Fleeting Glimpse Images : Visions in words ~ Sagas in light

I have a quandary. I am preparing for a gallery show this fall. (More on that later.)  My show will be about waterfalls and rushing waters. As I prepare for this endeavor, I am selecting show images. My recent trip to the Palouse region yielded a couple of keeper waterfalls but I am having trouble deciding upon the stronger image. The images are the same but have different treatments. 

I went to my photographic society and showed the two images, asking for opinions.  The vote was 6-6. A lot of help they were! I then posted it to my Facebook page and got a similar tie or near-tie result.  I guess both images have appeal.

So, readers of the Fleeting Glimpse Images blog, which do you like better? Color or B&W?

Post your preference in the comments or email me. Thank you for your assistance.

Rikk Flohr

I never realized how much I depend upon CorelDraw to dovetail into and out of so many other software packages. When working with PowerPoint, for example, CorelDraw turned out to be a perfect tool to feed custom graphics into my presentations. As it happens, it also works well in the Digital Asset Management tool arena.

I recently did a photo workshop in the Palouse region with an unlikely crew of photographers called the Turn-ups, or Turnips if you prefer. The jury is still out on the spelling. During the week-long session, I was privileged to present, to the group, a basic Lightroom capabilities seminar.

Lightroom has all these little nifty customizations that make your interface, slideshows, websites, printed material, etc look like it is specifically branded for you.  Before leaving for the Palouse, I took the time to do a little customization for the trip to make any demos or presentations look a little more polished. As is my preference, I used CorelDraw X4 to make my graphics.

Custom Identity Plate made in Corel Draw X4 

The interface has what is called an Identity Plate that can be ported to output for print, web and slideshow. The identity plate can be simple text or a graphic. When I needed a graphic, where did I turn? CorelDraw X4 of course. I could take my logo, already done in Draw and make an identity plate out of it and export it for use in Lightroom.

Custom End Panel Mark created in Draw X4

End panel marks appear at the bottom of the left and right panels in every module. Again, the artwork was originally created in Corel so Corel did the heavy lifting on creating the size and format graphic I needed.

Slide Show Start and Finish Slide made in CorelDraw X4 

I like to do my slideshows with title and ending slides. It is hard to do that in a digital camera. Lightroom gives you an option of a blank slide with an Identity Plate. Neither suited me. With Draw, I was able to create custom, themed title slides for use as start and finish bookends on my slide shows. I also use transition slides that fit the natural breaks of my presentations. Draw can make as many of these as I need, output them to JPG where they can be imported into a Lightroom collection.

Lightroom Print Template with a CorelDraw X4 Graphic

Moving to the print module. I often like to finish off my printed images with a nice graphic with my name and website. Lightroom has rudimentary text features to do this but it is very limiting. Leveraging the ubiquitous Identity Plate, you can create custom pieces in CorelDraw to be used to augment your printed work.

Custom Lightroom Interface complemented by of Draw X4

You can see already a continuity forming around the FGI Stroke, Logo and trademarked slogan. All of a sudden, the software package looks like a custom piece of work that was made special for me. All of the output looks coherent. I have a brand. Whether I present to groups of photographers or just show images to a client, my work appears to be parts of a whole rather that patchwork.  It helps the professional appearance of everything I do.

When my fellow photographers consider a software package to augment their DAM tool, consider Corel Draw. It has the ability to create some stunning complements to your other software and comes with PhotoPaint – a first-class pixel-level image editing package that dovetails nicely into Lightroom’s edit flow.

Rikk Flohr © 2009

File this under the “I’m not quite sure how I feel about this” category.

I read an article on a new functionality that is cropping up on the world wide web.  It’s appearance was innocuous enough but, upon sufficient reflection, including furrowed brows and a look of stern consternation, I have decided it bothers me.

Scenario:

You see a wonderful picture on Flickr. You admire what the photographer has done with the image and wonder at the hidden secrets of image editing that have occurred to produce this image.  You look a little farther and see that the photographer has included his or her metadata in the exported file. You take that photo’s link and place it in the dialog at http://lrpreset.appspot.com/ and wait for the magic to happen.

If all goes as planned, a Lightroom preset will be created that will attempt to duplicate the steps that went into the processing of this photographer’s RAW file based upon the metadata.  You can download this preset to your local computer. Presumably, you could take this preset into Lightroom and use it to edit your own files and potentially mimic the look-and-feel of the original image.

To be fair, you do have the option of not exporting metadata on your Lightroom-created JPGs. You also have the option not to display metadata in Flickr.  So, there are two stops along the way to prevent someone from borrowing your editing techniques and applying them effortlessly to thousands of images.  Also, editing done outside of Lightroom is not necessarily available to the process.  I guess if you want to include the data and make it visible for all, it is like leaving your wireless router’s SSID broadcasting and unsecure. You are inviting people in by indifference.

First, I thought it was cool. Wow, how amazing is that that you can grab someone’s editing workflow and apply it?

Second, I thought it was lame. Every image is different. How useful can it be?

Third, I thought it was scary. Yes every image is different but there are certain techniques I have developed and use repeatedly. I don’t necessarily want to dilute my brand by advertising my process.

Fourth, I thought it might be illegal. Is the editing process - individual style - if you will, copyrightable?

I am still not certain how I feel about the automated borrowing of image editing workflow. One side says, what’s the harm? and the other side says, intellectual property. As image editing software becomes more sophisticated and puts in things like snapshots and other housekeeping items, how long will it be before our entire processes could be laid bare to probing eyes?

Perhaps I will set up a dummy Flickr account and test the usefulness and/or harmlessness of this process.

What do you think?

Rikk Flohr © 2009

Sometimes a more unique photo is waiting in the guise of a dreary downpour.

Bored yesterday with working on design-for-print projects, I took a break at lunchtime, put on a macro lens, a ring flash and sat on my front steps pondering the rose bush growing there.  It was a high-overcast with wonderful diffuse light - the kind photographers dream about. I didn’t like it. Overpowering the ambient light by ISO’ing down, stopping down and cranking up the shutter speed, I was able to find a look, using the ring light, that made me smile.

This shot was taken on a Canon 20D with the 100MM F2.8 Macro lens and the Canon MR-14EX ring light. The shot was taken at noon.

ISO 100

F16

1/250th of a Second

Ring light on Manual at 1/4 Power

I set the camera to manual for maximum control and hand-held the shot. Several shots in the series turned out quite nice but I still didn’t have the shot I was looking for. Rain was in the forecast and I decided to see if nature could deliver a little ‘wow’ to my photo.

Fast forward to 9:30 PM. The ambient is gone, save for the bleed coming from my office window (Daylight balanced compact fluorescents). The rig was the same and the settings were the same, only the flash had been changed to protect the delicate. Here the flash is on 1/32 power so that all those lovely raindrops wouldn’t blow out to white.  It seems counterintuitive that with less ambient light, I need much less flash but so be it! If you look closely, you can see the reflection of the ring light in the droplets. In the intervening 9 hours, the flower also opened a bit more, revealing a slightly different character.

Every state seems to have the adage: If you don’t like the weather, wait 15 minutes and it will change.  The same is true of photography. If you don’t like the scene, the light, the flower, wait and it

too will change.

Rikk Flohr © 2009

Safeguarding your data while in transit can be harder than you think – especially if you have an emergency with which to deal. Don’t sing the blues if the unexpected occurs – find a way to take your data with you.

 “Who says you can’t
take it with you? The crew!”

It seems like weekly there is a televised news story of passengers being evacuated from an airplane. No matter what the problem, if an emergency evacuation of a plane is ordered, you must leave behind any of your carry-on luggage stowed under the seat or in the overhead compartments. Unless you are careful, this also includes leaving your data behind.

If you are traveling to or from a destination with valuable data, you are likely to ensure that you have it stored multiple places. You may have a backup optical disk, a portable hard drive, a USB drive, and an internet copy – all in addition to the copy on your laptop.  The problem most people have is that they store that extra copy in a brief case, checked luggage, (even  worse – your laptop case) or a jacket pocket.

In an emergency, no one is going to allow you the grace of retrieving a bag from beneath the seat, overhead bin or the jacket the flight attendant so kindly closeted for you. Regardless of the nature of the emergency you will leave your possessions behind.  After a successful evacuation it will be hours – maybe days before you recover your possessions.  If something happens to your bag or the the plane, you might not ever see your data again.

Photographers who shoot on location are especially susceptible. The data store is often large in tens  or even hundreds of gigabytes. The experiences and the images captured are often unique and unrepeatable. The good photographer is diligent about backing up the precious images but not as careful ensuring their safe arrival to the home destination. The airline crew and their very prudent evacuation procedures are unforgiving. They are designed to save everyone’s lives. All other concerns are secondary.

Thus: one copy of your data must be carried on your person. This means in a place which will not be severed from you in an emergency. A pants pocket is a good choice or a vest pocket if you wear one. The point is, it must be a garment that doesn’t leave your side. This way, in an evacuation, the data will tag along with no effort and no delay. You can leap onto that inflated slide with data confidence.

I go one step further and use a Ziploc™ double seal bag and a desiccant packet to encase my drive in a watertight container. Tucked into my vest or pants pocket, I am assured of carrying one set of data off the plane with me.  My laptop may stay behind, my luggage may be lost, my jacket may never be reunited with its owner but my WD Passport drive will tag along with me. If I make it off the plane, my data will as well.  Think back to flight 1549 that made an emergency landing in the Hudson river in January of 2009. The passengers made it off but the plane partially sank with their baggage and carry-ons. A small hard drive or USB drives in a sealed bag in a pocket might have saved the data day. 

Your disaster might not be as dramatic as a crash landing in a river. Perhaps you are diverted to a smaller plane and your baggage won’t fit the tiny overhead. Maybe your plane has a mechanical problem and the baggage doesn’t get forwarded for days. Perhaps someone has the same colored bag in the overhead bin and makes off with yours  by accident. Maybe the baggage claim is outside, in pouring rain.  Whatever your travel woes, keeping your data on your person, protected, can ensure that you can take it with you.

Rikk Flohr © 2009