PixelatedImage Blog

I was contacted today with an offer to consider a 3 week shooting schedul for the Abu Dhabi Tourist Authority via an agency in London, UK. The shoot would occur over three weeks in April with a 3 day location scout in March. Regrettfully I am unavailable. Having wanted to see Abu Dhabi for ages this is a disappointment, but it makes me hope another opportunity like this will come again.

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In other news i have been asked to join the staff at the Travel Photographers Network. It is not a large role but will give me a chance to contribute. I will be moderating a forum likely to be called the Digital Darkroom. I am hoping it also gives me a chance to do a regular column on digitial workflow and post-processing.

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First, there is a development in the works that I’d like to hold off announcing until it’s made “official” – it’s not a big thing, but another of those steps that I think is significant. I will let you know as soon as I can.

Secondly, Photoshop users who are also Mac users should check this out in regards to using Automator with Photoshop actions. The link is HERE.

Third, there are some new video tutorials up over at The Radiant Vista. I continue to be astonished at the quality of the teaching, and for FREE. Go check them out.

Fourth, for the digital nomads out there, check THIS out. Ben Wilmore, known to anyone who’s spent much time in the darky seedy underbelly of the Photoshop world, has traded his home for a motor-coach and is going to live on the road. This appeals to me immensely, though I’d rather have the motor coach somewhere over in Asia or something.

Lastly, I don’t recall offhand if I have mentionned this before or not but Matt Kloskowski, one of the Photoshop Guys, puts up a video-based Photoshop tip every day and they never fail to be excellent. Short and sweet, but worth the time if keeping your chops up is important to you. HERE

I will post my little announcement as soon as I am able. Keep eyes peeled.

Sorry I have not posted new images recently, I have had my head stuck in Photoshop working on some design projects. I’m shooting engagement shots today, and hoping to find some time to just wander and be creative this week.

Some of you are going to skip over this by virtue of the title alone. You’ve heard this song before. Too many times. But you haven’t listened to the lyrics.

I back up my stuff. And in a recent flurry of hard drive issues and some routine maintenance gone horribly awry, I lost my Backup drive. Which is not good becasue it is also the drive whereon I keep my archives. Fortunately I have an offsite back-up of the on-sight back-up. Redundant, to be sure, but for just these occassions. I lost a few files but it was more an inconvienience than a calamity. And it has served as a motivator to streamline my backup. So, for those of you looking for a system/workflow that incorporates paranoia to a new degree, I give you my system:

Import RAW files to desktop folder, rename, etc.

BURN RAW Files to Archival DVD, write on DVD with Archival Marker, file DVD (a friend of mine does this twice)

Copy Folder to RAW 2006 folder on Main Media Harddrive.

Copy again to Back-up Drive

Copy weekly to Off-site Drive.

See? Easy! And so redundant you’d have to have a neighborhood catastrohpe to wipe out my RAW negatives.

Becasue of the ongoing discussion about proprietary RAW formats, I think I will be using Lightroom to convert my RAW files to DNG and storing them in both formats when Lightroom is released and I swtich my workflow to incorporate it.

I am also beginning to wonder about how this is all going to look in the long-term. Do we have to now start thinking about shelling out $500/year for a hard-drive and then how do we store the terbites of information that we’ll accumulate over 20, 30,40 more years of shooting?