PixelatedImage Blog

OPEN YOUR EYES TO THE WORLD THROUGH THE LENS OF YOUR CAMERA

This summer, Matt Brandon and I are leading the first Lumen Dei Photography Tour in India. Lumen Dei (pronounced loo’men day) means light of God; this first tour is designed for people of Christian faith who are intermediate photographers, to see the world and its people with new eyes and to learn to share that new perspective with your camera. The tour will take us from Delhi to Agra to shoot the Taj Mahal, then to Srinagar in Kashmir, India to trek in the Himalaya and introduce participants to Gujjar shepherds (transhumant, not nomadic). There is more information here on the Lumen Dei website. The price is incredible for a two week guided trip - partly because the leaders, Matt and I, are not drawing a fee from it. Space is limited to 7 so get in on it quicklyish.

My latest article has been published at Lexar.com - Photographing in Extremes - can be found here on the Lexar Tips and Lessons site. Lexar is a leader in the digital photography industry and makes excellent, reliable cards; I’m proud to be sponsored by them. My article aside, if you have not taken time to read through the pro Blogs and excellent articles you are missing a great resource.

This is the proposed itinerary for my assignment in Africa. I’ve had alot of people ask about the wheres and the whens and the how-longs. Here it is, though subject to change.

Oct 23 Vancouver to Frankfurt
Oct 24 Frankfurt to Johannesburg
Oct 25 Johannesbug to Lilongwe, Malawi

Oct 26 - Oct.31 - 6 days - Shooting in Malawi

Nov 01 Lilongwe to Harare, Zimbabwe - Harare, Zimbabwe to Lubumbashi, DRC

Nov 02 - Nov 07 - 6 days - Shooting in DRCongo

Nov 08 Lubumbashi to Jo’burg, Jo’burg to Frankfurt
Nov 09 Frankfurt to Vancouver

Well folks, the insanity of the leading edge of technology continues. At Photokina this week SanDisk has announced 12 and 16GB cf cards. Two words people: Holy Moly.

I’m a Lexar shooter, and I will be as long as they continue to make great product and sponsor me, so this is in no way an endorsement - I’m just looking at the amazing capacity of these cards and the direction this technology is leading us in, and I am excited about the possibilities.

For those of you still shooting JPG and not RAW - you could fit 1900 to 2500 images from a Canon 5D (13 megapixels) on there. Un-believable.

Keep your eye on RobGabraith.com for more announcements out of Photokina 2006.

Adobe has released another version of Lightroom - now named Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. Get it at Adobe.com.

From Adobe this evening:

We’re pleased to announce that Adobe Photoshop Lightroom beta 4 is now ready for you to download and use. This is the first release to reveal the full name we are giving to the product, as Lightroom takes its place as the newest member of the Photoshop family of digital imaging and photography software.

Beta 4 is our biggest milestone to date, with several enhancements and additions, including the achievement offull feature parity between the Windows and Mac OS versions of Lightroom. No matter which platform you prefer, you can now bring the full power of Lightroom beta to your photos.

Lightroom Beta 4 also features:

• Groundbreaking changes in the way tone curve adjustments are made and displayed, giving you the highest quality results in an interface that’s easier to use than ever before.

• More streamlined and elegant user interface - We’ve made several changes to the look and feel based on your feedback in the earlier beta releases.

• Customizable interface - You can now display only the controls you want to be visible.

• Precision white balance selection tool

• Facility to easily rename and convert files to DNG after they’ve been imported to the Lightroom library

• Increased interaction between Lightroom library organizational structure and the underlying file system

• Filter and search presets to more quickly find the photographs you want

• Better performance and improved interface for the Web module features

• Develop control improvements based on community feedback, including comments from the Pixmantec user community (welcome!)

Thanks to the kind and vigilant Trevor Meier, I’ve just learned the Heathrow carry-on limits have been updated. They are now ONE bag - 45cm X  56cm X 25cm (17.75in X 22in X 9.85in). This is better. Not perfect but better. Still not sure it’s even liveable for professional photographers, but as a return to sanity it’s a step in the right direction. Thanks to Trevor and the fine folks at the British Airports Authority. No thanks to the haters who wanted to blow people up. Jerks.

As the Africa assignment gets closer I am tying up my final gear needs. For you gear-heads, here’s the latest.

1. The Epson p4000 seems to be malfunctioning - I can’t get it to charge and am now gearing up to argue and fuss with Epson. I suspect there is no chance of my getting this resolved before I travel, though I am willing to be surprised. In the mean time I have placed an order for the Hyperdrive I mentionned recently.

2. I picked up the last lens in my stable for a long time. Without question the Canon 135/2.0L is one of the finest - if not the finest - lens Canon makes. The colours this lens reproduces, the sharpness and speed of it are without equal in the Canon line-up. (With the exception of the two /1.2 lenses, perhaps.) This is the kind of lens that shines on a full-frame sensor and for the kind of environmental portraiture I do it’s perfect. And it allows me to leave the 70-200/2.8 at home.

3. LowePro shipped me a Specialist 85AW bag and it arrived this week. It’s as good as a bag like this gets. Easily will hold a couple bodies and three lenses along with a portable HDD and enough cf cards to choke a horse (whatever that means). I have yet to meet the one perfect bag - I don’t think it exists, but this one comes close for a medium-sized working bag that is accesible and allows me to use it as a modular belt system as well.

4. Leica just announced the M8. Oh Lord why must You tempt me!!? (At $5500 for the body alone it is the same  kind of temptation that Charlize Theron is to me. In other words: not a chance. Still…)

5. There’s a chance I will have to fly through Heathrow on the way to Africa. The possibility alone makes me shake and twitch. Heathrow maintains an unreasonable carry-on luggage restriction which limits flyers to a bag the size of a briefcase. The threat of having to put my gear or laptop into the hold is enough to make me tear my garments and run screaming into the dark night. Just thought you should know.

Stumbled on a book in a local crackhouse bookstore recently and while this counts as one of the very few times I have left my dealer a bookstore without actually scoring a hit buying a book I did find a book I’d love to have sat and mainlined read all day.

The World’s Most Dangerous Places by Robert Young Pelton is a thick, humourous, but somewhat macabre look at the state of the world and the many ways to kick it while seeing the more interesting places therein. It’s not the kind of book you let your mom or wife read before you head to Central Africa. I’m thinking about all these things because I don’t think that I’ve had an assignment or travel opportunity since I left highschool that didn’t require either a Hostage/Ransom release agreement signed or 5 litres of vaccines pumped into me. Sharon and I went to Paris two years ago - that was relatively calm. Nearly killed by a crepe, but no permanent scars.

Anyways, all that to draw your attention, if you’re interested, to a couple links:

Robert Young Pelton’s ComeBackAlive.com is full of interesting stuff, including this map of Dangerous Places. Oddly, he seems to have trademarked the words "Dangerous Places" - can you do that? Does my blatant use of these words put me in a dangerous place legally? Can I even ask that question without paying royalties to the venerable RYP?

The second resource is one I was recently reminded of by Jordan, the Digital Explorer. Jordan is a young photographer climbing the rungs. He’s got a great eye for someone so new to the craft. Kevin Sites is a solo journalist (a  SoJo) spending a year travelling through the world’s hottest conflict zones. Fascinating stuff to anyone who loves adventure travel (also known as "you’re going WHERE?"), solo travel, or has an interest on the state of things as seen from someone NOT behind a CNN or FOX desk.
Find him here at the Hotzone - there are some great articles on DRC which are of particular interest to me right now. I will be shooting in the DRC for a week sometime in late October, early November.

I stole this quote from Mike Todd who stole it from someone else. Three cheers for viral dissemination.

"Are we condemned to be largely spectators? Can we
affect the course of events? Can we claim ‘compassion fatigue’ when we show no
sign of consumption fatigue?"

—Sebastião Salgado

Much going on here as the summer winds up and fall settles in. The tourists are slowly going home and I can get my morning coffee in relative peace.

The big news continues to revolve around my World Vision assignment next month. I am flying to LA this time next week for briefings and a chance to meet the great folks I’ve started working with. Final country selection is in process and it looks like I will be shooting in the DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo) and Malawi. Very excited and still holding out hope that they might take me home via a detour to Addis Ababa for a couple days.

Travel excites me tremendously, as does the pile of logistics involved. I’ve spent the last week getting all those things I didn’t have on my last trip to Africa and wished I’d had. Chief among them a mosquito net; I’m rather un-keen on getting Malaria again.

I’m also knee deep in a self-led course on Hindi and the Devanagari script. Hindi asan nahi hai! (Hindi is not easy!) I realize most of India speaks english, but I think knowing a language is a great way to gain some insights into the way a culture thinks. Truth be told it is the script that gives me such headaches, the language itself is much easier than english or french. No wonder 70% of the country is illiterate. I suspect I will end up joining the majority! (If anyone knows of a Hindi tutor in Vancouver please let me know.)

The Photojournalism edition of PhotoEd is out. I wish I could say I’m happy with my spread but I’m disappointed by the layout and the photos look muddy. Lesson learned: always get a proof with time to persuade the pre-press guy to tweak your images or layouts.

Lastly, I stumbled last week across another Canadian Photo mag called C-ing. The slogan on the masthead is "A Creative, Compelling, Compassionate Perspective on the World". I couldn’t have said it better myself. It’s a new magazine, but holds some promise of substance. Check them out online here at C-ingMagazine.ca