Photo This & That

HRH Prince Charles Speaks At The Sony World Photography Award

Posted on May 1, 2009 | Leave a comment

His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales speaks at the Sony World Photography Awards 2009, and announces the winner of the Prince’s Rainforests Project Professional Award, Daniel Beltrá. This video was shown on the night of the awards.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Daniel Beltra won the Prince’s Rainforests Project Professional Award. This video is from the evening of the awards ceremony and has a clip showing Daniel’s visit to the Palace to meet HRH and receive his award.

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Posted in News, Photography

Digital Storage & Back Up! Back Up! Back Up!

Posted on April 28, 2009 | Leave a comment

We push ourselves to the limit; reach the highest peak, dodge bullets and land mines, badger PRs and argue with the Police…all because we have one agenda; that of making a great picture and communicating the story.

So, after all this effort, sometimes whilst risking our lives, other times at the risk of damaging relationships with loved ones, we dump the pictures onto a hard drive and forget about it, as the next assignment beckons.

We only remember as the cold sweat builds up when that hard drive goes down…and my friends, I guarantee, it will. Hard drives break; its only a question of when. I’ve had a hard drive go bad after three months of use and others which have lasted for many years.

What’s interesting though is to see how well the new SSD (Solid State Drive) will do. I for one hope that they will realise our need for safe and archival storage.

So, how do I back up? I use two machines in my office; an iMac for office work and writing and a Mac Pro for photo work. The iMac has an external G-Tech 1Tb drive connected to it and is my Time Machine hard disk. For those who may not be familiar, Time Machine is built into Apple’s Leopard OS and is a superb backup utility. It just works and has already once saved me when I deleted all of my archived sent emails by accident! On the iMac I also have a second hard drive (soon to be a G-Tech as the Freecom has given up!) which has a second backup (done manually and also with Apple’s Backup utility (part of Mobile Me) of my letters, invoices, articles and my iTunes library. Lastly, the documents are also backed up onto my iDisk every few weeks.

The Mac Pro is a bit more complicated! Before I switched back over to the Apple Mac platform a few years ago, I had several years worth of images on my PCs, so with these I decided to keep them on an HP server, where there are 3Tb of images (all stored as a RAID 01 or Mirror RAID onto another 3Tb of disks, so 6Tb altogether). These images are all referenced into my Aperture library on the Mac Pro. This means that I can search for and see images even when the server is off-line and if I need a high res file, then I simply switch on the server and export the file through Aperture.

On the Mac Pro I also have one hard drive which is my Time Machine volume. This is used for everything but picture, sound and video files. Inside the Mac Pro are four drives and attached externally are eight other drives. Two of these external drives are WD MyBook Studio RAID boxes configured as RAID 01 or Mirror. My working files, pictures and video are stored on the internal drives, and backups on these WDs. This means that anything on these drives is actually stored on two drives; this is great as it saves you from mechanical failure in one of the drives. However, it doesn’t save you from a file being accidentally deleted, so these drives are backed up onto external Seagate drives. The other drives are older work from previous years. My thought process is to use two different manufacturers, so the WD is backed up on Seagate. This is just in case in the future it becomes apparent that there are issues with a particular batch or make and model of a hard drive.

I do also have a Buffalo Terrastation NAS box on the network.

Lastly, all the important stuff is also backed up onto a virtual drive; a cloud disk. I’ve decided to go with Amazon’s S3 as it seems a secure bet. I use Jungle Disk to access my S3 cloud storage. I did today see something called ExpanDrive which seems quite neat and does a similar job. So, by important stuff I mean; all the jpegs files I have sent to clients for publication (filed per year), all images are enter into competitions (filed by year), RAW files of mega important jobs, and video and audio associated files of importance.

I think that cloud storage is definitely the way to go as a third backup. You could have ten backups in your office, but if disaster strikes, they can all get damaged. You definitely need a form of off site storage. I initially was doing this with DVDs and hard drives, but it just didn’t work. The archival qualities of DVDs is not really known and I’ve already had issues with CDs from a few years ago stop working. The problem of hard drive swapping off site is that its a job you have to keep on top off. With cloud storage (like iDisk and Amazon S3), its just a simple matter of drag and drop! Simples!

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Posted in Computers and Software

Mega Useful!

Posted on April 28, 2009 | Leave a comment

I remember the days when a desktop computer with a couple of internal hard drives would serve us well for years of storage and backups. Well, with all these huge megapixel cameras and most of our music and some video residing on our computers, gigabytes are no longer enough and terabytes are the order of the day.

The Signum with a mains extender and AC adapters

Once our computers are full, we then start to add external hard drive after external hard drive. At present, I’ve got nine hard drives connected to my Mac Pro! One thing that becomes very clear, is that the cables become an absolute mess! Even though half of these are daisy chained FireWire 800 and the others are all connected to a FireWire 400 hub, the cables are still a mess and when you add the mains cables, the mess turns into a nightmare! Anyone who has tried to Dyson (I don’t have a Hoover!!) under their desk knows what I’m talking about. The same problem arises when you try and remove or add a piece of hardware; gaining access becomes a nightmare.

The other Signum used, just after fitting

So, to get over this, I came up with the idea of attaching as much of the cables to the desk and also putting a mains surge protector socket expanders onto the desk too. By complete coincidence I found a perfect thing to help tidy up some of the mess of the cables and mains transformers at Ikea; the Signum is absolute genius! I’ve fitted two of these to one of my desks and it has cleared up so much of the mess. If I need to get to the back of the desk, all I need to do is pull it out as there’s no longer a huge pile of cables anchoring the desk to the carpet beneath.

A Belkin Surge Protector attached with sturdy cable ties. You need to be very careful when attaching with cable ties as its not really the most secure way; I’m still looking for a better alternative. use at your own risk.

So, my suggestions would be to try and do a similar thing and see how much tidier and user-friendly your workspace becomes!

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Posted in Computers and Software

Super Slow – SprintCam v3HD

Posted on April 21, 2009 | Leave a comment

I-Movix SprintCam v3 NAB 2009 showreel from David Coiffier on Vimeo.

This is astonishing! 1000fps full HD broadcast quality video from the SprintCam v3HD; just check out the detail and surreal quality of looking at things super slow.

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Posted in Video

Beltra Wins Prince’s Rainforests Project Award

Posted on April 18, 2009 | Leave a comment

Fires burn the Amazon rainforest to clear the ground for cattle or crop farming in Sao Felix Do Xingu municipality in Para State, Brazil, August 13, 2008. Photo: Daniel Beltra/Greenpeace

Congratulations to Daniel Beltra for winning the Prince’s Rainforests Project Award. I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Daniel for over three years now and a nicer and more dedicated photographer you could not find.

Daniel Beltrá, is announced as the winner of The Prince’s Rainforests Project (PRP) Award at this year’s Sony World Photography Awards Gala ceremony in Cannes, France on Thursday 16 April 2009.

The Spanish photographer, now based in Seattle, beat off stiff competition from some of the world’s finest environmental photographers to win a fully-funded assignment to document three rainforest regions of the world. On behalf of The Prince’s Rainforests Project and Sony Eco, he will travel through the rainforest nations over the course of three months.

Daniel Beltra on a recent assignment in the Amazon.

The Prince’s Rainforests Project (PRP), founded by His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales, recognises the global role played by rainforests in climate change and aims to achieve consensus about how the rate of deforestation might be slowed and stopped. There is a growing awareness of the need to urgently protect the world’s rainforests, their people and their resources. The project is working alongside other governmental and non-governmental initiatives to find a solution to deforestation for the rainforests nations, with the aim of making the trees worth more live than they are

dead. The project is also working to inform and engage public interest on this subject, collecting mass support to make rainforests central to any future climate change strategy.

In a video message at the awards night, HRH The Prince of Wales, said: “Photographic imagery can tell a compelling story about the truth of the situation and, the truth is, if we lose the fight against tropical deforestation, then we lose the fight against climate change.”

Daniel Beltrá, on the announcement of his award, commented: ”Winning The Prince’s Rainforests Project category at the Sony World Photography Awards is a tremendous honour. It is an incredible opportunity to work as part of a team of the most qualified professionals that are focused in protecting the world’s tropical rainforests. Tackling their destruction is one of the most effective ways to combat carbon emissions and global warming. His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales’ leadership in this matter is an example to all of us. I hope the photos I produce will make a strongly persuasive argument for the urgent preservation of the world’s tropical rainforests.”

Well known for his environmental and conservational photography, for the last twenty years, Daniel Beltrá’s images of the rapidly changing planet have appeared in many of the world’s most prestigious magazines and newspapers. His photographic career began with the Spanish news agency, EFE, after which he became Gamma Agency’s correspondent in Spain. In 2001 he moved to the United States where his work is now represented by Reportage by Getty Images. Beltra has also freelanced with Greenpeace since 1990.

Tom Stoddart, Chair of the PRP Award Judging Committee said: “For over two decades Daniel’s cameras have highlighted man’s devastating impact on the planet by depicting the destruction of ancient forests, peoples, oceans, species and the ozone layer. His passion and talent to inform in tandem with his artistic eye, makes him the perfect recipient of this most prestigious and important award.”

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Posted in News, Photography, Pictures