06, 2010

I’ve just completed uploading my latest gallery, and this one is particularly special for me. It features 16 so-called panoramic photographs, all taken in Iceland with the Hasselblad XPan. This is probably my favourite format, and the camera I have the closest relationship with it. I had considered selling it along with all my other film gear, but I’ve been convinced by others and myself that this would just be plain stupid. If I’m ever going to produce any notable photography, it is probably going to be with this camera.

An XPan photo of Jökulsárlón which didn’t make the last 16

Note: At the moment there’s a bit of a glitch with the display of the gallery thumbnails (they’re too wide for the page). This is due (a) to lack of planning on my part and (b) because I can’t get the fix I’ve kludged together to work yet.

The search for that DAM solution

Tuesday, January 05, 2010

The quest for the perfect solution for managing (digital) photos never seems to end. Aperture and Lightroom have brought integrated organisation and non-destructive editing to us, which should be a big step forward from the multiple tool workflows using combinations of Photoshop, Adobe Bridge, iView Media Pro, Extensis Portfolio and others. But I’m not convinced that it is all beneficial.

I would like to keep track of all of my photo library in one place. And this includes photos taken on film, both old and new, as well as digital, more recently processed “non-destructively” with Aperture but previously export with baked-in adjustments from Camera Raw, Capture One or Iridient Raw Developer. Aperture is sort of able to do this, but frankly it isn’t ideal. Aperture’s - and Lightroom’s - promise of non-destructive editing has a downside, and this is that it doesn’t really cater for the idea of a “finished” image. Neither are particularly flexible when it comes to free-form labelling. Lightroom is a bit better in this respect, but not much. With Aperture you can use albums and smart albums, but then again with some limitations.  Neither have the subtle but extremely effective depth of support for cataloging found in iView Media Pro (sorry, I should say Microsoft Expression Media). But Expression Media is (a) apparently dead, acquired and smothered by fucking stupid Microsoft, and (b) doesn’t have any concept of linking different renditions of the same source.

Beyond the grave: iView Media Pro 3 still works fine in OS X 10.5

Ideally Aperture 3, if it ever appears, will extend cataloging functionality and add the concept of a “final master”, but I doubt it. And Aperture is never going to be anything other than a very clumsy way of dealing with scanned images. I could live with a solution where I feed masters from Aperture to Expression Media. In fact I could even imagine creating a “bridge” with AppleScript which would allow me to generate catalog numbers and save them in a database. But I have serious doubts about the continued existence of Expression Media.

So what alternatives are there ? One possibility has been AtomicView from AntZero. AtomicView looks good in theory, as an Expression Media for the future, and it’s even Swiss. But it is let down by a very debatable user interface, which seems to screaming for attention and badly detracts from using it in any kind of of serious photographic context. It also has a weird import and organisation process, and finally it is much, much slower than Expression Media. On the other hand it is the advantage of youth and enthusiasm.  But on balance, version 1 is so poorly conceived that I can’t see it will ever get significantly better.

Atomic View would be so much better without the juvenile non-standard GUI

Major issues with the Atomic View GUI include floating panels which are confined within the main window (see at the bottom right of the screenshot above) and a frankly hideous default colour scheme (look at the highlighting of the selected image) which doesn’t get much better even with full use of the limited customisation options. It’s a pity because all of this must have taken significant resources, which could have been devoted to core functionality if the standard UI Toolkit had been used.

A very interesting glimmer of hope presents itself in the new (beta) Mac version of the veteran Windows tool, ACDSee Pro. However, although it does seem to have some nice features, and a major opportunity to attract Expression media “orphans”, I’m afraid that despite the “Pro” tag it is going to end up trying to compete more at the consumer end of the market, and will spread itself too thin.

ACDSee Pro Mac Beta in “manage” mode

ACDSee does seem to be more of a competitor to Adobe Bridge. It does not import images or build catalogs like Expression Media, so it cannot be used in “offline” mode in the sense of a traditional Digital Asset Management tool. It is much slower at building thumbnails than Adobe Bridge, and so far it does not appear to be offering much beyond very basic metadata management. However, it is a Beta, so maybe there is still an opportunity to influence development. In any case, it is nice to see such an established Windows developer enter the Mac market.

So the search goes on. While there remains an outside chance that Expression Media will be saved I guess I will continue to use it (or rather iView Media Pro v3), but I’m concerned about investing a lot of effort in a tool that may soon stop working.

Ticino Gallery: landscapes

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

I have at last added a gallery of landscape photos from Ticino to the photography pages.

The selection of 16 photos was taken from a period spanning the last 6 years. They’re mostly digital: it will be interesting to see if anyone can spot those which aren’t, not that it matters in the slightest as far as I’m concerned.

dusk over Cristallina

The locations are pretty spread about, although Ritom-Piora / Lucomagno and Verzasca / Vallemaggia areas take the majority share. There’s only one winter shot that made the cut. It seems that winter photography isn’t my strongest point!

I’ve left out one of my favourite locations, Lavertezzo and the surrounding area in Val Verzasca, because that is going to be the subject of a future gallery.

Thanks, as ever, for visiting!

End of the roll

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

I thought that my next post would be about film cameras, in particular about using one of the ones I own.  Well, it is about film cameras, but not quite in the direction I imagined.

I enjoy using film cameras, and I like the quality of film. It isn’t better than digital, in any absolute sense, but it is different. To me the difference is a bit intangible. I know it exists, I can see it, but I can’t really describe it. There are photos I’ve taken on film which I would - or could - never have taken on digital, and indeed vice versa.

But this is about to end, because I’m planning on selling all my film cameras. There are two reasons for this: reason 1, I need the money. Reason 2, I have far too many cameras, and this is stifling my creativity.

The vast majority of my photography is done with the Olympus E-3 with either the 14-54mm or 50-200mm lens. I occasionally use the E-400 when I want to travel light, or be unobtrusive, or use the Lensbaby. I also use the Ricoh GRD quite a lot.  But I never use the Olympus E-1, and that’s already on eBay.

But the following are going to be looking for new homes too:

• My Hasselblad ArcBody, with 45mm Rodenstock lens and all the accessories, with an A12 back, a Polaroid 100 back, and the quite frankly weird Hasselblad ArcBody inverter mount.  And the whole lot neatly packed away in its custom Pelican case.
• My Hasselblad XPan (version 1) with 30mm, 45mm and 90mm lens, centre ND filters, 30mm finder / level, all packed in a nice Hasselblad leather shoulder bag.
• Fuji SW670II 6x7 rangefinder with fixed 90mm f4 lens - possibly the best lens I’ve ever used (and it’s got some stiff competition in this list)

I’m not sure if I will use eBay. It’s a bit scary.

Then I’ll see. Maybe getting back to basics will help me find some inspiration. Or maybe unloading all this stuff will turn my growing disaffection with the whole business into actually giving it up. I’m also planning on offloading some Olympus lenses, including the 8mm Fisheye, the 7-14mm zoom, the 11-22mm zoom, and probably the 50mm macro and extension tube. If I haven’t got a cupboard full of expensive toys making me feel guilty about not using them, then maybe I can finally get it out of my system, and just enjoy looking at others (considerably better) photography.