Category Archives: Photography

Aperture 2.1 & The Plug-ins

Posted on August 5, 2008 | Leave a comment

I’ve been a big fan of Apple’s Aperture software for around two years now. I started using it (and switched over to the Mac platform because of it) when the software was on version 1.5.

A lot has changed since then with version 2 and now 2.1. The program runs a lot faster and has made big advances in editing speed. Even on my tightest deadline I use Aperture without hesitation. Its elegance, speed, robustness, full control over RAW and jpeg editing and its digital asset management have me completely hooked.
One of the biggest things is that the program now has a plug-in structure which allows Aperture to use third party plug-ins. Apple provide their own plug-in for dodging and burning.
I’ve been using two of Nik Software’s plug-ins; Viveza and Silver EfexPro. I’ve been using these for a couple of weeks now and I’m very impressed. They have now become part of my workflow.
Viveza’s user interface.
Viveza is absolute genius. In Aperture you click edit with Viveza which creates a copy of your original (it keeps your original file as it was and is non destructive, exactly like Aperture) and opens it in its own window. In a nut shell, you click on control points and select the area of the image you need to change.
Viveza can show you a before and after of your image. The control points are shown by the little dots on the image.
The control point then gives you a set of sliders which choose circle size, brightness, contrast and saturation. By clicking on the colour you want to change, it only makes these changes to that particular hue and the surrounding area of the same value, within the circle diameter you choose. Very easy, fast and accurate. Its much faster and more elegant than exporting into Photoshop.
Silver Efex Pro is equally amazing and is by far the best monochrome converting software I’ve come across. You export to it in the same way as above. It has a series of pre-defined B/W styles on the left side and the control point system on the right hand side of the user interface. It also allows full control over brightness, contrast and structure. On top of this, it also has a set of commonly used B/W filters which you can click. It gets even better though as it lets you vignette and burn in the edges of your image (addressing each edge separately).

You can get trials on all the software and I definitely recommend giving these a go.

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Posted in Computers and Software, Photography

"Iconic Britain" Competition By Microsoft=Copyright Theft

Posted on August 1, 2008 | Leave a comment

Microsoft has launched an interesting competition called “Iconic Britain“; a nice idea which alas is wrongly executed. In a nutshell its allowed entrants to enter any work considered iconic; the entrant doesn’t have to be the copyright holder. These images will be published on their web site and voted for. According to Microsoft, if an image makes it into the top 100, they will then find the copyright holder and ask for a license.

“Pro-Imaging” has an interesting write up on this competition and is campaigning for copyright infringements to be brought to Microsoft’s attention.
Nikon who are a supporter of the competition have thankfully pulled out of supporting the competition following concerns by photographers.
I strongly urge photographers to look through the results when they are published and follow the suggestion made on Pro-Imaging.

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Posted in Photography

"Get Modern" Says Martin Parr

Posted on August 1, 2008 | Leave a comment

Magnum photographer Martin Parr says that photojournalism has to get modern to survive in the magazine market. Although I’m not a big fan of his work, I am a big fan of his though process. PDN Online has an interesting interview with him.

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Posted in Photography, viewpoint

Obama Visits Number 10

Posted on July 27, 2008 | Leave a comment

Barack Obama, US Democratic presidential candidate visited Gordon Brown at 10 Downing Street yesterday. Not being a head of state, one would imagine there wouldn’t be a huge media presence there. However, there must have been around 150 members of the press. Colleagues who had covered George Bush’s last visit to Downing Street told me that there were only around 20 press for his visit!

During this kind of visit, it pays to get to Downing Street to reserve a spot early; very early. The visit was to start at 9am, and I got there just gone 7am. However I know friends who’d been there from 6am!
Bruno Vincent and a colleague fix their remote cameras to the scaffolding.
One of the nice things about the job was the huge American media attache who were travelling with the senator. I got a chance to chat to a few of my colleagues from across the pond; its quite funny that one can strike up a conversation with a total stranger. With the common element of photography and our passion for what we do, the conversation just flows!

Alas the whole side of the street we were on was covered in scaffolding which made getting a good spot even harder. Due to some good luck and a chat with the Police I managed to bag a spot directly opposite the door of number 10 – perfect!
The two hour wait for the senator’s departure and press conference.
The only down side to this is that it means you really can’t use direct flash as the door is a high gloss black which reflects really badly. Being a fan of natural light this wouldn’t normally worry me. However, as luck would have it, it was a very bright sunny day. This sun though was falling on number 10, and half way through the street was shadow. Where the senator was due to stand for his press conference was in the shaded area, and as a result the back ground was at least 4 stops brighter! Normally I’d try and balance this by using flash, but this just wasn’t possible.
Luckily I was using Canon 1D MkIII bodies (and a 5D). On the MkIIIs, there is a highlight tone priority custom function which helps with trying to eliminate blown highlights. The problem was that the exposure latitude between the extremes was too much for this custom function to cure on its own. I ended up having to slightly underexpose the foreground. But shooting in RAW and using Apple Aperture (which has a great restore and highlight feature) meant that I could get the images right. The combination of the camera’s custom function and software worked perfectly.
Apart from this technical issue with light, the scaffolding and the large number of us squeezed together like sardines, the day actually went quite well!

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Posted in Photography, Pictures

Photographers’ Quotes

Posted on July 24, 2008 | Leave a comment

Came across the Photo Quotes web site today. Makes good reading!

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Posted in Photography

Rates For The Job – PR & Commercial Work

Posted on July 22, 2008 | Leave a comment

As photographers, one thing we are all universally good at is moaning. We moan about work, lack of work, our picture desks, the light, lack of light, wrong type of light, cost of everything and pay, or more correctly, the lack of pay.

Editorially, shift rates have gone up very little over the past decades. However, the cost of equipment has gone up astronomically and the job is no where as well paid as it used to be. Our workload has also gone up as we now do all the post processing as well.
In the days of film you could have a descent professional camera system for around £10,000, now days you’re looking at more like £30,000. To top this, you also need to change cameras a lot more often as digital is changing and getting better at a very speedy rate. Lets not even talk about the computing technology making leaps and bounds.
Where we do have some control on the rates of pay is in the PR sector of the market. However, we choose to shoot ourselves in the foot. My rates haven’t changed in years, and I stick to them no matter what the client says. Everyone tries it on; the client doesn’t have enough money, the job’s a quick one, its a hospital, its a charity etc. One thing you can be sure of is that the PR companies charge full wack, but they will always try and get the photographer for cheap so they can have a larger profit margin; why not? Its a business and they have to make money – but so do you.
The problem we all face is that less established and less experienced photographers are under charging massively for this type of work. PR rates have always been three to four times that of editorial work. However the thought process seems now days to be “well, some money is better than none” or “its better than doing an eight hour shift”! Painfully, its not just the less established photographers who have this philosophy; alas a few established names are also doing this.
In the short term this does mean more income. The thought being to make money. One of the excuses being “well the economy’s not that strong”. Be warned though; once you drop your rates and give discounts and do things like editing or wiring for free, you will never be able to get back to your normal charges when things get better. Its a one way street; there’s no going back.
My advice and my way is to stick to my rates and not budge. For very regular clients I’ll do DVDs for free, or drop a wiring charge as a token of appreciation for doing long term business. I know that once I give in to a cheaper rate, this rate will then be always expected regardless of who the end client is or how well the economy is doing.

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Posted in Photography