The Making of Patch Submission II

I took these photos back on the first of January principally as an illustration of New Year and Renewal, the first challenge for the Patch. Hopefully they tell the story of one of my new year resolutions, to clean up my studio. Then I re-read the challenges and realised it was more appropriate for the second week theme Resolution and Renewal. Sounds good, just wait, and in waiting I thought it would be good to create a montage/collage with a new page showing the messy floor being turned to reveal a clean floor. That was a good idea until +Laura Rivera  posted a very good new page turning on her diary for her first submission. Great photo nicely execution. Back to the drawing board for me! My next idea was just to have an overlapping collage. Looks ok but… the story seems back to front. So then I came up with the idea of printing out the photos, shredding them, collecting the pieces and reassembling a composite image. A bit more abstract this time Fair bit of work but I needed to convince myself this is a resolution I’m going to keep. Just in case your wondering yes I have cleaned up and things are “mostly” still tidy. If you want to see the final submission you’ll find it here.

Following the Morning Shadows

This was really just an experiment in time lapse. The subject is just part of my back porch taken with the 50mm prime lens on my little canon rebel at 5 minute (ish, not to precisely timed) intervals that where just included in my daily photostream, thus uploaded to google+ backup and then I waited expecting a motion AutoAwesome. It came later and it isn't so bad. I wanted to capture the movement of the shadows (and light). There clearly is a lot to do to make something like this wonderful but does add an addition dimension to a simple snapshot, without a lot of effort. the down side is a lack of creative control.

PhotoProject :: Beginning the Year with a Wider View

After boldly claiming this might be the year of the photo book I have resolved to create several this year and write a bit about my experiences along the way. One of the books I would like to create is something like “A Year in Jells Park” (which is almost just on my doorstep, ok a short walk). Jells Park is vast and I’m sure there will be a lot to photograph and discuss. Already some of the post in the blog are fodder for the book. This evening I went to photograph the water birds down on the lake. on the way I liked the lighting across the lake but without a wide angle lens, I did my usually trick of taking a set of overlapping images, no tripod or fancy panorama head just hand held (like I always do). I then just sent the jpegs straight out of the camera into Autostitch to see what it looked like (well via Picasa)

I hadn’t tried to balance the exposure (of the sky and lake) across the set and autostitch returns ragged edges because my hand held overlap was pretty approximate. Yet it does give a wonderful view that is hard to capture without special lens (and cameras). I will certainly tweak this view further, when I have a little more time, perhaps even for a double page spread in a photobook! Ok lets not get ahead of ourselves here!

While I had all the images on my phototray in picasa I selected the collage tool to create a david hockney style joiner. I’ve set up one of the configurable buttons in the print/share area of the phototray. If you haven’t set up this key look under Create/Picture collage… item on the main menu. I then selected the Picture Pile under options. I set the without borders, and solid background colour which I selected with the eye dropper as part of the sky’s middle tone blue. I also click on the drop shadows to just highlight the photos edges a little. I then slide the photos around with the mouse to almost, but not quiet, have the photos overlap. Again clearly the photos don’t quiet match in tone and exposure but I think that just adds to the charm and realisation that this is a big vista.

Imposing AutoAwesome filters

I think my concerns about the explosion and mindless application of of "zanny" filters, has triggered a bit of cosmic Karma. After a few days struggle I had finally got google's AutoBackup operation. A short time later

I had a series of notifications congratulating me about the great Auto awesome photos added to my Google+ Photos. A couple of the motion items where probably expected but I must admit I had a chuckle to myself that the automated algorithms in the depth of google has choosen an out of focus image of a cormorant taking off to add a falling snow effect to the scene. Its summer here in Australia, and despite being a bit overcast its not that cold. How do I turn off this AutoImposing?

Jell Park Cormorants

The Patch :: first submission

The patch is a group on Google+ that offers a weekly themed challenge and it seemed the obvious way for me to try and re-engage with google+ photo community.

I was deferring my first submission, mainly due to lack of inspiration, but I was investigating photographing a magnified image and depth of field. The place to focus is no longer where the object actually is! So Other items at the same location can be "blurred". This is all old school stuff but I realized I was looking at the issues a new. 
So I had my new year/renewal inspiration (hopely just in time)

… … Looking Forward

Looking into a crystal ball used to be a common past time at the new year. Rapid Technological change was always a key aspect of these predictions, yet this year the changes in photography might not be gleaming new toys you can pick up.

1. We’ll do better without you, the move to on-line storage and display has been a wealth of Auto-fix facilities. Even your humble photo processing service in the local shopping mall probably uses an “enhance” filter. A lot of this is gimmickry and little more that increased contrast and colour saturation. Some are based on science, particularly from the field of medical imaging and some have come down from fancy photoshop plug-ins. Corels inclusion of Perfectly Clear and Niks Software’s Snap Seed (now Google’s Auto Awesome) are good examples of what can be achieved. However if you are a creative you might need to fight this trend, at least recognise it.
2. Better user interface on cameras (particularly smartphones). In todays world cameras might have a few mechanical and optical functioning bit bits (particularly the bigger DSLR) but at their centre is now a lot of electronics. They are essentially specific purpose computers and as such are programmable. Some existing cannon camera can already have their firmware updated (see magic lantern). However it is in the smartphone camera arena that the changes are most evident. There are hundreds of camera apps, unfortunately many are trival (and specifically the zanny filers I could do without). Yet there is light. There probably is no need to link new cameras back to the three traditional exposure controls, which relate back to the sensitivity of the film, or a diaphragm style aperture control. Even the time taken for the exposure. A simpler set of sliders on a touch screen that corrected over exposure, maybe focus (by just touching the screen where you want it in focus), a slider for depth of field and maybe a drop down set of buttons for specific modes like fast action close up all on the phones touch screen (or on the back of the camera) and the changes can been seen on the screen straight away, This doesn’t sound like much but I bet that would become a popular camera app or even an actual camera.
3. I suspect this will be the year of the photobook, Ok the term has changed a lot some time ago, not so long ago actually serious photographers had exhibitions and very occasionally a publisher might hang the expense and produce a wonderful book of photos, usually with accompanying text but a recognised write, Now the photobook can easily be self published. There are some quiet amazing limited edition photobooks being created today by semi-professionals and gifted amateurs These books have reached a price, mainly due to the technology of the production aspects and old fashion competition where it is can be cheaper to prepare a photobook full of say a hundred or so 5 by 8cm sized snaps of a recent overseas trip compared with getting those snaps printed out individually. The difference is it will probably take some time and energy to create the book and possibly your family will slink away when they see you get the book out, In between there is a place where you can be creative and publish what is important to you. The movement to photobooks is also present in the ebook area where photobooks are starting to gain traction mainly due to the larger screen on IPads and Android tablets. 2014 is a good year to consider creating your first photobook, just start small (in $20-$25 range)

Looking Back … …

Last year was a big year for digital photography, not so much an obvious big fanfare, most of the changes were small incremental adjustments. Three things that have been around for a while but have come into popular view last year.

1. First there is the death of the “mine is bigger than yours” paradigm.Hardware, gear envy and megapixel concerns should be a thing of the distant past. Most camera, from smartphones, point and shoot, through mirror less to the big DSLR are all pretty good. The camera you have is probably the best one to use right now. Go take lots of photos rather than worry about new camera hardware.  The obvious camera for you, will make itself obvious when you get to about 10,000 photos. It may well be the one you already have.
2. On-line storage, This has seen some strong competition with really large amounts of disk space offered for free, most are connected with social network style groups of services. Flickr, Google+ are two I am familiar with, and I have tried out a few like Everpix (now defunked), Photofeed (I’m still persevering) and Picturelife (given up with its slowness). but honestly I have been underwhelmed and I still use the dropbox facility which has been around for a while now. This just synchs my phones via available WiFi, if and when it is available to a place both on the net and on my harddrive. Sending all your images to “free storage” on the net has a dark side it will use up a lot of your precious bandwidth (and from a smart phone that could become expensive) and if you are not careful this may expose more than you might want to the world. That 10,000 photos equal 1.6 terra bytes if they are RAW 16 megapixels images, that might be several months of your bandwidth!
3. Photo Filters and Photo Apps, the zannier the better! This unfortunately is not a good trend in my view, because they get overused and instead of creating something new and exciting, they are just really boring, after you’ve seen the same effect for the third image in a row. It could have been a great trend but it really requires some user constraint and a lot less “copycat”,”look at me”, fashionista social media self promotion. Perhaps I am being a bit judgemental?

First Photo of 2014

Whilst I intended to get up for the sunrise (which I missed) Im not sure a wintery start to the year if really very photogenic.

Probably my last photo for 2013

AfterShoot & before LR

I recently received After Shoot Pro as a gift, and using it in earnest has been something of an epiphany after  my many mistresses ponderings. I have been aware of After Shot, (formerlty Bibble) for a while even tried a quick trial some months ago and seen the many reviews mainly comparing it to Lightroom. The general consensus was it was “becoming” a viable alternative to Lightroom (or Aperture)  for processing RAW format photos but the reviewers differ on who might benefit from using it. Well other than the obvious it is somewhat cheaper to purchase (particularly in Australia).
What suddenly struck me as I was only starting to review and classify and tweak a few images directly, ie without having to first import them into Picasa or Lightroom, was that After Shot pro is really fast and easy to use. After a bit of experimenting I settled as the combined thumbnails and single image display as what suited me. I can move through the thumbnails (like the film strip in Lightroom) rate the photo, do some preliminary editing and metadata tagging with only a few key strokes. In other words I can do most things on a singles screen (I don’t have to jump between modes)
The massive difference to Lightroom, and one I haven’t investigated in enough detail yet is the ability in After Shot pro to work with layers, for selective editing. Unfortunately the “spot” removal and retouching (called heal & clone) are accessed under the layers panel, so they are one step off the one single screen approach. I always try out the Auto-fix and Auto-enhance features but soon find them wanting, well at least not what I want. Perfectly Clear is a little different, sure it enhances the contrast and lifts the colours a little but it does it in a tame fashion, that closely matches what I remember seeing, Specifically it stands out from others when it comes to handling portraits, “keeping them real”. If the photo is well exposed it may not even make more than a few subtle changes but on underexposed and unfortunately strongly shadowed images it seems pretty reliable. I know perfectly clear  was, and apparently still is, a popular plug-in for Photoshop & Lightroom. Having it built into After Shoot is a bonus. The other real gem is the magnifier, all it does it is work exactly like a smallish magnifying glass, or loupe, which you can move around to view any part of your photos with the mouse. It makes that  Lightroom 1:1 viewing look and feel tedious. One final thing that soon became obvious to me was although  After Shoot Pro makes extensive use of short cut keys, they where not always the same as Lightroom, However I also found you can easily redefine the shortcuts, using file/preferences/keyboard, so I changed a few to match the shortcut keys I commonly used in Lightroom. You can also set up short cut keys to perform key wording from your keyword sets.
Yes there are several things After Shot Pro doesn’t do which Lightroom can, Red Eye removal is one obvious omission. Probably a lot of fine tunning Lightroom gives more options.  However its speed, ability to work on any image anywhere without “loading/importing it” and easy to use basic tools make After Shoot Pro perfect as my first review tools. The fact that I can transfer any rating, flagging, tagging and metadata edits into Lightroom later makes it the ideal first step to view and organize my photos without that long delay! So I see AFTER shot as a better way to review and organise photos BEFORE Lightroom, rather than a Lightroom replacement.
Lightroom has been a very finicky yet well loved mistress and doesn’t play well with other software so she is just going to be left on my studio computer and might only get used when I have time to pander to her eccentricities, everywhere else and particularly on my laptops and netbook After Shot is now my preference because she is fast, slim (less than 1/6th the size of Lightroom) and with more than adequate skills for me. The big outstanding issue is whether I will bother to re-catalogue my photo archive in Lightroom, after my recent disappointment?

Picasa 3.9 updating? or sidelining

Yesterday my Picasa suggested it was ready to be updated. Being a little wary I decided to change to a computer that i didn’t used Picasa as much on and begun the update which is still called Picasa 3.9  but is build 137.69 (136.20 was my previous version). It ran without any problems until I restarted Picasa and was given the option to set up Google+ Auto Backup. I actually went and read the learn more which take you to Google+ help and no mention of Picasa. Anyway I did press the Set up Auto Backup button which prompted me to log into my Google account but then just displayed a blank screen, which eventually timed out and reported I was not on the net but I was, Repeated attempt just produced the blanks screen aft6er I entered my details so I gave up in frustration.


Ok I couldn’t test Auto Backup, but the Picasa geeks have a good summary of the key issues. I agree Auto Backup is probably not for me. If you do want to use it please understand that it is not really unlimited! (make sure you read the fine print, full size images will count against for Google Drive limit). I see it is more a strategy to collect all of your photos onto the web, specifically onto Google+. This might be fine if you are only generating photos from a mobile phone (and maybe a Tablet or iPad) and it will let you view your full collection from those devices. At least the default is private, but you can easily share through Google+, There is also an update to maximum file size limits for uploads, now they can be up to 50 MB or 100 megapixels.

Something a lot of Picasa users may not have noticed was that “Edit in Creative Kit” was discontinued back in October.without any notification that i was aware of. The creative kit was the Picnik software, one of the early and at the time very popular on-line photo editors, Google had purchased it some time ago but seemed to do little more than change its name. In the 137.69 build the Edit in Creative Kit" key has been removed. You can still edit your photos on line with Edit Photo inside Google+ Photos or let Google do the enhancements for you with Auto Enhance and Auto Awesome.

These three “updates” are essentially about Google+ Photos on-line not Picasa on your PC. So were there any changes for your PC version? Apparently so, there are updates for RAW support to include newer cameras. Also there are  patches to image handling, to fix several issues in RAW, TIFF, and  JPEG handling. The RAW formats I use are already supported and I’m not sure of the circumstances that the new image handling patches will make a difference so these also may not make any difference to me

My verdict is I’m not going to bother with this update on my other computers. This update does little to allay  my fears about the future of Picasa, but it seems mostly harmless.

Summer in Jell's Park :: Late Afternoon

Autostitched Panorama from three photos. Unfortunately anything I send via Picasa's "Blog This" now is getting auto enhanced, which was not I wanted. It turned my strong contrast Contre-Jour into a bleached out apology of the scene.  So I had to go into Google+ Photos and find the image and turn auto enhance off.

Christmas must be close

Saw my first Christmas Beetle [Anoplognathus] this summer. Christmas must be getting near.

Very Pink Sunset

It was a very overcast evening and then just for a few moments the sky was a delicious pink as the sunset.

Another One Bites the Dust

I like the queen song but not when it applies to my external hard drives. My third Western Digital drive in a row has failed. Apple’s ITunes is definitely not to blame this time. Although there was some audio and video clips on the drive when it failed. It died in a very similar fashion to the other Western Digital drives, it got slower and slower, and slower but this time it failed completely before I could find space and retrieve its contents. Reports of this painful slowness of Western Digital drives seems to be very common among the various user forums on the net and even the Western Digital's own user support (where it remains unanswered!).

A Hard Lesson

I was not using the drive for any specific archives, so lost files can in theory be recovered. I was using the drive as a large scratch working area and convenient transfer place between computers, so many files passed through it.Specifically I held a lot of videos in various stages of editing and review on this scratch drive. I was mirroring this to my Netgear Stora (NAS style network disks) and had assumed that this would ensure a decent backup of the drive. I had not realised what might happen to the “mirror” as the disk began to slowly die. It seems that the mirroring was timing out while looking at files and must have assumed that the files had been deleted, so they where also deleted from my mirror. Some older directories were ok but anything I had recently worked on, just had the skeleton of empty folders on the “mirror” backup. In other words it was a copy of the apparently almost dead disk, not my actual files on the disk. So there is a hard lesson here, “mirror” disks are a convenient form of automated backup but they should not be relied on.

PhotoProject :: The Cubist Photographer Within

I was looking for some city photos for this week photofriday challenge and came across a set I had taken of the shot tower in Melbourne Central. The original intent was to create a large autostitched version from three series photos, 46 in all, taken from slightly different views. I did create two stitched panoramas, shown below. However they were not really conveying the feeling of the vast space and dome above.

I have always liked photo collage and montage. I still have several I made in the Late 60’s and early 70s from my own prints with scissors and glue. Getting things to match was harder than you might think, so often I didn’t bother and the fragmented results where often more striking than the individual photos. This collage above was created in picasa’s wonderfully simple yet very useful picture collage tool. Its under Create/Picture Collage… on the main menu or you can set up a button on picasa’s task bar on the bottom of the screen (Tools/Configure Buttons…). There are a number of collage styles to choose and in this case I am using the picture pile, which lets you overlap the photos, with or without borders like a pile of photos on the desk. You can resize and rotate the individual photos and more them forward and back in the stack.I have also used the colour picker and selected a neutral colour from within the photos as my background. I have also set drao shadow on, the accentuate the overlapping natures of the images. I am really following the basic “joiners” technique of David Hockney, but instead of using polaroid photos I’m using the computer and picasa collage. The cubists had demonstrated in paint that you could break conventional perspective and photographic realism to combine the subject more convincingly way in space and time, in particular their fragmented assemblage of the detail as tiles are also my inspiration here, to open up the dome above, unlike the fish eye effect any wide angle camera view would create, which crowds in and compresses the aspect.

You can of course assemble collages in many software packages, and a collage like this, or even a more elaborate one, could be easily created any any graphics or photo software that has layers and objects, but picasa

Manifesto–for the love of the photograph

This was spotted on a post from +GPhotos and is a remarkably well grounded and passionate plea to just love the photograph, not the number of pixel, brand on the camera or size and sharpness of the print, from David duChemin of  Craft & Vision, click here to watch him deliver his manifesto on video.

Then pick up your camera, any camera and go and make a great photograph.

Not Much Time left to get Your EverPix Photos

For those that where using everpix, the date of it shutdown (15/12/2013) is almost upon us. You should have received at least a couple of emails telling you how to archive and retrieve you photos. However because mine where all indexed to other location (ie my only images on Everpix were thumbnails) I didn’t bother. The process takes a couple of days so if you haven’t done it yet and intend to, TODAY is the DAY!

An Alternative

There was a comment one of my everpix posts, about being able to transfer your photos to Photofeed. So I have taken the opportunity to do that and test out the free version of photofeed at the same time. Photofeed has some useful everpix like features, it has built in duplicate detection, and read multiple resources. It’s sync seems quiet fast (well compared with picturelife) and I got the message that I has more than 1000 photos and needed to upgrade within minutes. I can’t see a lot of organization and ranking tools but it does have albums, and can use embedded metadata. It can store full resolution images (there is a 20MB limit not sure about RAW, there is no help section that I can find at the moment and the FAQs are about signing up) and can, using an app, can automatically backup photo from your phone. So I see it as more a cloud based place to consolidate and store your photos. I’m just using the free 30 day trial, rather the $100/year pro subscription, which gives a three month free bonus.

There is a nice looking android app for your phone, but as it required android version 2.3 or up I couldn’t test it either,

Enjoying the Day

The Birds have been very happy today outside my studio window, after much rain it has been a glorious day and the silky oak is still in full bloom.

I decided to take a couple of sequences to see if I could figure out how google+ selected its photos for its Auto Awesome Motion Function. Sadly It only selected one set (the gif on the right hand side, not the best set either) so I’ve added some other highlights below.