PixelatedImage Blog

I just got word that the TPN (Travel Photographers Network) is publishing a story I wrote about Ethiopia - something half way between a photo-essay and a personal reaction piece. The link is here: TPN Ethiopia Article - for those of you that wish to read it. They will also be using one of my images for the cover. While this is entirely an internet-based magazine and community for photographers it is my first cover and my first published article related to my photography and for me it’s a happy milestone. Ra ra ra! (and by that I mean, “go photo-guy!” not “Egyptian Sun God, we hail thee!”)

Got this from CreativeBits - a great in-one-place reference for all the Photoshop keyboard shortcuts. Learning these shortcuts has cut my work time dramatically - and allows me to get past the tech and straight to creating, which is what I love. Being a member of the NAPP i have access to this online, but this one is really convenient.

Keyboard Shortcuts PDF File

The further one gets into Photoshop the more one realizes what a truly remarkable program it is for the digital artist (and those of us who pretend we are). Today I worked on some logo concepts for a client and when looking in my trusty Moleskin at the sketches I had done I realized I had no idea how to pull my concept out of my head and onto the 17″ displays staring coldly at me.

So I zipped an email off to Pete Bauer - the help desk guy over at the National Association of Photoshop Professionals - and he sent me the link I am about to supply for you. I’ll warn you now, this is a bit of a long one - I think there are 7 pages - but if you’re ready to take your use of brushes to the next level then take the two following simple steps:

1. Get a Wacom tablet and learn how to use it. You will never go back to that mouse for Photoshop work.

2. Go to Planetphotoshop and read this tutorial

Thanks, Photofan.

Now that we’re back from Ethiopia the long hard journey begins. We are now, collectively, in the middle of creating fusion recipes, shooting the food shots, writing, and working on a proposal. Then we’ll take that to a short list of charities and publishers and begin soliciting interest. I have a feeling it’s going to be a long road, but am open to surprises.

Otherwise I am working on putting my photography career on track. I am primarily working on marketing materials, portfolios, and getting the stuff out there in hopes of publishing, awards, and clients. Somedays I am amazed it is all coming so fast, other days it seems so stinking slow I wonder what’s going on. I think i have patience and perspective issues! What bouys me up the most is the encouragement of people who’ve responded to my images and told me they’ve had something more than just an aesthetic reaction to them but been moved to emotion or action. if my images can compel people to empathy, compassion, mercy, love and - God forbid - opening their wallets or giving their time - that would be the greatest good.

What I want most at this point is to partner with ngo’s, charities, and mission groups - to help them tell their stories and do what they do.

The folks over at Radiant Vista have released another great Photoshop tutorial - this one is long - about an hour, so it’s a big download. I have not yet seen it, but their stuff is always great. Check it out here - Radiant Vista. Look to the top for A Photoshop Reference: Essential Adjustment Layers.

This weekend I posted a new PixelatedImage website. You can see it at the same address: PixelatedImage.com

If you have any thoughts on the new design - praises or constructive criticism, I’d love to hear it. Unless it’s one of you whiners without broadband. Sorry. It’s just a reality. You’re just going to have to schedule a week off so you can wait for the images to download. They probably won’t look that great on your old Commodore 64 anyways.
No, seriously, they won’t.

i posted this over on the Travel Photographers Network and thought I should duplicate it here in case anyone wants to browse these thoughts.

from TPN, david duChemin:

My recent marketing stuff revolves around my interest in (strength) telling stories with the images we create. I am taken with the notion that if a picture is worth a thousand words then you had better use those thousand words to tell a story - and hopefully a story that is true, resonates, and is worth the hearing.

I’d be interested in discussing the elements of what makes a great photographic story.

Here are some thoughts. Feel free to disagree.

1. It seems like a landscape orientation is better at telling story than a portrait orientation - perhaps this because we learned, most of us, to read from left to right along a horizontal plane. It’s just the natural way we read and somehow that translates into the way we read an image. When it is horizontal it seems to tell a stronger story. But not always.

2. The stories we tell in one frame will be - should be - full of questions. I like to think of it as Rabbinic technique - leave the questions hanging and let the reader answer them. What is he looking at? How did that get there? Why? What? Who? The more questions and the more those questions touch a nerve connected to deeper human stuff, the better. The question: “Why is that person so forlorn looking?” should naturally lead to empathy and an experience of story.

3. The strength of story is in it’s experiential nature. The best stories pull us in, make us identify with the protagonist, and feel we’ve been there with him/her. To do this effectively we must be aware of the universals. I don’t want to bog this down with arche-types etc., but suffice it to say that the more “basic” the emotions (and I do not by that mean they are simple or easy, but more, uh…primal (or something)) are the more the image will have broader (more people) and deeper (more profoundly human) appeal.

4. To continue the thought from 3. Stories have a theme - so should our images. When someone says “what is that movie about?” we usually reply with a plot summary - but in fact stories are not about plot - the things that happen - they are about the themes - loneliness, trust, betrayal, love, birth, death, rebirth, justice for the oppressed, revenge - all the great themes (and this is not even a shot at an encyclopaedic list) that are used in classic storytelling can be suggested in our images. Maybe it’s simply an emotion: happiness. Joy. Sadness. Surprise. Anticipation.

5. The strongest stories are the simplest. As I look over the images in my portfolio that have garnered the strongest response from others, they are the simple ones. Editors of the written word spend alot of time trimming the fat to get to the good stuff so the reader doesn’t have to do the hard work of slogging through. We need to trim. To crop. To compose carefully. The simpler our images are; the more clearly the viewer can discern the subject and experience the emotions, the better our stories are told.

6. Having said that, i think the more we can include context into our image, the more hints we give to the viewer and the more meaningful the image becomes. I shot an image of a gal in front of a tank in the highlands of Ethiopia - i posted it earlier this week, or late last week - and while the portrait would have been fine without the tank, going to a wide angle lens and getting close to the girl while keeping a recognizable part of the tank (the more iconic the elements the better) in the background gave the image context and dramatically increased the sense of danger or tragedy or loss - however you responded to it was because of the interaction of the girl and the tank - neither element alone would tell the story so powerfully.

These are my immediate thoughts. it was not my intention to begin a diatribe, so please weigh in on this. I think the more we understand the theory or even just process our own thoughts, the better our images will tell compelling stories, or at least suggest them, and when they do, the people viewing them will feel a greater impact, and that’s why we do this.

thoughts?

This shot from a few weeks ago, the one that perfectly sums up my feelings about this wetter-than-usual winter here in Vancouver, just won the weekly Travel Challenge over at the Travel Photographers Network. Many kind things were said, all of them did wonderful things to my failing ego.

Go, team, go.

ps - My ego doesn’t ALWAYS fail, it’s just that it never had a chance to study for these recent tests. Friggin’ pop quizes.

I have been using the Beta Version of Adobe Lightroom as my digital lightbox for the last couple weeks. When it initially came out I gave it a cursory review and was fairly positive about it. But I need to append my intial comments.

I love Lightroom. I don’t understand a whole lot about it – there are some features I am currently working my way around and to be honest I have just not taken the time to really dig.

I still find it slow.

But. The interface is clean and elegant and intuitive and even allows customization. So mine has a pixelatedimage plate on it instead of one that says Lightroom. But what I really love is this – Lightroom does something to my images that makes them look WAY better than most of my somewhat educated attempts at post-processing.

I imported a folder of images I had already tweaked and just wanted to try Lightroom out as a Digital Asset Manager. On import I converted the images to DNG format. Now in Lightbox I have not yet found preferences to turn this crazy “tweak the hell out of my photos” feature but the results are so good I am not sure I care. It bugged me at first, and in due course I will figure it out – but all this to say if you are in the least inclined to play with a beta version instead of waiting for the official release, I think Lightroom is worth a look.

Once the images are imported – a long onorous process – they’re easily viewed. There’s a great loupe function, similar to, but different from, the Loupe tool in Apple’s Aperture. Your histogram is visible, so is basic EXIF data. And when the image looks like you want it to – hit export and you have a number of options for naming your file, including the inclusion of selected EXIF data.

Give it a whirl.

Tim - and other users of Photoshop Elements - check this site out: PhotoshopElementsUser.com