PixelatedImage Blog

Somehow I knew Scott Kelby would find my lame comment about his humour in my last post. And now my crimes of dissent are known far and wide because he’s posted about it in his own blog (one which, btw, you should drop in on frequently) HERE

And so in a last ditch attempt to salvage any future friendship, I replied, and clarified my position. Of course, I think all this is in good humour and I hope I’ve not offended the man. I like him alot and he’s a remarkable teacher and photographer, and yes, his writing is funny. Anyways, aside from writing "I will not diss Scott Kelby" on the blackboard 100 times, which I will do shortly, I thought I should atone for my crimes here, to you. Or at least make them known.

Darn internet, just can’t keep a secret.

My wife and I are in Seattle this weekend, I had a meeting with a prospective client and now we’re sitting in Zietgiest, a great coffee shop in the Pioneer Square area. We’re staying on a sailboat for the weekend - cheaper digs than the local hotels or B&Bs and alot more fun. So - if you read my ill-advised rant about Kelby (see how these things gain momentum and become larger than life?)-  and are heading to our place in Vancouver to  slash our tires or put a letter bomb through the front mail slot, you should know (a) I stand by my comment about Kelby’s "Rocking The Houseki" gag, (b) we don’t have a car, and (c) we aren’t there right now and for maximum effect you should plan this for sometime around 7pm Monday.

All joking aside, I stand by my recommendation of Kelby’s Lightroom book, and for that matter anything he’s written. His humour runs sparingly throughout his books and is never a distraction. Just thought I should clarify. I got to know Kelby’s writting and excellent written humour, while he was still editing MacDesign. Over the years he’s been my primary teacher from afar on most things Photoshop and I’m both sorry to have been less careful in my wording - I was sincere but indiscreet - and grateful for Scott’s kind reply and his kind words about my photography.

Honestly, to have Scott Kelby call my photography "wonderful" is like hearing Babe Ruth say you play a good game of baseball. Or, uh, to have Baryshnikov say you do a mean pirouette, or uh, hmmm. Thanks, Scott.

A reminder to all you procrastinators, as well as those for whom crastination is merely an amateur pursuit: the introductory pricing on Lightroom expires April 30. This means you have 5 days left, including today, to save $100.

Kelby’s book continues to be helpful - particularily as he reveals keyboard shortcuts that are not otherwise indicated in the menus. So I dug around and found an Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Keyboard Shortcut list. You can find it here: SHORTCUTS

I’m still plugging through Chapter Two, but will have an overview/review when I get through it.

As if I were not already completely convinced Lightroom was the future of my digital photography workflow, an hour spent with Scott Kelby’s recently released Lightroom book, has me more enthusiastic than ever. Kelby’s book is excellent, and I am only on Chapter One. I’ll say right up front that my eyes tend to gloss over at the thought of sitting down and going through this book one chapter at a time. I’m much more prone to flipping through and stopping when I see a nice picture. But I’ve committed to doing this book like a course, beginning with the painful, humiliating assumption that I know nothing. Which is not true. I know a great deal. But I don’t yet know which things I do not know, so I’m going in head-first.

A couple impressions. First, as always, Scott makes learning easy and relatively fun. His writing is much easier to absorb than his speaking, which is fine but he tends to camp out on certain jokes (watch Photoshop TV more than a couple episodes and tell me his "Matt Kloskowsky, Rockin’ the Houseki" bit doesn’t get old fast. I digress. I’m sure I’m guilty of similar crimes). Anways.

Kelby spends Chapter One covering the Import function and though I’ve been using Lightroom since Beta1.0, I learned a few things, not the least of which is how to get rid of a metadata preset that you no longer want. If you ask me Adobe could have made this much easier. But now I know, and by a process of deduction I was able to figure out how to move my current custom metadata preset from my desktop machine to my laptop. Nice. Almost worth the price of admission right there.

As always the photos are great, the illustrations match up with the words and I had no problem breezing through the first chapter, and coming out on the other side with a little more savoir-faire than I had going in.

An aside. Several people have emailed asking about Lightroom vs Photoshop/Bridge. Lightroom is not a replacement, for me, for Photoshop and Bridge. But it is now my primary tool for digital photography. I will order the CS3 upgrade for Photoshop, but not until the fall when Leopard is released and I upgrade my current machine. In the past I  would have bought it the moment it was out. But most of my time now is spent in Lightroom. For my money there is simply no better way to import, organize, develop, and output my images. Once in a while i take an image to Photoshop for deeper work, and anything graphic, but Lightroom has made such easy work out of the many tasks that make up my workflow that I’m happy to spend less time in Photoshop.

Ecuador - February 2007. We were staying in Riobamba, spending most of our time somewhere between 12 and 14 thousand feet in altitude. At this altitude the sun burns you even when it’s out of sight for days at a time. On the other side of this image is a bald, sunburned, photographer looking like a burn victim with leprosy.

One of the unique World Vision projects in Ecuador involves Alpaca, a Llama-like animal that is as useful as it is beautiful. It is also, for those of you tasked with photographing an alpaca with a small child, a skittish animal who doesn’t like white guys with cameras.

We spent most of this day with mind-numbing headaches bouncing around the country-side looking for the shots we needed - not an easy task as it always involves the uncommon combination of cute baby animal with cute kid, both of whom need some measure of patience. After driving further and further into remote valleys - impossibly green and surrounded by blue sky and volcanoes spewing ash - we finally arrived in this gorgeous spot, not only feeling distant from any place we could finger on a map, but feeling distant, too, from the time we were used to. It felt a little like walking in a theme-park from a Michael Crichton novel, like somehow we’d arrived in a place where nomads and transhumant people lived in harmony with their flocks and each other. No email, no cell phones. Just the land and her children.

The beauty of all this aside, I was sure that we were chasing the impossible. It seemed so entirely unlikely that in this place (and this time) we’d find a young alpaca and a young child.

And then Juan summersaulted down the hill with his dog, Clever, and began wrestling with a young alpaca. He mugged for the camera and kept the alapaca where we needed it. When we took a break he went back to wrestling with Clever, leaving me the distinct impression that their relationship was something more like brothers (secretly I still believe Juan was raised by a pack of wolves). It was magical. Juan’s mother looked on, dressed in the coarse-textured, woolen clothes and traditional hat that her people have been wearing perhaps for centuries. She smiled abashedly, not sure what she thought of me and my camera, shy when I pointed it in her direction and asked if I could take some pictures of her and Juan together.

It is these incredibly human moments I love about my job. There’s the language barriers and awkwardness and asking people to pose for a photograph made by a technology they don’t understand to appear in publications they’ll never see, but when you approach all that as just a goofy game, and you relate to the people with kindness and respect and humility, you emerge with better photographs. Best of all you emerge with moments of connectedness that span the distance and the time - moments of profound humanness.

Post-script. While shooting this the alapaca herd was doing it’s best to multiply its numbers, completely abandonning discretion in the process. See that distant white blob to the left of Juan’s head? That’s a couple of Alpacas in mid-activity with a third one standing over them - the third was either refereeing the match or waiting to get tagged in or simply checking technique - I’m not sure. But the bellowing and whining coming from the mating alpacas made shooting with an altitude headache even harder, and more amusing.

EXIF date: Canon 5D, 24-70/2.8 @ 24mm. iso400, 1/320, f14 and a staggering amount of post-production in Photoshop to get the dogs out of the picture.

A few little things today. I’ll keep it short, detaily, and sweet.

Scott Kelby’s new book, The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book, is now shipping. Kelby is a prolific man - he’s at the helm of way too many things and is poised to take over the Photoshop world. He’s also, and this is my point, an excellent educator. The man knows how to cut through the fog, get to the point, and make you laugh while doing it. My copy is taking way too long to get here, but when it does I will giggle like a schoolgirl, read through it with one hand on my mouse and one eye on Lightroom, and then I will write a review. By all accounts it’s an excellent book. Scott’s blog is here: Photoshop Insider

Gitzo sent me my new tripod this week -  it’s the obscurely named GT2540EX and aside from it initially seeming like the most over-engineered tripod those clever eurpoeans have ever managed to crank out  - it’s pretty darn cool. It’s carbon fibre, so it’s light (though I prefer their basalt line), and it has the new G-lock legs, but best of all is the tilting centre column which allows you to position your camera at any conceivable angle. Everything GITZO is engineered well and built like some gorgeous european tank (only without the killing and destruction), this tripod is no exception. All that said, it will remain in my studio and be used exclusively for studio-type shoots. My other Gitzo, the GT1298 (no link on the Gitzo site for this one) is a basalt tripod and it’s small and easy to use and far more user-friendly for travel. Quick up, quick down, light, small - all the things travelers want and none of the bells and whistles studio shooters clamour after.

NAPP’s new magazine DARKROOM is out and shipped with this month’s PHOTOSHOP USER magazine. I just sat down with a cup of coffee and did a read-through. It’s a freebie, an add-on to the already value-ladened NAPP membership, so it can be forgiven for being a little thin. Content is excellent and if you’re not already a NAPP member, and you spend any time at all in Photoshop and/or Lightroom, you should be. Go here: Photoshopuser.com

Lastly, if you are a professional photographer, and you shoot with Canon gear, you need to look into Canon’s CPS program. Canon Professional Service gives you priority service if/when your camera or lens needs it, it gives you special pricing on 1-series bodies, the top two Speedlights, and L lenses, and I believe it gives you access to Canon rental stock. Each country seems to differ in what it offers and in what it requires to join. It’s free, but you need to jump through some hoops in order to prove that you’re a working professional. I just upgraded a lens and saved over $200 on the 24-70/2.8L - which isn’t bad for a membership that cost me nothing. CPS isn’t well advertised or well documented, but you can get the basics in your respective country by doing a google search.

I like my images to speak for themselves, but there are times I wish I could say more, and judging by the emails I get asking for details about this image or that, there’s a few nutters out there that are willingly asking me to give them my thoughts and opinions. So be it.

Introducing Without The Frame - The Story Behind the Image. It’s a chance for me to speak personally about some of my favourite images, to sound off on them, their impact on me, and the context in which the image was taken. It’s a grab-bag, really. So here we go.

Ethiopia, January 2006 with two friends. We were travelling this iconic country engaged in an exercise in irony: creating a cookbook in a nation known ostensibly for famine. But Ethiopia is much more than that, it is a mountainous, extraordinary country of rich culture, beautiful and diverse people, and an incredible history. In that one sentence I’ve used more modifiers then Hemingway in his entire career, but that’s beside the point.

This shot is taken high in the Simien Mountains, if I have my Ethiopian geography right. We’d just spent orthodox Christmas in the holy city of Lalibela, a day set in my memory as one of the most unexpected and unforgettable - a town filled to busting with pilgrims and beggars, priests and saints. Sometimes all 4 in one person. Everywhere, white robes contrasted with the red rock-hewn churches still in use after a thousand years, still infused with a sense of the sacred; mystery around every corner. And clinging to it all, and to us, the mingled scent of incense and feces, dust and diesel.

We’d left Lalibela reluctantly, our itinerary mercilessly tight with only myself to blame. As we clattered along the hairpin roads, the washboard surface beating our too-old Land Cruiser to pieces, we came upon this plateau - wide open and empty, dirt and golden chaff as far as you could see, until it dropped over the edge into the nothingness of the canyons and valleys. We stopped in the middle of the road to stretch our legs and pee, when out of nowhere this shepherd, (a goat-herd, technically) wandered with his little flock of bedraggled goats. He was young - perhaps 12, and wrapped in the green cloaks one sees on seemingly every shepherd from Addis to the border. He stopped to satisfy his curiousity, then blew his horn and wandered on.

I think of this boy often. He is typical of what one sees in Ethiopia. Typical of sub-saharan Africa too - most countries share a population that is 50% children - orphaned, many of them, by the HIV/AIDS pandemic and other plagues - famine, drought, genocide, bad governance - or the too-common fatal mix of all of them. Around every bend you see children carrying firewood, fetching water, driving goats or cattle. Can’t help but wonder where the parents are, but if you think too long about it you realize they just simply aren’t. Or they’re buried beneath the fertile soil. You’d think it would yield a greater crop, so nurtured is African soil with the blood of it’s children and the bodies of their families.

Still, it remains a bright and hopeful place. Perhaps that’s the way dark places seem - the points of light always seem brighter therein. That horn you hear is calling the sheep to order, but I can’t help think it’s also a clarion, a call for something more from those of us who have it.

As the locations in which I shoot get dustier, and more extreme, and as the means to get there becomes less and less reliable I have finally conceded the need to use something more bombproof than my current North Face Duffel Bag. I’m also finally conceding that the trend to inline wheels and pull-out handles is here to stay and may just save my back.

To this end, and in support of my focus on women and vulnerable children in the developping world, Hardigg Storm Case has just agreed to partner with me as a sponsor. Hardigg Storm Case becomes the fourth industry leader to back my vision and get me into some exceptional gear.

I will review these cases after my upcoming Lumen Dei trip to India and Nepal, but know already from a friend who has one that the quality and build is exceptional, and the price beats out the competition considerably. Check them out here: STORM CASE

War photographer James Nachtwey is one of my heroes behind the lens. He is thoughtful and articulate, and his images betray that fact - they are not only beautiful (in as much as they are also often stark and ugly) but they capture the resiliance of man in the midst of the horrors of war. James Nachtwey won the TED prize this year (www.TED.com) and his acceptance speech is extremely good; it bears hearing by anyone who wants to make a difference with their camera.

You can view/listen to it here as a streaming QT file: HIGH RES QT Video

After a stunning 58 hours of travel I got home last Sunday from Jinja, Uganda, via Entebbe, via Addis Ababa, via Rome, via Washington DC. My luggage followed a full 36 hours after that.

Travel in Africa is always a difficult thing to wrap my head around and I have come to the conclusion that the heart is the better organ for processing these trips.

It was a whirlwind tour and in two weeks we covered a tremendous amount of ground, spent far too much time in Land Cruisers and mini-buses, and visited a number of orphanages, genocide sites, and one of the smaller IDP camps in Gulu - only 13,000 people strong. All living in squalor. The image at the top of this post comes from the few short hours I spent at the Koro-Abili IDP camp. I get nauseous at the thought that these places exist and that we seem to be ok with that. I can only imagine what that little boy saw as I walked past. I spent a brief moment with him, made some faces and hoped he’d laugh and share the moment with me. In hindsight it always feels so presumptuous.

Enough of the soapbox. I urge you to check out the work of Invisible Children with whom we were visiting and in whom I discovered a profoundly inspiring group of young people from whom I have much to learn about kicking at the darkness. I fear you’ll begin hearing about Gulu again in the news soon. The WFP is running out of funding and is about to cut the already insufficient food distributions in half.

I come home hoping that the images I shot can be used to kick at the darkness and bring a little light to the darkest corners. Now begins the work of editing images, archiving files, getting copies to my client, and in the midst of all this preparing for the Lumen Dei tour in India and my subsequent time in Nepal. That trip happens from May 23 to June 16.

I have not posted images from this recent trip, but will let you know if and when I do. The recent dispatch from the Lessons Learned series will be posted on Lexar.com next month; I’ll let you know when that is up as well.