PixelatedImage Blog

Scraping the bottom of the barrel today, but have some bookmarks I wanted to share.

MedJet Assist - If you travel out of country, MedJet Assist looks to be an excellent investment. The fine=print and hassle on many travel medical plans are a little tough to navigate, and some just tough to swallow - MedJet Assist looks to be an excellent investment if you find yourself on assigment frequently. More info HERE

Adobe Kuler - Looking for inspiration for colour themes? I stumbled across Adobe Kuler recently - more information HERE - well worth looking at if you do design or even have to style a shot, put together your portfolio online, etc.

ImageKind - Looking to sell your prints online? ImageKind looks like a great place from which to do that. You upload the images, decide on pricing, and they do the rest. There’s a Web2.0 element to the whole thing, so people can stumble across you via tags, etc. If you’ve always wanted to sell your images but don’t have a fancy printer or the time and inclination to administer the task, ImageKind.com might be the place. But check their quality first because I haven’t. More info HERE.

Photopreneur - A frequently-updated blog about the business side of photography. Always seems to have the odd interesting tid-bit. I don’t know what a bit of a tid might be, nor why you’d want one. But if you do, then you’re in luck. Photopreneur site HERE

Brusheezy - I think it was Scott Kelby who put me onto this site. I recently spent a couple hours looking through this site for inspiration and found some really excellent brushes. Highly highly recommended. Brusheezy site HERE.

If you have anything to contribute, comments, additions, subtractions, detractions, or, uh, other stuff…leave it in the comments bin for the rest of the class.

My largest project this year has been partnering with World Vision Canada to gather photo-resources for their Gift Catalogue. In the coming month I suspect a number of you will get copies of this catalogue. American readers will get theirs from World Vision US who have also chosen, I believe, to use some of my images for their covers. I am thrilled to be part of this project and beyond announcing that it’s finally here, I want to encourage you all to consider how you can incorporate this Gift Catalogue into your plans for giving this Christmas.

Having seen over and over again the work that World Vision does I encourage you to consider some of these extraordinary ways of passing forward the blessings you’ve been given.

Most, though not all of the images in this years catalogue are mine. What a surreal feeling to look through this catalogue and see the faces and know that I was there, met those children, laughed with them, and saw firsthand how much good has come to their lives through World Vision. I do hope you’ll take the time to look through it; that your heart will be moved to say no to the stress and consumption that Christmas shopping has become, and give a gift that will change lives. Your aunt Edna’s getting pudgy anyways, she doesn’t need another box of Purdy’s Chocolates.

If you do not get a copy be sure to contact the World Vision office in your country and request one - they’ll gladly send you some to hand out to friends and colleagues. World Vision Canada - CLICK HERE, World Vision US - CLICK HERE, World Vision UK - CLICK HERE

Rob Galbraith’s site today reported that Nikon has just announced two new cameras. One, the new D3 is a 12 megapixel powerhouse (above) and it finally brings Nikon users in to the full-frame game. Welcome Nikonians, to the full-frame goodness we Canon users know and love and have been desperate to share with you. (See more details HERE.) Nikon also announced the D300, full details HERE.

Rather than repeat it all here, I’ll let you follow the links above to Galbraith’s site for the news. I’m not much of a techy-geek and don’t know Nikon’s line well enough to make meaningful comments. But for the Nikon shooters I know this is going to be a big deal.

Canon has recently release the 40D, and the specs are really solid, but I don’t think it’s the same leap forward that Nikon is making here. Now, to be fair, they’re a little late to the full-frame game and to the low-noise-at-high-ISO game too, but this isn’t a competition. Well it is but we consumers aren’t the players, we just reap the happy benefits of this competitive industry. So we all win.

Yesterday the 12″ Powerbook I most love for travelling died in the arms of my wife. Unhappily we trudged to MacStation for the 3rd time this month and picked up a 13″ MacBook. I’ve been dreading this day. Apple decided to discontinue the 12″ Powerbook when the MacBook Pros came out, and I have been loathing the idea of a transition to a MacBook, but knew that the size (13″) of the MacBook would in the end trump the performance and shiny of the MacBook Pro.

Buying a new laptop is a painful experience for me. It means my old batteries don’t fit, my old case(s) don’t fit, and my old AC cables don’t fit. In short, it means a whole pile of new accessories which I’m loathe to spend money on. It’s also an experience that comes with the uncertainty of “what if I hate the new machine? Or what if it doesn’t perform?”

After 24 hours with this little MacBook ( I got the black one - faster, bigger HDD) - I’m pleased to say I prefer it to any of my previous PowerBooks. I will miss the backlit keyboard. On the plus side, the resolution of the 13″ screen is actually greater than the resolution of the 15″ PowerBook - so I feel like I got a smaller machine without reverting to a tiny screen. I have a feeling that for travelling photographers the 13″ MacBooks are going to be the Apple laptop of choice.

On Tuesday I posted a lengthy rant concerning my experience with VistaPrint.com, this is the follow-up.

I posted my order on Tuesday, and on Thursday had a notification saying my order had been shipped. Today is Sunday  - and the post office just delivered a box from VistaPrint. I paid for the slow shipping method and it came in 3 days. I’m  impressed.

Opening the box made me a nervous; I hate being let down and I really did not want to print these postcards a third time. The good news is that the quality is really pretty good - it’s not offset quality, but it’s good. If it IS offset printed then it’s decent but not the best. Part of this is the underwhelming 80lb cardstock and the lack of a gloss laminate on the front. It has something like an aqueous coating but it maintains finger-prints more readily.

I like the quality well enough that on budget work I will happily go to VistaPrint.com again. I still find the online interface less than pleasant (painful would be my descriptor of choice). For the price - $124 for 3 sets of 100 jumbo postcards (almost 6×9) of decent quality and remarkable shpping speed - VistaPrint is the inverse of many of the services offered online these days that are all spit and polish but no substance. Vistaprint has the (substance for the price) but I’d happily pay $10 more on every order just to improve the ordering and uploading experience.

One of the most cost-effective methods of marketing yourself is direct mail, and my favourite way to do this is with postcards. Recently I’ve heard Vistaprint.com touted as a really great service, and after a plug on Dave Cross’ blog I decided to use them for my next campaign which incorporates three seperate postcards sent out over a three month period.

So. I went to Vistaprint.com this morning because they have good prices and on top of that some special pricing right now. I’ll be sure to let you know what the quality is like when they arrive, but a couple words about the service and the website which, when combined, were simply bad enough to make me want to punch a kitten. Maybe even two kittens. And I love kittens.

The interface is confusing at best. They provide templates, but when you use the templates, save them as they recommend, the files sizes are too big for their service to upload.

I called support and waited for 5 minutes before someone got to my call. His english was not so good, so we had a few mis-communications. The conclusion?

I had to re-save to JPG and try again. And I had to create an account before I uploaded anything, something the website is cleverly mute on. I swore under my breath. My cats started looking nervous.

But this time the interface wouldn’t seem my postcards as vertical and tried to force a vertical image into a horizontal orientation, so I had to go back to photoshop, rotate the images and re-save.

After cussing and whining and looking for another kitten I finally got through the upload process - which froze my browser while it uploaded, preventing me from doing other internetty things at the same time.

Then the discounts for which I went to this site never showed up. The site said they’d show up at checkout - they never did. So another call to support to sort out discounts. And then I had to go through the whole checkout process again.

Perhaps the printing quality is so good people keep coming back for that. Or perhaps it’s just a steep learning curve that takes it’s toll on kittens, and once you learn it you find you can go for WEEKS without punching a kitten or even a puppy. But folks, this was one of the most painful online experiences I have ever had. I’ve even skipped some stuff - like the whole bit about charging you for uploading your own designs, images, and logos. Or the way they force you to click through 4 pages of up-selling (Ready to buy now? How about envelopes? No? How about rubber stamps? No! What about labels for the envelopes you don’t want? NO!! Oh, so you really just want to check out?) I’m not suggesting you don’t use Vistaprint.com - if Dave Cross uses it the quality must be good. But you may as well walk into the experience prepared. So sign on, grab a kitten, and get ready for a painful experience.

I’ll update you in three weeks, which is when they say my order will be here. I refused to pay the premium for shipping. On the plus side - the part that kittens everywhere will be glad about - I got 3 orders of 100 postcards, 4/4,  roughly 5×8 in size, all shipped and taxed for $125.

If you’ve had a different experience, please tell me. I can’t bide the thought that fellow Canadian Dave Cross supports such violence against baby animals. If you’ve had a similar experience, chime in with that too.

(Thank you for letting me vent, I feel better now.)

After yesterday’s driver debacle I decided to finally take the bull by the horns and dig further under the hood and take my printing in Lightroom one step further. I took all this straight from Scott Kelby’s Lightroom book so if this stuff interests you at all, go buy the book. I’m posting this not to substitute for reading SK’s great book but to highlight how easy it is to follow a few simple directions and get outstanding results.

Here’s the steps I took to crank out what is arguably the best looking print I have yet to create on my Epson R2400 to date. This assumes the use of an Epson printer and Epson papers. I’m pretty sure the steps are similar for other combinations.

1. Go to Epson.com and follow the links to your printer driver. Somewhere on that same page there will/should be a link that says this: Visit our Premium ICC Profiles for Stylus Photo R2400
page for access to Premium ICC profiles produced by Epson America, Inc.
In most cases, these custom ICC profiles will provide more accurate
color and black and white reproduction than with the standard profiles
already shipping with every printer.

2. Click that link (or if using an R2400, click the one above) and download the icc profile for the papers you use - in my case it’s the Matte Paper - Heavyweight and Velvet Fine Art. It’ll download to your desktop. Double click the unzipped installer file and it’ll do it it’s thing.

3. Open Lightroom, pick an image and take it into the PRINT Module.

4. Ok, here’s the “under the hood” stuff. It’s pretty elementary but for someone who’s had an abject terror of anything related to printing, this is bold stuff. Assuming you have your page set-up the way you want it - margins where you want them, paper size, etc - Go down to the PRINT JOB panel on the bottom of right hand side and do the following:

A. Set Print Resolution to 360ppi
B. Set Print Sharpening to HIGH
C. Under Color Management, Profile - Click and hold where it says Managed By Printer, and in the resulting menu choose Other. This will now bring up a dialogue to choose the appropriate profile for the paper you’ve chosen. Check the box (or boxes if you use several papers).
D. You’r profiles are now added so choose the one for the paper you want to print on for this job.

That’s it. Now the only other thing you want to do is make sure Colour Management is turned off in the Print Settings dialogue.

You’ll get a more thorough explanation in The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book. I followed these steps and printed a bang-on print of one of my favourite images from India.

I’ve read alot of negative things about printing in Lightroom, and I’m the first to admit to being a beginner at digital printing, so there might be much I am missing. But I know what a great print looks like and I know when my printer isn’t meeting my expectations. 10 minutes after reading through the Printing chapter again, I fired up my printer and finally saw what my Epson can do. I strongly encourage you to dig under the hood, and want to reiterate what so many people told me - the proper icc profiles make a world of difference. (So does calibrating your monitor - I use Pantone’s excellent Eye-One weekly)

Go forth, print and be merry.

I was stumbling around the internet this afternoon - distracting myself from the suddenly-realized fact that my old R2400 printer drivers don’t work on my new MacPro. The frustration of the printer thing is another tale for another time. It sorted itself out after I downloaded a different driver from the Epson Malaysia site - it’s the only one that worked. But now all my paper sizes are in metric and it’s very confusing and, well I needed a break.

I stumbled upon a web-blog - Thomas Broening’s, I believe - that raised an excellent question. Someone had made the observation that at some point in Broening’s career his images were so over-produced that they had had the life sucked out of them, that someone had asked the question "but is the image alive?"

Is it alive?

Good question. It could probably be expressed a million ways - but "is it alive" resonates with me. The internet is full of shooters who are really good at their technique - but their images aren’t alive. There’s alot of clever, artsy stuff out there - really well conceived - but is it alive? Does it catch a moment, an emotion, a question that resists resolving, a moment where the thing is neither up nor down but hanging in the dynamic nano-second between being tossed in the air and being pulled back by gravity? Is it ALIVE?

I’m finding it harder and harder to critique images these days, i think mostly because i feel like I keep saying the same thing - the image isn’t ABOUT anything, it doesn’t conjure up emotion in me. Forget what you’ve heard - the best images don’t "freeze a moment  in time" as though the moment had been shot, killed, and mounted. The best images capture that moment and allow it to live on every time it is experienced by a viewer. The spark in the eye, the dynamic composition, the incompleted gesture, the leading lines, the interplay of light and dark, the hint of intention…all these and more can breathe life into an image when used right.

I’m not going anywhere with this, it’s not a tutorial - more like the mutterings of a drunken, senile teacher who long ago had his license revoked - but it’s my blog. I claim artistic license.

Next time you’re tempted to ask "is it any good?", start with "is it alive?" instead.

This one will really only be significant to those of you with Canon CPS status. Canon Canada has just announced a series of invitation-only 2-day expos across the country - Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, and Montreal. On the agenda are learning sessions with Apple and Adobe, and lecutres/sessions with Vincent Laforet and Dennis Reggie. Add to this some hands-on sessions with new gear, etc., and it seems like a great chance to get in on some free information and rubbing-of-elbows. I’m also holding out for swag - there had better be great swag.

Website here: Canon.ca/cspe

**
In other news and of NO interest to anyone, CPS or otherwise, FedEx has FINALLY got my new MacPro on a truck and headed out to my Vancouver area Apple retailer of choice - MacStation - today. So with any luck I will be getting my geek on tonight and installing a mountain of software. That annoying giggling sound this evening will be me. I apologize in advance.

Two great photo competitions for travel photographers are in full swing right now, and their deadlines loometh, so get in while you can, and while budgets permit. A guy could go bankrupt entering these things.

TRAVEL PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR 2007 -
This one has the coolest award EVER. From the TPOTY website: This year we are honoured to be able to announce that the overall winner
of the competition will travel to Dharamsala in India, during which
they will have the opportunity to spend up to two days with His Holiness
the Dalai Lama.  This trip will enable the winner to produce a superb
photographic essay on His Holiness and the Tibetan settlement at
Dharamsala.

TPOTY Website HERE

WORLD IN FOCUS CONTEST 2007 -
The World In Focus Contest is a collaboration between National Geographic and Photo District News. NG sponsors the amateur wing of the contest, and frankly, provides WAY cooler prizes than the professional  contest. Amatuers can look forward to some amazing trips, including 11 days in Artic Norway or 10 days in the Galapagos. Professionals get some new gear. The World In Focus Contest is very well publicized on this side of the pond, so the resulting PR is good.

World In Focus Website HERE